SLEEPER.
I am glad to hear that you give happiness to some while you take it away from others; that reconciles me to your office. But with all this care, how happens it that the advantages of life are so unequally dispensed? You do not appear to succeed very well in your endeavours to be just.
SPIRIT.
The inequality of happiness amongst men is not so great as you imagine. Superiority is very short, for we speedily correct it. But you shall see my operations. You observe that I carry a pair of scales, and two small boxes: in the scales I weigh the lot of every person within my province, placing his miseries in one scale, and his advantages in the other; then if they are not evenly balanced, I take something from the heaviest scale, or add something to the lightest. When the man has his due share of good and bad fortune, the scales are exactly even.
SLEEPER.
By what contrivance can you weigh such things as blessings and calamities? When the advantage to be weighed is ten thousand acres of land, you must find it an unwieldy burden for so small a scale. I should imagine, too, there would be equal difficulty in weighing a cheerful temper, or any other quality of mind.
SPIRIT.
All the advantages and misfortunes of life have certain representatives, which are easily weighed. I have a number of them in these two boxes: one box contains the blessings which I have taken from those who had more than their weight of happiness; the other holds the evils from which I have eased the miserable. Open that box, which contains evil, and examine the troubles you find in it.