DIALOGUE VII. ON THE USES OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. LORD SHAFTESBURY-MR. LOCKE; TO ROBERT MOLESWORTH, ESQ. I COULD not but be much surprised, my dear friend, to receive your commands on a subject, of which You, of all men, are the greatest master. For who could so well advise the party, you speak of, or resolve the general question concerning The Uses of Foreign Travel, considered as a part of modern breeding and education, as HE, who has himself profited so much by this practice, and, in a late excellent treatise a, has given so convincing a proof of its utility? Besides, your application to me is a little suspicious; and looks as if you wanted to draw a Account of Denmark, as it was in the year 1692. DIALOGUE from me a confirmation of your own sentiVII. ments, rather than a candid examination of them. For how was it possible for you not to foresee the difficulty I must be under, in debating this point with you? When have I been able to dissent from you in any question of morals or policy? and especially what chance for my doing it in this instance, when you know the bias which my own education, conducted in this way, must have left upon me? I am therefore at a loss, as I said, to account for your fancy in making me of your council on this occasion. But, whatever your purpose might be, since you have thought fit to honour me so far, I must own your Letter of Inquiry could not possibly have found me in a fitter season. I happened just then to amuse myself with recollecting a conversation, which, not many days before, had passed between me and a certain Philosopher of great note, on that very subject. You know the esteem I have of this Philosopher; I mean, for such of his writings, as are most popular, and deserve to be so; súch as his pieces on Government, Trade, Liberty, VII. and Education. No man understands the DIALOGUE world better; or reasons more clearly on those subjects, in which that world takes itself to be most of all, and is, in truth, very nearly concerned. His Philosophy, properly so called, is not, I doubt, of so good a taste; at least, his notion of morals is too modern for my relish: I had put myself to school to other masters, and had learnt, you know, from his betters what to think of Life and Manners; which they treat in a style quite out of the way of these subverters of ideal worlds, and architects on ma terial principles. But on this head, my dear Sir, you have heard me speak often, and may hear from me more at large on some other occasion. With exception to this one article (an important one, however), no man is more able, than Mr. LOCKE, or more privileged by his long experience, to give us Lectures on the good old b Such as certain philosophers amused themselves with building, on Innate Ideas. Ideas of Sensation-on which principles, indeed, a late writer has constructed, but by no fault of Mr. LOCKE, a material system of the grossest Epicurism. See a work entitled, De l'Esprit, in 2 tom. Amst. 1759. |