neric habit. So far as I can discover, this pleasure fuffers little or no decay after it comes to its height. The variety of gratification preserves it entire. However it may be with other generic habits, the observation I am certain holds with refpect to the pleasures of virtue and of knowledge... The pleafure of doing good has fuch an unbounded scope, and may be so varioufly gratified, that it can never decay. Science is equally unbounded; and our appetite for knowledge has an ample range of gratification, where discoveries are recommended by novelty, by variety, by utility, or by all of them.

Here is a large field of facts and experiments, and several phenomena unfolded, the causes of which have been occasionally suggested. The efficient cause of the power of custom over man, a fundamental point in the present chapter, has unhappily evaded my keenest search; and now I am reduced to hold it an original branch of the human conftitution, though I have no better reason for my opinion, than that I cannot refolve it into any other principle. But with respect VOL. II.

to

to the final cause, a point of still greater importance, I promise myself more success. It cannot indeed have escaped any thinking perfon, that the power of custom is a happy contrivance for our good. Exquifite pleafure produceth satiety: moderate pleasure becomes stronger by custom. Business is our province, and pleasure our relaxation only. Hence, satiety is necessary to check exquifite pleasures, which otherwise would ingross the mind, and unqualify us for business. On the other hand, habitual increase of moderate pleasure, and even converfion of pain into pleasure, are admirably contrived for difappointing the malice of Fortune, and for reconciling us to whatever course of life may be our lot:

How use doth breed a habit in a man!
This shadowy defert, unfrequented woods,
I better brook than flourishing peopled towns.
Here I can fit alone, unfeen of any,
And to the nightingale's complaining notes
Tune my distresses, and record my woes.

Two Gentlemen of Verona, att 5. 6. 4.

The foregoing distinction betwixt intense

and

and moderate, holds in pleasure only, not in pain, every degree of which is softened by time and custom. Custom is a catholicon for pain and distress of every fort; and of this regulation the final cause is so evident as to require no illustration.

Another final cause of custom will be highly relished by every person of humanity; and yet has in a great measure been overlooked. Custom hath a greater influence than any other known principle, to put the rich and poor upon a level. Weak pleasures, which fall to the share of the latter, become fortunately stronger by custom; while voluptuous pleasures, the lot of the former, are continually lofing ground by satiety. Men of fortune, who poffess palaces, sumptuous gardens, rich fields, enjoy them less than passengers do. The goods of Fortune are not unequally distributed: the opulent possess what others enjoy.

And indeed, if it be the effect of habit to produce the pain of want in a high degree while there is little pleasure in enjoyment, a voluptuous life is of all the least to be envied. Those who are accustomed

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to high feeding, eafy vehicles, rich furni ture, a crowd of valets, much deference and flattery, enjoy but a small share of happiness, while they are exposed to manifold. distresses. To such a man, inslaved by ease and luxury, even the petty inconveniencies of a rough road, bad weather, or homely fare on a journey, are serious evils. He loses his tone of mind, becomes peevish, and would wreak his resentment even upon the common accidents of life. Better far to use the goods of Fortune with moderation. A man who by temperance and activity has acquired a hardy constitution, is, on the one hand, guarded against external accidents, and is, on the other, provided with great variety of enjoyment ever at command.

I shall close this chapter with the discus fion of a question more delicate than abstruse, viz. What authority custom ought to have over our taste in the fine arts? It is proper to be premised, that we chearfully abandon to its authority every thing that nature leaves to our choice, and where the preference we bestow has no foundation other than whim or fancy. There appears

no

no original difference betwixt the right and the left hand: custom however has esta blished a difference, so as to make it aukward and disagreeable to use the left where the right is commonly used. The various colours, though they affect us differently, are all of them agreeable in their purity. But custom has regulated this matter in another manner: a black skin upon a human creature, is to us disagreeable; and a white skin probably not less so to a negro. Thus things originally indifferent, become agree able or disagreeable by the force of custom, Nor ought this to be surprising after the dif covery made above, that the original agreeableness or difagreeableness of an object, is, by the influence of custom, often converted into the opposite quality.

Concerning now those matters of taste where there is naturally a preference of one thing before another; it is certain, in the first place, that our faint and more delicate feelings are readily susceptible of a bias from custom; and therefore that it is no proof of a defective taste, to find these in some meafure under the government of custom Dress,

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