Among the different conditions and ranks of men, the balance of
happiness is preserved in a great measure equal; and the high and low,
the rich and the poor, approach in point of real enjoyment much nearer
to each other than is commonly imagined. Providence never intended that
any state here should either be completely happy, or entirely miserable.
If the feelings of pleasure are more numerous and more lively, in the
higher departments of life, such also are those of pain. If greatness
flatters our vanity, it multiplies our dangers.--If opulence increases
our gratifications, it increases in the same proportion our desires and
demands.--If the poor are confined to a more narrow circle, yet within
that circle lie most of those natural satisfactions, which, after all
the refinements of art, are found to be the most genuine and true. For
the happiness of every man depends more upon the state of his own mind
than upon any one external circumstance; nay, more than upon all
external things put together.
Inordinate passions are the great disturbers of life; and unless we
possess a good conscience, and a well governed mind, discontent will
blast every enjoyment, and the highest prosperity will only prove
disgusted misery. This conclusion then would be fixed in the mind: The
destruction of virtue is the destruction of peace. In no station---in no
period are we secure from the dangers which spring from our passions.
Every age, and every station they beset, from youth to grey hairs, and
from the peasant to the prince.
* * * * *
* * * *
THE VICTIM OF MAGICAL DELUSION;
_OR, INTERESTING MEMOIRS OF MIGUEL, DUKE DE CA*I*A._
Unfolding Many Curious Unknown Historical Facts.
_Translated from the German of Tschink._
(Continued from page 227.)
“Yet you have demonstrated nothing else but that we cannot see _pure_
spirits; we may, nevertheless, be capable of seeing spirits in bodily
clothing.”
“This I grant without the least hesitation, for daily experience proves
it. We see _men_, of course we see spirits in _bodily clothing_.”
“You fancy to escape me by this turn; but you are mistaken. You allow
that we can see spirits if clothed in a bodily covering.”
“What we _see_ is always nothing but the bodily covering; but we must
_conclude_ by other marks and circumstances, whether it be inhabited by
a spirit. Besides, there is in the whole dominion of our _sensible_
knowledge not one being that answers our idea of a spirit; this idea has
been produced merely by _reasoning_, and therefore a spirit never can
become an object of our _perception_.”
“Very strange!” the Duke replied, shaking his head; “the Irishman has
said much the same, and nevertheless, he hit upon an expedient of
proving to me the possibility of apparitions.”
“I have read that argument; it is taken from the dialectic. This
circumstance alone ought to have made you suspect it. Or are you such a
novice in that science that you should not know how pliable it is to
accommodate itself to all opinions? Those philosophers who fancy all the
beings of the whole creation to be spirits, as well as those who deny
the existence of God, draw their arguments from that source. Is there
any absurdity that could not be fitted to that baseless philosophy?”
“You are carrying matters too far. The Irishman did indeed propound
several positions, which by their evidence enforce their claim to
truth.”
“That I do not deny. A great deal of philosophical penetration is
however required, if one shall be able to discern the truth and
falsehood, which its assertion imply in a strange and m One feels
indeed, frequently, the falsehood of sophistical subtilities without
being able to refute them.”
“I should be glad to know what you have to object against the doctrine
of the Irishman concerning the possibility of apparitions?”
“In order to do this, it will be necessary previously to abstract his
doctrine.
“When a spirit, the Irishman says, operates on mine, then he is present
to me. If I were a mere rational being, I then should be satisfied with
_imagining_ the presence of the spirit, _without_ myself; but since I am
a sensible being, by virtue of my nature, my imagination forms a
corporeal idea of the object which my understanding _thinks_; that is,
it forms an image of it. The presence of a spirit, therefore, puts my
inferior intellectual powers in motion by means of the superior ones;
I do not only imagine it merely without myself, but I perceive, at the
same time, a shape answerable to it; I not only collect the ideas which
he produces in my mind, but, at the same time, shape them in words. In
short, I see the spirit and hear him speak.--Do you think, my friend,
that I have comprehended the doctrine of the Irishman?”
“Perfectly!”
“The shape in which I see the spirit is, consequently, no real
substance, but only the product of my sensitive power of perception, of
my imagination.”
“Very right.”
“Consequently, the seeing of a spirit is, indeed, founded on a spiritual
influx, which, however, is formed and shaped at pleasure by our
imagination; therefore, on every apparition of spirits truth would be
intermixed with illusion, and the notions which have been instilled in
our mind by our education, and all the prejudices we have imbibed in our
infancy, would act an important part on every occasion of that kind?”
“I perceive what you are aiming at.”
“Then tell me, what would the gift of seeing spirits and ghosts benefit
us, since the spiritual effect could not but be interwoven so closely
with the phantoms of our imagination, that it would be impossible to
discern reality from the gross illusions which it is surrounded with?”