MAXIMS AND RULES OF LIFE. 293 MAXIMS AND RULES OF LIFE. REMEMBER that every person, however low, has rights and feelings. In all contentions, let peace be rather your object, than triumph: value triumph only as the means of peace. Remember that your children, your wife, and your servants, have rights and feelings; treat them as you would treat persons who could turn again. Apply these doctrines to the administration of justice as a magistrate. Rank poisons make good medicines; error and misfortune may be turned into wisdom and improve ment. Do not attempt to frighten children and inferiors by passion; it does more harm to your own character than it does good to them; the same thing is better done by firmness and persuasion. If you desire the common people to treat you as a gentleman, you must conduct yourself as a gentleman should do to them. When you meet with neglect, let it rouse you to exertion, instead of mortifying your pride. Set about lessening those defects which expose you to neglect, and improve those excellences which command attention and respect. Against general fears, remember how very precarious life is, take what care you will; how short it is, last as long as it ever does. Rise early in the morning, not only to avoid selfreproach, but to make the most of the little life that 294 MAXIMS AND RULES OF LIFE. remains; not only to save the hours lost in sleep, but to avoid that languor which is spread over mind and body for the whole of that day in which you have lain late in bed. Passion gets less and less powerful after every defeat. Husband energy for the real demand which the dangers of life make upon it. Find fault, when you must find fault, in private, if possible; and some time after the offence, rather than at the time. The blamed are less inclined to resist, when they are blamed without witnesses; both parties are calmer, and the accused party is struck with the forbearance of the accuser, who has seen the fault, and watched for a private and proper time for mentioning it. Don't be too severe upon yourself and your own failings; keep on, don't faint, be energetic to the last. If you wish to keep mind clear and body healthy, abstain from all fermented liquors. Fight against sloth, and do all you can to make friends. If old age is even a state of suffering, it is a state of superior wisdom, in which man avoids all the rash and foolish things he does in his youth, and which make life dangerous and painful. Death must be distinguished from dying, with which it is often confounded. Reverence and stand in awe of yourself. How Nature delights and amuses us by varying even the character of insects: the ill-nature of the wasp, the MANAGEMENT OF THE BODY. 295 sluggishness of the drone, the volatility of the butterfly, the slyness of the bug. Take short views, hope for the best, and trust in God.-[Memoir.] MANAGEMENT OF THE BODY. THE longer I live, the more I am convinced that the apothecary is of more importance than Seneca; and that half the unhappiness in the world proceeds from little stoppages, from a duct choked up, from food pressing in the wrong place, from a vext duodenum, or an agitated pylorus. The deception, as practised upon human creatures, is curious and entertaining. My friend sups late; he eats some strong soup, then a lobster, then some tart, and he dilutes these esculent varieties with wine. The next day I call upon him. He is going to sell his house in London, and to retire into the country. He is alarmed for his eldest daughter's health. His expenses are hourly increasing, and nothing but a timely retreat can save him from ruin. All this is the lobster: and when over-excited nature has had time to manage this testaceous encumbrance, the daughter recovers, the finances are in good order, and every rural idea effectually excluded from the mind. In the same manner old friendships are destroyed by toasted cheese, and hard salted meat has led to suicide. Unpleasant feelings of the body produce correspondent sensations in the mind, and a great scene of wretchedness is sketched out by a morsel of indigestible and misguided food. Of such infinite consequence to happiness is it to study the body! 296 MANAGEMENT OF THE BODY. I have nothing new to say upon the management which the body requires. The common rules are the best:-exercise without fatigue; generous living without excess; early rising, and moderation in sleeping. These are the apothegms of old women; but if they are not attended to, happiness becomes so extremely difficult that very few persons can attain to it. In this point of view, the care of the body becomes a subject of elevation and importance. A walk in the fields, an hour's less sleep, may remove all those bodily vexations and disquietudes which are such formidable enemies to virtue; and may enable the mind to pursue its own resolves without that constant train of temptations to resist, and obstacles to overcome, which it always experiences from the bad organisation of its companion. Johnson says, every man is a rascal when he is sick; meaning, I suppose, that he has no benevolent dispositions at that period towards his fellowcreatures, but that his notions assume a character of greater affinity to his bodily feelings, and that, feeling pain, he becomes malevolent; and if this be true of great diseases, it is true in a less degree of the smaller ailments of the body. Get up in a morning, walk before breakfast, pass four or five hours of the day in some active employment; then eat and drink over-night, lie in bed till one or two o'clock, saunter away the rest of the day in doing nothing!-can any two human beings be more perfectly dissimilar than the same individual under these two different systems of corporeal management? and is it not of as great importance towards happiness to pay a minute attention to the body, as it is to study the wisdom of Chrysippus and Crantor?— [Memoir.] A GOOD stout bodily machine being provided, we must be actively occupied, or there can be little happi ness. If a good useful occupation be not provided, it is so ungenial to the human mind to do nothing, that men occupy themselves perilously, as with gaming; or frivolously, as with walking up and down a street at a watering-place, and looking at the passers-by; or malevolently, as by teazing their wives and children. It is impossible to support, for any length of time, a state of perfect ennui; and if you were to shut a man up for any length of time within four walls, without occupation, he would go mad. If idleness do not produce vice or malevolence, it commonly produces melancholy. A stockbroker or a farmer have no leisure for imaginary wretchedness; their minds are usually hurried away by the necessity of noticing external objects, and they are guaranteed from that curse of idleness, the eternal disposition to think of themselves. If we have no necessary occupation, it becomes extremely difficult to make to ourselves occupations as entirely absorbing as those which necessity imposes. The profession which a man makes for himself is seldom more than a half profession, and often leaves the mind in a state of vacancy and inoccupation. We must lash ourselves up however, as well as we can, to a notion of its great importance; and as the dispensing power is in our own hands, we must be very jealous of remission and of idleness. It may seem absurd that a gentleman who does not live by the profits of farming should rise at six o'clock in |
