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21. We suppose that all men conceive and feel in | same ignorance in which they began. But then the same way, the objects that are presented to this is an intelligent ignorance which knows itself. them: but we suppose this very gratuitously, for we Out of the many, however, who have come forth have no proof of it. I see plainly that the same from their native ignorance, there are some who word is used on the same occasion; and that wher- have not reached this other extreme; these are ever two men see snow, for example, they express strongly tinged with scientific conceit, and set up their notion of the same object by the same word- a claim to be the learned and the intelligent. These both saying that it is white; and from this agree- are the men that disturb the world; and they genement of the application of terms, we draw a strong rally judge more falsely than all others. The crowd conjecture in favor of a conformity of ideas; but and the men of talent, generally direct the course this is not absolutely convincing, though there is of the world; the others despise it and are degood ground for the supposition. spised.

22. When we see an effect regularly recurring, we conclude that there is a natural necessity for it, as that the sun will rise to-morrow, &c. But in many things nature deceives us, and does not yield a perfect submission to its own ws.

23. Many things that are certain are contradicted; many that are false pass without contradiction: contradiction is no proof of falsehood, nor universal assent, of truth.

24. The instructed mind discovers that as nature carries the imprint of its author stamped on all things, they all have a certain relation to his twofold infinity. Thus we see that all the sciences are infinite in the extent to which their researches may be carried. Who doubts, for instance, that geometry involves in it an infinity of infinites of propositions? It is infinite also in the multitude and the delicacy of its principles; for who does not perceive, that any which are proposed as the last, must rest upon themselves, which is absurd; and that in fact they are sustained by others, which have others again for their basis, and must thus eternally exclude the idea of an ultimate proposition.

We see at a glance, that arithmetic alone furnishes principles without number, and each science the same.

26. We think ourselves much more capable of reaching the centre of things, than of grasping the circumference. The visible expanse of the world, manifestly surpasses us; but as we visibly surpass little things, we think ourselves on a vantage ground for comprehending them; and yet it does not require less capacity to trace something down to nothing, than up to totality. This capacity, in either ease, must be infinite; and it appears to me that he who can discover the ultimate principles of things, might reach also to the knowledge of the infinitely great. The one depends on the other; the one leads to the other. These extremities touch and meet in consequence of their very distance. They meet in God, and in God only.

If man would begin by studying himself, he would soon see how unable he is to go further. How can a part comprehend the whole? He would aspire probably to know, at least, those parts which are similar in proportion to himself. But all parts of creation have such a relation to each other, and are so intertwined, that I think it is impossible to know one without knowing the other, and even the whole.

his substance-warmth and food to nourish him, and air to breathe. He sees the light, he feels his material body. In fact, every thing is allied with him.

Man, for instance, has a relation to all that he knows. He needs space to contain him-time for But if the infinitely small, is much less discerni-existence-motion that he may live-elements for ble than the infinitely great, philosophers have much more readily pretended to have attained to it; and here all have stumbled. This error has given rise to those terms so commonly in use, as "the principies of things-the principles of philosophy;" and her similar expressions, as conceited, in fact, though not quite so obtrusively so as that insufferably disgusting title, De omni scibili.*

To understand man, therefore, we must know wherein it is that air is needful for his support; and to understand air, we must trace its relation to human life.

Let us not seek then for assurance and stability. Our reason is perpetually deceived by the variableness of appearances, nothing can fix that which is finite, between the two infinites that enclose it, and fly from it; and when this is well understood, each man will, I believe, remain quietly in the position in which nature has placed him. This medium state, which has fallen to our lot, being always infinitely distant from the extremes, what matters it whether man has, or has not a little more know-knowing the parts in detail. ledge of the things round him? If he has, why then he traces them a degree or two higher. But is he not always infinitely distant from the extremes, and is not the longest human life infinitely short of eternity?

Flame will not live without air; then to comprehend the one, we must comprehend the other also.

Since, then, all things are either caused or causes, assisting or being assisted, mediately or immediately; and all are related to each other by a natural and imperceptible bond, which unites together things the most distant and dissimilar; I hold it impossible to know the parts, without knowing the whole, and equally so to know the whole, without

Compared with these infinities, all finite things are equal; and I see no reason why the imagination should occupy itself with one more than another. Even the least comparison that we institute between ourselves and that which is finite, gives us pain.

25. The sciences have two extremities, which touch each other. The one is that pure natural ignorance in which we are born: the other is that point to which great minds attain, who having gone the whole round of possible human knowledge, find that they know nothing, and that they end in the

The title of a thesis maintained at Rome, by Jean Pic de la Miranadole.

And that which completes our inability to know the essential nature of things is, that they are simple, and that we are a compound of two different and opposing natures, body and spirit; for it is impossible that the portion of us which thinks, can be other than spiritual; and as to the pretence, that we are simply corporeal, that would exclude us still more entirely from the knowledge of things; because there is nothing more inconceivable, than that matter could comprehend itself.

It is this compound nature of body and spirit which had led almost all the philosophers to confuse their ideas f things; and to attribute to matter that which belongs only to spirit, and to spirit, that which cannot consist but with matter; for, they say boldly, That bodies tend downwards; that they seek the centre; that they shrink from destruction, that they dread a vacuum; that they have inclinations, sympathies, antipathies, &c. which are all qualities that can only exist in mind. And in speak

4

ing of spirits, they consider them as occupying a place, and attribute to them motion from one place to another, &c. which are the qualities of body. Instead, therefore, of receiving the ideas of things, simply as they are, we tinge, with the qualities of our compound being, all the simple things that we contemplate.

age, by their industry and attention, that their fortune and reputation, and the fortune and reputation of their friends, be flourishing; and that a failure in any one of these things would make them miserable. And hence they are engaged in duties and businesses which harass them from morning to night. "A strange method this," you would say, "to make Who would not suppose, when they see us attach men happy; what could we do more effectually to to every thing the compound notions of body and make them miserable?" Do you ask what we could spirit, that this mixture was familiarly comprehen- do? Alas! we have but to release them from these sible to us? Yet it is the thing of which we know cares, for then they would see and consider themthe least. Man is, to himself, the most astonishing selves; and this is unbearable. And in proof of object in nature, for he cannot conceive what body this we see, that with all this mass of cares, if they is, still less what spirit is, and less than all, how a have yet any interval of relaxation, they hasten to body and a spirit can be united. That is the climax squander it on some amusement, that shall comof his difficulties, and yet it is his proper being.pletely fill the void, and hide them from themselves. Modus quo corporibus adhæret spiritus comprehendi On this account when I have set myself to conab hominibus non potest, et hoc tamen homo est.* sider the varied turmoil of life; the toil and dan

27. Man, then, is the subject of a host of errors,ger to which men expose themselves at courts, in that divine grace only can remove. Nothing shows him the truth; every thing misleads him. Reason and the senses, the two means of ascertaining the truth, are not only often unfaithful, but mutually deceive each other. Car senses mislead our reason by false impressions; and reason also has its revenge, by retorting the same trick upon our senses. The passions of the soul disturb the senses, and excite evil impressions; and thus our two sources of knowledge mutually lie and deceive each other.

CHAPTER IV.

THE MISERY OF MAN.

war, and in the pursuit of their ambitious projects, which give rise to so much quarrell ng and passion, and to so many desperate and fatal adventures: I have often said that all the misfortunes of men spring from their not knowing how to live quietly at home, in their own rooms. If a man, who has enough to live on, did but know how to live with himself, he would never go to sea, or to besiege a city, merely for the sake of occupation; and he whose only object is to live, would have no need to seek such dangerous employments.

But when I have looked into the matter more closely, I have found that this aversion to repose, and to the society of self, originates in a very power

NOTHING more directly introduces us to the know-fa! cause, namely, in the natural evils of our weak ledge of human misery, than an inquiry into the cause of that perpetual restlessness in which men pass their whole lives.

The soul is placed in the body to sojourn there for a short time. She knows that this is only the prelude to an eternal progress, to prepare for which, she has but the short period of this present life. Of this the mere necessities of nature engross a large portion, and the remainder which she might use, is small indeed. Yet this little is such a trouble to her, and the source of such strange perplexity, that she only studies how to throw it away. To live with herself, and to think of herself, is a burden quite insupportable. Hence all her care is to forget herself, and to let this period short and precious as it is, flow on without reflection, whilst she is busied with things that prevent her from thinking of it.

This is the cause of all the bustling occupations of men, and of all that is called diversion or pastime, in which they have really but one object to let the time glide by without perceiving it, or rather without perceiving self, and to avoid, by the sacrifice of this portion of life, the bitterness and disgust of soul, which would result from self-inspection during that time. The soul finds in herself nothing gratifying. She finds nothing but what grieves her when she thinks of it. This compels her to look abroad, and to seek, by devotion to external things, to drown the consciousness of her real condition. Her joy is in this oblivion; and to compel her to look within, and to be her own companion, is to make her thoroughly wretched.

Men are burdened from their infant years with the care of their honor and their property, and even of the property and the honor of their relations and friends. They are oppressed with the study of languages, sciences, accomplishments, and arts. They are overwhelmed with business, and are taught to believe that they cannot be happy unless they man

The union of mind with matter, is a subject utterly incomprehensible to man, and yet this is man's essential nature.

and mortal state-a state so completely wretched,
that whenever nothing hinders us from thinking of
it, and we thoroughly survey ourselves, we are ut-
terly inconsolable Of course, I speak only of those
who meditate on themselves without the aid of reli-
gion. For most assuredly it is one of the wonders
of the Christian religion, that it reconciles man to
himself, in reconciling him to his God; that it
makes self-examination bearable, and solitude and
silence more interesting than the tumults and the
But religion does not
busy intercourse of men.
produce this mighty change by confining man to the
survey of himself. It does this only by leading
him up to God, and sustaining him, even in the
consciousness of his present misery, with the hope
of another existence, in which he shall be freed
from it for ever.

But as for those who act only according to the impulse of those natural motives, that they find within them, it is impossible that they can live in that tranquillity which favors self-examination, without being instantly the prey of chagrin and melancholy. The man who loves nothing but self, dislikes nothing so much as being with himself only. He seeks nothing but for himself; yet he flies from nothing so eagerly as self; for when he sees himself, he is not what he wishes; and he finds in himself an accumulation of miseries that he cannot shun, and a vacuity of all real and substantial good which he cannot fill.

him accumulate around him all the goods and all Let a man choose what condition he will, and let the gratifications seemingly calculated to make him happy in it; if that man is left at any time without occupation or amusement, and reflects on what he is, the meagre, languid felicity of his present lot will not bear him up. He will turn necessarily to gloomy anticipations of the future; and except, therefore, his occupation calls him out of himself,' he is inevitably wretched.

But is not royal dignity sufficient of itself to make its possessor happy, by the mere contemplation of what he is as a king Must he too be withdrawn

from this thought the same as other men? I see plainly that it makes a man happy to turn him away from the thought of his domestic sorrows, and to engage all the energy of his mind in the attaining of some light accomplishments, even such as dancing: but is it so with a king? Would he be happier in a devotion to these vain amusements, than in the thought of his own greatness? What object more satisfying can be given to him? Would it not be thwarting his joy, to degrade his mind to the thought how to regulate his steps by the cadence of a fiddle, or how to strike a billiard ball; instead of leaving him to enjoy in tranquillity the contemplation of the glory and the majesty with which he is invested? Try it: leave a king to himself with-ject itself. A man persuades himself that if he obout any delight accruing to him through the senses; leave him without any care upon his mind, and without society, to think at his leisure of himself, and you will see that a king who looks within, is a man equally full of miseries, and equally alive to them, with other men. Hence they carefully avoid this; and there is always about the person of kings, a number of menials, whose concern it is to provide diversion when business is done, and who watch for their hours of leisure to supply them with pleasures and sports, that they may never feel vacuity; that is, in fact, they are surrounded by persons who take the most scrupulous care, that the king shall not be left alone to be his own companion, and in a situation to think of himself; because they know that if he does, with all his royalty he must be wretched.

The principal thing which bears men up under those weighty concerns, which are, in other respects, so oppressive, is that they are thus perpetually kept from thinking of themselves.

For instance: What is the being a governor, a chancellor, a prime minister, but the having a number of attendants flocking on every side to prevent them from having a single hour in the day in which they can think of self? And when such men are out of favor, and are banished to their country-seats, where they have no want of either money or servants to supply their real wants, then indeed they are wretched, because then they have leisure to think of self without hinderance.

Hence it is, that men love so ardently the whirl and the tumult of the world; that imprisonment is so fearful a punishment; and that so few persons can endure solitude.

would do if they thought seriously of it, they would so far agree with us at once; only that they would say also, that they merely seek in these things a violent impetuous occupation, which shall divert them from themselves, and that with this direct intention, they choose some attractive object which engages and occupies them entirely. But then they will not answer in this way, because they do not know themselves. A gentleman believes sincerely that there is something noble and dignified in the chase. He will say it is a royal sport. And it is the same with other things which occupy the great mass of men. They conceive that there is something really and substantially good in the obtained this employment, then he would enjoy repose. But he does not perceive the insatiability of his own desires; and while he believes that he is in search of rest, he is actually seeking after additional care. Men have a secret instinct leading them to seek pleasure and occupation from external sources, which originates in the sense of their continual misery. But they have also another secret instinct, a remnant of the original grandeur of their nature, which intimates to them that happiness is to be found only in repose; and from these opposite instincts, there eminates a confused project, which is hidden from their view in the very depth of the soul, and which prompts them to seek repose by incessant action; and ever to expect that the fulness of enjoyment, which as yet they have not attained, will infallibly be realized, if, by overcoming certain difficulties which immediately oppose them, they might open the way to rest.

And thus the whole of life runs away. We seek repose by the struggle with opposing difficulties, and the instant we have overcome them, that rest becomes insupportable. For generally we are occupied either with the miseries which now we feel, or with those which threaten; and even when we see ourselves sufficiently secure from the approach of either, still fretfulness, though unwarranted by either present or expected affliction, fails not to spring up from the deep recesses of the heart, where its roots naturally grow, and to fill the soul with its poison.

Hence it is that so many persons fly to play or to field sports, or to any other amusement which oc- And hence it is plain, that when Cineas said to cupies the whole soul. Not that they expect hap-Pyrrhus, who proposed to himself, after having piness from any thing so acquired, or that they conquered a large portion of the world, then to sit suppose that real bliss centres in the money that down and enjoy repose with his friends, that he had they win, or the hare that they catch. They would better hasten forward his own happiness now, by not have either as a gift. The fact is, they are not immediately enjoying repose, than seek it through seeking for that mild and peaceful course which so much fatigue; he advised a course which involved. leaves a man leisure to speculate on his unhappy very serious difficulties, and which was scarcely more condition, but for that incessant hurry which ren- rational than the project of this hero's youthful ambiders this impracticable. tion. Both plans assumed that man can be satisfied with himself, and with his present blessings, and not feel a void in his heart, which must be filled with imaginary hopes: and here they were both in error. Pyrrhus could not have been happy either before or This, then, is all that men have devised to make after the conquest of the world; and most probably themselves happy. And those who amuse them- the life of indolent repose which his minister reselves by showing the emptiness and the poverty of commended, was less adapted to satisfy him, than the such amusements, have certainly a right notion of a restless hurry of his intended wars and wanderings. part of human misery; for it is no small evil to be We are compelled then to admit, that man is so capable of finding pleasure in things so low and wretched, that he will vex himself, independently contemptible; but they do not yet know the full of any external cause of vexation, from the mere depth of that misery which renders these same circumstances of his natural condition; and yet miserable and base expedients absolutely necessary with all this he is so vain and full of levity, that in to man, so long as he is not cured of that internal the midst of a thousand causes of real distress, the natural evil, the not being able to endure the con- merest trifle serves to divert him. So that on seritemplation of himself. The hare that he buys in ous reflection, we see that he is far more to be comthe market, will not call him off from himself, but miserated that he can find enjoyment in things so the chase of it may. And therefore, when we tell frivolous and so contemptible, than that he mourns them that what they seek so ardently will not satis-over his real sorrows. His amusements are infify them, and that nothing can be more mean and nitely less rational than his lamentations. profitless, we know that, if they answered as they

2. Whence is it that this man, who lost so ately

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an only son, and who, under the pressure of legal | deceives us, and leads us down imperceptibly in processes and disputes, was this morning so harass- thoughtlessness to the grave. ed, now thinks of these things no more? Alas! it is no wonder. He is wholly engrossed in watching the fate of a poor deer, that his dogs have been chasing for six hours. And nothing more than this is necessary for a man, though he is brim full of sorrows! If he can but be induced to apply himself to some source of recreation, he is happy for the time; but then it is with a false and delusive happiness, which comes not from the possession of any real and substantial good, but from a spirit of levity, that drowns the memory of his real griefs, and occupies him with mean and contemptible things, utterly unworthy of his attention, much more of his love. It is a morbid and frantic joy, which flows not from the health of the soul, but from its disorder. It is the laugh of folly and of delusion. It is wonderful also to think what it is which pleases men in their sports and recreations. It is true, that by occupying the mind, they seduce it from the consciousness of its real sorrows: and so far is a reality. But then they are only capable of occupying the mind at all, because it has created for itself in them, a merely imaginary object of desire, to which it fondly and passionately devoted.

Men finding that they had no remedy for death, misery, and ignorance, have imagined that the way to happiness was not to think of these things. This is all that they have been able to invent, to console themselves in the midst of so much evil. But it is wretched comfort; since it does not profess to cure the mischief, but merely to hide it for a short time. And it does so hide it, as to prevent all serious thought of an effectual cure. And thus a man finds, that by a strange derangement of his nature, ennui, which is the evil that he most strongly feels, is in a certain sense his greatest good; and that amusement which he regards as his best blessing, is, in fact, his most serious evil; because it operates more than any thing else to prevent him from seeking a remedy for his miseries; and both of them are a striking proof of the misery and corruption of man, and of his greatness also; since both that weariness which he feels in all things, and that restless search after various and incessant occupation, spring equally from the consciousness of a happiness which he has lost; which happiness, as he does not find it in himself, he seeks fruitlessly through the whole round of visible things; but never finds peace, because it is not in us, nor in the creature at all, but in God only.

What think you is the object of those men who are playing at tennis with such intense interest of mind and effort of body? Merely to boast the next Whilst our own nature makes us miserable in day among their friends, that they have plaved bet-whatever state we are, our desires paint to us anter than another. There is the spring of their de- other condition as being happy, because they join votedness. Others again, in the same way, toil in to that in which we are, the pleasures of a conditheir closets to show the Scavans that they have tion in which we are not; and whenever we shall solved a question in algebra, which was never attain to those expected pleasures, we shall not be solved before. Others expose themselves, with at therefore happy, because other desires will then least equal folly, to the greatest dangers, to boast at spring up conformed to some other condition, yet length of some place that they have taken: and new and unattained. others there are, who wear out life in remarking on those things; not that they themselves may grow wiser, but purely to show that they see the folly of them. And these seem the silliest of all; because they are conscious of their folly; whilst we may hope of the others, that they would act differently if they knew better.

3. A man will pass his days without weariness, in daily play for a trifling stake, whom you would make directly wretched, by giving to him each morning the probable winnings of the day, on condition of his not playing. You will say, "But it is the amusement he wants, and not the gain." Then make him play for nothing, and you will see that for want of a risk, he will lose interest, and become weary. Evidently, then, it is not only amusement that he seeks. An amusement not calculated to excite the passions, is languid and fatiguing. He must get warmth, animation, stimulus, in the thought that he shall be happy in winning a trifle, that he would not consider worth a straw, if it were offered him without the risk of play. He must have an object of emotion adequate to excite desire, and anger, and hope, and fear.

Imagine a number of men in chains, and all condemned to die, and that while some are slaughtered daily in the sight of their companions, those who yet remain see their own sad destiny in that of the slain, and gazing on each other in hopeless sorrow, await their doom. This is a picture of the condition of human nature.

CHAPTER V.

THE WONDERFUL CONTRARIETIES WHICH ARE FOUND IN
MAN WITH RESPECT TO TRUTH, HAPPINESS, AND MANY
OTHER SUBJECTS.

THERE is nothing more extraordinary in the nature of man, than the contrarieties, which are discovered in it on almost every subject. Man is formed for the knowledge of truth; he ardently desires it; he seeks it; and yet, when he strives to grasp it, he so completely dazzles and confounds himself, that he gives occasion to doubt whether he has attained it or not.

This has given rise to the two sects of the Pyrrhonists and the Dogmatists, of whom the one would deny that men knew any thing of truth; the other professed to show them that they knew it accurately; but each advanced reasons so improbable, that they only increased that confusion and perplexity in which man must continue, so long as he obtains no other light than that of his own understanding.

So that the amusements which constitute mens' happiness here, are not only mean-they are false and deceitful that is to say, they have for their object a set of phantoms and illusions, which actually could not occupy the human mind, if it had not lost its taste and feeling for that which is really good if it were not filled with low and mean propensities, The chief reasons of the Pyrrhonists are these, with vanity, and levity, and pride, and a host of that we have no assurance of the truth of our prinother vices. And these diversions only alleviate ciples (setting aside faith and revelation) except our present sorrows. by originating a misery more that we find them intuitively within us. But this real and more humiliating. For it is they which intuitive impression is not a convincing proof of mainly hinder us from thinking of ourselves, and their truth; because, as without the aid of faith, we make us lose our time without perceiving it. With-have no certainty whether man was made by a beout them, we should be unhappy, and this unhap-nevolent Deity, or a wicked demon, whether man piness would drive us to seek some more satisfac- is from eternity, or the offspring of chance, it must tory way of peace. But amusement allures and remain doubtful whether these principles are given

.

to us-are true or false; or like our origin, uncertain. Further, that excepting by faith, a man has no assurance whether he sleeps or wakes; seeing that in his sleep he does not the less firmly believe that he is awake, than when he really is so. He sees spaces, figures, movements; he is sensible of the lapse of time; he measures it; he acts, in short, as if he were awake. So that as one half of life is admitted by us to be passed in sleep, in which, how-sense confutes the Pyrrhonists, and reason the Dogever it may appear otherwise, we have no perception of truth, and all our feelings are delusions; who knows but the other half of life, in which we think we are awake, is a sleep also, but in some respects different from the other, and from which we wake, when we, as we call it, sleep. As a man dreams often that he is dreaming, crowding one dreamy delusion on another.

been an absolute and perfect Pyrrhonist. Nature props up the weakness of reason, and prevents her from reaching this point of extravagance. But then on the other side, shall man affirm that he possesses the truth with certainty, who, if you press him ever so little, can bring no proof of the fact, and is forced to loose his hold?

I leave untouched the arguments of the Pyrrhonists against the impressions of habit, education, manners, and national customs, and the crowd of similar influences which carry along the majority of mankind, who build their opinions on no more solid foundation.

Who shall clear up this perplexity? Common matists. What then must become of thee, O man, who searchest out thy true condition, by the aid of natural reason? You cannot avoid adopting one of these opinions; but to maintain either, is impossible.

Such is man in regard to the truth. Consider him now with respect to that happiness, which in all his actions, he seeks with so much avidity; for all men, without exception, desire to be happy. However different the means which they adopt, they aim at the same result. The cause of one man engaging in war, and of another remaining at home, is this same desire of happiness, associated with different predilections. He will never stir a step but towards this desired object. It is the motive of all the actions of all men, even of those who destroy themselves.

And yet, after the lapse of so many years, no one has ever attained to this point at which we are all aiming, but by faith. All are unhappy: princes and their subjects, noble and ignoble, the old and the young, the strong and the weak, the learned and the ignorant, the sick and the healthy of all countries, all times, all ages, and all conditions.

similar, but that there is some slight difference, on the strength of which, we calculate that our hope shall not be disappointed, in this as in former instances. And thus while the present never satisfies us, hope allures us onward, and leads us from misfortune to misfortune, and finally to death and everlasting ruin.

The only strong point of the Dogmatists is, that we cannot, consistently with honesty and sincerity, doubt our own intuitive principles. We know the truth, they say, not only by reasoning, but by feeling, and by a quick and luminous power of direct comprehension; and it is by this last faculty that we discern first principles. It is in vain for reasoning, which has no share in discovering these principles, to attempt subverting them. The Pyrrhonists who attempt this, must try in vain. However unable we may be by reasoning to prove the fact, Experience so lengthened, so continual, and so yet we know that we do not dream. And this ina- uniform, might well convince us of our inability to bility may prove the feebleness of our reason, but be happy by our own efforts. But then here we get not as they pretend, the want of reality and sub-no profit from example. It is never so precisely stance in the subjects of our knowledge. For the knowledge of first principles, as the ideas of space, time, motion, number, matter, is as unequivocally certain, as any that reasoning imparts. And, after all, it is on the perceptions of common sense and feeling, that reason must, at last, sustain itself, and found its own argument. I perceive that space has three dimensions, and that number is infinite, and It is remarkable, that in the whole range of nareason demonstrates from this, that there are not ture, there is nothing that has not been accounted two square numbers, of which one is just double fit to become the chief end and happiness of man. of the other. Principles are perceived, propositions The stars, the elements, plants, animals, insects, are deduced: each part of the process is certain, diseases, wars, vices, crimes, &c. Man having though in different ways. And it is as ridiculous fallen from his original and natural state, there is that reason should require of feeling and percep- nothing however mean on which he does not fix tion proofs of these first principles before she as- his vagrant affections. Since he lost that which is sents to them, as it would be that perception should really good, any thing can assume the semblance require from reason an intuitive impression of all of it, even self-destruction, though it is so manifestthe propositions at which she arrives. This weak-ly contrary at once both to reason and to nature. ness, therefore, will only serve to abase that reason which would become the judge of all things, but not to invalidate the convictions of common sense, as if reason only could be our guide and teacher. Would to God, on the contrary, that we had no need of reason, but that we knew every thing intuitively by instinct and feeling. But this blessing is withheld from us by our nature; our knowledge by intuitive impression is very scanty; and every thing else must be attained by reasoning.

Here then is war openly proclaimed among men. Each one must take a side; must necessarily range himself with the Pyrrhonists or the Dogmatists; for he who would think to remain neuter, is a Pyrrhonist par excellence. This neutrality is the very essence of Pyrrhonism. He who is not against them, is completely for them. What then must a man do in this alternative? Shall he doubt of every thing? Shall he doubt that he is awake, or that he is pinched or burned? Shall he doubt that he doubts? Shall he doubt that he is? We cannot get so far as this; and I hold it to be a fact, that there never has

Some have sought happiness in power; some in science or in curious research; and some in voluptuous pleasure. These three propensities have given rise to three sects; and they who are called philosophers, have merely followed one or other of them. Those who have come nearest to happiness have thought, that the universal good which all men desire, and in which all should share, cannot be any one particular thing, which one only can possess, and which if it be divided, ministers more sorrow to its possessor, on account of that which he has not, than pleasure in the enjoyment of that which he has. They conceived that the true good must be such that all may enjoy it at once, without imperfection and without envy; and that no one could lose it against his will. They have rightly understood the blessing, but they could not find it; and instead of a solid and practical good, they have embraced its visionary semblance, in an unreal and chimerical virtue.

Instinct tells us, that we must seek our happiness within ourselves, Our passions drive us forth to

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