ON HUMAN HAPPINESS. 395 



Wide, and more wide, ih' o'erflowing of the mind 

 Takes every creature in of every kind. 

 Earth smiles around, in boundless beauty dress'd; 

 Andheav'n reflects its image in his breast." 



We stand in need, then, of no praecognita or innate ideas, of no fanciful 

 instinct whatever ; — arguing as intelligent beings, and fairly exercising the 

 discursive faculty of reason, we come to the clear conclusion that virtue 

 is the path to human happiness. The case, indeed, is so manifest, that while 

 many of the instincts we actually possess are often tempting us against such 

 a conduct and such a conclusion, whenever reason is appealed to, we never 

 fail to return to the same established dictum. 



The Stoics, with a sort of romantic refinement, pretended to have fallen 

 into a love of virtue for her own sake ; and to sustain and to abstain, to bear 

 and forbear, to be patient and continent, comprised the summary of their 

 moral system. But while they were ' thus enraptured with the means, like 

 every other society of mankind, they had the full advantage of the end. 

 They may, indeed, have practised virtue for the love of virtue, but they also 

 practised virtue, and reaped the benefit of their own happiness. 



The Epicureans, on the contrary, regarded all these sublime pretensions as 

 mere cant and affectation. They also enjoined and practised, and, notwith- 

 standing the false reproach that has attached to their name, enjoined and 

 practised with more rigidity than even the Stoics, the laws and restraints of 

 moral virtue ; yet boldly and unequivocally avowed that it was chiefly as a 

 mean towards an end : that it was not so much from a love of virtue, as from 

 a love of pleasure or happiness : and hence pleasure and happiness were in 

 this school used as synonymous terms, as were also vice and folly, and wis- 

 dom and virtue ; or, rather, wisdom was regarded as the first of all virtues, 

 as being that which teaches us that a life of real pleasure or happiness is to 

 be obtained alone by the exercise of the general cluster of virtues. In one of 

 his letters to Menaeceus, that has yet survived the ravage of time, Epicurus has 

 a passage upon this subject peculiarly striking, and that cannot be too strongly 

 impressed on our memories. " Wisdom," says he, " is the chief blessing of 

 philosophy ; since she gives birth to all other virtues which unite in teaching 

 us, that no man can live happily who does not live wisely, conscientiously, 

 and justly; nor, on the other hand, can he live wisely, conscientiously, and 

 justly, without living happily: for virtue is inseparable from a life of happiness, 

 and a life of happiness is equally inseparable from virtue. Be these, then, and 

 maxims like these, the subjects of thy meditation, by night and by day, both 

 when alone and with the friend of thy bosom ; and never, whether asleep or 

 awake, shalt thou be oppressed with anxiety, but live as a god among mankind.' * 



To the same effect Cassius, in an expostulatory letter to his friend Cicero, 

 who had shown some inclination to join in the general calumny against the 

 Epicureans : " Those whom we call lovers of pleasure are real lovers of good- 

 ness and justice : they are men who practise and cultivate every virtue ; for 

 no true pleasure can exist without a good and virtuous life." 



So Lucretius, when describing the different tribes of the sons of vice, or 

 offenders against the public law, characterizes them by the common name of 

 fools. " They are," says he, " perpetually smarting, even in secret, beneath a 

 sense of their atrocious crimes, and that reward of their guilt, which, they 

 well know, will sooner or later overtake them : — 



The scourge, the wheel, the block, the dungeon deep, 

 Tlie base-born haffgtnan, the Takpeian clilf, 

 Which, tliough the villain 'scape, his conscious soul 

 Still fears perpetual ; torturint; all his days, 

 And still foreboding heavier pangs at death. 

 Hence earth itself to fools becomes a hell.t 



* Diog. Laert. x. 132. 135. 

 V6rbera. carnufices, robur, pix, lamina, (aeda? : 

 Q.ui tamen et si absunt, at mens, sibi conscia factis, 

 Pra;/7jfetuens, adhibet stimulos, torretque flagellis 

 Nec videt intcrea, qui ternnnus esse maiorum 



