To desire, or pursue any thing with too much eagerness, is undoubtedly the greatest cruelty we can practise on ourselves; yet how impossible is it to avoid doing so, while the passions have any kind of dominion over us:—­to acquire, and to preserve, make the sole business of our lives, and leave no leisure to enjoy the goods of fortune:—­still tost on the billows of passion, hurried from care to care the whole time of our existence here, is one continued scene of restlessness and variated disquiet.—­Strange propensity in man!—­even nature in us seems contradictory to herself!—­we wish long life, yet shorten it by our own anxieties;—­nothing is so dreadful as death, yet we hasten his approach by our intemperance and irregularity, and, what is more, we know all this, yet still run on in the same heady course.

Natura had now, however, an interval, a happy chasm, between the extremes of pleasure and of pain;—­contented with his lot, and neither aiming at more than he possessed, nor fearful of being deprived of what he had.  He, for a time, seemed in a condition such as all wise men would wish to attain, tho’ so few take proper methods for that purpose, that those who we see in it, may be said to owe their felicity rather to chance, than to any right endeavours of their own.

CHAP.  V.

Contains a remarkable proof, that tho’ the passions may operate with greater velocity and vehemence in youth, yet they are infinitely more strong and permanent, when the person is arrived at maturity, and are then scarce ever eradicated.  Love and friendship are then, and not till then, truly worthy of the names they bear; and that the one between those of different sexes, is always the consequence of the other.

The inclination we have, and the pleasure it gives us to think well of our abilities, leads us frequently into the most gross mistakes, concerning the springs of action in our breasts.  We are apt to ascribe to the strength of our reason, what is in reality the effect of one or other of the passions, sometimes even those of the worst kind, and which a sound judgment would most condemn, and endeavour to extirpate.—­Man is a stranger to nothing, more than to himself;—­the recesses of his own heart, are no less impenetrable to him, than the worlds beyond the moon;—­he is blinded by vanity, and agitated by desires he knows not he is possessed of.

It was not reason but revenge, which dissipated the immoderate grief of Natura on the death of his son;—­it was not reason but pride, which made him see the inconveniences of marrying with Laetitia;—­and yet doubtless he gave the praise of these events to the strength of his prudence:  to that too he also ascribed the resolution he now took of living single during the remainder of his life; whereas it was in truth only owing to his being at present acquainted with no object capable of inspiring him with the tender passion.