LETTER V.

As we proceeded towards the centre of the city, the clamour and uproar increased; the pavement groaned beneath the weight of ponderous carriages, rumbling on their slowly revolving wheels; to this was added the laugh, the shouts, the curses of their drivers, mingled with the crack of enormous whips. Turning to L- -, I asked, if any thing extraordinary was going on? "Oh, no," he replied, "this is every day work here.""Then, in the name of wonder, what does all this mean? I am stupified with this incessant din: what is the object of the crowds who press around us? surely they are agitated by some universal stimulus. "--" They are so," said L, "cannot you divine what that stimulus is?"-Seeing me pause, he continued: "know you not, that from the earliest period of self-knowledge, until the hour of death, man busies himself in searching for a something for which his primitive organization imperiously bids him seek? that object which he thus instinctively seeks to acquire, is the maximum for which Nature calls him into

existence, for which she commands him to live; it is "happiness." All animals which possess consciousness of existence, seek this desideratum instinctively; that is, are moved to it by a blind inherent impulse, when left in the state where placed by the hand of Nature: and man, like them, is by her unerring wisdom impelled to seek diligently for it also, but with this especial difference in the mode of acquisition : that as to him alone of all the living creatures on our globe, pertains the faculty of reason, or of passing through the sieve of his mind, the enquiry whether this or that acquirement be congenial with his inherent feelings, so, by the exercise of this same reasoning faculty, he is enabled to adopt or reject with sufficient accuracy, the objects presented to him as generators of that happiness. Metaphysicians have wrangled, and quibbled a long time, about the constituent qualities of the emotion which we designate "happiness:" now, I am of opinion this pleasurable feeling is easily defined, by means of a simple division of its components. Let us first separate it into two grand divisions "corporeal and mental pleasure" let the first be again divided into two parts, that is, into pleasures strictly animal and necessitous, which are those of taking food; and into those which we term amusements,

which last are certainly not necessary to the continuance of existence; but have been too often confounded with those that are. Now, I mean to say, no man can enjoy mental pleasure, ease and serenity of soul, in the lofty degree for which Nature has framed him, unless he is morally certain of being able to satisfy his animal wants, at all seasonable times. The cravings of hunger and the yearnings of intellect, are diametrically opposite: the first are common to man with the other animal forms; the second appertain to him as distinguishing characteristics. As to amusements, strictly such, they are so perfectly secondary and subservient, that we may with propriety omit them entirely, and conclude this part of the question by pronouncing, "That a philosopher must eat, but a gourmand need not philosophize;”—and this is the first stage of our enquiry.

We also know, that man enjoys a capacity of speech and thought; a power of not only making known simple wants, (for the inferior animals are able to utter sounds, expressive of those, intelligible to their own species); but of entering into new and compound relations with his genus, through the medium of sounds, infinitely modified from peculiar organic structure; and by which he communicates the workings of his own sensorium, and in turn

imbibes new impressions through his sense of hearing; thus forming reciprocity of communication. He is produced a simple animal, with only two unmixed derivative sensations, those of hunger, and desire of procreation; on these two hang all the requisites of his existence, considering him as a simple animal machine; to these two alone are referable all the wants and wishes he would feel, if left to himself, as "Unity." But place him in contact with numbers of his genus, and his existence assumes a widely different character; then, his powers and latent capabilities are drawn into play; he becomes more like a complicated piece of mechanism. His original uniform simplicity of will becomes subject to impressions of Pride, Ambition, Hope, Despair, Love (refined), Hatred, Anger, Envy, Malice and the emotions, compounds of all or some of these, infinitely varied and amalgamated, according to the constitutional temperament of the individual: Joy, Grief, and Fear, I think, pertain to him as a single animal.

By the invention of letters, the art of forming sounds into objects of sight, and which, from the intimacy between his eyes and his brain, strike as forcibly on the latter as sounds through his power of hearing; he is enabled to communicate with surprising rapidity. And

lastly, in many instances, through accident and combination of chances, and in others, by the application of the reasoning faculty before noticed, he has obtained such an insight into his own nature and properties, and those of the objects around him, both animate and inanimate; has got such a fixed knowledge of the physical powers and necessitous laws which govern the universe; that at this day, no one can put an ultimatum to the progress and diffusion of science; no man can assign to it even a probable limit of discovery.

“Then,” said I, "to what does this tend, allowing it to be a clear proposition, that happiness is the sole aim of man? has the knowledge acquired fortuitously, or through search, increased the aggregate joint stock of such his staple commodity ?"-"You ask," said he, "a question of vast magnitude, of tremendous import, but it shall be answered: what you mean to ask is, in effect, this; 'Does knowledge constitute happiness?' are they synonymous? Now we come to the second grand division, to the pleasure of the soul. And I say, at once, that if we are allowed to define knowledge, as consisting in knowing, as truth, those things which belong to man, as man, by virtue of his superior understanding and prerogative, as the master-piece of that part of