ing. Whence is this thoughtless tranquillity, when thou and they are equally endangered?" I looked, and seeing the gulph of Intemperance before me, started and awaked.
Numb. 103. Tuesday, March 12, 1751.
Scire volunt secreta domus, atque inde timeri. |
Juv. |
They search the secrets of the house, and so |
Dryden. |
CURIOSITY is one of the permanent and certain characteristicks of a vigorous intellect. Every advance into knowledge opens new prospects, and produces new incitements to further progress. All the attainments possible in our present state are evidently inadequate to our capacities of enjoyment; conquest serves no purpose but that of kindling ambition, discovery has no effect but of raising expectation; the gratification of one desire encourages another; and after all our labours, studies, and enquiries, we are continually at the same distance from the completion of our schemes, have still some wish importunate to be satisfied, and some faculty restless and turbulent for want of its enjoyment.
The desire of knowledge, though often animated by extrinsick and adventitious motives, seems on many occasions to operate without subordination to any other principle; we are eager to see and hear, without intention of referring our observations to a farther end; we climb a mountain for a prospect of the plain; we run to the
