CHAPTER iI. 23 scholar now becomes a citizen or a gentleman, a neighbour and a friend ; he learns how to dress his Sentiments in the fairest colours, as well as to set them in the strongest light. Thus be brings out his notions with honour, he makes some use of them in the world, and improves the theory by the practice. But before we proceed too far in finishing a bright charac- ter by conversation, we should consider that something else is necessary besides an acquaintance with men and books: and therefore I add, V. Mere lecture, reading, and conversation, without thinL-- ing, are not sufficient to make a man of knowledge and wisdom. It is our own thought, and reflection, study and meditation, must attend all the other methods of improvement, and perfect them. It carries these advantages with it : 1. Though observation and instruction, reading and con- versation may furnish us with many ideas of men and things, yet it is our own meditation and the labour of our own thoughts, that must form our judgment of things. Our own thoughts should join or disjoin these ideas in a proposition for ourselves : it is our own mind that must judge for ourselves concerning the agreement or disagreement of ideas, and formpropositions of truth out of them. Reading and conversation may acquaint us with many truths and with many arguments to support them, but it is our own study and reasoning thatlmust determine whether these propositions are true, and whether these arguments are just and solid. It is confest there area thousand things which our eyes have not seen, and which would never come within the reach of our personal and immediate knowledge and observation, because of the distance of times and places : These must be known by con-. sulting other persons ; and that is done either in their writings or in their discourses. But after all, let this be a fixed point with us, that it is our own reflection and judgment must deter- mine how far we should receive that which books or men inform us of, and bow far they are worthy of our assent and credit. 2. It is meditation and study that transfers and conveys the notions and sentiments of others to ourselves, so as to make them properly our own. It is our own judgment upon them as well as our memory of them, that makes them become our own property. It does as it were concoct our intellectual food, and turns it into a part of ourselves : just as a man may call his limbs and his flesh his own, whether he borrowed the materials from the ox or the sheep, from the lark or the lobster ; whether he derived it from corn or milk, the fruits of the trees, or the herbs and roots of the earth ; it is all now become one substance with himself, and lie wields and manages those muscles and limbs for his own proper purposes, which once were the substance
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