JUSTICE. THERE is no virtue so truly great and godlike as Justice. Most of the other virtues are the virtues of created beings, or accommodated to our nature as we are men. Justice is that which is practised by God himfelf, and to be practifed in its perfection by none but him. Omniscience and omnipotence are requifite for the full exertion of it. The one to discover every degree of uprightness in thoughts, words, and actions. The other, to measure out and impart suitable rewards and punishments. As to be perfectly just is an attribute in the Divine Nature, to be so to the utmost of our abilities is the glory of a man. Such a one who has the public administration in his hands, acts like the representative of his Maker, in recompenfing the virtuous, and punishing the offender. By the extirpation of a criminal he averts the judgments of Heaven, when ready to fall upon an impious people, or as my friend Cato expreffes it much better in a fentiment conformable to his character When be just vengeance impious mortals perish, When a nation once lofes its regard to justice; when they do not look upon it as something venerable, holy, and inviolable; when any of them dare presume to lessen, affront, or terrify those who have the diftribution of it in their hands; when a judge is capable of being influenced by any thing but law, or a cause may be recommended by any thing that is foreign to its own merits, we may venture to pronounce that such a nation is hastening to its ruin. I always rejoice when I fee a tribunal filled with a man of an upright and inflexible temper, who in the execution of his country's laws can overcome all private fear, refentment, folicitation, and even pity itself.. Whatever passion enters into a fentence or decifion, so far will there be in it a tincture of injuftice. In short, justice discards party, friendship, kindred, and is therefore always reprefented as blind, that we may suppose her thoughts are wholly intent on the equity of a cause, without being diverted or prejudiced by objects foreign to it. I shall conclude this paper with a Perfian story which is very fuitable to my present subject. It will not a little please the reader, if he has the fame tafte of it which I myself have. As one of the Sultans lay encamped on the plains of Avala, a certain great man of the army entered by force into a peasant's house, and finding his wife very handsome, turned the good man out of his dwelling and went to bed to her. The peafant complained the next morning to the Sultan, and defired redress; but was not able to point out the criminal. The emperor who was very much incenfed at the injury done to the poor man, told him that probably the offender might give his wife another vifit, and if he did, commanded him immediately to repair to his tent and acquaint him with it. Accordingly, within two or three days, the officer entered again the peasant's house and turned the owner out of doors; who thereupon applied himself to the imperial tent, as he was ordered. The Sultan went in person with his guards, to the poor man's house, where he arrived about midnight. As the attendants carried each of them a flambeau in their hands, the Sultan, after having ordered all the lights to be put out, gave the word to enter the house, find out the criminal, and put him to death. This was immediately executed, and the corpse laid out upon the floor by the emperor's command. He then bid every one light his flambeau, and stand about the dead body. The Sultan approaching it, looked upon the face, and immediately fell upon his knees in prayer. Upon his rifing up, he ordered the peasant to fet before him whatever food he had in his house. The peafant brought out a great deal of coarfe fare, of which the emperor ate very heartily. The peasant feeing him in good humour, presumed to ask him, why he had ordered the flambeaux to be put out before he had com manded the adulterer to be slain? Why upon their being lighted again he looked upon the face of the dead body, and fell down in prayer ? And why, after this he had ordered meat to be set before him, of which he now eat so heartily? The Sultan, being willing to gratify the curiosity of his host, answered him in this manner: "Upon hearing the greatness of the offence which had been committed by one of the army, I had reason to think it might have been one of my fons, for who else would have been so audacious and prefuming? I gave orders therefore for the lights to be extinguished, that I might not be led astray by partiality and compaffion, from doing justice on the criminal. Upon lighting the flambeaux a fecond time, I looked upon the face of the dead perfon, and to my unspeakable joy, found it was not my fon. It was for this reason that I immediately fell upon my knees and gave thanks to God. As for my eating heartily of the food you have fet before me, you will cease to wonder at it, when you know that the great anxiety of mind I have been in, upon this occafion, since the first complaint you brought me, has hindered my eating any thing from that time till this very moment." GUARDIAN, Vol. II. No. 99. 4 KNOWLEDGE. T HE last method which I proposed in my Saturday's paper, for filling up those empty spaces of life which are so tedious and burdensome to idle people, is the employing ourselves in the pursuit of knowledge. I remember Mr. Boyle, speaking of a certain mineral, tells us, that a man may confume his whole life in the study of it, without arriving at the knowledge of all its qualities. The truth of it is, there is not a single science, or any branch of it, that might not furnish a man with business for life, though it were much longer than it is. I shall not here enlarge on those beaten subjects of the usefulness of knowledge, nor of the pleasure and perfection it gives the mind, nor on the methods of attaining it, nor recommend any particular branch of it, all which have been the topics of many other writers; but shall indulge myself in a speculation that is more uncommon, and may therefore perhaps be more entertaining. I have before thewn how the unemployed parts of life appear long and tedious, and shall here endeavour to shew how those parts of life which are exercised in study, reading, and the pursuits of knowledge, are long but not tedious, and by that means discover a method of lengthening our lives, and at the fame time of turning all the parts of them to our advantage. Mr. Locke observes, "That we get the idea of time, or duration, by reflecting on that train of ideas which succeed one another in our minds; that for this reason, when we fleep soundly without dreaming, we have no perception of time, or the length of it, whilft we fleep; and that the moment wherein we leave off to think, till the moment we begin to think again, seems to have no diftance." To which the author adds, " And so I doubt not but it would be to a waking man, if it were possible for him to keep only one idea in his mind without variation, and the succession of others; and we fee, that one who fixes his thoughts very intently on one thing, so as to take but little notice of the succession of ideas that pass in his mind whilft he is taken up with that earnest contemplation, lets flip out of his account a good part of that duration, and thinks that time shorter than it is." We might carry this thought farther, and confider a man as, on one fide, shortening his time by thinking on nothing, or but a few things; so, on the other, as lengthening it, by employing his thoughts on many subjects, or by entertaining a quick and conftant fuccession of ideas. Accordingly Monfieur Mallebranche, in his Inquiry after Truth (which was published several years before Mr. Locke's Essay on Human Understanding) tells us, That it is poffible some creatures may think half an hour as long as we de a thousand years; or look upon that space of duration which we call a minute, as an hour, a week, a month, or a whole age. This notion of Monfieur Mallebranche is capable of some little explanations from what I have quoted out of Mr. Locke; for if our notion of time is produced by our reflecting on the fucceflion of ideas in our mind, and this fucceffion may be infinitely accelerated or retarded, it will follow, that different beings may have different notions of the fame parts duration, ion, according to their ideas, which we suppose are equally diftinct in each of them, follow one another in a greater or less degree of rapidity. of There is a famous paflage in the Alcoran, which looks as if Mahomet had been poffefsed of the notion we are now speaking of. It is there said, that the angel Gabriel took Mahomet out of his bed one morning to give him a fight of all things in the seven Heavens, in paradife, and in hell, which the prophet took a diftinct view of; and after having held ninety thousand conferences with God, was brought back again to his bed. All this, fays the Alcoran, was transacted in so small a space of time, that Mahomet at his return found his bed still warm, and took up an earthen pitcher (which was thrown down at the very instant that the angel Gabriel carried him away) before the water was all spilt. There is a very pretty story in the Turkish tales, which relates to this passage of that famous impoftor, and bears fome affinity to the subject we are now upon. A Sultan of Egypt, who was an infidel, used to laugh at this circumstance in Mahomet's life, as what was altogether impoffible and abfurd: But converfing one day with a great doctor in the law, who had the gift of working miracles, the doctor told him he would quickly convince him of the truth of this passage in the history of Mahomet, if he would confent to do what he should defire of him. Upon this the Sultan was directed to place himself by an huge tub of water, which he did accordingly; as he stood by the tub amidst a circle of his great men, the holy man bid him plunge his head into the water, and draw it up again: |