PHI LOS 0 P H Y . - Classic Works of Apologetics Online

IIlilJZan Ilappincsse 39
~tullious of tileir ease, to be at the pains for them,
which they really deserve.
S;-:co:.;.oL Y, Neither does happiness consist in an :,
exemption from pain, labour, care, business, sU:5pense,:
molestation, and" those evils which are without ;"
such a state being usually attended not with ease, but
with depression of spirits, a tastelessness in all our
id,~.lS, imaginary anxieties, and the whole train of
11 v ..'ocllondriacal affections •
.; l~or which reason, it seldom answers the expectations
cf those, \VllO retire fronl their shops and counting-houses,
to enjoy the remainder of their days in
J~i:;ure
and tranquility; much less of such, as in a
fir of clJagrin, shut themselves up in cloisters and herfllitages,
or quit the world and their stations in it, for
solitude alld repose.
'V"here there exists a known external cause of uneasilless,
the cause may be removed, and the uneasiness
will cease. But those inlaginary distresses which
men feel for \vant of J·eal ones (and which are equally
tormenting, and so far equally real) as they depend
upon no single or assignable subject of uneasiness, adnlir
ofttimes of no application or relief.
Hence a 1110derate pain, upon which the attention
may fasten and spend itself, is to many a refreshment;
,as a fit of tIle g()llt will sometimes~ure the spleen.
And tIle s~nle of any less violent agitation of the
nlind, {IS a literary controversy, a law-suit, a contested
election, and, above all, gamil1g; tIle passion for
which, in. men of fortune and liberal minds, is only to
be acc0untcd for 011 tl1is l)rinciple,.
THIRDLY, Neither does happiness consist in grcat~
nes~, ranl( ()r elevated station.
,V t:.rc it true that all superiority afforded pleasure,
it would follow, that, by how much we were the
greater, that is, the more persons we were superior
to~ in the same pl~oportion, so far as depended upon
dns cause, we should be the happier; but so it is,
F