vice according to your wishes, you must not, therefore, abandon the
commonwealth, for the same reasons as 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 argument," 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 with,
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, leave 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 contrary way; and if we must let alone
everything as absurd or extravagant--which, by reason of the wicked lives
of many, may seem uncouth--we must, even among Christians, give over
pressing the greatest part of those things that Christ hath taught us,
though He has commanded us not to conceal them, but to proclaim on the
housetops that which He taught in secret. The greatest parts of His