ze in the imagination, to raise phantoms of
horrour, or beset life with supernumerary distresses.

To be always afraid of losing life is, indeed, scarcely to enjoy a life
that can deserve the care of preservation. He that once indulges idle
fears will never be at rest. Our present state admits only of a kind of
negative security; we must conclude ourselves safe when we see no
danger, or none inadequate to our powers of opposition. Death, indeed,
continually hovers about us, but hovers commonly unseen, unless we
sharpen our sight by useless curiosity.

There is always a point at which caution, however solicitous, must limit
its preservatives, because one terrour often counteracts another. I once
knew one of the speculatists of cowardice, whose reigning disturbance
was the dread of housebreakers. His inquiries were for nine years
employed upon the best method of barring a window, or a door; and many
an hour has he spent in establishing the preference of a bolt to a lock.
He had at last, by the daily superaddition of new expedients, contrived
a door which could never be forced; for one bar was secured by another
with such intricacy of subordination, that he was himself not always
able to disengage them in the proper method. He was happy in this
fortification, till being asked how he would escape if he was threatened
by fire, he discovered, that with all his care and expense, he had only
been assisting his own destruction. He then immediately tore off his
bolts, and now leaves at night his outer door half-locked, that he may
not by his own folly perish in the flames.

There is one species of terrour which those who are unwilling to suffer
the reproach of cowardice have wisely dignified with the name of
_antipathy_. A man who talks with intrepidity of the monsters of the
wilderness while they are out of sight, will readily confess his
antipathy to a mole, a weasel, or a frog. He has indeed no dread of harm
from an insect or a worm, but his antipathy turns him pale whenever they
approach him. He believes that a boat will transport him with as much
safety as his neighbours, but he cannot conquer his antipathy to the
water. Thus he goes on without any reproach from his own reflections,
and every day multiplies antipathies, till he becomes contemptible to
others, and burdensome to himself. It is indeed certain, that
impressions of dread may sometimes be unluckily made by objects not in
themselves justly formidable; but when fe