lements poured down before him.

This picture of a savage life if it shows how much individuals may
perform, shows likewise how much society is to be desired. Though the
perseverance and address of the Indian excite our admiration, they
nevertheless cannot procure him the conveniencies which are enjoyed by
the vagrant beggar of a civilized country: he hunts like a wild beast to
satisfy his hunger; and when he lies down to rest after a successful
chase, cannot pronounce himself secure against the danger of perishing
in a few days: he is, perhaps, content with his condition, because he
knows not that a better is attainable by man; as he that is born blind
does not long for the perception of light, because he cannot conceive
the advantages which light would afford him; but hunger, wounds, and
weariness, are real evils, though he believes them equally incident to
all his fellow-creatures; and when a tempest compels him to lie starving
in his hut, he cannot justly be concluded equally happy with those whom
art has exempted from the power of chance, and who make the foregoing
year provide for the following.

To receive and to communicate assistance, constitutes the happiness of
human life: man may, indeed, preserve his existence in solitude, but can
enjoy it only in society; the greatest understanding of an individual,
doomed to procure food and clothing for himself, will barely supply him
with expedients to keep off death from day to day; but as one of a large
community performing only his share of the common business, he gains
leisure for intellectual pleasures, and enjoys the happiness of reason
and reflection.

No. 69. TUESDAY, JULY 3, 1753.

_Fere libenter homines id quod volunt credunt._ Caesar.

Men willingly believe what they wish to be true.

Tully has long ago observed, that no man, however weakened by long life,
is so conscious of his own decrepitude, as not to imagine that he may
yet hold his station in the world for another year.

Of the truth of this remark every day furnishes new confirmation: there
is no time of life, in which men for the most part seem less to expect
the stroke of death, than when every other eye sees it impending; or are
more busy in providing for another year, than when it is plain to all
but themselves, that at another year they cannot arrive. Though every
funeral that passes before their eyes evinces the deceitfulness of such
expectations, since every man who is born