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passion, obliges fortitude to ally itself with the whole force of wisdom, to support the doubtful victory.

The passions all carry good in their aspect, and their evil of enormous magnitude is diminished by its distance in their rear: Wisdom, like a telescope, brings them into view; and Fortitude is enabled to triumph over every passion, by fol lowing the Epicurean maxims:

Enjoy the present good, if it does not produce greater future evil:

Support present evil, to obtain a (much greater) distant good:

And abstain from present good, to avoid much greater future evil.

Which maxims contain the whole art of happiness.

The most important function of fortitude, as of all the faculties and passions, is to conduct man in the worship of self and Nature, the augmentation of good and diminution of evil, throughout the mundane system in time present and futurity.

When the identical form or mode of self has irretrievably lost its ability of such worship, by an incurable disorder, moral or physical, as severe chronic disease of the body, or insanity of the mind; the sacred function of fortitude may dissolve its own painful mould of sensation into the great ocean of matter, that it may thence return into happier moulds of sensitive life.

There can be no fixed criterion of human action, but human circumstances; and when the individual man is fallen into a state of incurable evil, of lunacy, deformity, or ignominy, the worship of Nature's laws calls on fortitude to dissolve the identity into the great ocean of matter.

Men bubble-like on sea of matter borne,

Burst into death, and into life return.

A good end can justify only good means, as a sore upon the leg may justify amputation, but not if a plaster or cau tery will be a sufficient remedy.

The most difficult exercise of fortitude is in the reformation of bad habits. I regard the habitual drunkard, gamester, or prodigal, who quits his vicious course, as a greater hero than the philosophic suicide, who, oppressed by irre

mediable misery, puts a period to his existence. The firing of a pistol, or a leap into the river, has little energy when compared with the protracted effort of a triumph over habit.

How many thousands are lingering through life, under the tortures of nervous debility and melancholy, who dare not or cannot abstain from the habit of dram-drinking or teadrinking, the cause of their misery?

How many wretched prostitutes in each metropolis, linger out life in all the misery of famine, disease, and contempt, when the soft sleep of the laudanum vial or of a watery grave, would not only put an end to their sufferings, but transmute some particles of their indestructible matter into the enviable existence of those who had the moment before refused them relief or pity?

WISDOM.

There is a strong desire of knowledge or curiosity, operating in the moral temperament of man, which, if properly directed by education and instruction, would put us in pos session of that discipline of reason, called Wisdom, the guide of intellect and will to happiness.

This desire, or ardent curiosity, which displays itself even in the savage mind, has, by an improper direction, taken a wide range into foreign subjects, and turned its back on home. Man has pursued this impetuous passion of raging curiosity in the study of plants, animals, fossils, literature, and science, and all the economy of external nature, while he abandoned the most important knowledge of self in its own constitution, and the relations of that to the Universe.

The simplest division of the modifications of the Will, is into Love and Hatred. Among the passions of love are am bition, avarice, friendship, love of the sexes, and curiosity; among those of hatred are revenge, anger and fear.

These various passions, like the keys of a musical instrument, if properly touched, modulate those tones which con. stitute melody, or happiness of moral temperament.

Ambition is a key, that, well or ill touched, produces the most direful discord, or the most beneficent concord. A passion for power or dominion engenders corroding care and perturbation of mind; while the emulation of moral excel

lence, to guide, instruct, and assist our fellow-citizens, creates the grateful sentiments of self-estimation.

Avarice is a key of the human phrenal instrument, which, well or ill played on, produces either sordidness, and a privation of all enjoyment, or forms prudential economy, the cause of pleasure, security, and independence.

The passion or key of Friendship, well or ill played on, produces either personal partiality to foibles and vices, because they resemble our own, and then it becomes the cause of certain misery, by multiplying the force of our vices with that of others; or it is a just attachment to moral excellence, which produces felicity by multiplying the force of our own virtue with that of another.

Love of the sexes is a passion fraught with the greatest consequence of happiness or misery. Whoever is influenced merely by personal beauty, the color or the features of a face, to enter upon the basis and thraldom of domestic life, loses, with the fading charms, the fleeting pleasures of love, and then drags on a life of anguish, which the companion has not power to sooth. The person who touches the key of this passion with judgment, feels its common influence, but is determined only by the influence of friendship; and is never precipitated into domestic misery merely to enjoy personal beauty.

The passion, Curiosity, if properly economized, instead of a book-worm of useless and pompous science, makes the man of sagacity by disciplining the powers of reason, with out overburdening the memory, and thereby extending the faculty of judgment; or, in other words, directs the efforts of intellect to the knowledge of self, in its relations with surrounding Nature, constituting the moral science, which is of more value than all the encyclopedia of learning.

Among the modes of HATRED, I named revenge, anger, and fear.

The passion, Revenge, is a disordered modification of the will, which will admit of no economy, because it ought to have no existence. We must hold all vice in aversion, as we do all disease or sickness: but no man resents a fever or a headache; why then resent anger, malice, or vice?

It may be here observed, that if we did not resent evil actions, we should be guilty of exposing ourselves to much in

jury. To this it may be replied, that the defence of self against assault, or the punishment of crimes by the laws of society, is not to be regarded as the passion of revenge. Criminal punishments should not be for revenge but as preventive terrors, to excite ignorant minds to reflection; and personal defence against slander, assault, and injury, should also be conducted without the least spirit of revenge.

In those petty cases of injury, where the laws offer no relief, we expose the malice of our enemies in our own defence, in order to punish the vice rather than the person, who is more an object of pity than revenge, because he is subject to the moral disorder of malice, which brings upon its possessor pain and misery, and disarms resentment, The aversion we feel against vice or error, in ourselves or others, will never generate anger in a well-disciplined temper.

Anger is accompanied by the most absurd as well as the most injurious consequences of all the passions. Among fools it is contagious, and often seizes on a whole company, infected by a single patient. What imbecility! There is a beautiful and apt allegory in the Persian language, which exhibits this passion in a very contemptuous light;

"A shallow puddle, and not the sea, is troubled by the falling of a pebble."

I partially attribute my happiness, and the success of my travels, to the instruction of this allegorical adage. In my very extensive travels, I was often the object of anger, from my ignorance of particular customs, in particular countries. This anger of strangers I studied to sooth, and not to irritate; and I saw as much folly in catching this moral disorder, as I should in giving myself a headache, because my companion had one.

How many unhappy victims of the passion of anger would be relieved by attending to the Persian adage! What friendships, what valuable acquaintances, what useful domestic connections have all been irretrievably lost by the contagion of anger! and how many years of affection and service have all been forgotten in a moment of contagious petulance!

I have always observed in company, that a soft and soothing reply, made to an angry observation, has carried in it such influential reproof, that the angry person has been

abashed, while the complacent and mild conversant became the object of esteem.

Fear. This of our painful passions is the most beneficent, but the most difficult to be disciplined. When controlled by reason, it gives an anticipated notice of future evil, which enables us to take precautionary measures, to avoid it without an anxious and painful sufferance in melancholy reflec tion on its advent.

A just and rational dread of evil is nothing more than a happy sensibility, or vigilance, to avoid it; the dread of sick. ness procures the economy of temperance, which is the cause of cheerfulness, pleasure, and health. The dread of contempt causes probity, honor, and wisdom, and upholds that liberal intercourse of civil behavior, in convivial company, which forms the harbor of life, to shelter man from the tempestuous storms of the passions in business.

Instead of the term "polite," I make use of the term civil behavior, which words stand in the same contrast with each other, as religion and morality: the first is nothing but form, and the last is all substance. Politeness requires the obser vance of certain formalities in deportment and discourse; and these being complied with, passion, sarcasm, and indifference, are tolerated to great excess.

Civility or amiability dispenses with all superfluous cere. mony; but in lieu thereof, it forbids passion, sarcasm, and indifference, and requires a delicate attention, which amounts to a kind of courtship of mutual esteem and friendship: such is the behavior of an English gentleman, contrasted with a polite foreigner, from any part of the continent of Europe.

To return to the passion, Fear, we will consider its discipline on the important subject, Death. If we observe well and clearly the phenomena of Nature, in the dissolution of all organized matter, we see nothing but the transition of indestructable atoms, from one body to another: "All forms that perish, other forms supply." When the beggar dies, some of his atoms will form part of a living prince; and on the contrary, some atoms of the dissolving prince will enter the identity of a living beggar. Nothing is suffered by death, but the loss of remembrance; and what is there so formidadle or dreadful in the loss of memory of prior existence, as to become the common bugbear of human nature.

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