can discern, they may but open by that means the door to tranquillity.

Thus our life runs away. We seek rest, by encountering some impediments, and when we have removed them, rest itself becomes insupportable. For either we are ruminating on the miseries we feel, or on those which we fear. And even when we see ourselves on all sides under shelter, disquietude, though deprived of its authority, will yet infallibly shoot forth from the heart, where it is naturally rooted, and fill the mind with its poison.

Therefore, when Cineas said to Pyrrhus, who proposed to enjoy himself with his friends, after he should have conquered a good part of the world, that he would do better to take his happiness in advance, by beginning at once to enjoy ease, without going in quest of it through so much fatigue: he gave him advice, which was indeed full of difficulty, and which was scarcely more rational than the project of that ambitious young prince. Each of them supposed that a man could be satisfied with himself, and his present possessions, without filling up the void in his heart, by imaginary expectations; which is false. Pyrrhus could never have been happy, either before or after the conquest of the world; and perhaps that easy life which his minister recommended to him, was still less capable of giving him satisfaction, than the tumult of all the battles and voyages which he had planned in his mind.

We ought therefore to acknowledge, that man is really so miserable, that he would disquiet himself without any external cause of disquiet, by the mere state alone of his natural condition; and yet he is at the same time so trifling and vain, that while he is full of a thousand essential reasons for sorrow, the least trifle in the world is sufficient to divert him. Insomuch, that if we seriously consider it, he seems more to be pitied for being able to amuse himself with things so frivolous and mean, than for being distressed

at his own real miseries. His diversions are infinitely less rational than his uneasiness.

Whence is it that this man, who has lately lost his only son, and who was this morning entirely taken up with law-suits and litigations, now seems to think nothing more of them? Do not be surprised; he is wholly taken up with looking which way the stag will pass, which his dogs have been in chase of these six hours. He cares about nothing else now, notwithstanding all his afflictions. If you can but make him enter into some diversion, you make him happy for that time; but with a false and imaginary happiness, not arising from the possession of any real and solid good, but from a levity of spirit, which makes him lose the memory of his real calamities, to attach himself to mean and ridiculous objects, unworthy of his attention, and still more unworthy of his love. It is the joy of a sick man, of a man in a frenzy, not arising from the health, but from the disorder of his mind. It is the laugh of folly and delusion. It is wonderful to observe what trifling things please men in their games and diversions. It is true that by keeping their minds employed, they preserve them from reflecting on their real evils; but then such things keep them employed, only because the mind forms in them an imaginary object of delight, to which it attaches itself.

What do you take to be the object of those men, whom you see playing at tennis with such application of mind, and such exertion of body? The pleasure of boasting to-morrow among their friends, that they have played better than any body else. This is the real source of their earnestness. And thus others again toil in their closets, for the sake of showing the learned that they have resolved a question in algebra, hitherto reputed inexplicable. And many others foolishly enough, in my opinion, expose themselves to the greatest of dangers, to vaunt of some town they have taken; nor are there wanting those

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who kill themselves in taking notice of all this; not that they may grow wiser, but merely to show that they know the vanity of it: and these last are the most foolish of all, because they are so knowingly ; whereas we may suppose of the rest, that they would not act as they do, but for want of knowing better.

One man passes away his life without uneasiness, by gaming every day for a trifling stake, that would be rendered unhappy, if you were to give him every morning the sum which he might win in the day, upon condition that he should refrain from play. It will be said, perhaps, that it is the amusement of the play which he seeks, and not the gain. Yet if you make him play for nothing, he will feel no eagerness about it, and becomes dull. It is not, therefore, the mere amusement which he seeks; a languishing amusement without any interest would fatigue him: he must be allowed to heat and rouse himself, by imagining that he should be happy in gaining that, which he would not accept, if it were given him on condition of not playing; and that he shall create an object of passion, which shall excite his desire, his anger, his fear, and his hope.

So that these diversions which constitute the happiness of men, are not only contemptible, but false and deceitful: that is to say, their object is merely a phantom and delusion, which would be incapable of occupying the mind of man, if he had not lost the taste and perception of real good, and were he not filled with baseness, vanity, levity, pride, and an infinite number of other vices; and they only relieve us under our miseries, by creating a misery more real, and more injurious. For such is whatever hinders us from thinking principally, about ourselves, and which makes us insensibly lose our time. Without this we should indeed feel dissatisfaction, but this dissatisfaction would lead us to seek some more solid means of escaping from it. But diver

sions deceive us, amuse us, and lead us on heedlessly to our graves.

Mankind having no remedy against death, ignorance, and misery, have fancied the way to be happy was to think nothing about them. This is all they have been able to invent to console themselves under their calamities. But a most miserable consolation it is, because it tends not to the cure of the evil, but only to the concealment of it for a very short time; and because by concealing it, it hinders us from having recourse to such means as would really cure it. Thus, by a strange subversion of the nature of man, he finds that disquiet, which is to him the most sensible evil, is in one respect his greatest good, because it may contribute, more than any thing else, to make him seek after real restoration; while his diversions, which he looks upon as his principal good, are indeed his greatest evil, because they are of all things those which most effectually keep him back from seeking the remedy of his miseries. And both the one and the other are admirable proofs, both of the misery and corruption of man, and at the same time of his dignity. For he only grows weary of every object, and engages in such a multitude of pursuits, because he still retains the idea of his lost happiness; and not finding it within himself, he vainly seeks it in external things, without ever obtaining satisfaction, because it is neither to be found in ourselves, nor in creatures, but in God alone.

CHAPTER XXVII.

THOUGHTS ON MIRACLES.

WE are to judge of doctrine by miracles, and of miracles by doctrine. The doctrine shows the nature of the miracles, and the miracles show the nature of the doctrine. All this is true, and contains no contradiction.

Some miracles are certain evidences of the truth, others are not. There must be a mark by which we may distinguish them, or they would be useless. But they are not useless; they are fundamentally necessary.

The rule, therefore, which is given us, must be such as shall not destroy the evidence which real miracles afford of the truth; which it is the principal end of miracles to establish.

Were there no miracles ever joined to falsehood, they would be in themselves demonstrative. If there were no rule by which we might distinguish them, they would be useless, and would afford us no reason for our faith.

Moses has given us one rule, which is when the miracle is intended to lead men to idolatry; Deut. xiii. 1, 2, 3. And Jesus Christ has given us another; "There is no man (says he) which shall do a miracle in my name, that can lightly speak evil of me;" Mark ix. 39. Whence it follows, that whoever speaks openly against Jesus Christ, cannot perform miracles