when it was a natural means of procuring more pleasure than we could taste without it: that, as we all strongly desire to live, and to live only to enjoy, we should take as much care about our future as our present happiness, and not build one upon the ruins of the other: that we should look to the end, and regard consequences: and if, through want of attention, we had erred, and exceeded the bounds which nature had set us, we were then obliged, for our own sakes, to refrain or deny ourselves a present momentary pleasure, for a future constant and durable good.

Hor. You have shown, Philocles, that self-denial, which weak or interested men have rendered the most forbidding, is really the most delightful and amiable, the most reasonable and pleasant thing in the world. In a word, if I understand you aright, self-denial is, in truth, self-recognizing, self-acknowledging, or self-owning. But now, my friend, you are to perform another promise, and show me the path which leads up to that constant durable and invariable good, which I have heard you so beautifully describe, and which you seem so fully to possess. Is not this good of yours a mere chimera? Can anything be constant in a world which is eternally changing, and which appears to exist by an everlasting revolution of one thing into another, and where everything without us and everything within us is.in perpetual motion? What is this constant durable good, then, of yours? Prithee satisfy my soul; for I am all on fire, and impatient to enjoy her. Produce this eternal blooming goddess, with neverfading charms, and see whether I will not embrace her with as much eagerness and rapture as you.

Phil. You seem enthusiastically warm, Horatio; I will wait till you are cool enough to attend to the sober, dispassionate voice of reason.

Hor. You mistake me, my dear Philocles; my warmth is not so great as to run away with my reason: it is only just raised enough to open my faculties, and fit them to receive those eternal truths, and that durable good, which you so triumphantly boast of. Begin, then, I am prepared.

Phil. I will, I believe; Horatio, with all your scepticism about you, you will allow that good to be constant which is never absent from you, and that to be durable which never ends but with your being.

Hor. Yes,

go on.

Phil. That can never be the good of a creature which when present the creature may be miserable, and when absent is certainly so.

Hor. I think not; but pray explain what you mean, for I am not much used to this abstract way of reasoning.

Phil. I mean all the pleasures of sense. The good of man cannot consist in the mere pleasures of sense; because, when any one of those objects which you love is absent, or cannot be come at, you are certainly miserable; and, if the faculty be impaired, though the object be present, you cannot enjoy it. So that this sensual good depends upon a thousand things without and within you, and all out of your power. Can this, then, be the good of man? Say, Horatio, what think you, is not this a checkered, fleeting, fantastical good? Can that, in any propriety of speech, be called the good of man, which, even while he is tasting, he may be miserable; and which, when he cannot taste, he is necessarily so? Can that be our good which costs us a great deal of pains to obtain, which cloys in possessing, for which we must wait the return of appetite before we can enjoy again? Or, is that our good which we can come at without difficulty, which is heightened by possession, which never ends in weariness and disappointment, and which the more we enjoy the better qualified we are to enjoy on?

Hor. The latter, I think; but why do you torment me thus? Philocles, show me this good immediately.

Phil. I have showed you what it is not; it is not sensual, but it is rational and moral good. It is doing all the good we can to others by acts of humanity, friendship, generosity and benevolence: this is that constant and durable good, which will afford contentment and satisfaction always alike, without variation or diminution. I speak to your experience now, Horatio. Did you ever find yourself weary of relieving the miserable, or of raising the distressed into life or happiness? Or, rather, do not you find the pleasure grow upon you by repetition, and that it is greater in reflection than in the act itself? Is there a pleasure upon earth to be compared with that which arises from the sense of making others happy? Can this pleasure ever be absent, or ever end but with your being? Does it not always accompany you? Doth not it lie down and rise with you, live as long as you live, give you consolation in the article of death, and remain with you in that gloomy hour when all other things are going to forsake you, or you them?

Hor. How glowingly you paint, Philocles! Methinks Horatio is amongst the enthusiasts. I feel the passion, I am enchantingly convinced; but I do not know why, overborne by something stronger than reason. Sure, some divinity speaks within me; but prithee, Philocles, give me coolly the cause why this

rational and moral good so infinitely excels the mere natural or sensual.

Phil. I think, Horatio, that I have clearly shown you the difference between merely natural or sensual good and rational or moral good. Natural or sensual pleasure continues no longer than the action itself; but this divine or moral pleasure continues when the action is over, and swells and grows upon your hand by reflection: the one is inconstant, unsatisfying, of short duration, and attended with numberless ills; the other is constant, yields full satisfaction, is durable, and no evils preceding, accompanying or following it. But, if you inquire further into the cause of this difference, and would know why the moral pleasures are greater than the sensual, perhaps the reason is the same as in all other creatures, that their happiness or chief good consists in acting up to their chief faculty, or that faculty which distinguishes them from all creatures of a different species. The chief faculty in man is his reason; and, consequently, his chief good, or that which may be justly called his good, consists not merely in action, but in reasonable action. By reasonable actions we understand those actions which are preservative of the human kind, and naturally tend to produce real and unmixed happiness; and these actions, by way of distinction, we call actions morally good.

Hor. You speak very clearly, Philocles; but, that no difficulty may remain upon your mind, pray tell me what is the real difference between natural good and evil and moral good and evil; for I know several people who use the terms without ideas.

Phil. That may be: the difference lies only in this, that natural good and evil are pleasure and pain, moral good and evil are pleasure or pain produced with intention and design. For, it is the intention only that makes the agent morally good or bad.

Hor. But may not a man, with a very good intention, do an evil action?

Phil. Yes; but then he errs in his judgment, though his design be good. If his error is invincible, or such as, all things considered, he could not help, he is inculpable; but, if it arose through want of diligence in forming his judgment about the nature of human actions, he is immoral and culpable.

Hor. I find, then, that, in order to please ourselves rightly, or to do good to others morally, we should take great care of our opinions.

Phil. Nothing concerns you more; for, as the happiness or real good of men consists in right action, and right action can

not be produced without right opinion, it behoves us, above all things in this world, to take care that our own opinions of things be according to the nature of things. The foundation of all virtue and happiness is thinking rightly. He who sees an action is right, that is, naturally tending to good, and does it because of that tendency, he only is a moral man; and he alone is capable of that constant, durable and invariable good, which has been the subject of this conversation.

- - —

Hor. How, my dear philosophical guide, shall I be able to know, and determine certainly, what is right and wrong in life? Phil. As easily as you distinguish a circle from a square, or light from darkness. Look, Horatio, into the sacred book of nature; read your own nature, and view the relation which other men stand in to you and you to them, and you will immediately see what constitutes human happiness, and consequently what is right.

Hor. We are just coming into town, and can say no more at present. You are my good genius, Philocles: you have showed me what is good; you have redeemed me from the slavery and misery of folly and vice, and made me a free and happy being. Phil. Then am I the happiest man in the world. Be you steady, Horatio; never depart from reason and virtue.

Hor. Sooner will I lose my existence. Good-night, Philocles. Phil. Adieu, dear Horatio.

POOR RICHARD'S ALMANAC.

THE WAY TO WEALTH, AS CLEARLY SHOWN IN THE PREFACE OF AN OLD PENNSYLVANIA ALMANAC, ENTITLED, POOR

RICHARD IMPROVED." *

COURTEOUS READER: I have heard that nothing gives an author so great pleasure as to find his works respectfully quoted by others. Judge, then, how much I must have been gratified by an incident I am going to relate to you. I stopped my horse, lately, where a great number of people were collected, at an

* Dr. Franklin for many years published the Pennsylvania Almanac, purporting to be the work of Richard Saunders, and furnished it with various sentences and proverbs, having relation chiefly to "industry, attention to one's own business, and frugality." These sentences and proverbs he collected and digested in the above preface.

auction of merchant's goods. The hour of the sale not being come, they were conversing on the badness of the times; and one of the company called to a plain, clean old man, with white locks, "Pray, Father Abraham, what think you of the times? Will not these heavy taxes quite ruin the country?. How shall we ever be able to pay them? What would you advise us to do?" Father Abraham stood up, and replied, "If you would have my advice, I will give it to you in short; 'for a word to the wise is enough,' as poor Richard says.”

They joined in desiring him to speak his mind; and, gathering round him, he proceeded as follows:

Friends," says he, "the taxes are, indeed, very heavy, and, if those laid on by the government were the only ones we had to pay, we might more easily discharge them; but we have many others, and much more grievous to some of us. We are taxed twice as much by our idleness, three times as much by our pride, and four times as much by our folly; and from these taxes the commissioners cannot ease or deliver us, by allowing an abatement. However, let us hearken to good advice, and something may be done for us. God helps them that help themselves,' as poor Richard says.

"1. It would be thought a hard government that should tax its people one-tenth part of their time, to be employed in its service; but idleness taxes many of us much more; sloth, by bringing on diseases, absolutely shortens life. 'Sloth, like rust, consumes faster than labor wears, while the used key is always bright,' as poor Richard says. But dost thou love life? then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of,' as poor Richard says. How much more than is necessary do we spend in sleep! forgetting that the sleeping fox catches no poultry, and that there will be sleeping enough in the grave,' as poor Richard says.

"If time be of all things the most precious, wasting time must be,' as poor Richard says, the greatest prodigality;' since, as he elsewhere tells us, 'lost time is never found again, and what we call time enough always proves little enough.' Let us then up and be doing, and doing to the purpose; so by diligence shall we do more with less perplexity.

Sloth makes all

things difficult, but industry all easy; and he that riseth late must trot all day, and shall scarce overtake his business at night; while laziness travels so slowly, that poverty soon overtakes him. Drive thy business, let not that drive thee; and early to bed, and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise,' as poor Richard says.