VI
The following short description of the practical Paley comes aptly after that of this charming Utopian:
“Paley.—The natural frame of Paley’s understanding fitted it more for business and the world than for philosophy; and he accordingly enjoyed with considerable relish the few opportunities which the latter part of his life afforded, of taking a part in the affairs of his country, as a magistrate. Penetration and shrewdness, firmness and coolness, a vein of pleasantry, fruitful, though somewhat unrefined, with an original homeliness and significancy of expression, were perhaps more remarkable in his conversation than the restraints of authorship and profession allowed them to be in his writings. His taste for the common business and ordinary amusements of life, fortunately gave a zest to the company which his neighbourhood chanced to yield, without rendering him insensible to the pleasures of intercourse with more enlightened society. The practical bent of his nature is visible in the language of his writings, which, on practical matters, is as precise as the nature of the subject requires; but, in his rare and reluctant efforts to rise to first principles, becomes undeterminate and unsatisfactory, though no man’s composition was more free from the impediments which hinder a writer’s meaning from being quickly and clearly seen. He possessed that chastised acuteness of discrimination, exercised on the affairs of men, and habitually looking to a purpose beyond the mere increase of knowledge, which forms the character of a lawyer’s understanding, and which is apt to render a mere lawyer too subtle for the management of affairs, and yet too gross for the pursuit of general truths. His style is as near perfection, in its kind, as any in our language. Perhaps no words were ever more expressive and illustrative than those in which he represents the art of life to be that of rightly setting our habits.”—“Ethical Philosophy,” p. 274.
Such are the portraits in this work; the history of ancient ethics, and the vindication of the scholiasts also, are in themselves and as separate compositions of great merit; but when, after admiring these different fragments, we look at the plan, at the system which is to result from them, or endeavour to follow out the line of reasoning which is to bring them together—we quit the land of realities for that of shadows, and are obliged to confess that the author has barely sufficient vigour to make his meaning intelligible.