pomps and diversions as are innocent in | I never took in my youth. Among others is themselves, and only culpable when they draw the mind too much? I could not but smile upon reading a passage in the account which Mr. Baxter gives of his own life, wherein he represents it as a great blessing that in his youth he very narrowly escaped getting a place at court. It must indeed be confessed that levity of temper takes a man off his guard, and opens a pass to his soul for any temptation that assaults it. It favours all the approaches of vice, and weakens all the resistance of virtue: for which reason renowned statesman in queen Elizabeth's days, after having retired from court and public business, in order to give himself up to the duties of religion, when any of his old friends used to visit him, had still this word of advice in his mouth, 'be serious.' that of an afternoon's nap, which I fell into in the fifty-fifth year of my age, and have continued for the three last years past. By this means I enjoy a double morning, and rise twice a day fresh to my speculations. It happens very luckily for me, that some of my dreams have proved instructive to my countrymen, so that I may be said to sleep, as well as to wake, for the good of the public. I was yesterday meditating on the account with which I have already entertained my readers concerning the cave of Trophonius. I was no sooner fallen into amy usual slumber, but I dreamed that this cave was put into my possession, and that I gave public notice of its virtue, inviting every one to it who had a mind to be a serious man for the remaining part of his life. Great multitudes immediately resorted to me. The first who made the experiment was a Merry-andrew, who was put into my hand by a neighbouring justice of peace, in order to reclaim him from that profligate kind of life. Poor Pickle-herring had not taken above one turn in it, when he came out of the cave, like a hermit from his cell, with a penitential look and a most rueful countenance, I then put in a young laughing fop, and, watching for his return, asked him, with a smile, how he liked the place? He replied, An eminent Italian author of this cast of mind, speaking of the great advantage of a serious and composed temper, wishes very gravely, that for the benefit of mankind he had Trophonius's cave in his possession; which, says he, would contribute more to the reformation of manners than all the work houses and bridewells in Europe. On the other hand, writers of a more merry complexion have been no less severe on the opposite party; and have had one advantage above them, that they have attacked them with more turns of wit and humour. We have a very particular description of this cave in Pausanias, who tells us that it was made in the form of a huge oven, and had many particular circumstances, Pr'ythee, friend, be not impertinent;' and which disposed the person who was in it to stalked by me as grave as a judge. A be more pensive and thoughtful than or- citizen then desired me to give free ingress dinary; insomuch, that no man was ever and egress to his wife who was dressed in observed to laugh all his life after, who the gayest coloured ribands I had ever had once made his entry into this cave. It seen. She went in with a flirt of her fan was usual in those times, when any one and a smirking countenance, but came out carried a more than ordinary gloominess in with the severity of a vestal; and throwing his features, to tell him that he looked like from her several female gewgaws, told me, one just come out of Trophonius's cave. with a sigh, that she resolved to go into deep mourning, and to wear black all the rest of her life. As I had many coquettes recommended to me by their parents, their husbands, and their lovers, I let them in all at once, desiring them to divert themselves together, as well as they could. Upon their emerging again into day-light, you would have fancied my cave to have been a nunnery, and that you had seen a solemn procession of religious marching out, one behind another, in the most profound silence and the most exemplary decency. As I was very much delighted with so edifying a sight, there came towards me a great company of males and females, laughing, singing, and dancing, in such a manner, that I could hear them a great while before I saw them. Upon my asking their leader what brought them thither? they told me all at once that they were French Protestants lately arrived in Great Britain, and that finding themselves of too gay a humour for my country, they applied themselves to me in order to compose them for British conversation. I told them that, to oblige them, I would soon spoil their mirth; upon which I admitted a After all, if a man's temper were at his own disposal, I think he would not choose to be of either of these parties; since the most perfect character is that which is formed out of both of them. A man would neither choose to be a hermit nor a buffoon; human nature is not so miserable, as that we should be always melancholy; nor so happy, as that we should be always merry. In a word, a man should not live as if there was no God in the world, nor, at the same time, as if there were no men in it. No. 599.] Monday, September 27, 1714. -Ubique Luctus, ubique pavor.-Virg. Æn. ii. 369. IT has been my custom, as I grow old, to allow myself some little indulgences, which whole shoal of them, who after having | patients walking by themselves in a very taken a survey of the place, came out in pensive and musing posture, so that the very good order, and with looks entirely English. I afterwards put in a Dutchman, who had a great fancy to see the kelder, as he called it; but I could not observe that I had made any alteration in him. whole space seemed covered with philosophers. I was at length resolved to go into the cave myself, and see what it was that had produced such wonderful effects upon the company; but as I was stooping at the re-entrance, the door being somewhat low, I gave such a nod in my chair that I awaked. After having recovered myself from my first startle, I was very well pleased at the accident which had befallen me, as not knowing but a little stay in the place might have spoiled my Spectators. A comedian, who had gained great putation in parts of humour, told me that he had a mighty mind to act Alexander the Great, and fancied that he should succeed very well in it if he could strike two or three laughing features out of his face. He tried the experiment, but contracted so very solid a look by it, that I am afraid he will be fit for no part hereafter but a Timon of Athens, or a Mute in The Funeral. I then clapped up an empty fantastic citizen, in order to qualify him for an alderman. He was succeeded by a young rake of the Middle Temple, who was brought to me by his grandmother; but, to her great sorrow and surprise, he came out a quaker. Seeing myself surrounded with a body of freethinkers and scoffers at religion, who were making themselves merry at the sober looks and thoughtful brows of those who had been in the cave, I thrust them all in, one after another, and locked the door upon them. Upon my opening it, they all looked as if they had been frightened out of their wits, and were marching away with ropes in their hands to a wood that was within sight of the place. I found they were not able to bear themselves in their first serious thoughts; but, knowing these would quickly bring them to a better frame of mind, I gave them into the custody of their friends until that happy change was wrought in them. case. The last that was brought to me was a young woman, who at the first sight of my short face fell into an immoderate fit of laughter, and was forced to hold her sides all the while her mother was speaking to me. Upon this, I interrupted the old lady, and taking her daughter by the hand, Madam," said I, 'be pleased to retire into my closet while your mother tells me your I then put her into the mouth of the cave; when the mother, after having begged pardon for the girl's rudeness, told me that she had often treated her father and the gravest of her relations in the same manner; that she would sit giggling and laughing with her companions from one end of a tragedy to the other; nay, that she would sometimes burst out in the middle of a sermon, and set the whole congregation a staring at her. The mother was going on, when the young lady came out of the cave to us with a composed countenance and a low courtesy. She was a girl of such exuberant mirth that her visit to Trophonius only reduced her to a more than ordinary decency of behaviour, and made a very pretty prude of her. After having performed innumerable cures, I looked about me with great satisfaction, and saw all my No. 600.] Wednesday, September 29, 1714. Solemque suum, sua sidera norunt. Virg. En. vi. 641. Stars of their own, and their own suns they know. Dryden. I HAVE always taken a particular pleasure in examining the opinions which men of different religions, different ages, and different countries, have entertained concerning the immortality of the soul, and the state of happiness which they promise themselves in another world. For, whatever prejudices and errors human nature lies under, we find that either reason, or tradition from our first parents, has discovered to all people something in these great points which bears analogy to truth, and to the doctrines opened to us by divine revelation. I was lately discoursing on this subject with a learned person who has been very much conversant among the inhabitants of the more western parts of Africa.* Upon his conversing with several in that country, he tells me that their notion of heaven or of a future state of happiness is this, that every thing we there wish for will immediately present itself to us. We find, say they, our souls are of such a nature that they require variety, and are not capable of being always delighted with the same objects. The Supreme Being, therefore, in compliance with this taste of happiness which he has planted in the soul of man, will raise up from time to time, say they, every gratification which it is in the humour to be pleased with. If we wish to be in groves or bowers, among running streams, or falls of water, we shall imme diately find ourselves in the midst of such a scene as we desire. If we would be entertained with music and the melody of sounds, the concert arises upon our wish, and the whole region about us is filled with harmony. In short, every desire will be followed by fruition; and whatever a man's inclination directs him to will be present with him. Nor is it material whether the Supreme Power creates in conformity to our wishes, or whether he only produces published an account of West Barbary, &c. He died in * Addison's father, dean Launcelot Addison, who 1703, aged 71. several powers and faculties, there is no such division in the soul itself, since it is the whole soul that remembers, understands, wills, or imagines. Our manner of considering the memory, understanding, will, imagination, and the like faculties, is for the better enabling us to express ourselves in such abstracted subjects of speculation, not that there is any such division in the soul itself. such a change in our imagination as makes | infinite multitude of objects, especially when us believe ourselves conversant among the soul shall have passed through the space those scenes which delight us. Our hap- of many millions of years, and shall reflect piness will be the same, whether it pro- with pleasure on the days of eternity. Every ceed from external objects, or from the other faculty may be considered in the same impressions of the Deity upon our own pri- extent. vate fancies. This is the account which I We cannot question but that the happihave received from my learned friend. ness of a soul will be adequate to its nature; Notwithstanding this system of belief be and that it is not endowed with any faculties in general very chimerical and visionary, which are to lie useless and unemployed. there is something sublime in its manner of The happiness is to be the happiness of the considering the influence of a Divine Be- whole man; and we may easily conceive to ing on a human soul. It has also, like most ourselves the happiness of the soul, while other opinions of the heathen world upon any one of its faculties is in the fruition of these important points; it has, I say, its its chief good. The happiness may be of a foundation in truth, as it supposes the souls more exalted nature in proportion as the of good men after this life to be in a state faculty employed is so: but, as the whole of perfect happiness; that in this state soul acts in the exertion of any of its parthere will be no barren hopes, nor fruitless ticular powers, the whole soul is happy in wishes, and that we shall enjoy every thing the pleasure which arises from any of its we can desire. But the particular circum- particular acts. For, notwithstanding, as stance which I am most pleased with in has been before hinted, and as it has been this scheme, and which arises from a just taken notice of by one of the greatest moreflection upon human nature, is that va-dern philosophers, we divide the soul into riety of pleasures which it supposes the souls of good men will be possessed of in another world. This I think highly probable, from the dictates both of reason and revelation. The soul consists of many faculties, as the understanding, and the will, with all the senses, both outward and inward; or, to speak more philosophically, the soul can exert herself in many different ways of action. She can understand, will, imagine, see, and hear; love, and discourse, and apply herself to many other the like exercises of different kinds and natures; but, what is more to be considered, the soul is capable of receiving a most exquisite pleasure and satisfaction from the exercise of any of these its powers, when they are gratified with their proper objects; she can be entirely happy by the satisfaction of the memory, the sight, the hearing, or any other mode of perception. Every faculty is a distinct taste in the mind, and hath objects accommodated to its proper relish. Doctor Tillotson somewhere says, that he will not presume to determine in what consists the happiness of the blessed, because God Almighty is capable of making the soul happy by ten thousand different ways. Besides those several avenues to pleasure, which the soul is endowed with in this life, it is not impossible, according to the opinions of many eminent divines, but there may be new faculties in the souls of good men made perfect, as well as new senses, in their glorified bodies. This we are sure of, that there will be new objects offered to all those faculties which are essential to us. Seeing then that the soul has many different faculties, or, in other words, many different ways of acting; that it can be intensely pleased or made happy by all these different faculties, or ways of acting; that it may be endowed with several latent faculties, which it is not at present in a condition to exert; that we cannot believe the soul is endowed with any faculty which is of no use to it; that, whenever any one of these faculties is transcendently pleased, the soul is in a state of happiness: and, in the last place, considering that the happiness of another world is to be the happiness of the whole man, who can question but that there is an infinite variety in those pleasures we are speaking of? and that this fulness of joy will be made up of all those pleasures which the nature of the soul is capable of receiving? We shall be the more confirmed in this doctrine, if we observe the nature of variety with regard to the mind of man. The soul does not care to be always in the same bent. The faculties relieve one another by turns, and receive an additional pleasure from the novelty of those objects about which they are conversant. Revelation likewise very much confirms this notion, under the different views which it gives us of our future happiness. In the description of the throne of God, it represents to us all those objects which are able * Locke. to gratify the senses and imagination: in it a being capable of receiving so much Some of the rabbins tell us, that the cherubims are a set of angels who know most, and the seraphims a set of angels who love most. Whether this distinction be not altogether imaginary, I shall not here examine; but it is highly probable that, among the spirits of good men, there may be some who will be more pleased with the employment of one faculty than of another; and this perhaps according to those innocent and virtuous habits or inclinations which have here taken the deepest root. I might here apply this consideration to the spirits of wicked men, with relation to the pain which they shall suffer in every one of their faculties, and the respective miseries which shall be appropriated to each faculty in particular. But, leaving this to the reflection of my readers, I shall conclude with observing how we ought to be thankful to our great Creator, and rejoice in the being which he has bestowed upon us, for having made the soul susceptible of pleasure by so many different ways. We see by what a variety of passages joy and gladness may enter into the thoughts of man; how wonderfully a human spirit is framed, to imbibe its proper satisfactions, and taste the goodness of its Creator. We may therefore look into ourselves with rapture and amazement, and cannot sufficiently express our gratitude to Him who has encompassed us with such a profusion of blessings, and opened in us so many capacities of enjoying them. There cannot be a stronger argument that God has designed us for a state of future happiness, and for that heaven which he has revealed to us, than that he has thus naturally qualified the soul for it, and made • Ο άνθρωπος ευερνετος περυκώς. Antonin. Lib. ix. Man is naturally a beneficent creature. THE following essay comes from a hand which has entertained my readers once before. 'Notwithstanding a narrow contracted temper be that which obtains most in the world, we must not therefore conclude this to be the genuine characteristic of mankind; because there are some who delight in nothing so much as in doing good, and receive more of their happiness at second hand, or by rebound from others, than by direct and immediate sensation. Now, though these heroic souls are but few, and to appearance so far advanced above the grovelling multitude as if they were of another order of beings, yet in reality their nature is the same; moved by the same springs, and endowed with all the same essential qualities, only cleared, refined, and cultivated. Water is the same fluid body in winter and in summer; when it stands stiffened in ice as when it flows along in gentle streams, gladdening a thousand fields in its progress. It is a property of the heart of man to be diffusive: its kind wishes spread abroad over the face of the creation; and if there be those, as we may observe too many of them, who are all wrapped up in their own dear selves, without any visible concern for their species, let us suppose that their good nature is frozen, and by the prevailing force of some contrary quality, restrained in its operation. I shall therefore endeavour to assign some of the principal checks upon this generous propension of the human soul, which will enable us to judge whether, and by what method, this most useful principle may be unfettered, and restored to its native freedom of exercise. The first and leading cause is an unhappy complexion of body. The heathens, ignorant of the true source of moral evil, generally charged it on the obliquity of matter, which, being eternal and independent, was incapable of change in any of its duce a change in the body, which the others not doing, must be maintained the same way they are acquired, by the mere dint of industry, resolution, and vigilance. "Homo qui erranti comiter monstrat viam, Quasi lumen de suo lumine accendat, facit, Nihilominus ipsi luceat, cum illi accenderit." properties, even by the Almighty Mind, who, when he came to fashion it into a world of beings, must take it as he found it. This notion, as most others of theirs, is a composition of truth and error. That matter is Another thing which suspends the opeeternal, that, from the first union of a soul rations of benevolence, is the love of the to it, it perverted its inclinations, and that world; proceeding from a false notion men the ill influence it hath upon the mind is have taken up, that an abundance of the not to be corrected by God himself, are all world is an essential ingredient in the hapvery great errors, occasioned by a truth as piness of life. Worldly things are of such evident, that the capacities and dispositions a quality as to lessen upon dividing, so that of the soul depend, to a great degree, on the more partners there are the less must the bodily temper. As there are some fools, fall to every man's private share. The others are knaves by constitution; and par- consequence of this is, that they look upon ticularly it may be said of many, that they one another with an evil eye, each imaginare born with an illiberal cast of mind; the ing all the rest to be embarked in an inmatter that composes them is tenacious as terest that cannot take place but to his birdlime; and a kind of cramp draws their prejudice. Hence are those eager compehands and their hearts together, that they titions for wealth or power; hence one man's never care to open them, unless to grasp at success becomes another's disappointment; more. It is a melancholy lot this; but at- and, like pretenders to the same mistress, tended with one advantage above theirs, to they can seldom have common charity for whom it would be as painful to forbear good their rivals. Not that they are naturally offices as it is to these men to perform them; disposed to quarrel and fall out; but it is that whereas persons naturally beneficent natural for a man to prefer himself to all often mistake instinct for virtue, by reason others, and to secure his own interest first. of the difficulty of distinguishing when one If that which men esteem their happiness rules them and when the other, men of the were, like the light, the same sufficient and opposite character may be more certain of unconfined good, whether ten thousand enthe motive that predominates in every ac-joy the benefit of it or but one, we should tion. If they cannot confer a benefit with see men's good-will and kind endeavours that ease and frankness which are neces- would be as universal. sary to give it a grace in the eye of the world, in requital, the real merit of what they do is enhanced by the opposition they surmount in doing it. The strength of their virtue is seen in rising against the weight of nature; and every time they have the resolution to discharge their duty, they make a sacrifice of inclination to conscience, which is always too grateful to let its followers go without suitable marks of its approbation. Perhaps the entire cure of this ill quality is no more possible than of some distempers that descend by inheritance. However, a great deal may be done by a course of beneficence obstinately persisted in; this, if any thing, being a likely way of establishing a moral habit, which shall be somewhat of a counterpoise to the force of mechanism. Only it must be remembered that we do not intermit, upon any pretence whatsoever, the custom of doing good, in regard, if there be the least cessation, nature will watch the opportunity to return, and in a short time to recover the ground it was so long in quitting: for there is this difference between mental habits and such as have their foundation in the body; that these last are in their nature more forcible and violent; and, to gain upon us, need only not to be opposed; whereas the former must be continually reinforced with fresh supplies, or they will languish and die away. And this suggests the reason why good habits in general require longer time for their settlement than bad, and yet are sooner displaced; the reason is, that vicious habits, as drunkenness for instance, pro another man's candle by one's own, which loses none "To direct a wanderer in the right way, is to light of its light by what the other gains." 'But, unluckily, mankind agree in making choice of objects which inevitably engage them in perpetual differences. Learn, therefore, like a wise man, the true estimate of things. Desire not more of the world than is necessary to accommodate you in passing through it; look upon every thing beyond, not as useless only, but burdensome. Place not your quiet in things which you cannot have without putting others beside them, and thereby making them your enemies; and which, when attained, will give you more trouble to keep than satisfaction in the enjoyment. Virtue is a good of a nobler kind; it grows by communication; and so little resembles earthly riches, that the more hands it is lodged in, the greater is every man's particular stock. So, by propagating and mingling their fires, not only all the lights of a branch together cast a more extensive brightness, but each single light burns with a stronger flame. And lastly, take this along with you, that if wealth be an instrument of pleasure, the greatest pleasure it can put into your power is that of doing good. It is worth considering, that the organs of sense act within a narrow compass, and the appetites will soon say they have enough. Which of the two therefore is the happier man—he who, |