From my own Apartment,November 17.
It has cost me very much care and thought to marshal and fix the people under their proper denominations,and to range them according to their respective characters.These my endeavours have been received with unexpected success in one kind,but neglected in another;for though I have many readers,I have but few converts.
This must certainly proceed from a false opinion,that what I write is designed rather to amuse and entertain than convince and instruct.I entered upon my Essays with a declaration that I should consider mankind in quite another manner than they had hitherto been represented to the ordinary world,and asserted that none but a useful life should be,with me,any life at all.But,lest this doctrine should have made this small progress towards the conviction of mankind,because it may appear to the unlearned light and whimsical,I must take leave to unfold the wisdom and antiquity of my first proposition in these my essays,to wit,that "every worthless man is a dead man."This notion is as old as Pythagoras,in whose school it was a point of discipline,that if among the Akoustikoi,or probationers,there were any who grew weary of studying to be useful,and returned to an idle life,the rest were to regard them as dead,and upon their departing,to perform their obsequies and raise them tombs,with inions,to warn others of the like mortality,and quicken them to resolutions of refining their souls above that wretched state.It is upon a like supposition that young ladies,at this very time,in Roman Catholic countries,are received into some nunneries with their coffins,and with the pomp of a formal funeral,to signify that henceforth they are to be of no further use,and consequently dead.Nor was Pythagoras himself the first author of this symbol,with whom,and with the Hebrews,it was generally received.Much more might be offered in illustration of this doctrine from sacred authority,which I recommend to my reader's own reflection;who will easily recollect,from places which I do not think fit to quote here,the forcible manner of applying the words dead and living to men,as they are good or bad.
I have,therefore,composed the following scheme of existence for the benefit both of the living and the dead;though chiefly for the latter,whom I must desire to read it with all possible attention.