us, and excuse the death of so many innocent cocks, bulls, dogs, and bears, as have been set together by the ears, and died untimely deaths, only to make us sport.

It will be said, that these are the entertainments of common people. It is true; but they are the entertainments of no other common people. Besides, I am afraid, there is a tincture of the same savage spirit in the diversions of those of higher rank, and more refined relish. Rapin observes, that the English theatre very much delights in bloodshed, which he likewise represents as an indication of our tempers. I must own, there is something very horrid in the public executions of an English tragedy. Stabbing and poisoning, which are performed behind the scenes in other nations, must be done openly among us, to gratify the audience.

When poor Sandford was upon the stage, I have seen him groaning upon a wheel, stuck with daggers, impaled alive, calling his executioners, with a dying voice, 'cruel dogs and villains! and all this to please his judicious spectators, who were wonderfully delighted with seeing a man in torment so well acted. The truth of it is, the politeness of our English stage, in regard to decorum, is very extraordinary. We act murders, to shew our intrepidity; and adulteries, to shew our gallantry: both of them are frequent in our most taking plays, with this difference only, that the former are done in the sight of the audience, and

This person was an admirable actor in odious characters. He had a low and crooked person, and such bodily defects as were too strong to be admitted into great or amiable characters; so that he was the stage villain, not by choice, but from necessity. Colley Cibber, in his Apology, &c. has given an entertaining account of this player.

the latter wrought up to such an height upon the stage, that they are almost put in execution before the actors can get behind the scenes.

I would not have it thought that there is just ground for those consequences which our enemies draw against us from these practices; but methinks one would be sorry for any manner of occasion for such misrepresentations of us. The virtues of tenderness, compassion, and humanity, are those by which men are distinguished from brutes, as much as by reason itself; and it would be the greatest reproach to a nation, to distinguish itself from all others by any defect in these particular virtues. For which reasons, I hope that my dear countrymen will no longer expose themselves by an effusion of blood, whether it be of theatrical heroes, cocks, or any other innocent animals, which we are not obliged to slaughter for our safety, convenience, or nourishment. When any of these ends are not served in the destruction of a living creature, I cannot but pronounce it a great piece of cruelty, if not a kind of murder.

STEELE.

N° 135. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 1709-10.

Quod si in hoc erro, quod animos hominum immortales esse credam, libenter erro; nec mihi hunc errorem, quo delector, dum vivo, extorqueri volo: sin mortuus, ut quidam minuti philosophi censent, nihil sentiam; non vereor, ne hunc errorem meum mortui philosophi irrideant.

TULL. De Senect.

If I err in believing that the souls of men are immortal, I willingly err; nor while I live would I wish to have this delightful error extorted from me: and if after death I shall feel nothing, as some minute philosophers think, I am not afraid lest dead philosophers should laugh at me for the error.

Sheer Lane, February 17.

SEVERAL letters, which I have lately received, give me information, that some well-disposed persons have taken offence at my using the word freethinker as a term of reproach. To set, therefore, this matter in a clear light, I must declare, that no one can have a greater veneration than myself for the freethinkers of antiquity; who acted the same part in those times, as the great men of the reformation did in several nations of Europe, by exerting themselves against the idolatry and superstition of the times in which they lived. It was by this noble impulse that Socrates and his disciples, as well as all the philosophers of note in Greece, and Cicero, Seneca, with all the learned men of Rome, endeavoured to enlighten their contemporaries amidst the darkness and ignorance in which the world was then sunk and buried.

The great points, which these freethinkers endea

voured to establish and inculcate into the minds of men, were the formation of the universe, the superintendency of Providence, the perfection of the divine nature, the immortality of the soul, and the future state of rewards and punishments. They all complied with the religion of their country, as much as possible, in such particulars as did not contradict and pervert these great and fundamental doctrines of mankind. On the contrary, the persons who now set up for freethinkers are such as endeavour, by a little trash of words and sophistry, to weaken and destroy those very principles, for the vindication of which freedom of thought at first became laudable and heroic. These apostates from reason and good sense, can look at the glorious frame of nature, without paying an adoration to Him that raised it; can consider the great revolutions in the universe, without lifting up their minds to that superior Power which hath the direction of it; can presume to censure the Deity in his ways towards men; can level mankind with the beasts that perish; can extinguish in their own minds all the pleasing hopes of a future state, and lull themselves into a stupid security against the terrors of it. If one were to take the word priestcraft out of the mouths of these shallow monsters, they would be immediately struck dumb. It is by the help of this single term that they endeavour to disappoint the good works of the most learned and venerable order of men, and harden the hearts of the ignorant against the very light of nature, and the common received notions of mankind. We ought not to treat such miscreants as these upon the foot of fair disputants; but to pour out contempt upon them, and speak of them with scorn and infamy, as the pests of society, the revilers of human nature, and the blasphemers of a Being, whom a good man would rather die than

hear dishonoured. Cicero, after having mentioned the great heroes of knowledge that recommended this divine doctrine of the immortality of the soul, calls those small pretenders to wisdom, who declared against it, certain minute philosophers,' using a diminutive even of the word 'little,' to express the despicable opinion he had of them. The contempt he throws upon them in another passage is yet more remarkable; where, to shew the mean thoughts he entertains of them, he declares he would rather be in the wrong with Plato, than in the right with such company y'. There is indeed nothing in the world so ridiculous as one of these grave philosophical freethinkers, that hath neither passions nor appetites to gratify, no heats of blood, nor vigour of constitution, that can turn his systems of infidelity to his advantage, or raise pleasures out of them which are inconsistent with the belief of an hereafter. One that has neither wit, gallantry, mirth, or youth, to indulge by these notions, but only a poor, joyless, uncomfortable vanity of distinguishing himself from the rest of mankind, is rather to be regarded as a mischievous lunatic, than a mistaken philosopher. A chaste infidel, a speculative libertine, is an animal that I should not believe to be in nature, did I not sometimes meet with this species of men, that plead for the indulgence of their passions in the midst of a severe studious life, and talk against the immortality of the soul over a dish of coffee.

I would fain ask a minute philosopher, what good he proposes to mankind by the publishing of his doctrines? Will they make a man a better citizen or father of a family; a more endearing husband, friend, or son? Will they enlarge his public or private vir

Tusc. Disp. lib, i,