of holy resolutions. That the
supreme being may be more easily propitiated in one place than in
another, is the dream of idle superstition; but that some places may
operate upon our own minds in an uncommon manner, is an opinion which
hourly experience will justify[a]. He who supposes that his vices may be
more successfully combated in Palestine, will, perhaps, find himself
mistaken, yet he may go thither without folly; he who thinks they will
be more freely pardoned, dishonours, at once, his reason and religion."

"These," said the prince, "are European distinctions. I will consider
them another time. What have you found to be the effect of knowledge?
Are those nations happier than we?"

"There is so much infelicity," said the poet, "in the world, that scarce
any man has leisure, from his own distresses, to estimate the
comparative happiness of others. Knowledge is certainly one of the means
of pleasure, as is confessed by the natural desire which every mind
feels of increasing its ideas. Ignorance is mere privation, by which
nothing can be produced; it is a vacuity, in which the soul sits
motionless and torpid, for want of attraction; and, without knowing why,
we always rejoice when we learn, and grieve when we forget. I am,
therefore, inclined to conclude, that, if nothing counteracts the
natural consequence of learning, we grow more happy, as our minds take a
wider range.

"In enumerating the particular comforts of life, we shall find many
advantages on the side of the Europeans. They cure wounds and diseases,
with which we languish and perish. We suffer inclemencies of weather,
which they can obviate. They have engines for the despatch of many
laborious works, which we must perform by manual industry. There is such
communication between distant places, that one friend can hardly be said
to be absent from another. Their policy removes all publick
inconveniencies: they have roads cut through their mountains, and
bridges laid upon their rivers. And, if we descend to the privacies of
life, their habitations are more commodious, and their possessions are
more secure."

"They are surely happy," said the prince, "who have all these
conveniencies, of which I envy none so much as the facility with which
separated friends interchange their thoughts."

"The Europeans," answered Imlac, "are less unhappy than we, but they are
not happy. Human life is everywhere a state, in which much is to be
endured, and little to be enj