MAXIME LXIX.

Not to be of the humour of the vulgar.

He is a great man that gives no admis∣sion to popular impressions. It is a lesson of Prudence to reflect upon ones self, to know ones own inclination, to prevent it, and even to goe to the other extremity, that one may find the poise of reason be∣twixt nature and art. The knowledge of ones self is the beginning of amend∣ment. There are some Monsters of im∣pertinence, who are now of one humour, and by and by of another; and change their opinions as their humours. They engage in quite contrary affairs, being always hurried away by the impetuosity of that civil torrent, which not onely corrupts the will, but also the knowledge and judgment.

A great Capacity (saith the Authour in the Chapter, No rendirse al humor of his Discreet) is never carried with the flux and reflux neither of humours, nor of passions. It is always above that clownish immoderation. Many shame∣fully Page  70 suffer themselves to be tyrannized over by the predominant humour. They maintain to day what they contradicted yesterday. Sometime they stand for rea∣son, and sometimes they trample it under foot. There is no rest for their judge∣ments, which is the height of extrava∣gance. You cannot take them in a good sense, because they have none. Yesterday and to day they differ as much as black and white: and then having been the first to contradict themselves, they contradict all others. When once we understand their depraved mind, it is best to let them a∣lone in their own confusion. For the more they doe, the more they undoe.

It is the sign of a rich stock of sense, to know how to prevent and correct ones humour, since it is a disease of mind, wherein a wise man ought to govern himself as in a distemper of body.

There are such far gone impertinents, that they are always in some humour; always galled with some passion; insup∣portable to those who have to doe with them, perpetual Enemies of conversation and civility, who have no relish of the best things; more incurable than stark fools. For with a little compliance these are wheedled, and those grow worse by it. There is nothing to be got of them Page  71 by reason, for having none themselves, they'll receive none from others.

But if a man sometimes fall into a passion, and that but rarely, and for a great cause, that will be no ground to ac∣cuse him of a vulgar humour. For never to be angry, is to be always a Beast. But a constant bad humour, and towards all people, is insupportable Clownishness. Anger, which makes the slave, may still be a sawce for a free state. But he that is not capable of knowing himself, will be still less of correcting himself.