certain philosophers tell us, that "there is no such thing as happiness or misery in this life, and that they are terms merely confined to the ideas of different people, who differently define them." it must indeed be confessed, from constant and invariable experience, that what a man, at one time in his life, considered as a misery, he will at another consider as a happiness.
cleorus was, from his childhood, bred to business, and the pursuit of riches appeared to him178 as the principal blessing he had in view, since, from his worldly possessions, he hoped to derive every comfort of life. he viewed, with an eye of pity and contempt, the follies and extravagancies of young fellows of his own age, and considered their nocturnal revels and excursions as so many sad scenes of misery.
he continued in this opinion till he was turned of the age of forty; at which period, losing his wife, and finding his circumstances easy, he joined in the company of those we call free and easy. new company, by degrees, made him imbibe new sentiments, and what he had formerly considered as miseries, began insensibly to assume the name of pleasure, and his former happiness was soon construed to be misery. he began to reflect on the dull path he had trodden all the prime of his life, and therefore determined to atone for it in the evening of his days, by entering on such scenes as were disgraceful even to the youthful partners of his follies. suffice it to say, that after having exchanged prudence for pleasure, he soon fell a martyr to his vices.
it is a melancholy but a just observation, that the man who turns vicious in the evening of his life, is generally worse than the youthful libertine, and his conversation often more lewd and obscene. hence we may conclude with ovid, that no man can be truly said to be blessed, till death has put a seal on his virtuous actions, and rendered him incapable of committing bad ones.
the destruction of happiness and misery is, perhaps, more on a level than we are in general apt to imagine. if the labouring man toils all the day, and hardly earns his bread by the sweat of his brow, yet every meal is to him a sumptuous feast, and he sleeps as soundly between coarse blankets as on a bed of down; nor does any part of his life betray a sense of that state of misery, such as it would be considered by the courtier.
if the courtier basks in the sunshine of fortune; if he be loaded with honours, riches, and titles, keeps a brilliant equipage, and has numerous dependants at his command, the world in general will consider him as placed in a state of happiness; but, if we contemplate him at leisure, see the anxieties of his mind to be still more great and powerful, which interrupt his broken slumbers, and see how insipid to him are all the luxuries of his table, his perpetual succession of false pleasure, and the mean adoration he is compelled to pay to the idol of power, we shall hardly allow him the idea of happiness, but justly consider him as more miserable than the labouring peasant.
the mind is undoubtedly the seat of happiness and misery, and it is within our power to determine which shall hold the empire there. to maintain a uniform conduct through all the varying stations of life—to content ourselves with what comes within our reach, without pining after what we cannot obtain, or envying others what they possess—to maintain a clear unsullied conscience—and to allow for the infirmities of others from a retrospect of our own, are perhaps some of the best rules we can lay down, in order to banish misery from this mortal frame, and to acquire such a degree of happiness, as may enable us to perform our terrestrial journey with some degree of satisfaction to ourselves and others.