It is no wonder, therefore,
he succeeds in it better than the man of humanity, as a person who
makes use of indirect methods is more likely to grow rich than the
fair trader.
NEXT ESSAY
- Quis enim bonus, aut face dignus
Arcana, qualem Cereris vult esse sacerdos,
Ulla aliena sibi credat mala? -
JUV., Sat. xv. 140.
Who can all sense of others' ills escape,
Is but a brute, at best, in human shape.
TATE.
In one of my last week's papers, I treated of good-nature as it is
the effect of constitution; I shall now speak of it as it is a moral
virtue. The first may make a man easy in himself and agreeable to
others, but implies no merit in him that is possessed of it. A man
is no more to be praised upon this account, than because he has a
regular pulse or a good digestion. This good nature, however, in
the constitution, which Mr. Dryden somewhere calls "a milkiness of
blood," is an admirable groundwork for the other. In order,
therefore, to try our good-nature, whether it arises from the body
or the mind, whether it be founded in the animal or rational part of
our nature; in a word, whether it be such as is entitled to any
other reward besides that secret satisfaction and contentment of
mind which is essential to it, and the kind reception it procures us
in the world, we must examine it by the following rules:
First, whether it acts with steadiness and uniformity in sickness
and in health, in prosperity and in adversity; if otherwise, it is
to be looked upon as nothing else but an irradiation of the mind
from some new supply of spirits, or a more kindly circulation of the
blood.
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