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mulate the means of subsistence, to bind together society by a reciprocity of good offices, and to seek distinction and eminence, that they may be employed for wise purposes. But hunger and thirst, lust, avarice, ambition, vanity, and selflove, induce us to pursue the same objects. The consequence is, that when the human mind becomes improved, and we discern our true situation and business in this world, we find that we have been performing the very same actions that we would have wished to perform had we possessed the highest conceivable degree of knowledge and self-command. Thus are we trained up in the way wherein we should go ; and thus, when we acquire extensive views of truth and excellence, we are under no necessity of changing our conduct. We continue to perform the same actions, but with different motives and purposes; reason, or the desire of perfection, being now become the motive, as blind inclination or passion was formerly.

CHAP. XX.

A SPECULATIVE AND ACTIVE LIFE COMPARED,

BEFORE Concluding this Part, I shall concisely notice the important practical question, Whether the human mind is most highly improved by speculation or by business; that is, by a life spent in the pursuits of science, or by engaging in a career of ordinary industry?

I shall begin by stating the advantages and disadvantages which, in a moral point of view, seem to attend upon each of these modes of life; after which it will not be difficult to resolve the general question relative to their comparative utility.

The pursuit of knowledge, when rationally conducted, consists of the careful investigation and examination of the various objects which Nature has produced, and of attempting to reduce them and their qualities under general heads, which constitute what are called the principles of science, by means of which the recollection is facilitated of all the particulars that

have been observed or discovered. In some branches of physical science, this investigation and classification of the works of Nature is a laborious task. The botanist and the mineralogist, in the pursuit of their different departments, find it necessary to survey, as far as possible, every part of the surface and of the substance of the globe which we inhabit. The chemist must, on the other hand, bring together all sorts of bodies, and all their combinations, and examine with patient and persevering industry their effects upon each other, and all their repulsions and combinations under different degrees of temperature. The result of all his observations must also be arranged, if possible, in such a form as to exhibit the principles according to which Nature conducts her minute operations.

The study of moral science consists in examining, by personal observation, and by the aid of history, the qualities of the human mind, and the various circumstances by which these qualities are affected; whether they consist of the physical situation in which a people are placed, as the fertility of their soil, and its vicinity to the ocean, or of their education, or their religious and social institutions. The result of this investigation is to be reduced, in like manner, by arrangement, into general principles, which state shortly the different circumstances which tend to ameliorate or injure the condition or the

character of man. The advantages resulting from such pursuits to the individuals engaged in them, are obviously great.

The pursuit of knowledge is evidently the most dignified of all employments. The man who engages in it is directly occupied in tracing the operations of the Mighty Artist who constructed the fabric of the universe. While other men are occupied by the objects which their passions or supposed interests represent as impor tant, he is storing his mind with ideas and objects which have appeared important to Supreme Intelligence itself; and thus he is becoming allied, by his occupation and conceptions, to the great Mind from which all intelligence is derived. In the pursuits of moral science, in particular, the elevated nature of his employment is extremely evident. While the busy multitude labour in their various situations, and carry on the multifarious operations of social life, as husbandmen, mechanics, merchants, mariners, priests, lawyers, and statesmen, he employs himself, like a Superior Intelligence, in looking down upon the whole, surveying the relation in which all of them stand to each other, their mutual subserviency and utility, the errors into which they fall, the progress which they maké, the advantages in their power which they fail to attain; and, like an overseeing mind, he arranges under a few principles the rules and the result of their

actions, and from thence reports their nature and their destiny.

A man thus occupied necessarily passes his life in much innocence, and remains a stranger to those sentiments of ambition and of avarice which hurry other men into the greatest crimes. This, however, is only of secondary importance when compared to the positive acquisition which he makes of intellectual worth. He acquires, by his pursuits, a considerable degree of perseverance or industry; but, above all, his discern→ ment of truth becomes acute, and he improves beyond other men that part of his constitution which is the most important, and which consists of the capacity of acquiring wisdom, by reducing, in consequence of arrangement, the whole events and objects which the universe contains, under the easy grasp of a discerning mind. Thus the pursuit of science is equivalent to the direct and intentional pursuit of intellectual superiority and distinction. Hence it never fails to produce in the mind a strong sense of self-ap probation. The new ideas which it acquires, together with the capacity of passing, as it were, under its review, by little more than a single act of thought, the globe itself, with the nations which exist upon its surface, their character and history, never fails to give rise in the mind to a sense of expansion and enlargement, and to

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