"While I was intent on improving my language, I met with an English
grammar (I think it was Greenwood's), at the end of which there were
two little sketches of the arts of rhetoric and logic, the latter
finishing with a specimen of a dispute in the Socratic method; and soon
after I procur'd Xenophon's Memorable Things of Socrates, wherein there
are many instances of the same method. I was charm'd with it, adopted
it, dropt my abrupt contradiction and positive argumentation, and put
on the humble inquirer and doubter. And being then, from reading
Shaftesbury and Collins, become a real doubter in many points of our
religious doctrine, I found this method safest for myself and very
embarrassing to those against whom I used it; therefore I took a
delight in it, practis'd it continually, and grew very artful and
expert in drawing people, even of superior knowledge, into concessions,
the consequences of which they did not foresee, entangling them in
difficulties out of which they could not extricate themselves, and so
obtaining victories that neither myself nor my cause always deserved.
I continu'd this method some few years, but gradually left it,
retaining only the habit of expressing myself in terms of modest
diffidence; never using, when I advanced any thing that may possibly be
disputed, the words certainly, undoubtedly, or any others that give the
air of positiveness to an opinion; but rather say, I conceive or
apprehend a thing to be so and so; it appears to me, or I should think
it so or so, for such and such reasons; or I imagine it to be so; or it
is so, if I am not mistaken. This habit, I believe, has been of great
advantage to me when I have had occasion to inculcate my opinions, and
persuade men into measures that I have been from time to time engag'd
in promoting; and, as the chief ends of conversation are to inform or
to be informed, to please or to persuade, I wish well-meaning, sensible
men would not lessen their power of doing good by a positive, assuming
manner, that seldom fails to disgust, tends to create opposition, and
to defeat every one of those purposes for which speech was given to us,
to wit, giving or receiving information or pleasure. For, if you would
inform, a positive and dogmatical manner in advancing your sentiments
may provoke contradiction and prevent a candid attention. If you wish
information and improvement from the knowledge of others, and yet at
the same time express yourself as firmly fix'd in your present
opinions, modest, sensible men, who do not love disputation, will
probably leave you undisturbed in the possession of your error. And by
such a manner, you can seldom hope to recommend yourself in pleasing
your hearers, or to persuade those whose concurrence you desire. Pope
says, judiciously:
"Men should be taught as if you taught them not,
And things unknown propos'd as things forgot;"
farther recommending to us
"To speak, tho' sure, with seeming diffidence."
And he might have coupled with this line that which he has coupled with
another, I think, less properly,
"For want of modesty is want of sense."
If you ask, Why less properly? I must repeat the lines,
"Immodest words admit of no defense,
For want of modesty is want of sense."
Now, is not want of sense (where a man is so unfortunate as to want it)
some apology for his want of modesty? and would not the lines stand
more justly thus?
"Immodest words admit but this defense,
That want of modesty is want of sense."
This, however, I should submit to better judgments."
