reasoned in order to prove to me that human reason cannot be
trusted, or I to convince one who affirmed its universal falsity,
it were hard to say whether he or I had been the greater fool.
Your universal sceptic--if he choose to affect that character,--no
man is it--is impregnable; his true emblem is the hedgehog ensphered
in his prickles; that is, as long as you are observing him. For if
you do not thus irritate his amour propre, and put him on the
defensive, he will unroll himself. Speaking, reasoning, acting,
like the rest of the world, on the implied truthfulness of the
faculties whose falsity he affirms, he will save you the trouble of
confuting him, by confuting himself.

And I am glad, for another reason, that Harrington does not affect
this universal scepticism: for whereas, by the confession of its
greatest masters, it is at best but the play of a subtle intellect, so
it does not afford a very flattering picture of an intellect that
affects it. I should have been mortified, I confess, had Harrington
been chargeable with such a foible.

It is true that, in another aspect, all this makes the case more
desperate; for his scepticism, so far as it extends, is deep and
genuine; it is no play of an ingenious subtilty, nor the affectation
of singularity with him;--and my prognostications of the misery
which such a mind must feel from driving over the tempestuous ocean
of life under bare poles, without chart or compass, are, I can see,
verified. One fact, I confess, gives me hopes, and often affords me
pleasure in listening to him. He is an impartial doubter; he doubts
whether Christianity be true; but he also doubts whether it be false;
and, either from his impatience of the theories which infidelity
proposes in its place, as inspiring yet stronger doubts, or in revenge