LETTER LVIII.
Worthy to Harrington.
YOU argue as if your reason were perverted—Let your mind be employed, and time will wear out these gloomy ideas; for it is certainly a truth, the love of life increases with age—Your letters, therefore, are predicated on the most erroneous principles.
REMEMBER the story of the old man, who had been buried in a dungeon the greater part of his life, and who was liberated at an advanced age. He viewed, once more, the light of the sun, and the habitations of men—he had come into a new order of beings, but found their manners distasteful—In the midst of the sunshine of the world he remembered the prison, where he had wasted his life, and he sighed to be again immured within its walls.
SUCH is our passion for life; we love it because we know it; and our attachment becomes the more riveted, the longer we are acquainted with it—Our prison grows familiar—we contemplate its horrours—but however gloomy the walls that surround us, there is not one but sets a full value on his dreary existence—there is not one but finds his partiality for his dungeon increase, in proportion to the time he hath occupied it—for among the race of human beings confined to this narrow spot—how few are they who are hardy enough to break their prison?
LET us watch over all we do with an eye of scrutiny—the world will not examine the causes that gave birth to our actions—they do not weigh the motives of them—they do not consider those things which influence our conduct—but as that conduct is more or less advantageous to society, they deem it madness or wisdom, or folly or prudence—Remember this—