Whether you reed or rite, accustom yourselves to stand at a high desk, rather than indulge an indolent habit of sitting, which always weekens, and sometimes disfigures the body. The neerer you can keep every part of the body to an eezy strait posture, the more equable wil be the circulation of the fluids; and in order to giv them the most unconstrained flow to the extremities of the lims, it iz very useful to loosen thoze parts of dress that bind the lims closely.
There iz another kind of temperance which I would warmly recommend; that iz, temperance in study. Little does a helthy robust yuth reflect upon the delicate texture of the nervous system, which iz immediately affected by close mental application. The full fed muscular man may spurn the caution, that warns him against the danger of hypocondriacs; but it iz next to impossible that the hard student, who clossets himself seven or eight hours a day, in deep meditation, should escape the deplorable evil, which makes men valetudinarians for life, without hope of a radical cure, and with the wretched consolation of being perpetually laughed at.
Four hours of uninterrupted study in a day iz generally sufficient to furnish the mind with az many ideas az can be retained, methodized and applied to practice; and it iz wel if one half of what are run over in this time are not lost. It may sometimes be necessary to study or reed more hours in a day; but it wil az often be found useful to reed less.
When you exercize at any diversion, or go into company, forget your studies, and giv up yourselves entirely to the amusement. It wil do you no good to leev your books behind, unless you dismiss your attention or train of thinking. Attend to experience. You find it very fateeging to stand, sit or even to lie in one fixed posture, for any length of time, and change affords releef. The same iz tru of the mind. It iz necessary, if I may indulge the expression, to change the pozition of the mind; that iz, vary the train of thought; for by a variety of ideas, the mind iz releeved, in the same degree az the body by a change of posture.
When you reed, always endevor to reed with some particular object. You wil find many books that ought to be red in course; but in general when you take up a treetis upon any science, or a volum of history, without a view to inform yourself of some particular in that wurk, you are not likely to retain what you reed. The object iz too general; the mind iz not capable of embracing the whole. For instance, if you reed Hume's England in course, with design to acquaint yourself with the whole story, you wil find, at the end of your labor, that you are able to recollect only a few of the most remarkable occurrences; the greatest part of the history haz escaped you. But if you confine yourself to one point of history at a time, for example, the life and policy of Alfred, or the account of Mary, queen of Scots, and reed what every author you can lay your hand on, haz said upon that subject, comparing their different accounts of it, you wil impress the history upon the mind, so az not to be eezily effaced. Law students should attend to theze remarks.
There iz another kind of temperance of more consequence than thoze mentioned, viz. temperance in plezure: For to all the personal evils of an excessiv indulgence of the animal appetite, we may add innumerable evils of a moral and social nature. No intercourse should take place between the sexes, til the body haz attained to full strength and maturity. In this respect, ancient barbarous nations hav set an example, that ought to make moderns blush for their effeminacy of manners, and their juvenile indulgences. The old Germans accounted it shameful and disreputable for yung men to hav any intercourse with the other sex, before the age of twenty.[168] To this continence were they much indetted for their muscular bodies, their helth and longevity. But such an abstinence from plezure waz not maintained by law; the Germans knew that positiv prohibitions would be ineffectual to restrain this indulgence; they had recourse to the only certain method; they made it dishonorable. How different iz the case in modern times! So far iz debauchery from being scandalous, that it iz frequently the boast of men in the first offices of state; and a karacter of licentiousness iz little or no objection in a candidate for preferment.[169]
Oppozed to passion and to false pride, caution wil perhaps be unavailing. But men who wish for permanent happiness, should be persuaded to take the meens for securing it. Wil you then run the risk of erly indulgence in illicit plezure? Some of you may escape the evils which generally follow; but the chances are against you. In nine cases of ten, you wil destroy the vigor of your bodies, and thus impair the ability of enjoyment by excess; or what iz an additional evil, you wil contract diseese. What iz the consequence? Eether your taste for the vilest plezures wil grow into habit and make abandoned rakes of you, averse to the innocent enjoyments of the married life, and of course bad members of society; or you wil perhaps marry amiable wimen, with your strength and helth impaired, and your minds debauched, fickle, prone to jelousy. In this case, you are neether secure of your partners affections, nor wil you be likely to know the valu of their virtues. Having broken over the barriers of virtue, you are forever liable to stray; and the probability iz, you destroy the happiness of your wives, and the peece of your families. Perhaps with some art, and the forgiving temper of your wives, you may conceel the family discord, and the wretched state of your minds, from a censorious world; pride, reputation, every motiv would urge you to this precaution; but iz not this a poor substitute for happiness? A poor consolation for the multiplied evils that follow, in an endless train, from the unreezonable and criminal indulgences of a few yeers? You may be assured also that a woman of good principles cannot feel a pure satisfaction, in the company even of a reformed husband, when she reflects, az she frequently wil, that he haz wasted hiz helth and substance upon the vilest of her sex. My yung frends, it iz idle, it iz weekness and folly to expect any kind of happiness or plezure, which shal indemnify you for the trubble of seeking it, except in the pursuance of the principles which morality prescribes. Whenever you pursu an object, at the expense of any moral principle; when the attainment of your end must injure the person, the property, the reputation or the feelings of one child of Adam, the acquisition of that object wil not giv you happiness; you are pursuing a fantom. This leeds me to say something on one of the most hanous crimes a man can commit, and which the laws of society cannot or at leest do not punish; that iz, seduction.
Fashion, which iz often founded on moral propriety, and oftener on political convenience, iz sometimes an enemy to both; and public opinion, enlisted in the cauze of vice, iz a greater scurge to society than war or pestilence. It iz one of the evils, or rather of the curses of civilization, that certain crimes, az malignant in their nature, and az fatal in their consequence, az murder and robbery, becume fashionable, and to a certain degree, reputable. Of this kind, iz deliberate seduction. It iz az malignant in its nature az murder, for it iz accompanied with the same aggravation, malice pretense, or a premeditated design: It iz az fatal to society; for reputation iz az deer az life; and the wretched victims of deception, if they lay violent hands on themselves, or linger out a life of disgrace, are equally murdered, equally lost to society. And the only reezon why the seducer and the murderer hav not been placed on a footing by the laws of society, must be, the difficulty of proof, or of ascertaining the degrees of gilt, where there iz a possibility or a presumtion of assent on the part of the woman.
There are however certain instances of this crime which are az capable of proof az, arson, burglary or murder; and why the laws of a state, which prohibit under severe penalties, the taking or giving more than six per cent. interest on the loan of money, even on the fairest contract, should yet permit the seducer to take another's reputation, to doom to indelible infamy the helpless female, whoze reputation iz all her portion, iz one of thoze problems in society, which the philosopher wil impute to human imperfection, and the Kristian number among the inscrutable mysteries of providence.
But I am not addressing legislators; I am reezoning with individuals. Waving the baseness of the crime, let us attend to its consequences in families and society. You wil doutless acknowlege, for I do not see how you can deny, that when you deliberately commit a crime that affects your nabor, you explicitly admit that your nabor haz an equal right to commit the same crime against yourselves; for I presume no man wil arrogate to himself an exclusiv privilege of being a villan.