III. PHILOSOPHICAL. I. UT a question further,' said he 'Can the husbandman 'BUT work, think you, without his tools? Must he not have his plough, his harrow, his reap-hook, and the like?' 'He must.' 'And must not those other artists too be furnished in the same manner?' 'They must.' 'And whence must they be furnished? From their own arts? Or are not the making tools and the using them two different occupations?' 'I believe,' said I,' they are.' 'You may be convinced,' said he, 'by small recollection. Does Agriculture make its own plough, its own harrow, or does it not apply to other arts for all necessaries of this kind?' 'It does.' 'Again, does the baker build his own oven, or the miller frame his own mill?' 'It appears,' said I, 'no part of their business.' 'What a tribe of mechanics then,' said he, are advancing upon us-smiths, carpenters, masons, mill-wrights, and all these to provide the single necessary, Bread. No less than seven or eight arts, we find, are wanting at the fewest.' 'It appears so.' 'And what if to the providing a comfortable cottage, and raiment suitable to an industrious hind, we allow a dozen arts more?' 'It would be easy, by the same reasoning, to prove the number double. I admit the number,' said I, ' mentioned.' Plato, Sophist. 219, 220; Ion, 537, C. sqq. II. Μ' EN fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other. Certainly, the contemplation of death, as the wages of sin, and passage to another world, is holy and religious; but the fear of it, as a tribute due unto Nature, is weak. By him that spake only as a philosopher, and natural man, it was well said, 'Pompa mortis magis terret quam mors ipsa.' Groans and convulsions, and a discoloured face, and friends weeping, and the like, show death terrible. It is worthy the observing that there is no passion in the mind of man so weak, but it mates and masters the fear of death; and therefore death is no such terrible enemy when a man hath so many attendants about him that can win the combat of him. Plato, Phado. 77, 81; Apolog. 40. III. 'L ET us therefore at length cease to dispute and learn to live throw away the incumbrance of precepts which they who utter them with so much pride and pomp do not understand, and carry with us this simple and intelligible maxim, That deviation from nature is deviation from happiness.' When he had thus spoken, he looked round him with a placid air, and enjoyed the consciousness of his own beneficence. Sir,' said the Prince, with great modesty, 'as I, like all the rest of mankind, am desirous of felicity, my closest attention has been fixed upon your discourse. I doubt not the truth of a position which a man so learned has so confidently advanced. Let me only know what it is to live according to nature.' 'When I find young men so humble and so docile, said the philosopher, 'I can deny them no information which my studies have enabled me to afford. To live according to nature is to act always with a due regard to the fitness arising from the relations and qualities of causes and effects: to concur with the great and unchangeable scheme of universal felicity to co-operate with the general disposition and tendency of the present system of things.' The Prince soon found that this was one of the sages whom he should understand less as he heard him longer. He therefore bowed and was silent; and the philosopher, supposing him satisfied and the rest vanquished, rose up and departed with the air of a man that had co-operated with the present system. Plato, Protag. 334, 335. IV. YOU OU see, then,' said he, 'how well our hypothesis, being of the sovereign good.' I replied, it indeed appeared so, and could not be denied. 'But who, think you, ever dreamt of a happiness like this? A happiness dependent, not on the success, but on the aim?' 'Even common and ordinary life,' replied he, can furnish us with examples. Ask of the sportsman where lies his enjoyment? Ask, whether it be in the possession of a slaughtered hare, or fox? He would reject, with contempt, the very supposition. He would tell you, as well as he was able, that the joy was in the pursuit, in the difficulties which are obviated, in the faults which are retrieved, in the conduct and direction of the chace through all its parts; that the completion of their endeavours was so far from giving them joy, that instantly at that period all their joy was at an end.' 'For sportsmen,' replied I, ' this may be no bad reasoning.' 'It is not the sentiment,' said he, of sportsmen alone. To them we may add the tribe of builders and projectors. Or has not your own experience informed you of numbers who, in the building and laying-out, have expressed the highest delight, but shown the utmost indifference to the result of their labours, to the mansion or gardens, when once finished and complete?' Plato, Gorgias, 499, sqq.; 503, sqq. Aristotle, Ethic. Nicom. i. I. M. J V. : UST as sleep is the renovator of corporeal vigour, so I would believe death to be of the mind's that the body to which it is attached, from habitude rather than from reason, is little else than a disease to our immortal spirit: and that like the remora of which mariners tell marvels, it contracts, as it were, both oar and sail, in the most strenuous advances we can make towards felicity. Shall we lament to feel this reptile drop off? Or shall we not, on the contrary, leap with alacrity on shore, and offer up in gratitude to the gods whatever is left about us uncorroded and unshattered? A broken and abject mind is the thing least worthy of their acceptance. Q. Brother, you talk as if there were a plurality of gods. M. I know not and care not how many there may be of them. Philosophy points to unity: but while we are here we speak as those do who are around us, and employ in these matters the language of the country. Italy is not so fertile in hemlock as Greece: yet a wise man will dissemble half his wisdom on such a topic: and I, as you remember, adopting the means of dialogue, have often delivered my opinions in the voice of others, and speak now as custom, not as reason leads me. Plato, Phædo. 66; Legg. 885. VI. HE opinions of children and parents, of the young and the old, are naturally opposite, by the contrary effects of hope and despondence, of expectation and experience, without crime or folly on either side. The colours of life in youth and age appear different, as the face of nature in spring and winter. And how can children credit the assertion of parents, which their own eyes show them to be false? Few parents act in such a manner as to enforce their maxims by the credit of their lives. The old man trusts only to slow contrivance and gradual progression: the youth expects to force his way by genius, vigour, and precipitance. The old man pays regard to riches, and the youth reverences virtue. The old man deifies prudence: the youth commits himself to magnanimity and chance. The young man who intends no ill, believes that none is intended, and therefore acts with openness and candour; but his father, having suffered the injuries of fraud, is impelled to suspect, and too often allured to practise it. Age looks with anger on the temerity of youth, and youth with contempt on the scrupulosity of age. Thus parents and children, for the greatest part, live on to love less and less; and if those whom nature has thus closely united are the torment of each other, where shall we look for tenderness and consolation ? Plato, Republic, 329, sqq. VII. UT the hopes and fears of man are not limited to this short life, and to this visible world. He finds himself surrounded by the signs of a power and wisdom higher than his own; and in all ages and nations, men of all orders of |