OF THE NATURE AND STATE OF MAN, WITH RESPECT TO HAPPINESS.

THE ARGUMENT.

False notions of happiness, philosophical and popular, answered It is the end of all men, and attainable by all. God intends happiness to be equal; and to be so it must be social, since all particular happiness depends on general, and since he governs by general, not particular laws. As it is necessary for order, and the peace and welfare of society, that external goods should be unequal, happiness is not made to consist in these But notwithstanding that inequality, the balance of happiness among mankind is kept even by providence, by the two passions of hope and fear. What the happiness of individuals is, as far as is consistent with the constitution of this world; and that the good man has here the advantage The error of im puting to virtue what are only the calamities of nature or of fortune. The folly of expecting that God should alter his general laws in favor of particulars. That we are not judges who are good; but that whoever they are, they must be happiest That external goods are not the proper rewards, but often inconsistent with, or destructive of virtue. That even these can make no man happy without virtue Instanced in riches. honors, nobility, greatness, fame superior talents, &c. with pictures of human infelicity in men possessed of them all. That virtue only constitutes a happiness, whose object is universal and whose prospect eternal, That the perfection of virtue and happiness consists in a conformity to the order of Providence here, and to a resignation to it here and hereafter.

OH HAPPINESS! our being's end and aim! Good, pleasure, ease, content! whate'er thy

name:

That something still which prompts th' eternal

sigh,

For which we bear to live, or dare to die,
Which still so near us, yet beyond us lies,
O'er-look'd, seen double, by the fool, and wise.
Plant of celestial seed! if drop'd below,

Say, in what mortal soil thou deign'st to grow?
Fair op'ning to some court's propitious shine,
Or deep with di'monds in the flaming mine?
Twin'd with the wreaths Parnassian laurels yield,
Or reap'd in iron harvests of the field?

Where grows? where grows it not? If vain our

toil,

We ought to blame the culture, not the soil:
Fix'd to no spot is happiness sincere,

'Tis no where to be found, or every where:
'Tis never to be bought, but always free,

And fled from monarchs, St. JOHN! dwells with thee.

Ask of the learn'd the way; the learn❜d are blind; This bids to serve, and that to shun mankind; Some place the bliss in action, some in ease, Those call it pleasure, and contentment these; Some, sunk to beats, find pleasure end in pain;

Some swell'd to gods, confess e'en virtue vain;
Or indolent, to each extreme they fall,
To trust in ev'ry thing, or doubt of all.

Who thus define it, say they more or less
Than this, that happiness is happiness?

Take nature's path, and mad opinion's leave; All states can reach it, and all heads conceive; Obvious her goods, in no extreme they dwell; There needs but thinking right, and meaning

well;

And mourn our various portions as we please, Equal is common sense, and common ease.

Remember, man, "the universal Cause
Acts not by partial, but by gen'ral laws;"
And makes what happiness we justly call
Subsist, not in the good of one, but all:
There's not a blessing individuals find,
But some way leans and hearkens to the kind:
No bandit fierce, no tyrant mad with pride,
No cavern'd hermit rests self-satisfi'd:
Who most to shun or hate mankind pretend,
Seek an admirer, or would fix a friend.

Abstract what others feel, what others think,
All pleasures sicken, and all glories sink:
Each has his share, and who would more obtain,
Shall find, the pleasure pays not half the pain.

ORDER is Heaven's first law; and this confest,
Some are, and must be, greater than the rest,
More rich, more wise; but who infers from hence
That such are happier, shocks all common sense.
Heaven to mankind impartial we confess,
If all are equal in their happiness:

But mutual wants this happiness increase;
All nature's diff'rence keeps all nature's peace.
Condition, circumstance, is not the thing;
Bliss is the same in subject or in king,
In who obtain defence, or who defend,
In him who is, or him who finds a friend:
Heaven breathes through every member of the
whole

One common blessing, as one common soul.
But fortune's gifts if each alike possest,
And each were equal, must not all contest?
If then to all men happiness was meant,
God in externals could not place content.

Fortune her gifts may variously dispose,
And these be happy call'd, unhappy those;
But heaven's just balance equal will appear,
While those are plac'd in hope, and these in fear:
Not present good or ill, the joy or curse,
But future views of better or of worse.

Oh sons of earth! attempt ye still to rise,
By mountains pil'd on mountains to the skies?
Heaven still with laughter the vain toil surveys;
And buries madmen in the heaps they raise.

Know, all the good that individuals find,
Or God and nature meant to mere mankind,
Reason's whole pleasure, all the joys of sense,
Lie in three words, health, peace and competence.
But health consists with temperance alone;
And peace, oh Virtue! peace is all thy own.
The good or bad the gifts of fortune gain;
But these less taste them as they worse obtain.
Say, in pursuit of profit or delight,

Who risk the most, that take wrong means, or right?

Of vice or virtue, whether blest or curst, Which meets contempt, or which compassion

first?