Who confers reputation? who gives respect and veneration to persons, to books, to great men? Who but opinion? How utterly insufficient are all the riches of the world without her approbation! Opinion settles every thing. She constitutes beauty, justice, happiness, which is the whole of this world. I would like much to see that Italian work, of which I have only heard the title. It is called "Opinion, the Queen of the World." It is worth many other books. I subscribe to it without knowing it, er ror excepted. 4. The most important concern in life, is the choice of an occupation; yet chance seems to decide it. Custom makes masons, soldiers, bricklayers, &c. They say, "That's a capital workman," or when speaking of soldiers, "What fools those men are:" others again say, "There is nothing noble but war, all men but soldiers are contemptible." And according as men, during their childhood, have heard those several occupations praised and others vilified, they make their choice; for naturally we love wisdom and hate folly. It is these words that influence us; we err only in the application of them; and the force of custom is such, that in some countries, the whole population are sons; in others, soldiers. Now we do not conceive that nature is so uniform. It is custom which does this, and carries nature with it. There are cases however in which nature prevails, and binds man to his specific object, in defiance of custom, whether bad or good. ma 5. We think very little of time present; we anticipate the future, as being too slow, and with a view to hasten it onward; we recall the past to stay it as too swiftly gone. We are so thoughtless, that we thus wander through the hours which are not here, regardless only of the moment that is actually our own :— so vain, that we dream of the times which are not, and suffer that only which does exist, to escape us without a thought. This is because, generally, the present gives us pain; we hide it from our sight, it afflicts us; and even if it ministers pleasure, we grieve to see it flying and hence we bring up the future to sustain it, and speculate on doing things which are not in our power, at a time which we can have no that we shall ever see. assurance Let any man examine his thoughts; he will find them ever occupied with the past or the future. We scarcely think at all of the present; or if we do, it is only to borrow the light which it gives, for regulating the future. The present is never our object; the past and the present we use as means; the future only is our object. Thus in fact we never live, we only hope to live; and thus ever doing nothing, but preparing to be happy, it is certain that we never shall be so, unless we seek a higher felicity than this short life can yield. 6. Our imagination so magnifies this present existence, by the power of continual reflection on it; and so attenuates eternity, by not thinking of it at all, that we reduce an eternity to nothingness, and expand a mere nothing to an eternity; and this habit is so inveterately rooted in us, that all the force of reason cannot induce us to lay it aside. 7. Cromwell would have laid desolate all Christendom. The royal family was ruined; his own was completely established: but for a small grain of sand, which entered the urethra, even Rome would have trembled before him; but when only this atom of gravel, which elsewhere was as nothing, was placed in that spot, behold he dies, his family is degraded, and the king restored! 8. We see scarcely any thing, just or unjust, that does not change its quality with its climate. Three degrees of latitude upset all the principles of juris-prudence; a meridian determines what is truth, or a few years of settled authority. Fundamental laws may vary. Right has its epochs. Droll justice inTruth on> deed, that a river or a mountain limits! 9. Theft, incest, parricide, infanticide, each has been ranked among virtuous actions. Is there any thing more ridiculous, than that a man has the right to kill me, because he lives across the water, and that his prince has a quarrel with mine, though I have none with him? There are certainly natural laws, but this corrupted reason has corrupted every thing, Nihil amplius nostri est; quod nostrum dicimus, artis est; ex senatusconsultis et plebiscitis crimina exercentur, ut olim vitiis sic nunc legibus laboramus. From this confusion it arises, that one affirms, that the essential principle of justice is the authority of the legislature; another, the convenience of the sovereign; another, present custom: and this is the safest. There is nothing, if we follow the light of reason only, that is in itself, independently just. Time alters every thing; custom makes equity, simply because it is received. That is the mystic basis of its authority, and he who traces it to its origin, annihilates it. Nothing is so faulty as those laws which redress faults. He who obeys them because they are just, obeys that which he has conceived to be justice, but not the essence of the law. Its whole force lies in this:-It is law and nothing more. He who looks into the principle will find it so weak and flimsy, that if he is not accustomed to the prodigies of the human imagination, he would wonder how a century could have nourished it with so much pomp and veneration. The secret for overturning a state, is to shake to their foundation established customs, by going back to their origin, and shewing the defect of the authority or the principle on which they rest. "We must return," say they, "to those fundamental and primitive laws of the state, which corrupt custom has abolished." This is a sure play for losing every thing. In such a balance nothing will appear right: yet the people listen eagerly to such discourses. They throw off the yoke as soon as they perceive it; and the great make their advantage of this to ruin both them and these curious inspectors of established customs. Yet there there are is an error directly the reverse of this, and men who think that any thing can be done justly, which has a precedent in its favor. Whence one of the wisest legislators said, "That for the welfare of man, he must frequently be deceived;" and another great politician says, Cum veritatem qua liberetur ignoret, expedit quod fallatur. Man: should not ascertain the truth of the usurpation; for it was introduced in ancient times, without good reason. But now it must always be held up as authentic and eternal; we must veil its origin, if we wish it to be perpetuated. 10. Set the greatest philosopher in the world upon a plank, even broader than the space he occupies in walking on plain ground, and if there is a precipice below him, though reason convices him of his safety, his imagination will prevail to alarm him: the very thought of it would make some perspire and turn pale. Who does not know that there are persons so nervous, that the sight of a cat, or a rat, or the crushing of a bit of coal, will almost drive them out of their senses. 11. Would you not say of that venerable magistrate, whose years command the respect of a whole people, that he is under the control of pure and dignified wisdom, and that he judges of things as they are, without being influenced by those adventitious circumstances which warp the imagination of the weak? But see him enter the very court where he is to administer justice; see him prepare to hear with a gravity the most exemplary; but if an advocate appears to whom nature has given a hoarse voice, or a dull expression of countenance, if his barber has but half shaved him, or an accidental splash of mud has fallen on him, I'll engage for the loss of the judge's self-possession. 1 12. The mind of the greatest man on earth, is not 80 independent of circumstances, as not to feel incon-venienced by the merest buzzing noise about him; it does not need the report of a cannon to disturb his thoughts. The creaking of a vane or pully is quite enough. Do not wonder that he reasons ill just now; a fly is buzzing by his ear; it is quite enough to unfit him for giving good counsel. If you wish him to see the rights of the case, drive away that insect, which suspends his reasoning powers, and frets that mighty mind which governs cities and kingdoms. 13. The will is one of the principal sources of belief; not that it produces belief, but that things appear true or false to us according to the way they are looked at. The will, which inclines to one thing more than another, turns away the mind from consid ering the qualities of that which it does not approve; and thus the whole mind led by the will or inclination, limits its observation to what it approves, and thus forming its judgment on what it sees, it insensibly regulates its belief by the inclinations of the will, i. e. by its own preferences. 14. Disease is another source of error. It impairs the judgment and the senses: and if serious disorders do visibly produce this effect, doubtless minor ailments do so in proportion. Self-interest also is a surprising means of inducing a voluntary blindness. Affection or dislike will alter our notions of justice. For instance, when an advocate is well paid before hand, how much more just he thinks the cause which he has to plead. Yet owing to another strange peculiarity of the human mind, I have known men who, lest they should serve their own interest, have been cruelly unjust, through a con-trary bias so that the sure way to lose a good cause, was to get it recommended to them by one of their near relations. 15. The imagination often magnifies the veriest trifle, by a false and romantic preference, till it fills the whole soul; or in its heedless presumption, brings down the most elevated subjects to our own low standard. 16. Justice and truth are two points of such ex quisite delicacy, that our coarse and blunted instruments will not touch them accurately. If they do find out the point, so as to rest upon it, they bruise and in- |