the sciences; the less acute, by studying this, though useless to them in every other respect, will gain this advantage; that their minds will be improved in reasoning aright; for no study employs more, or makes it susceptible of attention so much; and those whom we find have a mind worth cultivating, ought to apply themselves to this study."

ON TRUE HAPPINESS.

From the Pennsylvania Gazette, No. 363, Nov. 20, 1735.

THE desire of happiness in general is so natural to us, that all the world are in pursuit of it: all have this one end in view, though they take such different methods to attain it, and are so much divided in their notions of it.

Evil as evil can never be chosen; and though evil is often the effect of our own choice, yet we never desire it, but under the appearance of an imaginary good.

Many things we indulge ourselves in may be considered by us evils, and yet be desirable; but then they are only considered as evils in their effects and consequences, not as evils at present, and attended with immediate misery.

Reason represents things to us not only as they are at present, but as they are in their whole nature and tendency; passion only regards them in their former light: when this governs us, we are regardless of the future, and are only affected with the present.

It is impossible ever to enjoy ourselves rightly, if our conduct be not such as to preserve the harmony, and order of our faculties, and the original frame and constitution of our minds: all true happiness, as all that is truly beautiful, can only result from order.

Whilst there is a conflict between the two principles of passion and reason, we must be miserable in proportion to the struggle; and when the victory is gained, and reason so far subdued, as seldom to trouble us with its remonstrances, the happiness we have then is not the happiness of our rational nature, but the happiness only of the inferior and sensual part of us, and consequently a very low and imperfect happiness, to what the other would have afforded us.

If we reflect on any one passion and disposition of the mind, abstract from virtue, we shall soon see the disconnexion between that and true solid happiness. It is of the very essence, for instance, of envy, to be uneasy and disquieted. Pride meets with provocations and disturbances upon almost every occasion. Covetousness is ever attended with solicitude and anxiety. Ambition has its disappointments to sour us, but never the good fortune to satisfy us; its appetite grows the keener by indulgence, and all we can gratify it with at present serves but the more to inflame its insatiable desires.

The passions, by being too much conversant with earthly objects, can never fix in us a proper composure and acquiescence of mind. Nothing but an indifference to the things of this world, an entire submission to the will of Providence here, and a well grounded expectation of happiness hereafter, can

give us a true satisfactory enjoyment of ourselves. Virtue is the best guard against the many unavoidable evils incident to us; nothing better alleviates the weight of the afflictions, or gives a truer relish of the blessings, of human life.

What is without us has not the least connexion with happiness, only so far as the preservation of our lives and health depends upon it. Health of body, though so far necessary that we cannot be perfectly happy without it, is not sufficient to make us happy of itself. Happiness springs immediately from the mind; health is but to be considered as a candidate or circumstance, without which this happiness cannot be tasted pure and unabated.

Virtue is the best preservative of health, as it prescribes temperance, and such a regulation of our passions as is most conducive to the well being of the animal economy; so that it is, at the same time, the only true happiness of the mind, and the best means of preserving the health of the body.

If our desires are to the things of this world, they are never to be satisfied; if our great view is upon those of the next, the expectation of them is an infinitely higher satisfaction than the enjoyment of those of the present.

There is no happiness then but in a virtuous and self-approving conduct: unless our actions will bear the test of our sober judgment, and reflections upon them, they are not the actions, and consequently not the happiness, of a rational being.

ON DISCOVERIES.

From the Pennsylvania Gazette, No. 409, Oct. 14, 1736.

THE world, but a few ages since, was in a very poor condition as to trade and navigation; nor indeed were they much better in other matters of useful knowledge. It was a green-headed time; every useful improvement was hid from them; they had neither looked into heaven or earth, into sea nor land, as has been done since. They had philosophy without experiment, mathematics without instruments, geometry without scale, astronomy without demonstration.

They made war without powder, shot, cannon, or mortars; nay, the mob made their bonfires without squibs or crackers. They went to sea without compass, and sailed without the needle. They viewed the stars without telescopes, and measured latitudes without observation. Learning had no printingpress, writing no paper, and paper no ink: the lover was forced to send his mistress a deal board for a love-letter, and a billet-doux might he about the size of an ordinary trencher. They were clothed without manufacture, and their richest robes were the skins of the most formidable monsters: they carried on trade without books, and correspondence without posts: their merchants kept no accounts, their shopkeepers no cash-books: they had surgery withqut anatomy, and physicians without the materia

medica; they gave emetics without ipecacuanha, drew blisters without cantharides, and cured agues without the bark.

As for geographical discoveries, they had neither seen the North Cape, nor the Cape of Good Hope, south. All the discovered inhabited world which they knew and conversed with, was circumscribed within very narrow limits, viz. France, Britain, Spain, Italy, Germany, and Greece; the Lesser Asia, the west part of Persia, Arabia, the north parts of Africa, and the islands of the Mediterranean Sea; and this was the whole world to them. Not that even these countries were fully known either; and several parts of them were not inquired into at all. Germany was known little farther than the banks of the Elbe, Poland as little beyond the Vistula, or Hungary as little beyond the Danube; Muscovy or Russia perfectly unknown, as much as China beyond it; and India only by a little commerce upon the coast, about Surat and Malabar; Africa had been more unknown, but by the ruin of the Carthaginians; all the western coast of it was sunk out of knowledge again, and forgotten; the northern coast of Africa in the Mediterranean remained unknown, and that was all; for the Saracens, overrunning the nations which were planted there, ruined commerce as well as religion. The Baltic Sea was not discovered, nor even the navigation of it known; for the Teutonic knights came not thither till the 13th century.

America was not heard of, nor so much as a suggestion in the minds of men that any part of the