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we cannot feel without pain those reflections roufed which we have been endeavouring to lay afleep; and when pain has produced anger, who would not willingly believe, that it ought to be discharged on others, rather than on himself?

The refentment produced by fincerity, whatever be its immediate caufe, is fo certain, and generally fo keen, that very few have magnanimity fufficient for the practice of a duty, which, above most others, expofes its votaries to hardships and perfecutions; yet friendship without it is of a very little value, fince the great ufe of fo close an intimacy is that our virtues may be guarded and encouraged, and our vices repressed in their first appearance by timely detection, and falutary remonftrances.

It is decreed by providence that nothing truly valuable shall be obtained in our prefent ftate, but with difficulty and danger. He that hopes for that advantage which is to be gained from unreftrained communication, must sometimes hazard, by unpleafing truths, that friendship which he afpires to merit. The chief rule to be observed in the exercife of this dangerous office, is to preserve it pure from all mixture of interest or vanity; to forbear admonition or reproof, when our confciences tell us that they are incited, not by the hopes of reforming faults, but the defire of fhewing our dif cernment, or gratifying our own pride by the mortification of another. It is not indeed certain that the most refined caution will find a proper time for bringing a man to the knowledge of his own failings, or the moft zealous benevolence reconcile him to that judgment, by which they are detected; but

he

he who endeavours only the happiness of him whom he reproves, will always have either the fatisfaction of obtaining or deferving kindness; if he fucceeds, he benefits his friend, and if he fails, he has at leaft the consciousness that he fuffers for only doing well.

NUMB. 41. TUESDAY, August 7, 1750.

Nulla recordanti lux eft ingrata gravifque,
Nulla fuit cujus non meminisse velit.

Ampliat ætatis fpatium fibi vir bonus, hoc eft
Vivere bis, vitá poffe priore frui.

No day's remembrance shall the good regret,
Nor with one bitter moment to forget;
They stretch the limits of this narrow fpan,
And, by enjoying, live paft life again.

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MART.

F. LEWIS.

O few of the hours of life are filled up with objects adequate to the mind of man, and fo frequently are we in want of present pleasure or employment, that we are forced to have recourse every moment to the past and future for fupplemental fatisfactions, and relieve the vacuities of our being, by recollection of former paffages, or anticipation of events to come.

I cannot but confider this neceffity of fearching on every fide for matter on which the attention may be employed, as a strong proof of the fuperior and celeftial nature of the foul of man. We have no reason to believe that other creatures have higher faculties, or more extenfive capacities, than the prefervation

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fervation of themselves, or their fpecies, requires; they feem always to be fully employed, or to be completely at eafe without employment, to feel few intellectual miseries or pleasures, and to have no exuberance of understanding to lay out upon curiofity or caprice, but to have their minds exactly adapted to their bodies, with few other ideas than fuch as corporal pain or pleasure imprefs upon them.

Of memory, which makes fo large a part of the excellence of the human foul, and which has fo much influence upon all its other powers, but a fmall portion has been allotted to the animal world. We do not find the grief, with which the dams lament the lofs of their young, proportionate to the tenderness with which they carefs, the affiduity with which they feed, or the vehemence with which they defend them. Their regard for their offspring, when it is before their eyes, is not, in appearance, less than that of a human parent; but when it is taken away, it is very foon forgotten, and, after a fhort absence, if brought again, wholly disregarded.

That they have very little remembrance of any thing once out of the reach of their fenfes, and scarce any power of comparing the prefent with the past, and regulating their conclufions from experience, may be gathered from this, that their intellects are produced in their full perfection. The fparrow that was hatched laft fpring makes her firft neft the enfuing season, of the fame materials, and with the fame art, as in any following year; and the hen conducts and fhelters her firft brood of chickens with all the prudence that she ever attains.

It has been asked by men who love to perplex any thing that is plain to common understandings, how reafon differs from inftinct; and Prior has with no great propriety made Solomon himself declare, that to distinguish them is the fool's ignorance, and the pedant's pride. To give an accurate anfwer to a queftion, of which the terms are not completely understood, is impoffible; we do not know in what either reafon or instinct confift, and therefore cannot tell with exactnefs how they differ; but furely he that contemplates a fhip and a bird's neft, will not be long without finding out, that the idea of the one was impreffed at once, and continued through all the progreffive descents of the fpecies, without variation or improvement; and that the other is the refult of experiments compared with experiments, has grown, by accumulated obfervation, from lefs to greater excellence, and exhibits the collective knowledge of different ages and various profeffions.

Memory is the purveyor of reafon, the power which places thofe images before the mind upon which the judgment is to be exercised, and which treasures up the determinations that are once paffed, as the rules of future action, or grounds of fubfequent conclufions.

It is, indeed, the faculty of remembrance, which may be said to place us in the class of moral agents. If we were to act only in confequence of fome immediate impulse, and receive no direction from internal motives of choice, we should be pushed forward by an invincible fatality, without power or reafon for the most part to prefer one thing to another,

because

because we could make no comparison but of objects which might both happen to be present.

We owe to memory not only the increase of our knowledge, and our progrefs in rational enquiries, but many other intellectual pleafures. Indeed, almost all that we can be faid to enjoy is paft or future; the present is in perpetual motion, leaves us as foon as it arrives, ceafes to be prefent before its prefence is well perceived, and is only known to have exifted by the effects which it leaves behind. The greatest part of our ideas arifes, therefore, from the view before or behind us, and we are happy or miserable, according as we are affected by the furvey of our life, or our prospect of future existence.

With regard to futurity, when events are at fuch a diftance from us, that we cannot take the whole concatenation into our view, we have generally power enough over our imagination to turn it upon pleafing scenes, and can promife ourselves riches, honours, and delights, without intermingling those vexations and anxieties, with which all human enjoyments are polluted. If fear breaks in on one side, and alarms us with dangers and disappointments, we can call in hope on the other, to folace us with rewards, and escapes, and victories; fo that we are feldom without means of palliating remote evils, and can generally footh ourselves to tranquillity, whenever any troublesome prefage happens to attack

us.

It is, therefore, I believe, much more common for the folitary and thoughtful, to amuse themselves with fchemes of the future, than reviews of the paft. For the future is pliant and ductile, and will be eafily moulded

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