overcast, if a few successive days of wet and boisterous weather have rendered all escape into the open air, and the exercises which this escape would afford, impossible!

"The sort of bodily pleasure, which we derive from exercise," says the author of a very pleasing little French work, on the theory of our agreeable feelings, "cannot be analyzed, indeed, without becoming almost insensible. The pleasure which accompanies a motion of the hand, escapes from us, by its littleness; but it is not, on that account, the less real. Do not women, every day, save themselves from many hours of listless uneasiness merely by a little motion of the fingers, in some slight work, to which they attach no other value, than as it is a source of this very amusement to them? The charm of the particular work itself, and the general pleasure of being occupied, have need of being combined, to make any sensible impression."*

Without the knowledge of the pleasure that is thus felt in mere exertion, it would not be easy for us to look with satisfaction on the scene of human toil around us,-which assumes instantly a different aspect, when we consider this happy principle of our mental constitution. Though we are apt to think of those who are labouring for others, as if they were not labouring for themselves also and though unquestionably, from our natural love of freedom, any task which is imposed cannot be as agreeable, as an occupation spontaneously chosen-we yet must not think that the labour itself is necessarily an evil, from which it would be happiness for man to be freed. Nature has not dealt so hardly with the great multitude,-in comparison with whom the smaller number, for whose accommodation she seems to have formed a more sumptuous provision, are truly insignificant, and would be unworthy of this seeming preference, if the provision of their means of luxury, were all which is involved in the wealth which she bestows on them. The wealth of the individual is valuable, chiefly as it leads to the labour of others, and presents, in the reward which it offers, an agreeable object, to mingle with the pleasure of the occupation, and to sooth and sweeten it, even when it rises to fatigue. How different would the busy scene of the world appear, if we could conceive that no pleasure attended the occupations, to which so great a majority of our race would then seem to be condemned, almost like slaves, that are fettered to the very instruments of their daily task! How different from that scene, in which, though we perceive many labouring, and a few at rest, we perceive, in the labourer, a pleasure of occupation, which those who rest would often be happy to purchase from him, and which they do sometimes endeavour to purchase, by the same means by which he has acquired it, by exercises as violent and unremitted as his, and which have the distinction only of being of less advantage to the world, than those toils by which he at once promotes his own happiness, and contributes to the accommodation of others! It is pleasing, thus, to perceive a source of enjoyment, in the very circumstance which might seem most hostile to happiness,-to perceive in the labour itself, of which the necessity is imposed on man, a consolation for the loss of that very freedom which it constrains.

When we do not labour with our limbs, we must labour with our mind; and happy is it for our peace when this mental occupation can supply to us the place of bodily occupation,-which, to the rich at least, must always be in a great degree dependent on the accidents of weather, and in some measure, too, on the society of others. He, to whom a book presents occupation, * Théorie des Sentimens agréables, chap. ii.

VOL. II.

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scarcely can be in circumstances in which this occupation is not in some degree at his command; and it is not easy to say, how much of happiness, and of that good humour which is no small part of morality, depends on the mere power of occupying ourselves agreeably with this exercise of our eyes and mind, as others, less happy in intellectual taste, are obliged to depend for occupation on exercises that require a greater number of circumstances to place them in their power.

"Choose any station in life which you may prefer," says Pascal, “combine in it every pleasure which seems capable of satisfying the desires of man; if he, whom we imagine placed in this situation, has no occupation or amusement, his languishing felicity will not support him for an hour. He must have something to withdraw him from himself, or he is necessarily unhappy.

"Is not the royal dignity great enough of itself to content him who is the object of so much envy? I see, indeed, that in other circumstances, to render a man happy, it is necessary to turn him away from the sight of his own misery, though it be only to occupy his whole mind with the anxiety of bending his knee, or pointing his toe in a dance a little better than before. But is it the same with a king? Must he, too, be amused like others? Would it not be a sort of insult to the joy which he must feel, to occupy his soul with the thought, how he is to adapt his steps to the measure of an air, or how he is to send one billiard ball most adroitly to meet another,—instead of leaving him to enjoy, in repose, the contemplation of that majestic glory which surrounds him? Let us make the trial. Let us leave the most magnificent sovereign, without company, without occupation, to enjoy himself, in all his magnificence at leisure; and the sovereign whom we have left to himself will be only a human being, that feels his miseries like other people. All this, therefore, is most carefully provided against; and there are never wanting round the person of kings a number of idle courtiers, whose only occupation is to watch the time of their leisure, that they may suggest instantly some new amusement in the intervals of public business, or of other amusements, and save them from the dreadful misery of being alone, and of knowing what they are.

"Man is so wretched a being," he continues, "that he would soon be tired of himself, without any external cause of dissatisfaction, by the mere feeling of what he is; and yet he is so vain and trifling a creature, that, full as he is of a thousand essential causes of disgust, the most insignificant trifle is sufficient to amuse him; so that if we were to consider him seriously, we should find far more reason to pity him for being capable of finding amusement in things so mean and frivolous, than for the distresses which truly afflict him.

"How happens it, that that man, who was a short time ago in such deep misery at the loss of his only son, and who, loaded with law-suits and quarrels, was this very morning fretted with so many vexations, thinks of these evils no more? Be not astonished at the change; he is now entirely absorbed in other thoughts. He is occupied, and most completely occupied, in seeing where it is that a stag is to try to get a passage, a weary stag, which his dogs have been pursuing since six o'clock. Nothing more is necessary to account for the transformation. Miserable as man may be, if only we can succeed in occupying him in any manner, he is no longer miserable, he is

happy."

* Pensées de Pascal, première partie, Art. VII. Sect. i, ii.

Of the truth of the great facts, which Pascal thus states in a very forcible and lively manner, there can be no question; but the conclusion which he draws from them is surely not the conclusion which is most suitable to our nature, and to the great object of Him by whom we were formed. It is much juster, as it is unquestionably far more pleasing, to trace, in this necessity of occupation, the evident marks of the intention of Heaven, that man who is to exist among men, and who has powers of mind and of body capable of benefiting them in innumerable ways, is not to suffer these powers to lie idle. The languor which we feel when we cease from exertion, reminds us at every moment, that we are not formed for inactivity,—that we have duties to discharge, which may become to us amusement, become to us amusement, if we only deign to avail ourselves of pleasures that are constantly in our power,—and without which, all amusements and exercises, that are only the mimicry of these very duties, would soon become as wearisome almost as idleness itself, of which we are so ready to feel the misery, when it is total idleness, unoccupied with a single pastime. It is not to fly the sight of ourselves, and, therefore, of our miseries, as Pascal says, that we busy ourselves even in trifles; but because Heaven, that has formed us for action, has formed us, therefore, necessarily to busy ourselves with something, and to occupy ourselves even with trifles, rather than to be wholly unoccupied. In beginning to exert ourselves, or to take interest in the exertions of others, we have no thought either of misery to be avoided, or of happiness to be attained. We are already busy, before we have felt the happiness; we are already idle, before we have felt the misery of being idle. Nature does not wait for our reflections and calculations. She gives us, indeed, the power of reflecting and calculating, that we may correct the abuses of our desires; but the desires which are necessary to our own well-being, and to the well-being of those around us, she prompts without our bidding. She has formed man, with a nature that may suit him to every situation;-the monarch, with those passions and powers which are necessary for the humblest of his subjects;-the humblest peasant, with the passions and powers of those who are born of kings. The sovereign occupying himself with those voluntary labours which he denominates amusements, may feel, in these very amusements, the common nature which he shares with those who are toiling around him, in labours, which they, indeed, term labours, and think, perhaps, that they would be happy, if only they had that ease which he finds so painful, and from which he makes so many efforts to free himself, but which are to them what his amusements are to him, a source of occupation, a mode of shaking off that idleness, which, if general, would be inconsistent with the very being of society, and from which, therefore, man is warned or saved, by the languor that attends it. When we look at the guards, and the palace, and the splendour,―at all those crowds, which seem useful only as supplying to him more speedily every thing which his wants require, it is scarcely possible for us to think that a king has any necessity of labouring; but if we look within his breast, and see the constant appetite for occupation, which this ready supply of all his wants inflames rather than mitigates, we discover the same necessity which we feel in ourselves, the same proof, that man is formed to contribute his share of service to the general labours of mankind,-to be active even where this propensity of our nature can have no excitement from individual wants, -and to minister, in some sort, to the happiness of others, if he does not choose to be the willing minister of his own unhappiness.

LECTURE LXVII.

III. PROSPECTIVE EMOTIONS.-4. DESIRE OF SOCIETY-5. DESIRE OF KNOWLEDGE.

GENTLEMEN, after the desires which I examined in my last Lecture, that which is next to be considered by us, is our desire of society.

Man, as I have already said, is born in society, and dependent on it, in some of its most delightful forms, for the preservation of his infant being, which, without the protection of those who love him the more for the very helplessness that is consigned to their protection, would seem thrown into the world, only to suffer in it for a few hours, and, ceasing to suffer, to cease also to exist.

If man be thus dependent on society for the preservation of his early existence, he is not less dependent on it for the comfort and happiness of his existence in other years. It is to be the source of all the love which he feels, of all the love which he excites,—and, therefore, of almost all the desires and enjoyments which he is capable of feeling. There is not one of his actions, which may not, directly or indirectly, have some relation to those among whom he lives; and I may say even, that there is scarcely a moment of his existence, in which the social affection, in some one of its forms, has not an influence on some feeling or resolution, some delightful remembrance of the past, some project of future benevolence or resentment. We are born, as I have said, in society, and dependent on it for our existence; but, even if we could exist without society, we should not exist as men, not even as savage men,-for savages, rude as their intercourse is, are still united together by domestic affinities and friendships,—and have one common land, as dear to them, or, perhaps, more dear to them, than the country of the civilized is to its polished inhabitants. With our immortal spirit, and with all the glorious capacities that are developed in society, we should, but for the society that almost gives us a different soul, be only a species of wild animal, -that might not yield as readily, perhaps, to the stronger animals around as the weak of a less noble race, but which would hold with them, at best a perilous contest,-miserable within the cave, and trembling to venture beyond it. "Make us single and solitary," says an eloquent Roman moralist,." and what are we? The prey of other animals, and their victim,-the prey which it would be most easy for them to seize, the victim which it would be most easy for them to destroy. Those other animals have in their own strength, sufficient protection. If they be born to live apart, each has its separate arms to defend it. Man has no tusks or talons to make him terrible. He is weak, and naked; but, weak and naked as he is, society surrounds him and protects him. It is this which submits to his power all other living things, and not the earth merely, which seems in some measure his own by birth, but the very ocean, that is to him like another world of beings of a different nature. Society averts from him the attack of diseases,-it mitigates his suffering when he is assailed by them,-it gives support and happiness to his old age, -it makes him strong in the great combat of human life, because it leaves him not alone to struggle with his fortune."-" Fac nos singulos: quid su

* Al. imbecillimus.-al. vilissimus.

mus? præda animalium et victimæ, ac imbecillissimus et facillimus sanguis ; quoniam cæteris animalibus in tutelam sui, satis virium est. Quæcunque vaga nascuntur, et actura vitam segregem, armata sunt. Hominem imbecillitas cingit: non unguium vis, non dentium, terribilem ceteris fecit. Nudum et infirmum, societas munit.-Societas illi dominium omnium animalium dedit; societas terris genitum, in alienæ naturæ transmisit imperium, et dominari etiam in mari jussit. Hæc morborum impetus arcuit, senectuti adminicula prospexit, solatia contra dolores dedit; hæc fortes nos facit, quod licet contra fortunam advocare."

Of a society, to which man thus owes all his strength, as well as all his happiness, it is not wonderful, that nature should have formed him desirous; and it is in harmony with that gracious provision, which we have seen realized so effectually in our other emotions, that she has formed him to love the society which profits him, without thinking of the profit which it affords,— that is to say, without regard to this benefit, as the primary source of a love that would not have arisen, but from the prospect of the selfish gain. We exist in society, and have formed in it innumerable affections, long before we have learned to sum and calculate the consequences of every separate look and word of kindness, or have measured the general advantage which this spontaneous and ready kindness yields, with the state of misery in which we should have existed, if there had been no society to receive and make us happy. These affections, so quick to awake in the very moment almost of our waking being, are ever spreading in the progress of life; because there is no moment to the heart, in which the principle of social union is cold or powerless. The infant does not cling to his nurse more readily than the boy hastens to meet his playmates, and man to communicate his thoughts to man. If we were to see the little crowd of the busy school-room rush out, when the hour of freedom comes, and, instead of mingling in some general pastime, betake themselves, each to some solitary spot, till the return of that hour which forced them again together, we should look on them with as much astonishment, as if a sudden miracle had transformed their bodily features, and destroyed the very semblance of men. As wonderful would it appear, if, in a crowded city, or even in the scattered tents of a tribe of Arabs, or in the huts or very caves of the rudest savages, there were to be no communing of man with man, no voice or smile of greeting,-no seeming consciousness of mutual presence, but each were to pass each with indifference, as if they had never met, and were never to meet again, or rather, with an indifference which even those cannot wholly feel, who have met once in the wildest solitudes, and to whom that moment of accidental meeting was the only tie which connects them afterwards in their mutual recognition. The mere presence of a human being,—at least when there is no fear to counteract and overcome the affection,-is sufficient to give him a sort of interest in our wishes,-certainly, if he be in pain or want, an interest in our compassionate wishes, as if he were not wholly a stranger; or rather, such is our love of society, that to be, in the strictest sense of the term, a stranger, is to us a sort of recommendation, as to be a friend, or even a common acquaintance, is also a recommendation, more or less strong, to the same diffusive regard.. Qualities, thus seemingly opposite, excite an interest that is similar; because, opposite as the qualities are, they are still qualities of man, -of one, who, whether a stranger or a friend, shares our nature, and who

* Seneca de Beneficiis, lib. iv. c. 18.