you mix with it things of an opposite nature, even though they are much
better. Therefore go through with the play that is acting the best you
can, and do not confound it because another that is pleasanter comes
into your thoughts. It is even so in a commonwealth, and in the councils
of princes; if ill opinions cannot be quite rooted out, and you cannot
cure some received vice according to your wishes, you must not therefore
abandon the commonwealth, for the same reasons you should not forsake
the ship in a storm because you cannot command the winds. You are not
obliged to assault people with discourses that are out of their road,
when you see that their received notions must prevent your making an
impression upon them. You ought rather to cast about and to manage
things with all the dexterity in your power, so that if you are not
able to make them go well they may be as little ill as possible; for
except all men were good everything cannot be right, and that is a
blessing that I do not at present hope to see. According to your
arguments," answered he, "all that I could be able to do would be to
preserve myself from being mad while I endeavoured to cure the madness
of others; for if I speak truth, I must repeat what I have said to you;
and as for lying, whether a philosopher can do it or not, I cannot tell,
I am sure I cannot do it. But though these discourses may be uneasy and
ungrateful to them, I do not see why they should seem foolish or
extravagant: indeed if I should either propose such things as Plato has
contrived in his commonwealth, or as the Utopians practise in theirs,
though they might seem better, as certainly they are, yet they are so
different from our establishment, which is founded on property, there
being no such thing among them, that I could not expect that it would
have any effect on them; but such discourses as mine, which only call
past evils to mind and give warning of what may follow, have nothing in
them that is so absurd that they may not be used at any time, for they
can only be unpleasant to those who are resolved to run headlong the