lancholy
enough; as those usually are which carry us beyond the mere surface of
things; and which would undoubtedly make the lives of all thinking men
extremely miserable, if the same philosophy which caused the grief, did
not at the same time administer the comfort.

On considering political societies, their origin, their constitution,
and their effects, I have sometimes been in a good deal more than doubt,
whether the Creator did ever really intend man for a state of happiness.
He has mixed in his cup a number of natural evils, (in spite of the
boasts of stoicism they are evils,) and every endeavor which the art and
policy of mankind has used from the beginning of the world to this day,
in order to alleviate or cure them, has only served to introduce new
mischiefs, or to aggravate and inflame the old. Besides this, the mind
of man itself is too active and restless a principle ever to settle on
the true point of quiet. It discovers every day some craving want in a
body, which really wants but little. It every day invents some new
artificial rule to guide that nature which, if left to itself, were the
best and surest guide. It finds out imaginary beings prescribing
imaginary laws; and then, it raises imaginary terrors to support a
belief in the beings, and an obedience to the laws.--Many things have
been said, and very well undoubtedly, on the subjection in which we
should preserve our bodies to the government of our understanding; but
enough has not been said upon the restraint which our bodily necessities
ought to lay on the extravagant sublimities and eccentric rovings of our
minds. The body, or as some love to call it, our inferior nature, is
wiser in its own plain way, and attends its own business more directly
than the mind with all its boasted subtlety.

In the state of nature, without question, mankind was subjected to many
and great inconveniences. Want of union, want of mutual assistance, want
of a common arbitrator to resort to in their differences. These were
evils which they could not but have felt pretty severely on many
occasions. The original children of the earth lived with their brethren
of the other kinds in much equality. Their diet must have been confined
almost wholly to the vegetable kind; and the same tree, which in its
flourishing state produced them berries, in its decay gave them an
habitation. The mutual desires of the sexes uniting their bodies and
affections, and the children which are the