n
balance with so great an advantage.

Let us now view the other species of the rich, those who devote their
time and fortunes to idleness and pleasure. How much happier are they?
The pleasures which are agreeable to nature are within the reach of all,
and therefore can form no distinction in favor of the rich. The
pleasures which art forces up are seldom sincere, and never satisfying.
What is worse, this constant application to pleasure takes away from the
enjoyment, or rather turns it into the nature of a very burdensome and
laborious business. It has consequences much more fatal. It produces a
weak valetudinary state of body, attended by all those horrid disorders,
and yet more horrid methods of cure, which are the result of luxury on
the one hand, and the weak and ridiculous efforts of human art on the
other. The pleasures of such men are scarcely felt as pleasures; at the
same time that they bring on pains and diseases, which are felt but too
severely. The mind has its share of the misfortune; it grows lazy and
enervate, unwilling and unable to search for truth, and utterly
uncapable of knowing, much less of relishing, real happiness. The poor
by their excessive labor, and the rich by their enormous luxury, are set
upon a level, and rendered equally ignorant of any knowledge which might
conduce to their happiness. A dismal view of the interior of all civil
society! The lower part broken and ground down by the most cruel
oppression; and the rich by their artificial method of life bringing
worse evils on themselves than their tyranny could possibly inflict on
those below them. Very different is the prospect of the natural state.
Here there are no wants which nature gives, and in this state men can be
sensible of no other wants, which are not to be supplied by a very
moderate degree of labor; therefore there is no slavery. Neither is
there any luxury, because no single man can supply the materials of it.
Life is simple, and therefore it is happy.

I am conscious, my lord, that your politician will urge in his defence,
that this unequal state is highly useful. That without dooming some part
of mankind to extraordinary toil, the arts which cultivate life could
not be exercised. But I demand of this politician, how such arts came to
be necessary? He answers, that civil society could not well exist
without them. So that these arts are necessary to civil society, and
civil society necessary again to these arts. Thus are w