ESSAY I. 408 preserve the works of his hands ; so that the love of life, or re- luctanceagainst dying, is owing to the 'strongmechanic and ani- mal principles of self-preservation, without any formed and sedate judgment of reason, whether it be best to continue in lifeor no, or whether this life has more happiness or misery. I answer yet in the third place : III. That far the greatest part of mankind do not pass a true and just judgment on things, nor wisely balance the right value of them : All their faculties are engrossed, and their spirits, as it were, intoxicated with present sensible things they enjoy, and so they march onward in the rounds of human life, without thinking ; and therefore as painful, and as miserable as this state is, yet they cannot tell how to think of parting with it. They bear a thousand calamities rather than venture into non - existence. A club of drunken fellows in a prison, and in chains, who are to be scourged once á day, yet they are still drinking and dancing and indulging their sport and merriment, thoughtless of the scourge ; but can these men be called happy ? or will any wiseman assent to their judgment of their own state ? Perhaps it may be òbjeeted still, that in order to make up the quantity of happiness, and to judge aright of it; we must take in the temper of.the person, as well as his circumstances of pain andpleasure. An indolent man may be happy with half the quantity of delights and relishing joys, which his gay and sprightly neighbour requires to his happiness. A hero may be happy under such loads of calamity, as would render a weak mind Miserable. Avulgar and ignorant creature may be happy in the midst of such low and foolish delights, which would disgust the wise, and give them pain. Theglutton and the drunkard rejoice in such a happiness as would be scorned and despised by a man of virtue and philosophy. Now if we consider the bulk of man- kind of such tempers and tastes as they have, they must be said to be happy, if they enjoy the good they desire, though it be but a sorry good, or rather an evil in the opinion of the wise and rational : And on this account men generally do and will pre- fer life to death, and their existence here, such as it is, to non- existence, even though there should be no hereafter. In answer to this reply ; I must grant it in a great degree ; but then I say that the common satisfactions and delights of this life, which the bulk of mankind call their happiness, are most of them of so low and degenerate a nature, and many of them so criminal, that it is a sad sign that the intelligent creature man must be fallen from the original excellence of his nature, from his best principles of wis- dom, and from the favour of his God, before he can make him- self happy in such enjoyments. Let it be called his happiness, if you will have it so, since he chuses it, and is loath to part with it; yet it is stich a paltry happiness as no creature of reason
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