I enter now directly upon the point.
—Here stands wit —and there stands judgment , close beside it, just like the two knobs I’m speaking of, upon the back of this selfsame chair on which I am sitting.
—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 (I care 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