UNREASONABLE COMPLAINTS. 153 vacant mind, of a free, unsuspicious temper. If you preserve your integrity, it must be a coarse and vulgar honesty. Those high and lofty notions of morals which you brought with you from the schools must be considerably lowered, and mixed with the baser alloy of a jealous and worldly-minded prudence. You must learn to do hard, if not unjust things; and for the nice embarrassments of a delicate and ingenuous spirit, it is necessary for you to get rid of them as fast as possible. You must shut your heart against the Muses, and be content to feed your understanding with plain, household truths. In short, you must not attempt to enlarge your ideas, or polish your taste, or refine your sentiments, but must keep on in one beaten track, without turning aside either to the right hand or to the left. But I cannot submit to drudgery like this. I feel a spirit above it.' 'Tis well; be above it then; only do not repine that you are not rich. "Is knowledge the pearl of price? That too may be purchased-by steady application, and long, solitary hours of study and reflection. Bestow these, and you shall be wise. 'But,' says the man of letters,' what a hardship is it, that many who are grossly illiterate shall raise a fortune, and make a figure, while I have little more than the conveniences of life.' But, was it in order to raise a fortune that you consumed the sprightly hours of youth in study and retirement? You have then mistaken your path, and ill-employed your industry. What reward have I then for all my labors?' What reward! A large and comprehensive soul, well purged from vulgar fears, and perturbations, and prejudices; able to comprehend and interpret the works of man and of God; a rich, flourishing, cultivated mind, possessed of inexhaustible stores of entertainment and reflection; a perpetual spring of fresh ideas; and the conscious dignity of superior intelligence. Good heaven! and what reward can you ask beside? "But is it not some reproach upon the economy of Providence that such a one, who is a mean, dirty fellow, should have amassed wealth enough to buy half a nation ?' Not in the least. He made himself a mean, dirty fellow, for that very end. He has paid his health, his liberty, his conscience for it; and will you envy him his bargain? Will you hang your head, and blush in his presence, be 154 INFLUENCE OF HABITS ON HAPPINESS. cause he outshines you in equipage and show? Lift up your brow with a noble confidence, and say to yourself, I have not these things, it is true; but it is because I have not sought,—because I have not desired them; it is because I possess something better. I have chosen my lot; I am content and satisfied.' "If you would be a philosopher, these are the terms. You must do thus and thus: there is no other way. If not, go and be one of the vulgar." 352. What is the influence of opinions upon happiness? 353. Into what inconsistences do most men fall, in their expectations of happiness, as well as in the estimates they form of the prosperity of others? SECTION VI.-INFLUENCE OF HABITS ON HAPPINESS. 354. IT is the effect of habit to reconcile us to inconveniences in our situation, and to enable us to overcome difficulties in the pathway of life. It was therefore a wise counsel of Pythagoras: "Choose that course of action which is best, and custom will soon render it the most agreeable." "The art in which the secret of human happiness in a great measure consists," says Dr. Paley, "is to set the habits in such a manner, that every change may be a change for the better. Whatever is made habitual becomes smooth and easy, and nearly indifferent. The return to an old habit is likewise easy, whatever the habit be. Therefore the advantage is with those habits which allow of indulgence in the deviation from them. The luxurious receive no greater pleasure from their dainties than the peasant does from his bread and cheese; but the peasant, whenever he goes abroad, finds a feast, whereas the epicure must be well entertained to escape disgust. A reader who has inured himself to books of science and argumentation, if a novel, a well-written pamphlet, an article of news, a narrative of a curious voyage, or the journal of a traveler comes in his way, sits down to the repast with relish; enjoys his entertainment while it lasts, and can return when it is over to his graver reading without distaste. Another, with whom nothing will go down but works of humor and pleasantry, or whose curiosity must be interested by perpetual novelty, will consume a bookseller's window in half a fore COMPARISON OF ENJOYMENTS. 155 noon, during which time he is rather in search of diversion than diverted; and as books to his taste are few and short (they are not so now-a-days), and rapidly read over, the stock is soon exhausted, when he is left without resource from this principal supply of harmless amusement." Books of this class, at present, so far from being harmless, are in general lamentably adverse to happiness, because destructive of morality. 354. What is the influence of habits on happiness? SECTION VII.-COMPARISON OF DIFFERENT CLASSES OF 355. OUR enjoyments may be distributed into those of sense, of imagination, of the understanding, of the social and moral powers. 356. The pleasures of the outward senses are common to man and to the brutes, and notwithstanding the space they occupy in the imagination of most men, they must be allowed to stand at the bottom of the scale, and must be ranked among the lowest gratifications of our nature. When pursued too far, they bring disgust, and even pain along with them; they please not upon reflection, as intellectual and moral exertions please; they tend to disqualify us for the nobler delights of science and virtue ; they depend not on ourselves, but on other persons and things; we lose all taste for them in adversity; and often they are followed to such an extreme as to destroy health, property, fame, intellect, and moral sensibilities, thus producing a complete wreck of human happiness. The result of these observations, is, not that the pleasures of sense are unworthy the regard of a wise man, but that they should be confined within those limits which are marked out by the obvious intentions of nature. 357. There is a grand defect, however, in all worldly sources of enjoyment. Human experience universally declares that there is often found disappointment in the pursuit of them, more or less dissatisfaction in the enjoyment of them, and a painful uncertainty in the possession. 358. The pleasures of the imagination are unquestionably of a higher rank than those of sense, and may be protracted to a much longer period without any danger of injuring the health, or of impairing the faculties. On 158 TENDENCY OF VIRTUOUS HABITS. Pleasure, we both agree, is man's chief good : Give pleasure's name to naught, but what has pass'd * * ** and defies The tooth of time; when past, a pleasure still: And doubly to be prized, as it promotes Our future, while it forms our present joy. * Throw all their beams that way, and gild the tomb. YOUNG. There is, indeed, a remarkable tendency in virtuous habits to systematize the conduct for the purpose of happiness, and to open up all the various sources of enjoyment in our constitution, without suffering any one to encroach upon the rest. They establish a proper balance among our different principles of action, and, by doing so, produce a greater source of enjoyment, on the whole, than we could have obtained by allowing any one in particular to gain an ascendant over our conduct. 361. It is not right, however, to suppose, as some do, that virtue is only another name for rational self-love. They coincide so wonderfully together, as to illustrate, in a striking manner, the unity as well as the beneficence of design in the human constitution. But still, notwithstanding these happy effects of a virtuous life, the principle of duty, and the desire of happiness, are radically distinct from each other. To this it may be added, that if the desire of happiness were the sole, or even the governing principle of action in a good man, it could scarcely fail to frustrate its own object, by filling the mind with anxious conjectures about futurity, and with perplexing calculations of the various chances of good and evil: whereas he, whose ruling principle of action is a sense of duty, conducts himself in life with boldness, consistency, and dignity; and finds himself rewarded with that happiness which so often eludes the pursuit of those who exert every faculty of the mind in order to attain it. 362. In promoting our own happiness, the great duty INJUSTICE TO PROVIDENCE. 159 which we owe to ourselves is to promote our real interests, not for any detached period, but throughout the whole of our existence. This cannot be done without performing our duty to God and our neighbor. God has established a close connection betwixt our duty and our interest; by performing the one we shall assuredly promote the other. DUTY IS THE GRAND MEANS OF HAPPINESS. Pleasure, due only when all duty's done. POLLOK. [Stewart's Works, vol. v. pp. 487-553; Beattie's Moral Science, 247252; Fergus on Nature and Revelation.1 355. Into what classes may our enjoyments be distributed? 356. What estimate ought to be put on the pleasures of the outward senses? 357. What is the grand defect of all worldly sources of enjoyment and possession? 358. What estimate shall we put on the pleasures of the imagination? 359. What comparative place is due to the pleasures of the understanding? 360. How shall the pleasures be considered which result from the social and moral powers; or, in other words, the pleasures of the heart? 361. Is it right then to suppose, as some do, that virtue is only another name for rational self-love? 362. What should especially be borne in mind in promoting our own happiness? SECTION VIII.-INJUSTICE TO PROVIDENCE IN THE COMPUTATION OF OUR PLEASURES AND OUR PAINS. 363. (1.) WE are accustomed to number the hours which are spent in distress or sorrow, but to forget those which have passed away, if not in high enjoyment, yet in the midst of those gentle satisfactions and placid emotions which make life glide smoothly along. (2.) We complain of the frequent disappointments we suffer in our pursuits. But we recollect not, that it is in pursuit more than in attainment, that our pleasure now consists. In the present state of human nature, man derives more enjoyment from the exertion of his active powers in the midst of toils and efforts, than he could receive from a still and uniform possession of the object which he strives to gain. "I have lived long enough to learn," said Dr. Adam Clarke, "that the great secret of human-happiness is this: never suffer your energies to stagnate. The old adage of 'too many irons in the fire' |