FRANCIS.

When Socrates was asked, "which of mortal men was to be accounted
nearest to the _gods_ in happiness?" he answered, "that man who is in
want of the fewest things."

In this answer, Socrates left it to be guessed by his auditors, whether,
by the exemption from want which was to constitute happiness, he meant
amplitude of possessions or contraction of desire. And, indeed, there is
so little difference between them, that Alexander the Great confessed
the inhabitant of a tub the next man to the master of the world; and
left a declaration to future ages, that if he was not Alexander he
should wish to be Diogenes.

These two states, however, though they resemble each other in their
consequence, differ widely with respect to the facility with which they
may be attained. To make great acquisitions can happen to very few; and
in the uncertainty of human affairs, to many it will be incident to
labour without reward, and to lose what they already possess by
endeavours to make it more: some will always want abilities, and others
opportunities to accumulate wealth. It is therefore happy, that nature
has allowed us a more certain and easy road to plenty; every man may
grow rich by contracting his wishes, and by quiet acquiescence in what
has been given him, supply the absence of more.

Yet so far is almost every man from emulating the happiness of the gods,
by any other means than grasping at their power, that it seems to be the
great business of life to create wants as fast as they are satisfied. It
has been long observed by moralists, that every man squanders or loses a
great part of that life, of which every man knows and deplores the
shortness: and it may be remarked with equal justness, that though every
man laments his own insufficiency to his happiness, and knows himself a
necessitous and precarious being, incessantly soliciting the assistance
of others, and feeling wants which his own art or strength cannot
supply; yet there is no man, who does not, by the superaddition of
unnatural cares, render himself still more dependent; who does not
create an artificial poverty, and suffer himself to feel pain for the
want of that, of which, when it is gained, he can have no enjoyment.

It must, indeed, be allowed, that as we lose part of our time because it
steals away silent and invisible, and many an hour is passed before we
recollect that it is passing; so unnatural desires insinuate themselves
unobserved into t