He has no more title to the worth and virtue of his ancestors than
the worms that were engendered in their dead bodies, and yet he believes
he has enough to exempt himself and his posterity from all things of
that nature for ever. This makes him glory in the antiquity of his
family, as if his nobility were the better the further off it is, in
time as well as desert, from that of his predecessors. He believes the
honour that was left him as well as the estate is sufficient to support
his quality without troubling himself to purchase any more of his own;
and he meddles us little with the management of the one as the other,
but trusts both to the government of his servants, by whom he is equally
cheated in both. He supposes the empty title of honour sufficient to
serve his turn, though he has spent the substance and reality of it,
like the fellow that sold his ass but would not part with the shadow of
it; or Apicius, that sold his house, and kept only the balcony to see
and be seen in. And because he is privileged from being arrested for his
debts, supposes he has the same freedom from all obligations he owes
humanity and his country, because he is not punishable for his ignorance
and want of honour, no more than poverty or unskilfulness is in other
professions, which the law supposes to be punishment enough to itself.
He is like a fanatic, that contents himself with the mere title of a
saint, and makes that his privilege to act all manner of wickedness; or
the ruins of a noble structure, of which there is nothing left but the
foundation, and that obscured and buried under the rubbish of the
superstructure.
Pages:
365
366
367
368
369
370
371
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387
388
389