rtain. I wonder the inductive process has not been more
systematically applied to the solution of this great philosophical
problem, _what is happiness_, and _in what it consists_, for the
practical purpose of directing the human mind into the right road
for reaching this goal of all human wishes. Why are not
innumerable instances collected, examined, analysed, and the
results expanded, explained, and reasoned upon for the benefit and
instruction of mankind? Who can tell but what these results may
lead at last to some simple conclusions such as it requires no
vast range of intellect to discover, no subtle philosophy to
teach--conclusions mortifying to the pride and vanity of man, but
calculated to mitigate the evils of life by softening mutual
asperities, and by the establishment of the doctrine of
_humility_, from which all charity, forbearance, toleration, and
benevolence must flow as from their source? These simple
conclusions may amount to no more than a simple maxim that
happiness is to be found 'in the pursuit of truth and the practice
of virtue.'

Semita certe
Tranquillae per virtutem patet unica vitae.

The end of the tenth Satire of Juvenal (which is one of the
finest sermons that ever was composed, and worth all the homilies
of all the Fathers of the Church) teaches us what to pray for--

Orandum est ut sit mens sana in corpore sano.

Healthy body, healthy appetite, healthy feelings, though
accompanied by mediocrity of talent, unadorned with wit and
imagination, and unpolished by learning and science, will
outstrip in the race for happiness the splendid irregularities of
genius and the most dazzling successes of ambition. At the same
time this general view of the probabilities of happiness must be
qualified by the admission that mere vegetation scarcely deserves
the name of happiness, and that the highest enjoyment which
humanity is capable of may be said to consist in the pleasures of
reason and imagination--of a mind expatiating among the wonders
of nature, and ranging through all the 'changes of many-coloured
life,' without being shaken from its equilibrium by the
disturbing causes of jealousy, envy, and the evil passions of our
nature. The most galling of all conditions is that of him whose
conscience and consciousness whisper to him perpetual reproaches,
who reflects on what he might have been and who feels and sees
what he is. When such a man as Macintosh, fraught wi