CHAPTER XXIX.

MORAL REFLECTIONS.

THE Sciences have two extremities, which touch each other. The first is pure natural ignorance, in which every man is born. The other is the perfection attained by great souls, who having gone through every thing that man can know, feel that they know nothing, and find themselves in the same ignorance from which they set out. But it is a wise ignorance that knows itself. Those who are between these extremities, who have got out of their natural ignorance, but have not been able to arrive at the other, have a tincture of science which fills them with vanity, and makes them vaunt of their attainments. These are the men who trouble the world, and judge the most falsely of every thing. The common people and the learned, usually compose the train of the world the others despise them, and are despised by them.

The common people pay respect to persons of high birth. The half-learned despise them; alleging that birth is not a superiority of parts, but of chance. The learned respect them; not from the motives of the vulgar, but from much higher reasons. Certain zealots, who have but little knowledge, despise them in spite of those considerations, on account of which the learned respect them; for they judge of them by a new light with which piety has inspired them. But

real Christians honour them from a light which is superior to that. Thus one opinion succeeds to another, both for and against, according to the different degrees of knowledge which we possess.

God having made heaven and earth, which are unconscious of the felicity of existence, has been also pleased to create beings who might be capable of knowing him, and who should compose one body, consisting of members capable of thinking. All men are members of this body; and in order to be happy, it is necessary they should conform their own private wills to that universal will which governs the whole body. But yet it often happens that a man thinks himself to be a whole, and seeing no other person on whom he is dependent, he thinks he depends only upon himself, and therefore wants to make himself the centre and the body. But he soon finds, in such a state, that he is like a member separated from the body, and which not having in itself a principle of life, can only wander and confound itself in the uncertainty of its existence. At length, however, when he begins to know himself, and is, as it were, come to himself again, he finds that he is not the whole body, that he is only a member of the universal body; that to be a member, is neither to have life, being, or motion, but for the body, and through the spirit which animates the body. That a member separated from the body to which it belongs, has from that time nothing more than a perishing and dying existence; that therefore he ought only to love himself for the sake of the body, or rather he ought only to love the body, because in loving it he loves himself, since he has no being but in it, by it, and for it.

Therefore, in order to regulate our love of ourselves, we must remember this body composed of thinking beings, and that we are members of a whole, and then we shall see in what way each member ought to love himself.

The body loves the hand: and the hand, if it had

a will, ought to love itself in the same proportion that the body loves it. All love beyond this would be unjust.

If the feet and the hands had a private will of their own, they could never be in their proper order without submitting it to that of the body: without this they must get into disorder and misery. But in seeking only the good of the body, they procure their own good.

The members of our bodies are not conscious of the happiness which arises from their union to each other, of the admirable wisdom with which they are formed and connected, of the care which nature has taken to influence them with the spirits to make them grow and subsist. If they were capable of knowing this, and were to avail themselves of that knowledge for the purpose of keeping to themselves the nourishment they receive, without suffering it to pass on to the rest, they would not only be unjust, but miserable also, and would hate themselves, rather than love themselves; their felicity, as well as their duty, consisting in submitting to the conduct of that universal spirit to which they all belong, and which loves them better than they love themselves.

"He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit," 1 Cor. vi. 17. A Christian loves himself, because he is a member of Jesus Christ, and he loves Jesus Christ because he is the head of that body of which he himself is a member. There is one whole, in which both are included.

Concupiscence and violence are the sources of all actions merely human. The former produces those which are voluntary, and the latter those which are involuntary.

Whence is it that a lame man does not offend us, and that a deficient mind does offend us? It is because the lame man acknowledges that we walk strait; whereas the crippled in mind maintain that it

is we who go lame. But for this, we should feel more compassion for them than resentment.

Epictetus proposes a similar question: why we are not angry when a man tells us that we have the headache, and yet fall into a passion when he tells us we reason ill or make a wrong choice? The

reason is, that we can be very certain if we have not the headache, or are not lame; but we cannot be so certain that we make a right choice. For having no assurance that we do so, but because it appears so to us, with all the light we have, when another, with all his light, sees the contrary, this confounds us, and keeps us in suspense; especially if a thousand other persons laugh at our choice; for then we must prefer our own light to that of so many others, which is a perplexing and difficult matter. But men never contradict each other thus, about the lameness of any

one.

The common people have some sound notions; for instance, that of preferring diversion and the chase to the study of poetry. The half-learned laugh at this, and triumph in showing from thence the folly of the world. But for a reason which they do not perceive, we are right in distinguishing men on account of external things, as birth and fortune; the vulgar triumph in shewing how unreasonable they think this to be. But, on the contrary, it is highly reasonable

and proper.

It is a great advantage to persons of quality, that a man at eighteen or twenty, shall be as much known and respected as another can be, by merit alone, at fifty. So that they gain thirty years in advance without any trouble.

There are certain persons, who, to shew how unjust we are not to esteem them, never fail to urge how much they are respected by some people of quality. I would reply to them, show us the merit by which you have obtained the esteem of these persons, and we will esteem you in like manner.

If a man places himself at a window, to see those who pass by, and I happen to go that way, can I say he placed himself there to see me? No; for he did not think of me in particular. But he who loves a person on account of her beauty, does he love her? No; for the small-pox, by destroying her beauty, without taking away her life, will put an end to his love. And if I am loved for my understanding or memory, is it I that am loved? No; for I may lose these qualities without ceasing to exist. What then is this I, if it neither exists in the body nor in the soul? And how are we to love the body, or the soul, except for its qualities, which yet are not what make up this I, because they are perishable? For could we love the substance of a soul abstractedly, whatever qualities might be in it? That is impossible, and would be unjust. We, therefore, never love any person, but only the qualities of the person. Or if we do love any person, we must allow it is the assemblage of qualities that makes up the person.

The things we are the most anxious about, are most commonly trifling. As, for instance, to conceal the smallness of our property. This is a mere nothing, which our imagination swells to a mountain. Another turn of the imagination would make us discover it without pain.

There are some vices which cleave to us only by the intervention of others; and which, like branches, are taken away on removing the trunk.

When ill-nature has reason on its side, it becomes proud, and sets forth reason in all its lustre. And when austerity, or a rigorous life, has proved unsuccessful with regard to the true good, and we are obliged to return and follow nature, it grows prouder by that return.

It is not happiness to be capable of being pleased with diversion, because all this is external and forcign, and consequently dependent, and liable to be