--You see, they are the highest and most ornamental parts of its frame--as wit and judgment are of ours--and like them too, indubitably both made and fitted to go together, in order, as we say in all such cases of duplicated embellishments--to answer one another.
Now for the sake of an experiment, and for the clearer illustrating this matter--let us for a moment take off one of these two curious ornaments (Icare not which) from the point or pinnacle of the chair it now stands on--nay, don't laugh at it,--but did you ever see, in the whole course of your lives, such a ridiculous business as this has made of it?--Why, 'tis as miserable a sight as a sow with one ear; and there is just as much sense and symmetry in the one as in the other:--do--pray, get off your seats only to take a view of it,--Now would any man who valued his character a straw, have turned a piece of work out of his hand in such a condition?--nay, lay your hands upon your hearts, and answer this plain question, Whether this one single knob, which now stands here like a blockhead by itself, can serve any purpose upon earth, but to put one in mind of the want of the other?--and let me farther ask, in case the chair was your own, if you would not in your consciences think, rather than be as it is, that it would be ten times better without any knob at all?
Now these two knobs--or top ornaments of the mind of man, which crown the whole entablature--being, as I said, wit and judgment, which of all others, as I have proved it, are the most needful--the most priz'd--the most calamitous to be without, and consequently the hardest to come at--for all these reasons put together, there is not a mortal among us, so destitute of a love of good fame or feeding--or so ignorant of what will do him good therein--who does not wish and stedfastly resolve in his own mind, to be, or to be thought at least, master of the one or the other, and indeed of both of them, if the thing seems any way feasible, or likely to be brought to pass.
Now your graver gentry having little or no kind of chance in aiming at the one--unless they laid hold of the other,--pray what do you think would become of them?--Why, Sirs, in spite of all their gravities, they must e'en have been contented to have gone with their insides naked--this was not to be borne, but by an effort of philosophy not to be supposed in the case we are upon--so that no one could well have been angry with them, had they been satisfied with what little they could have snatched up and secreted under their cloaks and great perriwigs, had they not raised a hue and cry at the same time against the lawful owners.
I need not tell your worships, that this was done with so much cunning and artifice--that the great Locke, who was seldom outwitted by false sounds--was nevertheless bubbled here. The cry, it seems, was so deep and solemn a one, and what with the help of great wigs, grave faces, and other implements of deceit, was rendered so general a one against the poor wits in this matter, that the philosopher himself was deceived by it--it was his glory to free the world from the lumber of a thousand vulgar errors;--but this was not of the number; so that instead of sitting down coolly, as such a philosopher should have done, to have examined the matter of fact before he philosophised upon it--on the contrary he took the fact for granted, and so joined in with the cry, and halloo'd it as boisterously as the rest.
This has been made the Magna Charta of stupidity ever since--but your reverences plainly see, it has been obtained in such a manner, that the title to it is not worth a groat:--which by-the-bye is one of the many and vile impositions which gravity and grave folks have to answer for hereafter.
As for great wigs, upon which I may be thought to have spoken my mind too freely--I beg leave to qualify whatever has been unguardedly said to their dispraise or prejudice, by one general declaration--That I have no abhorrence whatever, nor do I detest and abjure either great wigs or long beards, any farther than when I see they are bespoke and let grow on purpose to carry on this self-same imposture--for any purpose--peace be with them!--> mark only--I write not for them.