Ask a child, what he thinks he would do with a great sum of money? Why, he would buy twenty little horses, he would have twenty fine coats, see all fine sights, and the like.
Now promise but a man a great estate, and you will raise all these same thoughts and designs in his mind.
And whence is this, but from hence, that men act with the same vanity of mind, are under the same poor guidance of their senses, are as ignorant of their true happiness, as great strangers to their own nature, as when they first set out in life.
And is not this a plain reason for self-denial? For to indulge ourselves in our natural tempers, is to grow old in the follies of childhood.
XXIX. *Let us take another view of the disorder of our nature, that we may see a still greater necessity of not walking according to it.
When we see people drunk, or in a violent passion, we own they are so long in a state of delusion, thinking, saying, and doing irregular things, by the mere force of their blood and spirits. Here we all see the power of our bodies over our reason; and never suppose a man capable of judging or acting wisely, so long as he is under the violence of passion, or heated by drink.
Now this is more or less the constant, natural state of all mankind; who are by bodily impressions, and the agitations of the blood and spirits, in the same kind of delusion, as men that are drunk, or in a passion, tho’ not always in the same degree.
Sometimes the disorder is more violent than at others. But it never ceases. Men are always in some passion or other; and this, even when it is not to that degree, as to be visible to others, yet occasions the same weakness of mind, the same disordered imagination, and the same wrong apprehension of the nature of things.
A silent envy, a secret vanity, which no body sees, disorders our judgments in the same manner as more violent passions.
You may increase the vanity or envy, till it end in distraction, as it sometimes happens. But then you may be sure, it disordered our understanding in some degree, long before it came to madness. All men therefore while, in a natural state, resemble those who are drunk, or in a violent passion; having some passion or other that affects their spirits and disorders their judgment, in the same manner tho’ not in the same degree.