4 ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPORTS. 



produce delight. Happy for themfelves and 

 their country, when their pleafures are rational, 

 and free from oppreflion and crime ; when 

 they conduce to the advancement of the fine 

 arts, and when they have for their objeft the 

 furtherance of thofe difcoveries which improve 

 and benefit human fociety. In fuch cafe, the 

 inferior clafles become (harers in the wealth 

 and pleafures of.the opulent, induftry and plea- 

 fure go hand in hand, and the general mafs of 

 enjoyment and of profit, is infinitely aug- 

 mented. 



Brain-fick fanatics, a remnant of which ftill 

 exifts even in the prefent enlightened times, 

 and wretched curmudgeons, whom nature has 

 curft with the fordid letch of accumulation, are 

 in the habit of condemning either all luxury 

 and pleafure in the lump, or certain particular 

 fpecies of them at which their morbid fancies 

 have chanced to take unmeaning exceptions. 

 According to the flavifh notion of thefe wrong- 

 heads, ftage- plays, dancing, horfe - courfing, 

 hunting, and games of chance are unlawful : 

 not confidering, that univerfal liberty is the 

 favourite child of nature ; that all poflible afts, 

 which do not involve abfolute crime, are, and 

 ought to be, left to the difcretion of man ; that 

 in things indifferent, criminality exifts only in 

 the abufe, in which alfo lies the punifhment. 

 The divine Plato himfelf, as we are informed 



by 



■te 



