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CHAPTER XXII.

THE HAPPINESS OF A LIFE LED ACCORDING TO

NATURE.

RASSELAS Went often to an assembly of learned men, who met at stated times to unbend their minds and 5 compare their opinions. Their manners were somewhat coarse, but their conversation was instructive, and their disputations acute, though sometimes too violent, and often continued till neither controvertist remembered upon what question they began. Some IO faults were almost general among them; everyone was desirous to dictate to the rest, and everyone was pleased to hear the genius or knowledge of another depreciated.

In this assembly Rasselas was relating his interview 15 with the hermit, and the wonder with which he heard him censure a course of life which he had so deliberately chosen, and so laudably followed. The sentiments of the hearers were various. Some were of opinion that the folly of his choice had been justly 201 punished by condemnation to perpetual perseverance. One of the youngest among them, with great vehemence, pronounced him an hypocrite. Some talked of the right of society to the labor of individuals, and considered retirement as a desertion of duty. Others 25 readily allowed that there was a time when the claims of the public were satisfied, and when a man might properly sequester himself, to review his life and purify his heart.

One, who appeared more affected with the narrative 30

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than the rest, thought it likely that the hermit would in a few years go back to his retreat, and perhaps, if shame did not restrain or death intercept him, return once more from his retreat into the world. "For the hope of happiness," says he, "is so strongly impressed that the longest experience is not able to efface it. Of the present state, whatever it be, we feel and are forced to confess the misery; yet when the same state is again at a distance, imagination paints it Io as desirable. But the time will surely come when desire will be no longer our torment, and no man shall be wretched but by his own fault.”

"This," said a philosopher who had heard him with tokens of great impatience, "is the present condition 15 of a wise man. The time is already come, when none are wretched but by their own fault. Nothing is more idle than to inquire after happiness, which nature has kindly placed within our reach. The way to be happy is to live according to nature, in obedience to that 20 universal and unalterable law with which every heart is orginally impressed; which is not written on it by precept, but engraven by destiny, not instilled by education, but infused at our nativity. He that lives according to nature will suffer nothing from the 25 delusions of hope or importunities of desire; he will receive and reject with equability of temper, and act or suffer as the reason of things shall alternately prescribe. Other men may amuse themselves with subtle definitions or intricate ratiocination. Let them learn 30 to be wise by easier means; let them observe the hind

of the forest and the linnet of the grove; let them consider the life of animals, whose motions are regu

lated by instinct; they obey their guide, and are happy. Let us therefore, at length, cease to dispute, and learn to live; throw away the encumbrance of precepts, which they who utter them with so much pride and pomp do not understand, and carry with us 5 this simple and intelligible maxim, that deviation from nature is deviation from happiness."

When he had spoken he looked round him with a placid air, and enjoyed the consciousness of his own beneficence. "Sir," said the prince with great 10 modesty, "as I, like all the rest of mankind, am desirous of felicity, my closest attention has been fixed upon your discourse. I doubt not the truth of a position which a man so learned has so confidently advanced; let me only know what it is to live accord- 15 ing to nature.'

"When I find young men so humble and so docile," said the philosopher, "I can deny them no information which my studies have enabled me to afford. To live according to nature, is to act always with due regard 20 to the fitness arising from the relations and qualities of causes and effects; to concur with the great and unchangeable scheme of universal felicity; to cooperate with the general disposition and tendency of the present system of things."

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The prince soon found that this was one of the sages whom he should understand less as he heard him longer. He therefore bowed and was silent; and the philosopher, supposing him satisfied and the rest vanquished, rose up and departed with the air of a man 30 that had co-operated with the present system.

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CHAPTER XXIII.

THE PRINCE AND HIS SISTER DIVIDE BETWEEN
THEM THE WORK OF OBSERVATION.

RASSELAS returned home full of reflections, doubtful how to direct his future steps. Of the way to happiness he found the learned and simple equally ignorant; but as he was yet young, he flattered himself that he had time remaining for more experiments and further inquiries. He communicated to Imlac his Io observations and his doubts, but was answered by him with new doubts and remarks that gave him no comfort. He therefore discoursed more frequently and freely with his sister, who had yet the same hope with himself, and always assisted him to give some reason 15 why, though he had been hitherto frustrated, he might succeed at last.

"We have hitherto," said she, "known but little of the world; we have never yet been either great or mean. In our own country, though we had royalty, 20 we had no power, and in this we have not yet seen the private recesses of domestic peace. Imlac favors not our search, lest we should in time find him mistaken. We will divide the task between us; you shall try what is to be found in the splendor of courts, and I 25 will range the shades of humbler life. Perhaps command and authority may be the supreme blessings, as they afford most opportunities of doing good; or perhaps what this world can give may be found in the modest habitations of middle fortune, too low for 30 great designs, and too high for penury and distress."

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE PRINCE EXAMINES THE HAPPINESS OF HIGH

STATIONS.

RASSELAS applauded the design, and appeared next day with a splendid retinue at the court of the Bassa. 5 He was soon distinguished for his magnificence, and admitted, as a prince whose curiosity had brought him from distant countries, to an intimacy with the great officers and frequent conversation with the Bassa himself.

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He was at first inclined to believe, that the man must be pleased with his own condition whom all approached with reverence and heard with obedience, and who had the power to extend his edicts to a whole kingdom. "There can be no pleasure," said he, "equal to that 15 of feeling at once the joy of thousands all made happy by wise administration. Yet, since by the law of subordination this sublime delight can be in one nation but the lot of one, it is surely reasonable to think there is some satisfaction more popular and accessible, and that 20 millions can hardly be subjected to the will of a single man, only to fill his particular breast with incommunicable content.

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These thoughts were often in his mind, and he found no solution of the difficulty. But as presents and 25 civilities gained him more familiarity, he found that almost every man that stood high in employment hated all the rest, and was hated by them; and that their lives were a continual succession of plots and detections, stratagems and escapes, faction and treachery. 30

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