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if unrestrained by habitual dread, he would tear the hand which gives him food: and if a stranger came within reach, would bury his fangs and muzzle in the flesh of his victim: he stands an emblem of cruelty and despair. In like manner is man born innocent and sinless; he comes into the world in obedience to primary laws, an involuntary being, containing in himself the seeds of reproduction, of goodness, of happiness to himself and his species. His hours of childhood are like the cool hours of twilight, dim, yet beautiful, precursive to a brighter day. It is true, his feeble wail is heard even at this early period, but it is generally the cry for nourishment, often from pain, produced by improper treatment, or the unnatural aliment derived from a more unnatural mother: they are no more the cries of mental anguish, no more the inheritage of a curse denounced on his race, than is the bleat of the lamb for the His eyes too soon shed tears, but they are as soon dried by the hand of kindness, soon smile brighter from their moisture: as the flowers renew their freshness from the dews of night. But this fair dawn is of short duration; full quickly the clouds of evil lower round its horizon, late so serene and promising. Scarcely do the buds of intellect begin to burst into blossom, promising, with the aid of judicious

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culture, a harvest of good fruits, when Superstition puffs her breath across the germs. 'Hear me,' she says, 'or wither on the stem, 'tis I can ripen without scorching.' Pride blows his blast, and scattering blight proclaims, 'I seize you as my own; yours are the boughs predestined to spring aloft, to shade more lowly shrubs.' And last creeps Avarice, marking her path with slime, first drawing in her cautious horns, snail-like, and anon, thrusting them forth more boldly, and she whispers, 'be mine, or perish untimely, for lack of nutriment.' And thus pushed from the stalk, the fruit falls premature, a prey to wasps and pismires; and leaves the trunk naked, branchless, leafless; a mounting block for craft and villainy; a soft butt for fools and knaves to kick their heels against with impunity."

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

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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

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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,

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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

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