9. In the East, where the warmth of the climates makes cleanliness more immediately necessary than in colder countries, it is made one part of their religion; the Jewish law (and the Mahometan, which, in somethings, copies after it) is filled with bathings, purifications, and other rites of the like nature. Though there is the above named convenient reason to be assigned for these ceremonies, the chief intention, undoubtedly, was to typify inward purity and cleanliness of heart by those outward washings.
10. We read several injunctions of this kind in the book of Deuteronomy, which confirms this truth, and which are but ill accounted for by saying, as some do, that they were only instituted for convenience in the desert, which otherways could not have been habitable, for so many years.
11. I shall conclude this essay with a story which I have some where read in an account of Mahometan superstition. A dervise of great sanctity one morning had the misfortune, as he took up a crystal cup, which was consecrated to the prophet, to let it fall upon the ground and dash it in pieces. His son coming in some time after, he stretched out his hand to bless him, as his manner was every morning; but the youth going out stumbled over the threshold and broke his arm. As the old man wondered at those events, a caravan passed by in its way from _Mecca_. The dervise approached it to beg a blessing; but as he stroked one of the holy camels, he received a kick from the beast, that sorely bruised him. His sorrow and amazement increased upon him, till he recollected, that, through hurry and inadvertency, he had that morning come abroad without washing his hands.
1. I consider a human soul without education like marble in the quarry, which shews none of its inherent beauties, until the skill of the polisher fetches out the colours, makes the surface shine, and discovers every ornamental cloud, spot and vein, that runs through the body of it. Education, after the same manner, when it works, upon a noble mind, draws out to view every latent virtue and perfection, which, without such helps, are never able to make their appearance.
2. If my reader will give me leave to change the allusion so soon upon him, I shall make use of the same instance to illustrate the force of education, which _Aristotle_ has brought to explain his doctrine of substantial forms, when he tells us that a statue lies hid in a block of marble; and that the art of the statuary only clears away the superfluous matter, and removes the rubbish. The figure is in the stone, the sculptor only finds it. What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to an human soul.