do hard, if not unjust, things; and as 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.' 'T is well be above it then; only do not repine that you are not rich.

:

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."*

V. (4.) Influence of Habits on Happiness.] The effect of habit in reconciling our minds to the inconveniences of our situation was formerly remarked, and an argument was drawn from it in proof of the goodness of our Creator, who, besides making so rich a provision of objects suited to the principles of our nature, has thus bestowed on us a power of accommodation to external circumstances, which these principles teach us to avoid.

This tendency of the mind, however, to adapt itself to the objects with which it is familiarly conversant, may, in some instances, not only be a source of occasional suffering, but may disqualify us for relishing the best enjoyments which human life affords. The habits contracted during infancy and childhood are so much more inveterate than those of our maturer years, that they have been justly said to constitute a second nature; and if, unfortunately, they have been formed amidst circumstances over which we have no control, they leave us no security for our happiness but the caprice of fortune. To habituate the minds of children to those occupations and enjoyments alone, which it is in the power of an individual at all times to command, is the most solid foundation that can be laid for their future tranquillity.

* Works, Vol. II. p. 21.

Dr. Paley, with that talent for familiar and happy illustration for which he is so justly celebrated, has said : "The art in which the secret of human happiness in a great measure consists is to set the habits in such a manner that every change may be a change for the better. The habits themselves are much the same; for 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. Those who spend every day at cards, and those who go every day to plough, pass their time much alike; intent upon what they are about, wanting nothing, regretting nothing, they are both for the time in a state of ease; but then whatever suspends the occupation of the card-player distresses him, whereas to the laborer every interruption is a refreshment: and this appears in the different effect that Sunday produces on the two, which proves a day of recreation to the one, but a lamentable burden to the other. The man who has learned to live alone feels his spirits enlivened whenever he enters into company, and takes his leave without regret. Another, who has long been accustomed to a crowd, experiences in company no elevation of spirits, nor any greater satisfaction than what the man of a retired life finds in his chimney-corner. So far their conditions are equal; but let a change of place, fortune, or situation separate the companion from his circle, his visitors, his club, common room, or coffee-house, and the difference of advantage in the choice and constitution of the two habits will show itself. Solitude comes to the one clothed with melancholy; to the other it brings liberty and quiet. You will see the one fretful and restless, at a loss how to dispose of his time till the hour come round that he can forget himself in bed; the other easy and satisfied, taking up his book or his pipe as soon as he finds himself alone, ready to admit any little amusement that casts up, or to turn his hands

and attention to the first business that presents itself, or, content without either, to sit still and let his trains of thought glide indolently through his brain, without much use, perhaps, or pleasure, but without hankering after any thing better, and without irritation. 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 traveller, 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 forenoon, during which time he is rather in search of diversion than diverted; and as books to his taste are few and short, and rapidly read over, the stock is soon exhausted, when he is left without resource from this principal supply of harmless amusement.

As a supplement to the remarks of Paley, I shall quote a short passage from Montaigne, containing an observation relative to the same subject, which, although stated in a form too unqualified, seems to me highly worthy of attention. "We must not rivet ourselves so fast to our humors and complexions. Our chief business is to know how to apply ourselves to various customs. For a man to keep himself tied and bound by necessity to one only course is but bare existence, not living. It was an honorable character of the elder Cato, So versatile was his genius, that, whatever he took in hand, you would be apt to say that he was formed for that very thing only.' Were I to choose for myself, there is no fashion so good that I should care to be so wedded to it as not to have it in my power to disengage myself from it. Life is a motion, uneven, irregular, and ever varying its direction. A man is not his own friend, much less his own master, but rather a slave to himself, who is eternally pursuing his own humor, and such a bigot to his inclinations that he is not able to abandon or to alter them."†

* Moral Philosophy, Book I. Chap. vi. + Essays, Book III. Chap. iii.

The only thing to be censured in this passage is, that the author makes no distinction between good and bad habits; between those which we are induced to cultivate by reason, and by the original principles of our nature, and those which reason admonishes us to shun, on account of the mischievous consequences with which they are likely to be followed. With respect to these two classes of habits, considered in contrast with each other, it is extremely worthy of observation, that the former are incomparably more easy in the acquisition than the latter; while the latter, when once acquired, are (probably in consequence of this very circumstance, the difficulty of overcoming our natural propensities) of at least equal efficacy in subjecting all the powers of the will to their dominion.

Of the peculiar difficulty of shaking off such inveterate habits as were at first the most repugnant to our taste and inclinations, we have a daily and a melancholy proof in the case of those individuals who have suffered themselves to become slaves to tobacco, to opium, and to other intoxicating drugs, which, so far from possessing the attractions of pleasurable sensations, are in a great degree revolting to an unvitiated palate. The same thing is exemplified in many of those acquired tastes which it is the great object of the art of cookery to create and to gratify; and still more remarkably in those fatal habits which sometimes steal on the most amiable characters, under the seducing form of social enjoyment, and of a temporary respite from the evils of life.

I am inclined, however, to think that Montaigne meant to restrict his observations chiefly, if not solely, to habits which are indifferent, or nearly indifferent, in their moral tendency, and that all he is to be understood as asserting amounts to this, that we ought not, in matters connected with the accommodations of human life, to enslave ourselves to one set of habits in preference to another. this sense his doctrine is just and important.*

In

* On the subject treated of in this section, see Degerando, Du Perfectionnement Moral et de l'Education de soi-même. It has been translated into English with this title: Self-Education; or the Means and Art of Moral Progress. Also, Carpenter's Principles of Education, and Combe's Constitution of Man. ED.

BOOK IV.

OF THE NATURE AND ESSENCE OF VIRTUE.

CHAPTER I.

OF THE GENERAL DEFINITION OF VIRTUE.

HAVING taken a cursory survey of the chief branches of our duty, we are prepared to enter on the general question concerning the nature and essence of virtue. In fixing on the arrangement of this part of my subject, it appeared to me more agreeable to the established rules of philosophizing, to consider, first, our duties in detail; and after having thus laid a solid foundation in the way of analysis, to attempt to rise to the general idea in which all our duties concur, than to circumscribe our inquiries, at our first outset, within the limits of an arbitrary and partial definition. What I have now to offer, therefore, will consist of little more than some obvious and necessary consequences from principles which have been already stated.

The various duties which have been considered all agree with each other in one common quality, that of being obligatory on rational and voluntary agents; and they are all enjoined by the same authority, the authority of conscience. These duties, therefore, are but different articles of one law, which is properly expressed by the word virtue.

As all the virtues are enjoined by the same authority, (the authority of conscience,) the man whose ruling principle of action is a sense of duty will observe all the different virtues with the same reverence and the same zeal. He who lives in the habitual neglect of any one of them shows plainly, that, where his conduct. happens to coincide