It is the observation of sir Thomas Browne: *^ Man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave." One of the most remark- able examples of this is to be found in the pyramids of Egypt. They are generally considered as having been erected to be the tombs of the kings of that country. They have no opening by which for the light of heaven to enter, and afford no means for the accommodation of living man. An hundred thousand men are said to have been constantly em- ployed in the building; ten years to have been consumed in hewing and conveying the stones, and twenty more in completing the edifice. Of the * Life of Mahomet, by Prideaux.
v.] OF THE REBELLIOUSNESS OF MAN. 101 largest the base is a square, and the sides are tri- angleSy gradually diminishing as they mount in the air. The sides of the base are two hundred and twenty feet in length, and the perpendicular height is above one hundred and fifty-five feet. The figure of the pyramid is precisely that which is most cal- culated for duration: it cannot perish by accident; and it would require almost as much labour to de- molish it, as it did to raise it at first.
What a light does this fact convey into the in- most recesses of the human heart! Man reflects deeply, and with feelings of a mortified nature, upon the perishableness of his frame, and the approaching close, so far as depends upon the evidence of our senses, of his existence. He has indeed an irrepres* sible " longing after immortality;" and this is one of the various and striking modes in which he has sought to give effect to his desire.
Various obvious causes might be selected, which should be calculated to give birth to the feeling of discontent.
One is, the not being at home.
I will here put together some of the particulars which make up the idea of home in the most em- phatical sense of the word.
Home is the place where a man is principally at his ease. It is the place where he most breathes his native air: his lungs play without impediment; and every respiration brings a pure element, and a 103 OF THE REBELLIOUSNESS OF MAN. [ESSAY cheerful and gay frame of mind. Home is the place where he most easily accomplishes all his de* signs: be has his furniture and materials and the elements of his occupations entirely within his reach. Home is the place where he can be uninterrupted. He is in a castle which is his in full propriety. No unwelcome guests can intrude; no harsh sounds can disturb his contemplations; he is the master^ and can command a silence equal to that of the tomb, whenever he pleases.
In this sense every man feels, while cribbed in a cabin of flesh, and shut up by the capricious and ^bitrary injunctions of human communities, that he is not at home.
Another cause of our discontent is to be traced to the disparity of the two parts of which we are composed, the thinking principle, and the body in which it acts. The machine which constitutes the visible man, bears no proportion to our thoughts, our wishes and desires. Hence we are never satis- fied; we always feel the want of something we have not; and this uneasiness is continually push- ing us on to precipitate and abortive resolves.
I find in a book, entitled. Illustrations of Phre- nology, by Sir George Mackenzie, Baronet, the following remark. '^ If this" portrait be correctly drawn, the right side does not quite agree with the left in the region of ideality. This dissimilarity may have produced something contradictory in the v.] OF TH£ REBELLIOUSNESS OF MAN. 103 feelings of the person it represents^ which he may ] have fidt extremely annoying*." An observation \ of this sort may be urged with striking propriety \^ as to the dissimilar attributes of the body and the / thinking principle in man. l It is perhaps thus that we are to account for a phenomenon^ in itself sufficiently obvious, that our nature has within it a principle of boundless am- bition, a desire to be something that we are not, a feeling that we are out of our place, and ought to be where we are not. This feeling produces in us \ quick and earnest sallies and goings forth of the / mind, a restlessness of soul, and an aspiration after some object that we do not find ourselves able to chalk out and define. ^^^ | Hence comes the practice of castle-building, and of engaging the soul in endless reveries and imagi- nations of something mysterious and unlike to what we behold in the scenes of sublunary life. Many writers, having remarked this, have endeavoured to explain it from the doctrine of a preexistent state, and have said that, though we have no clear and distinct recollection of what happened to us pre- viously to our being launched in our present condi- tion, yet we have certain broken and imperfect con- ceptions, as if, when the tablet of the memory was cleared for the most part of the traces of what we had passed through in some other mode of being, ■ The remark thus delivered is applied to the portrait of the author of the present volume.
/ 104 OF THE REBELLIOUSNESS OF MAN. [esSAT there were a few characters that had escaped the diligence of the hand by which the rest had been obliterated.
It is this that^ in less enlightened ages of the worlds led men to engage so much of their thoughts upon supposed existences^ which^ though they might never become subject to our organs of vision, were yet conceived to be perpetually near us, fairies^ ghosts, witches, demons and angels. Our ancestors often derived suggestions from these, were informed of things beyond the ken of ordinary faculties, were tempted to the commission of forbidden acts, or en- couraged to proceed in the paths of virtue.
The most remarkable of these phenomena was that of necromancy, sorcery and magic. There were men who devoted themselves to " curious arts," and had books fraught with hidden knowledge. They could " bedim • The noon-tide sun^ call forth the mutinous winds. And 'twixt the green sea and the azured vault Set roaring war: to the dread, rattling thunder They could give fire, and rift even Jove*s stout oak With hLs own bolt — graves at their command Have waked their sleepers, oped and let them forth.
And of these things the actors in them were so cer- tain, that many witches were led to the stake, their guilt being principally established on their own confessions. But the most memorable matters in the history of the black art, were the contracts which those who practised it not unfrequently v.] OF THE REBELLIOUSNESS OF MAN. 105 entered into with the devil^ that he should assist them by his supernatural power for ten or twenty years, and, in consideration of this aid, they con- sented to resign their souls into his possession, when the period of the contract was expired.
In the animal creation there are some species that may be tamed, and others whose wildness is irreclaimable. Horace says, that all men are mad: and no doubt mankind in general has one of the features of madness. In the ordinary current of our existence we are to a considerable degree rational and tractable. But we are not altogether safe. I may converse with a maniac for hours; he shall talk as soberly, and conduct himself with as much propriety, as any other of the species who has never been afflicted with his disease; but touch upon a particular string, and, before you are aware of it, he shall fly out into the wildest and most terrifying extravagances. Such, though in a greatly inferior degree, are the majority of human beings.
The original impulse of man is uncontrolable- ness. When the spirit of life first descends upon us, we desire and attempt to be as free as air. We are impatient of restraint. This is the period of the empire of will. There is a power within us that wars against the restraint of another. We are eager to follow our own impulses and caprices, and are with difficulty subjected to those who believe they best know how to control inexperienced youth in a way that shall tend to his ultimate advantage.
s.
lOd OF THE REBELLIOUSNESS OF MAN. [ESSAY The most moderate and auspicious method in which the old may endeavour to guide and con- trol the pursuits of the young, undoubtedly is by the conviction of the understanding. But this is not always easy. It is not at all times practicable fully to explain to the apprehension of a very young person the advantage, which at a period a little more advanced he would be able clearly to recog- nise.
There is a further evil appertaining to this view of the subject. A young man even, in the early season of life, is not always disposed to obey the convictions of his understanding. He has prescribed to himself a task which returns with the returning day; but he is often not disposed to apply. The very sense that it is what he conceives to be an in- cumbent duty, inspires him with reluctance.
An obvious source of this reluctance i^, that the convictions of our understanding are not always equally present to us. I have entered into a deduc-* tion of premises, and arrived at a conclusion; but some of the steps of the chain are scarcely obvious to me, at the time that I am called upon to act upon the conclusion I have drawn. Beside which, there was a freshness in the first conception of the reasons on which my conduct was to be framed, which, by successive rehearsals, and by process of time, is no longer in any degree spirit-stirring and pregnant.
This restiveness and impracticability are princiv.] OF THE REBELLIOUSNESS OF MAN. 107 pally incident to us in the period of youth. By degrees the novelties of life wear out, and we be- come sober. We are like soldiers at drills and in a review. At first we perform our exercise from ne- cessity, and with an ill grace. We had rather be doing almost any thing else. By degrees we are reconciled to our occupation. We are like horses in a manige^ or oxen or dogs taught to draw the plough, or be harnessed to a carriage. Our stub- bornness is subdued; we no longer exhaust our strength in vain efforts to free ourselves from the yoke.
Conviction at first is strong. Having arrived at years of discretion, I revolve with a sobered mind the difl^erent occupations to which my eflbrts and my time may be devoted, and determine at length upon that which under all the circumstances dis- plays the most cogent recommendations. Having done so, I rouse my faculties and direct my energies to the performance of my task. By degrees how- ever my resolution grows less vigorous, and my ex- ertions relax. I accept any pretence to be let off, and fly into a thousand episodes and eccentricities.
But, as the newness of life subsides, the power of temptation becomes less. That conviction, which was at first strong, and gradually became fainter and less impressive, is made by incessant repetitions a part of my nature. I no more think of doubting its truth, than of my own existence. Practice has rendered the pursuits that engage me more easy, 108 OF THE REBELLIOUSNESS OF MAN. [essAY till at length I grow disturbed and uncomfortable if I am withheld from them. They are like my daily bread. If they are not afforded me, I grow sick and attenuated, and my life verges to a close. The sun is not surer to rise, than I am to feel the want of my stated employment.
It is the business of education to tame the wild ass, the restive and rebellious principle, in our na- ture. The judicious parent or instructor essays a thousand methods to accomplish his end. The con- siderate elder tempts the child with inticements and caresses, that he may win his attention to the first rudiments of learning. He sets before him, as he grows older, all the considerations and reasons he can devise, to make him apprehend the advantage of improvement and Uterature. He does his utmost to make his progress easy, and to remove all im- pediments. He smooths the path by which he is to proceed, and endeavours to root out all its thorns. He exerts his eloquence to inspire his pupil with a love for the studies in which he is engaged. He opens to him the beauties and genius of the authors he reads, and endeavours to proceed with him hand in hand, and step by step. He persuades, he ex- horts, and occasionally he reproves. He awakens in him the love of excellence, the fear of disgrace, and an ambition to accomplish that which "the excellent of the earth" accomplished before him. ) At a certain period the young man is delivered I into his own hands, and becomes an instructor to v.] OF THE REBELLIOUSNESS OF MAN, 109 himself. And, if he is blessed with an ingenuous \ disposition, he will enter on his task with an earnest \ desire and a devoted spirit. No person of a sober and enlarged mind can for a moment delude himself into the opinion that, when he is delivered into his own hands, his education is ended. In a sense to which no one is a stranger, the education of man arid his life terminate together. We should at no period of our existence be backward to receive in- formation, and should at all times preserve our minds open to conviction. We should through every day of our lives seek to add to the stores of our knowledge and refinement. But, independently* of this more extended sense of the word, a great portion of the education of the young man is left to the direction of the man himself. The epoch of entire liberty is a dangerous period, and calls upon him for all his discretion, that he may not make an ill use of that, which is in itself perhaps the first of sublunary blessings. The season of puberty also,n and all the excitements from this source, "that flesh / is heir to,*' demand the utmost vigilance and the )>- strictest restraint. In a word, if we would counter- J act the innate rebelliousness of man, that indocility pf mind which is at all times at hand to plunge us into folly, we must never slumber at our post, but govern ourselves with steady severity, and by the dictates of an enlightened understanding. We must be like a skilful pilot in a perilous sea, and be tho- roughly aware of all the rocks and quicksands, and 110 OF THE REBELLIOUSNESS OF MAN. [eSSAY the multiplied and hourly dangers that beset our navigation.
In this Essay I have treated of nothing more than the inherent restiveness and indocility of man, which accompany him at least through all the earlier sections and divisions of his life. I have not treated of those temptations calculated to lead him into a thousand excesses and miseries, which originate in our lower nature, and are connected with what we call the passion of love. Nor have I entered upon the still more copious chapter, of the incentives and provocations which are administered to us by those wants which at all times beset us as living creatures, and by the unequal distribution of pro- perty generally in civil society. I have not con- sidered those attributes of man which may serve indiflferently for good or for ill, as he may happen to be or not to be the subject of those fiercer ex- citements, that will oft times corrupt the most in- genuous nature, and have a tendency to inspire into us subtle schemes and a deep contrivance. I have confined myself to the consideration of man, as yet untamed to the modes of civilised community, and unbroken to the steps which are not only prescribed by the interests of our social existence, but which are even in some degree indispensible to the im- provement and welfare of the individual. I have considered him, not as he is often acted upon by causes and motives which seem almost to compel him to vice, but merely as he is restless, and impav.] OF THE REBELLIOUSNESS OF MAN. Ill tient, and disdainful both of the control of others, and the shackles of system.
For the same reason I have not taken notice of another species of irrationality, and which seems to answer more exactly to the Arabic notion of the fomes peccatiy the black drop of blood at the bottom of the heart. We act from motives apprehended by the judgment; but we do not stop at them. Once set in motion, it will not seldom happen that we proceed beyond our original mark. We are like Othello in the play: Our blood begins our safer guides to rule; And passion, having our best judgment quelled, AsMays to lead the way.
This is the explanation of the greatest enormities that have been perpetrated by man, and the inhuman deeds of Nero and Caligula. We proceed from bad to worse. The reins of our discretion drop from our hands. It fortunately happens however, that we do not in the majority of cases, like l^haeton in the fable, set the world on fire; but that, with ordi- nary men, the fiercest excesses of passion extend to no greater distance than can be reached by the sound of their voice.
1 12 OF HUMAN INNOCENCE. [essAY ESSAY VI.
OF HUMAN INNOCENCE.
One of the most obvious views which are presented to us by man in society is the inoflFensiveness and innocence that ordinarily characterise him.
Society for the greater part carries on its own organization. Each man pursues his proper occu- pation, and there are few individuals that feel the propensity to interrupt the pursuits of their neigh- bours b]^ personal violence. When we observe the quiet manner in which the inhabitants of a great city, and, in the country, the frequenters of the fields, the high roads, and the heaths, pass along, each engrossed by his private contemplations, feel- ing no disposition to molest the strangers he en- counters, but on the contrary prepared to afford them every courteous assistance, we cannot in equity do less than admire the innocence of our species, and fancy that, like the patriarchs of old, we have fallen in with ^^ angels unawares."
There are a few men in every community, that are sons of ript and plunder, and for the sake of these the satirical and censorious throw a general slur and aspersion upon the whole species.
When we look at human society with kind and complacent survey, we are more than half tempted VI.] OF HUMAN INNOCENCE. 113 to imagine that men might subsist very well in clusters and congregated bodies without the coer- cion of law; and in truth criminal laws were only made to prevent the ill-disposed few from interrupt- ing the regular and inoflfensive proceedings of the vast majority.
From what disposition in human nature is it that all this accommodation and concurrence proceed?
It is not primarily love. We feel in a very slight degree excited to good will towards the stranger whom we accidentally light upon in our path. ' Neither is it fear.
It is principally forecast and prudence. We have a sensitiveness^ that forbids us for a slight cause to expose ourselves to we know not what. We are unwilling to be disturbed. We have a mental vis inertUBy analogous to that quality in material sub- stances, by means of which, being at rest, they resist being put into a state of motion. We love our security; we love our respectability; and both of these may be put to hazard by our rashly and un- advisedly thrusting ourselves upon the course of another. We like to act for ourselves. We like to act with others, when we think we can foresee the way in which the proposed transaction will proceed^ and that it will proceed to our wish.
Let us put the case, that I am passing along the highway^ destitute and pennyless^ and without fore- sight of any means by which I am to procure the next meal that my nature requires.
I 114 OF HUMAN INNOq^NCfi. [ESSAY The vagrant^ who revolves in his mind the thought of extorting from another the supply of which he is urgently in need^ surveys the person upon whom he meditates this violence with a scru- tinising eye. He considers^ Will this man submit to my summons without resistance^ or in what manner will he repel my trespass? He watcher his eye^ he measures his limbs^ his strength, and his agility. Though they have met in the deserts of Africa, where there is no law to punish the violator, he knows that he exposes himself to a fearful hazard; and he enters upon his purpose with despe^^ rate resolve. All this and more must occur to the man of violence, within the pale of a civilised com-r munity.
Begging is the mildest form in which a man can obtain from the stranger he meets, the means of supplying his urgent necessities. But, even here, the beggar knows that he exposes himself not only to refusal, but to the harsh and opprobrious terai« in which that refusal may be conveyed. In this city there are laws against begging; and the man that asks alms of me, is an offender against the state. In country-towns it is usual to remark a notice upon entering, to say. Whoever shall be found begging in this place, shall be set in the stocks.
There are modes however in which I may accost ' a stranger, with small apprehension that I shall ba: miide to repent of it. I may enquire of him my way to the place towards which my business or my VU] OF HUMAN INNOCENCE. 115 plei^sune iuvites loe.^ Enniiis of old has observed^ that lumen de lumine^ to light my candle at my neighbour s lamp, is one of the privileges that the practices of civil society concede.
But it is not merely from forecast and prudence that we refrain from interrupting the stranger in his way. We have all of us a certain degree of kindness for a being of our own species. A mul-* titude of men feel this kindness for every thing that has animal life. We would not willingly molest the stranger who has done us no injury. On the con- trary we would all of us to a certain extent assist him, under any unforeseen casualty and tribulation* A part therefore of the innocence that characterises our species is to be attributed to philanthropy.
Childhood is diffident. Children for the most part are averse to the addressing themselves to strangers, unless in cases where, from the mere want of anticipation and reflection, they proceed as if they were wholly without the faculty of making calculations and deducing. conclusions. The child neither knows himself nor the stranger he meets in his -path. He has not measured either the one or the other. He does not know what the stranger may be able, /or may likely be prompted to do to him, nor what are his own means of defence or escape. He takes refuge therefore in a wary, some- times an obstinate silence. It is for this reason that a boy at school often appears duller and more inept, than would be the amount of a fair proper- I 2 n6 OF HUMAN INNOCENCE. [bSSAT tion to what he is found to be when grown up to a man.
As we improve in judgment and strength, we know better ourselves aiid others, and in a majority of instances take our due place in the ranks of so- ciety. We acquire a modest and cautious firmness, yield what belongs to another, and assert what is due to ourselves. To the last however, we for the most part retain the inoifensiveness described in the beginning of this Essay.
How comes it then that our nature labours under so bitter an aspersion? We have been described as cunning, malicious and treacherous. Other animals herd together for mutual convenience; and their intercourse with their species is for the most part a reciprocation of social feeling and kindness. But community among men, we are told, is that con- dition of human existence, which brings out all our evil qualities to the face of day. We lie in wait for, and circumvent each other by multiplied artifices. We cannot depend upon each other for the truth of what is stated to us; and promises and the most solemn engagements often seem as if they were made only to mislead. We are violent and deadly in our animosities, easily worked up to ferocity, and satisfied with scarcely any thing short of muti- lation and blood. We are revengeful: we lay up an injury, real or imaginary, in the store-house ^f an undecaying memory, waiting only till we can repay the evil we have sustained tenfold, at a time Jfl.} OF HUMAN INNOCENCE. il7 when our adversary shall he lulled in unsuspecting >8ecurity. We are rapacious^ with no symptom that the appetite for gain within us will ever be appeased; and we practise a thousand deceits, that it may be the sooner^ and to the greater degree glutted. The 4 ambition of man is unbounded; and he hesitates at no means in the course it prompts him to pursue. In shorty man is to man ever the most fearful and dangerous foe: and it is in this view of his nature that the king of Brobdingnag says to Gulliver, " I cannot but conclude the bulk of your race to be the most pernicious generation of little, odious ver- min, that were ever suffered to crawl upon the sur- face of the earth." The comprehensive faculties of man therefore, and the refinements and subtlety of his intellect, serve only to render him the more for- midable companion, and to hold us up as a species to merited condemnation.
It is obvious however that the picture thus drawn is greatly overcharged, that it describes a very small part of our race, and that even as to them it sets before us a few features only, and a partial repre- sentation.
History — ^the successive scenes of the drama in which individuals play their part — is a labyrinth, of which no man has as yet exactly seized the clue.
It has long since been observed, that the history of the four great monarchies, of tyrannies and free states, of chivalry and clanship, of Mahometanism and the Christian church, of the balance of Europe U6 OF ttUMAN INKOCEKO&. [ESSAt and the revolution of empires^ is little else thaii'4 tissue of crimes^ exhibiting nations as if they wttt so many hetds of ferocious animals^ whose genuiite occupation was to tear each other to pieces^ and t6 deform their mother-earth with mangled carcadent and seas of blood.
But it is not jui^ that we should establish otU* opinion of human nature purely from the recdifds of history. Man is alternately devoted to tranqulijk lity and to violence. But the latter only affords fHc proper materials of narration. When he is wrought upon by some powerful impulse^ our curiosity ih most roused to observe him. We remark his emo* tions, his energies^ his tempest. It is then that he becomes the person of a drama. And, where ihh disquietude is not the affair of a single individttid, but of several persons together, of nations, it is there that history finds her harvest. She goes into the field with all the Implements of her industry, and fills her storehouses and magazines with the abundance of her crop. But times Of tranquillity and peace furnish her with no materials. They ai^ dismissed in a few slight sentences, and leave ito memory behind.
Let us divide this spacious earth into equal cdlil- partments, and see in which violence, and in which tranquillity prevslils. Let us look thi'oiigh the var- rious ranks and occupations of human society, afid endeavour to arrive at a conclusion of a sitnilid* sort. The solctier by occupation, and the bffic^t VI.] or HUMAN INNOCBNCB. 119 who commands him^ would seem^ when they are employed in their express functions^ to be men of strife. Kings and ministers of state have in a mul- titude of instances fallen under this description* Conquerors, the firebrands of the earth, have suf-* ficiently displayed their noxious propensities.
But these are but a small part of the tenantry of the many-peopled globe. Man lives by the sweat of his brow. The teeming earth is given him, that by his labour he may raise from it the means of his subsistence. Agriculture is, at least among civilised nations^ the first, and certainly the most indispen- sible of professions. The profession itself is the emblem of peace. All its occupations, from seed- time to harvest, are tranquil; and there is nothing which belongs to it, that can obviously be applied to rouse the angry passions, and place men in a frame of hostility to each other. Next to the cul- tivator, come the manufacturer, the artificer, the carpenter, the mason, the joiner, the cabinet-maker, all those numerous classes of persons, who are em- ployed in forming garments for us to wear, houses to live itii, and moveables and instruments for the accommodation of the species. All these persons are, of necessity, of a peaceable demeanour. So are those who are not employed in producing the con- veniencies of life, but in conducting the affairs of barter and exchange. Add to these, such as are engaged in literature, either in the study of what has already been produced, or in adding to the 120 OF HUMAN INNOCENCE. [ESSAY stock, in science or the liberal arts, in the instructing mankind in religion and their duties, or in the educa- tion of youth. "Civility," ^^ civil,** are indeed terms which express a state of peaceable occupation, in opposition to what is military, and imply a tranquil frame of mind, and the absence of contention, up« roar and violence. It is therefore clear, that the majority of mankind are civil, devoted to the arts of peace, and so far as relates to acts of violence innocent, and that the sons of rapine constitute the exception to the general character.
We come into the world under a hard and unpa- latable law, " In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread.** It is a bitter decree that is promulgated against us, " He that will not work, neither shall he eat.** We all of us love to do our own will, and to be free from the manacles of restraint. What our hearts " find us to do,** that we are disposed to execute *^ with all our might.** Some men are lo- vers of strenuous occupation. They build and they plant; they raise splendid edifices, and lay out plea- sure-grounds of mighty extent. Or they devote their minds to the acquisition of knowledge; they outwatch the bear.
With thrice great Hermes, or unsphere The spirit of Plato^ to unfold What worlds, or what vast regions hold The immortal mind.
Others again would waste perhaps their whole lives in reverie and idleness. They are constituted of VI.] OF HUMAN INNOCENCE^ 12 1 materials so kindly and serene^ that their spirits never flag from want of occupation and external excitement. They could lie for ever on a sunny bank, in a condition divided between thinking and no thinking, refreshed by the fanning breeze, view- ing the undulations of the soil, and the rippling of the brook, admiring the azure heavens, and the vast, the bold, and the sublime figure of the clouds, yielding themselves occasionally to " thick-coming fancies,^ and day-dreams, and the endless romances of an undisciplined mind; And find no end^ in wandering mazes lost.
But all men, alike the busy of constitution and the idle, would desire to follow the impulses of their own minds, unbroken in upon by harsh necessity^ or the imperious commands of their fellows.
We cannot however, by the resistless law of our existence, live, except the few who by the accident of their birth are privileged to draw their supplies from the labour of others, without exerting our- selves to procure by our eflforts or ingenuity the necessaries of food, lodging and attire. He that would obtain them for himself in an uninhabited island, would find that this amounted to a severe tax upon that freedom of motion and thought which would otherwise be his inheritance. And he who has his lot cast in a populous community, ex- ists in a condition somewhat analogous to that of a negro slave, except that he may to a limited extent 183 OF HUMAN INMOCfiNCB. [essaY select the occupation to which he shall addict him^ self, or may at least starve, in part or in whole, tm* controled, and at his choice. Such is, as it werU^ the universal lot.
'Tis destiny unshunnable like death: Even then this dire necessity falls on us^ When we do quicken.
I go forth in the streets, and observe the ocetl* pations of other men. I remark the shops that on every side beset iny path. It is curious and strik- ing, how vast are the ingenuity and contrivance of human beings, to wring from their fellow-creatures, ^^from the hard hands of peasants" and artisans, a part of theii* earnings, that they also may live. W^ soon become feelingly convinced, that we also mufirt enter into the vast procession of industry, upon pain that otherwise, ' Like to an entered tide, they all rush by. And leave you hindmost: there you lie, For pavement to the abject rear^ o*ernin And trampled on.
It is through the effect of this necessity, that civilised communities become what they are. We all fall into our ranks. Each one is member of a certain company or squadron. We know our re- spective places, and are marshaled and disciplined with an exactness scarcely less than that of the in^ dividuals of a mighty army. We are therefore little disposed to interrupt the occupations of each other. We are intent upon the peculiar employment to