miserable exertions made by them to fill up their vacancy of mind, frequently costs them. more care, more loss of health, of fortune, and of true enjoyment, than would have been necessary to have rendered them the most enlightened of mankind. Nature, however, has so managed matters that they usually do, in the midst of their anxiety for amusement, acquire a small degree of improvement arising from that very anxiety, although this improvement is often too small to be of much importance either to themselves or to the world.

Some amusements, or modes of trifling, are less mischievous than others; but the most pernicious form which they can assume, is that of occupying the mind with hazard or gaming. Though somewhat out of place, I cannot omit the opportunity of taking some notice of this last practice. It will afterwards appear that our passions are the result of habit and of weakness. They are overcome by being suppressed, and by acquiring the power of acting under the immediate influence and dictates of the understanding: but in the case of gaming, the uncertainty of the event produces a constant renewal of hopes and fears; and if it did not do so, it would be attended with no pleasure. The exercise of gaming, then, is equivalent to regularly training or educating ourselves to become passionate, instead of rational beings; and if we

game for money, we fix in our minds the passion of avarice in its strongest form. Accordingly, almost all persons who occupy themselves much in this manner, become less or more greedy, peevish, quarrelsome, or superstitious. They who subject their other passions to their avarice, that they may gain money by gaming as by a regular trade, besides misemploying their talents and their time, are guilty of taking advantage of the weakness of others to their injury, and of unjustly deriving subsistence from the general funds of society, while they contribute nothing to their increase. Without taking into account, therefore, the distress that is sometimes produced by this means, it is obvious that the practice of engaging in games of hazard, by the loss of time which it occasions, and by the interest which it excites in frivolous objects, is in all cases a vicious perversion of the human faculties and exertions. The excuse that is usually made for it is altogether absurd, that we know not how to employ ourselves otherwise in company. What business have a set of persons to come together who have nothing to say to one another? Or why should they remain together, after all they have to say is exhausted, and when they are no longer capable of entertaining each other with instructive conversation? If men and women will not be virtuous, let them at least be innocent.

In the mean time, as man, in the pursuit of excellence, has much to do, his understanding is capable of doing much; but the proper management of its powers consists, not so much in pushing obstinately forward in any one branch of improvement, as in so varying the objects of our efforts, as to keep the mind always active and awakened. The understanding ought to relieve itself by turning from moral to natural science, and by ranging through the different branches of human knowledge. Let it not be said, that in this way only frivolous and superficial accomplishments can be acquired. The universe is the systematic work of one mind; and no one part of the system can be well understood by those who have not such a general knowledge of the whole as will enable them to discern the relations of the several parts which mutually explain and throw light upon each other. Besides this, man has more than knowledge to acquire. The energy of a skilful and steady mind must be the result of much exertion in the business of life. To this it ought therefore to be directed as well as to speculative wisdom. High discernment and vigour united constitute its excellence; and this excellence is to be attained, not by periodical fits of idleness and action, but by various, by well directed, and constant activity.

CHAP. IX.

OF THE APPETITES,

ALTHOUGH an enlightened understanding can perceive that the improvement of our rational faculties is the best object of human pursuit ; yet it is certain that this improvement is by no means the motive of our most frequent exertions. Action in man is not originally the result of improved reason, but is produced by the two great stimulants pain and pleasure. To avoid the one, and to obtain the other of these, is apt to form, in ordinary minds, the great business of life. Our senses are the earliest source of our pains and pleasures. The remembrance of these pleasures gives rise to the desire of their repetition, which is called appetite or animal appetites, from their being common to man and the inferior animals.

Appetites, or the wish for renewed sensual pleasure, arise so speedily and so universally from the pleasures of sense, that for a man to feel the power of any animal appetite, such as

hunger, thirst, lust, or weariness, is considered as neither right nor wrong in itself, but purely indifferent, because involuntary. It is certain, however, that they may be greatly strengthened as motives of action by our voluntary exertions. From reflecting frequently upon the pleasure derived from the gratification of any one of them, it may be enabled in a great degree to take possession of the memory, to the exclusion of more important objects; and the pursuit of it may become a considerable part of the occupation of life.

In their ordinary state, and when not used as a source of occupation, or, as it is called, of luxury, the appetites are a valuable and necessary part of our constitution. A man who should not possess them would be accounted a defective being; and the Author of our nature could not justly have regarded His own work as good and perfect, had it wanted them. The intellectual improvement, which forms the perfection of our nature, is not to be attained without the exertion of much thought and industry. In contriving our constitution, therefore, the most important object of attention must have been to find out business in which to engage us continually, that our talents might be called into constant action, and that it might never be in our power to sink into total indolence. Accordingly, the important trust is committed to us of preserving