Of the S T U D Y of H I S T O R Y. II

the only advantage of inftrudtion by example; forexample appeals not to our underftanding alone,but to our paffions likewife. Example affuagesthefe, or animates them; fets paffion on the fideof judgment, and makes the whole man of a-piece;w r hich is more than the flrongeft reafoning andthe cleareft demonftration can do: and thus forminghabits by repetition, example fecures the obfer-vance of thofe precepts which example infmuated.Is it not Pliny , my lord, who fays, that thegentleft, he fhould have added the mod effectual,way of commanding, is by example? “ Mitiustc jubetur exemplo. ” The harfheft orders are foft-ened by example, and tyranny itfelf becomesperfuafive. What pity is it that fo few princeshave learned this way of commanding? But again:the force of examples is not confined to thofealone, that pafs immediately under our fight: theexamples, that memory fuggefts, have the fameeffect in their degree, and a habit of recallingthem will foon produce the habit of imitatingthem. In the fame epiftle, from whence I cited apaffage juft now, Seneca fays that Cleanthes had never become fo perfedt a copy of Zeno , ifhe had not palled his life with him ; that Plato ,Aristotle , and the other philofophers of thatfchool, profited more by the example, than bythe difcourfe of Socrates . ( But here, by theway, Seneca miftook; for Socrates died twoyears, according to fome, and four years, accordingto others, before the birth of Aristotle : andhis miftake might come from the inaccuracy of