a counsellor, retained with a large fee, find the justice of the cause he is defending improve! Yet I have known men, who, through a contrary fantasticalness of mind, have, in order to avoid falling into this self-love, been guilty of the highest injustice in the other extreme. The sure way to lose a cause the most just in itself, was to get it recommended, to them, by some of their nearest relations.

Imagination often magnifies the most trifling objects, by giving them such a chimerical value, that our minds are completely filled by them; and by an insolent temerity, it diminishes the greatest, to make them come within our mea

sure.

Truth and justice are two points so very fine, that our instruments are too dull to touch them with exactness. If they reach them, they either slip over the point, or get all on one side it, more near to the wrong than the right,

It is not merely old impressions that are capable of misleading us. The charms of novelty have the same power: and hence arisc all the disputes amongst men, who charge each other either with following the false impressions

they have received from their childhood, or with rashly running after new ones.

Who keeps the just medium? Let him come forward and prove it. There is no principle, how natural soever it may be, even from our infancy, but may be made to pass for a false impression, either from education or of the senses. Because, says one, you have thought from your infancy that a vessel was empty when you saw nothing in it, you have believed the possibility of a vacuum. This is only a strong illusion of your senses, strengthened by custom, which science will correct. While others say, on the other hand, because they have told you in the schools that there is no such thing as a vacuum, they have vitiated your common sense, which easily admitted it before they made this evil impression, which you must therefore correct, by returning to the dictates of nature. Which then has deceived us, our senses or our education?

The whole employment of men is to get property; and yet the title by which they hold it, has nothing for its origin, but the fancy of the legislature. But after all they have no power to keep possession of it in security; a thousand accidents may deprive them of it. It is the same with knowledge; a fit of sickness may deprive us of it.

Man, therefore, is nothing but the subject of indelible errors, without grace. Nothing shows him the truth, every thing misleads him. The two criterions of truth, reason, and the senses, beside being often unfaithful, impose mutually upon each other. Our senses mislead our reason by false appearances; and reason plays them the same trick in return, and revenges itself upon them. The passions of the mind discompose the senses, and leave bad impressions upon them. They lie, and impose on each other.

What are our natural principles, but principles we are used to? In children, those they have received from the customs of their parents, in the same way that animals learn to run after one another.

A different custom produces different natural principles. This is proved by experience. And if there are some principles of nature indelible by custom, there are likewise some impressions of custom, indelible by nature. This depends on disposition.

Parents are fearful lest the natural affection of their children should be effaced; what a nature then is this, which is liable to be effaced? Custom is a second nature, which eradicates the first. Why then is not custom called na

tural? I much fear that this nature itself is

only an original custom, as custom is a secondary nature.

XXVI.

THE MISERY OF MAN.

NOTHING is more capable of making us enter into the knowledge of human misery, than a consideration of the real cause of that perpetual agitation, in which men pass away all their lives.

The soul is sent into the body, to sojourn there a few days. She knows that this is only the passage to a voyage for eternity, and that she has only the short period that life endures to prepare herself for it. The necessities of nature take up the greatest part of this time; and but very little is left to be at her own disposal. And yet this little which remains, so greatly incommodes her, and so strangely perplexes her, that she only studies how to lose it. It is an intolerable burden to her, to be obliged

So

to live with herself, and think of herself. that her whole care is to forget herself, and to let this short and precious period pass away without reflection, by amusing herself with things that may prevent her from thinking of it.

This is the source of all the tumultuous occupations of men, and of all that is called diversion, or pastime; in which their only aim in effect is, to make the time pass away without feeling it, or rather without feeling themselves; and, by wasting this small portion of life, to avoid that bitterness and inward disgust, which would necessarily accompany an attention to ourselves for that period. The soul finds nothing in herself that contents her. She sees nothing but what it distresses her to think of. And this obliges her to look round about her, to seek how she may lose the recollection. of her real condition, by applying herself to external objects. Her pleasure consists in this forgetfulness and nothing is wanting to make her miserable, but obliging her to see herself, and to live with herself.

Men are charged from their infancy with the care of their honor, of their property, and with the property and honor of their relations and friends. We burden them with the study of languages, of the sciences, of exercises, and