COMPARISON and CAUSALITY exist, and these faculties, aided by Individuality, Form, Size, Weight, and others already enumerated, find ample gratification in Natural Philosophy, and in Moral, Political, and Intellectual Science. The general objects and affairs of life, together with our own feelings, conduct, and relations, are also the objects of the knowing and reflecting faculties, and afford them vast opportunities for exercise.

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CHAPTER III.

ON THE SOURCES OF HUMAN HAPPINESS, AND THE CON. DITIONS REQUISITE FOR MAINTAINING IT.

HAVING now given a rapid sketch of the constitution of man, and its relations to external objects, we are prepared to inquire into the sources of his happiness, and the conditions requisite for maintaining it.

The first and most obvious circumstance which attracts attention is, that all enjoyment must necessarily arise from activity of the various systems of which the human constitution is composed. The bones, muscles, nerves, and digestive and respiratory organs, furnish pleasing sensations, directly or indirectly, when exercised in conformity with their nature; and the external senses and internal faculties, when excited, supply the whole remaining perceptions and emotions, which, when combined, constitute life and rational existence. If these were habitually buried in sleep, or constitutionally inactive, life, to all purposes of enjoyment, might as well be extinct: Existence would be reduced to mere vegetation, without consciousness.

If, then, wisdom and benevolence have been employed in constituting man, we may expect the arrangements of creation, in regard to him, to be calculated, as a leading object, to excite his various powers, corporeal and mental, to activity. This, accordingly, appears to me to be the case; and the fact may be illustrated by a few examples. A certain portion of nervous and muscular energy is infused by nature into the human body every twenty-four hours, which it is delightful to expend. To provide for its expenditure, the stomach has been constituted so as to require regular supplies of food, which can be obtained only by nervous and muscular exertion; the body has been

created destitute of covering, yet standing in need of ptection from the elements of heaven; and nature has been so constituted, that raiment can be easily provided by moderate exercise of the mental and corporeal powers. It is delightful to repair exhausted nervous and muscular energy by wholesome aliment; and the digestive organs have been so constituted as to afford us frequent opportunities of enjoying the pleasures of eating. In these arrangements, the design of supporting the various systems of the body in activity, for the enjoyment of the individual, is abundantly obvious. A late writer justly remarks, that 'a person of feeble texture and indolent habits has the bone smooth, thin, and light; but nature, solicitous for our safety, and in a manner which we could not anticipate, combines with the powerful muscular frame a dense and perfect texture of bone, where every spine and tubercle is completely developed.' 'As the structure of the parts is originally perfected by the action of the vessels, the func tion or operation of the part is made the stimulus to those vessels. The cuticle on the hand wears away like a glove; but the pressure stimulates the living surface to force successive layers of skin under that which is wearing, or, as anatomists call it, desquamating; by which they mean, that the cuticle does not change at once, but comes off in squamæ or scales.'

Directing our attention to the Mind, we discover that Individuality, and the other Perceptive Faculties, desire, as their means of enjoyment, to become acquainted with external objects; while the Reflecting Faculties long to know the dependencies and relations of all objects and beings. There is something,' says an eloquent writer, 'positively agreeable to all men, to all at least whose nature is not most grovelling and base, in gaining knowledge for its own sake. When you see any thing for the first time, you at once derive some gratification from the sight being new; your attention is awakened, and you desire to know more about it. If it is a piece of workman

ship, as an instrument, a machine of any kind, you wish to know how it is made; how it works; and of what use it is. If it is an animal, you desire to know where it comes from; how it lives; what are its dispositions, and, generally, its nature and habits. This desire is felt, too, without at all considering that the machine or the animal may ever be of the least use to yourself practically; for, in all probability, you may never see them again. But you feel a curiosity to learn all about them, because they are new and unknown to you. You accordingly make inquiries; you feel a gratification in getting answers to your questions, that is in receiving information, and in knowing more,in being better informed than you were before. If you ever happen again to see the same instrument or animal, you find it agreeable to recollect having seen it before, and to think that you know something about it. If you see another instrument or animal, in some respects like it, but differing in other particulars, you find it pleasing to compare them together, and to note in what they agree, and in what they differ. Now, all this kind of gratification is of a pure and disinterested nature, and has no reference to any of the common purposes of life; yet it is a pleasurean enjoyment. You are nothing the richer for it; you do not gratify your palate, or any other bodily appetite; and yet it is so pleasing that you would give something out of your pocket to obtain it, and would forego some bodily enjoyment for its sake. The pleasure derived from science is exactly of the like nature, or, rather, it is the very same.'* This is a correct and forcible exposition of the pleasures attending the active exercise of our intellectual faculties. In the Introduction to this work, pages 7 and 8, I have given several illustrations of the manner in which the external world is adapted to the mental faculties of man, and of the extent to which it is calculated to maintain them in activity, and I need not repeat them here. Supposing the human faculties to have received their

* Objects, Advantages, and Pleasures of Science, p. 1.

present constitution, two arrangements for their gratification may be fancied: 1st, Infusing into the intellectual powers at birth, intuitive knowledge of every object which they are fitted ever to comprehend; and directing every propensity and sentiment by an infallible instinct to its best mode and degree of gratification: Or, 2dly, Constituting the intellectual faculties only as capacities for gaining knowledge by exercise and application, and surrounding them with objects bearing such relations towards them, that, when these objects and relations are observed and attended to, high gratification shall be obtained, and, when they are unobserved and neglected, the result shall be uneasiness and pain; giving at the same time to each propensity and sentiment a wide field of action, comprehending both use and abuse, and leaving the intellect to direct each to its proper objects, and to regulate its degrees of indulgence. And the question occurs, Which of these modes would be more conducive to enjoyment? The general opinion will be in favor of the first; but the second appears to me to be preferable. If the first meal we had eaten had for ever prevented the recurrence of hunger, it is obvious that all the pleasures of satisfying a healthy appetite would then have been at an end; so that this apparent bounty would have greatly abridged our enjoyment. In like manner, if (our faculties being constituted as at present) unerring desire had been impressed on the propensities and sentiments, and intuitive knowledge had been communicated to the understanding, so that, when an hour old, we should have been, morally, as wise and virtuous, and, intellectually, as thoroughly instructed as we could ever become, all provision for the sustained activity of our faculties would have been done away with. When wealth is acquired, the miser's pleasure in it is diminished. He grasps after more with increasing avidity. He is supposed irrational in doing so; but he obeys the instinct of his nature. What he possesses no longer satisfies Acquisitiveness. The miser's pleasure arises from the active