A passion without intervals is madness; and a state of madness is the death of the soul. Violent passions with intervals are fits of folly, a malady of the mind, whose danger consists in its duration and frequency. In those intervals alone it may be said to enjoy health by the resumption of wisdom, but prevents it being a state of happiness, by reflecting on and condemning the past follies.
The generality of those who call themselves unhappy, are men of violent passions, or rather madmen, who have some intervals of reason; and as in exalted stations there are more false desires, more vain pursuits, more unruly passions, more abuses of the mind, than in the inferior, the rich man, beyond a doubt, is the most unhappy.
But let us turn from these gloomy objects, these humiliating truths, and take a view of the man of wisdom, who alone is worthy our notice. Contented with his situation, he who is entitled to this character wishes not to live but as he has always lived: happy within himself, he stands in little need of other resources; continually occupied in exercising the faculties of his mind, he perfects his understanding, cultivates his talents, acquires new knowledge, and without remorse and disgust, he enjoys the whole universe by enjoying himself.
A man like this is undoubtedly the happiest being in Nature. To the pleasures of the body, which he possesses in common with other animals, he adds those of the mind, which he enjoys exclusively. He has two methods of being happy, which aid and fortify each other: and if by indisposition or accident he is subject to pain, his sufferings are not great: his strength of mind supports him, reason consoles him, and he feels a satisfaction that he is enabled to suffer.
The health of man is more precarious than that of any other animal; he is indisposed more frequently, and for a greater length of time, and dies at all ages; while brutes travel through life with an even and steady pace. This difference seems to proceed from two causes, which, though widely distinct, contribute to the same effect. The first is, the unruliness of our internal material sense; the passions have an influence on the health, and disorder the principles which animate us. Almost all mankind lead a life of timidity or contention, and the greatest part die of chagrin. The second is the imperfection of those of our senses which have an affinity with the appetite. Brute animals have a better perception of what is suitable to their nature; they are not liable to deception in the choice of their food; they are not guilty of excess in their pleasures; and guided solely by a sense of their present wants, they satisfy these without seeking new modes of gratification. As for man, independent of his propensity to excess, independent of that ardour with which he endeavours to destroy himself, by endeavouring to force Nature; he hardly knows how to distinguish the effect of this or that nourishment; he disdains simple food, and prefers artificial dishes, because his taste is depraved, and because, from being a sense of pleasure, he has rendered it an organ of debauchery, which is never gratified but when it is irritated.
It is not surprising, therefore, that we are more subjected than animals to infirmities; since we know not so well as them, what may contribute to preserve or destroy health, our experience being less certain than their perception; nay we abuse the very senses of the appetite, which they enjoy in such superior excellence, these being to them the means of preserving health, and to us causes of disease and of destruction. By intemperance alone more men sicken and die, than by all the scourges incident to human nature.
From these reflections it would appear, that animals have a more certain, as well as a more exquisite sensation of feeling than men. In support of this superior strength of sentiment, we may advert to their sense of smelling, which some animals enjoy to such a degree that they can smell further than they can see. A sense like this is an eye which sees objects, not only where they are, but even where they have been; it is the sense by which the brute animal distinguishes what is suitable or repugnant to its nature, and by which it perceives and chooses what is proper for the gratification of its appetite.
In greater perfection, then, than man, do animals enjoy the senses which relate to appetite: and though of their present existence they have a consciousness, of their past they have none. This second proposition, as well as the first, is worthy consideration. The consciousness of existence is composed in man of the sensation of his present, and of the remembrance of his past existence. Remembrance is a sensation altogether as present as the first impression, and sometimes affects us more strongly. As these two kinds of sensations are different, and as the mind possesses the faculty of comparing and forming ideas from them, our consciousness of existence is the more certain and extensive, as remembrance more frequently and copiously recalls past things and occurrences; and as by our reflections we compare and combine them with those past and present occurrences. Every man retains within himself a certain number of sensations correspondent with the different existences or states through which he has passed; and these sensations, by the comparison which the mind forms between them, at length become a succession, and a series of ideas. In this comparison of sensations consists the idea of time; and indeed all other ideas. But this series of ideas, this chain of existences, is often presented to us in an order very different from that in which our sensations reached us; and in this it is that the difference principally consists in the genius and disposition of mankind.
Some men have minds particularly active in comparing and forming ideas. These are invariably the most ingenious, and, circumstances concurring, will always distinguish themselves. There are others, and in a greater number, whose minds are less active, allow all sensations which have not a certain degree of force to escape, and who only compare those by which they are strongly agitated. In points of ingenuity and vivacity these yield to the former. Others still there are, and they form the multitude, in whom there is so little activity of mind, so little propensity to think, that they compare and combine nothing, at least at the first glance; sensations of force, and repeated a thousand times, are required before their minds will be influenced to compare them, and form ideas.
The consciousness of our existence being composed, then, not only of our actual sensations, but of the train of ideas which gave rise to the comparison of our sensations, and of our past existences, it is evident that the more ideas we have, the more certain we are of our existence; that the more we have of intellectual capacity, the more we exist; that it is by the power of reflection alone that we are certain of our past existence, and view our future one; the idea of futurity being nothing more than a comparison of the present with the past inverted, since in this light the present is past, and the future present.