Au Cid persecuté Cinna doit sa naissance, 32. Heav'n forming each on other to depend, A master, or a servant, or a friend, Bids each on other for assistance call, 'Till one man's weakness grows the strength of all. The common interest, or endear the tie. To these we owe true friendship, love sincere, It *Boileau, Epistre vii. a M. Racine, pag. 57. + "In rerum systemate vel optimè constituto, debent esse diversa animantium genera superiora, et inferiora, ut locus sit præclaris animi virtutibus ubi se exerceant: excluderentur enim commiseratio, beneficentia, liberalitas, fortitudo, æquanimitas, patientia, lenitas, et officia omnia gratuita et immerita, quorum sensus longe est omnium lætissimus, et memoria jucundissima; si nulla esset imbecillitas, nulla indigentia, nulla hominum vitia et errores." Hutcheson. Metaphysicæ Synopsis, cap. ii. page 81. This resembles the doctrine of the old Stoic Chrysippus, as he is quoted by Aulus Gellius, lib. vi. cap. 1. "Nullum adeo contrarium sine contrario altero. Quo enim pacto justitiæ sensus esse posset nisi essent injuriæ ? Aut quid aliud justitia est quam injustitiæ privatio? Quid item fortitudo intelligi posset misi ex ignaviæ oppositione? Quid continentia nisi ex intem perantia ? It was an objection constantly urged by the ancient Epicureans, that man could not be the creature of a benevolent being, as he was formed in a state so helpless and infirm. Montaigne took it, and urged it also. They never considered, or perceived, that this very infirmity and helplessness were the cause and cement of society; that if men had been perfect, and self-sufficient, and had stood in no need of each other's assistance, there would have been no occasion for the invention of the arts, and no opportunity for the exertion of the affections. The lines, therefore, in which Lucretius proposes this objection, are perantia? Quo item modo prudentia esset, nisi foret ex contrario imprudentia?"" To this purpose the elegant lyric poet: Who founds in discord Beauty's reign, And bids the universe be blest." "This is that magic divine, which, by an efficacy past comprehension, can transform every appearance, the most hideous, into beauty, and exhibit all things fair and good to thee! Essence Increate! who art of purer eyes than to behold iniquity." Three Treatises, by J. H. page 234. are as unphilosophical, and inconclusive, as they are highly pathetic and poetical: Tum porrò puer, ut sævis projectus ab undis There is a passage in the moralists which I cannot forbear thinking POPE had in his eye, and which I must not therefore omit, as it serves to illustrate and confirm so many parts of the Essay on Man; I shall therefore give it at length, without apology. "The young of most other kinds, are instantly helpful to themselves, sensible, vigorous, know how to shun danger, and seek their good: A human infant is of all the most helpless, weak, infirm. And wherefore should it not have been so ordered? Where is the loss in such a species ? Or what is man the worse for that defect amidst such large supplies? Does not this defect en * Lib. v. ver. 223. gage gage him the more strongly to society,* and force him to own that he is purposely, and not by accident, made rational and sociable; and can no otherwise increase or subsist, than in that social intercourse and community which is his natural state? Is not both conjugal affection, and natural affection to parents, duty to magistrates, love of a common city, community, or country, with the other duties and social parts of life, deduced from hence, and founded in these very wants? What can be happier than such a deficiency, as it is the occasion of so much good? What better than a want so abundantly made up, and answered by so many enjoyments? Now, if there are still to be found among mankind, such as, even in the midst of these wants, seem not ashamed to affect a right of independency, and deny themselves to be by nature sociable; where * A longer care man's helpless kind demands;, And again, And still new needs, new helps, new habits rise, where would their shame have been, had nature otherwise supplied these wants? What duty or obligation had been ever thought of? What respect or reverence of parents, magistrates, their country, or their kind? Would not their full and self-sufficient state more strongly have determined them to throw off nature, and deny the ends and author of their creation ?"* 31. And pride bestow'd on all a common friend.† The observation is from La Rochefoucault: "Nature, who so wisely has fitted the organs of our body to make us happy, seems likewise to have bestowed pride on us, on purpose, as it were, to save us the pain of knowing our imperfections."+ Un sot en ecrivant fait tout avec plaisir. Il n'a point en ses vers l'embarras de choisir, * The Moralists, page 201. + Ver. 272. Maxim 36. Mais |