A Treatise on Self-Knowledge Author:John Mason Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: comprehensive precepts in the whole moral system. And it is well known in how great a veneration this maxim was held by the ancients; and in how high esteem the ... more »duty of self-examination, as necessary to it. Thales, the Milesian, is said to be the first author of it; who used to say, " That for a man to " know himself, is the hardest thing in the world." It was afterwards adopted by Chylon, the Lacedemonian ; and is one of those three precepts, which Pliny affirms to have been consecrated at Delphos in golden letters. It was afterwards greatly admired, and frequently used by others, till, at length, it acquired the authority of a divine oracle, and was supposed to have been given originally by Apollo himself. Of which general opinion Cicero gives us this reason, " Because it hath such a weight " of sense and wisdom in it, as appears too great " to be attributed to any man." And this opinion, of its coming originally from Apollo himself, perhaps was the reason that it was written, in golden capitals, over the door of his temple at Delphos. And why this excellent precept should not be chapter{Section 4held in as high esteem in the Christian world, as it was in the heathen, is hard to conceive. Human nature is the same now as it was then; the heart as deceitful; and the necessity of watching, knowing, and keeping it, the same. Nor are we less assured that this precept is divine : nay, we have a much greater assurance of this than they had. They supposed it came down from heaven; we know it did. What they conjectured, we are sure of. For this sacred oracle is dictated to us in a manifold light, and explained to us in various views, by the Holy Spirit, in that revelation which God hath been pleased to give us, as our guide to duty and happiness; by which, " as in a glass, we ma...« less