It is evident how
much men love to deceive and be deceived, since rhetoric, that
powerful instrument of error and deceit, has its established
professors, is publicly taught, and has always been had in great
reputation: and I doubt not but it will be thought great boldness,
if not brutality, in me to have said thus much against it.
Eloquence, like the fair sex, has too prevailing beauties in it to
suffer itself ever to be spoken against. And it is in vain to find
fault with those arts of deceiving, wherein men find pleasure to be
deceived.
Chapter XI
Of the Remedies of the Foregoing Imperfections
and Abuses of Words
1. Remedies are worth seeking The natural and improved imperfections
of languages we have seen above at large: and speech being the great
bond that holds society together, and the common conduit, whereby
the improvements of knowledge are conveyed from one man and one
generation to another, it would well deserve our most serious thoughts
to consider, what remedies are to be found for the inconveniences
above mentioned.
2. Are not easy to find. I am not so vain as to think that any one
can pretend to attempt the perfect reforming the languages of the
world, no not so much as of his own country, without rendering himself
ridiculous.
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