to its height. However it may be with other generic habits, the obfervation, I am certain, holds with respect to the pleasures of virtue and of knowledge: the pleasure of doing good has an unbounded scope, and may be fo variously gratified, that it can never decay; fcience is equally unbounded; our appetite for knowledge having an ample range of gratification, where discoveries are recommended by novelty, by variety, by utility, or by all of them.

In this intricate inquiry, I have endeavoured, but without fuccefs, to discover by what particular means it is that cuftom hath influence upon us and now nothing seems left, but to hold our nature to be fo framed, as to be fufceptible of fuch influence. And fuppofing it purpofely fo framed, it will not be difficult to find out feveral important final caufes. That the power of cuftom is a happy contrivance for our good, cannot have efcaped any one who reflects, that business is our province, and pleasure our relaxation only. Now fatiety is neceffary to check exquifite pleasures, which other wife would engrofs the mind, and unqualify us for bufinefs. On the other hand, as business is fometimes painful, and is never pleasant beyond moderation, the habitual increase of moderate pleasure, and the converfion of pain into pleasure, are admirably contrived for disappointing the malice of Fortune, and for reconciling us to whatever courfe of life may be our lot:

How

.

How ufe doth breed a habit in a man!

This fhadowy defert, unfrequented woods,

I better brook than flourishing peopled towns.

Here I can fit alone, unseen of any,

And to the nightingale's complaining notes

Tune my diftreffes, and record my woes.

Two Gentlemen of Verona, A&t v. Sc. 4.

As the foregoing diftinction between intense and moderate holds in pleasure only, every degree of pain being foftened by time, cuftom is a catholicon for pain and diftrefs of every fort; and of that regulation the final caufe requires no illuftration.

Another final caufe of cuftom will be highly relished by every person of humanity, and yet has in a great measure been overlooked; which is, that custom hath a greater influence than any other known caufe, to put the rich and the poor upon a level weak pleasures, the fhare of the latter, become fortunately stronger by custom; while voluptuous pleasures, the share of the former, are continually lofing ground by fatiety. Men of fortune, who poffefs palaces, fumptuous gardens, rich fields, enjoy them less than paffengers do. The goods of Fortune are not unequally distributed: the opulent poffefs what others enjoy.

And indeed, if it be the effect of habit, to produce the pain of want in a high degree, while there is little pleasure in enjoyment, a voluptu

Thofe

ous life is of all the leaft to be envied. who are habituated to high feeding, eafy vehicles, rich furniture, a crowd of valets, much deference and flattery, enjoy but a small share of happiness, while they are expofed to manifold diftreffes. To fuch a man, enflaved by eafe and luxury, even the petty inconvenience in travelling, of a rough road, bad weather, or homely fare, are ferious evils: he lofes his tone of mind, turns peevish, and would wreak his refentment even upon the common accidents of life. Better far to use the goods of Fortune with moderation: a man who by temperance and activity hath acquired a hardy conftitution, is, on the one hand, guarded against external accidents; and, on the other, is provided with great variety of enjoyment ever at command.

I shall close this chapter with an article more delicate than abftrufe, namely, what authority custom ought to have over our taste in the fine arts. One particular is certain, that we chearfully abandon to the authority of custom things that nature hath left indifferent. It is cuftom, not nature, that hath established a difference between the right hand and the left, fo as to make it awkward and disagreeable to use the left where the right is commonly used. The various colours, though they affect us differently, are all of them agreeable in their purity: but cuftom has regulated that matter in another manner; a black skin upon a human being, is to

us

us difagreeable; and a white skin probably no lefs fo to a Negro. Thus things, originally indifferent, become agreeable or disagreeable, by the force of cuftom. Nor will this be surprising after the discovery made above, that the original agreeablenefs or difagreeableness of an object, is, by the influence of custom, often converted into the oppofite quality.

Proceeding to matters of tafte, where there is naturally a preference of one thing before another; it is certain, in the first place, that our faint and more delicate feelings are readily fufceptible of a bias from cuftom; and therefore that it is no proof of a defective tafte to find thefe in fome meafure influenced by cuftom: drefs and the modes of external behaviour are regulated by cuftom in every country: the deep red or vermilion with which the ladies in France cover their cheeks, appears to them beautiful in fpite of nature; and ftrangers cannot altogether be juftified in condemning that practice, confidering the lawful authority of cuftom, or of the fashion, as it is called: It is told of the people who inhabit the fkirts of the Alps facing the north, that the swelling they have univerfally in the neck is to them agreeable. So far has cuftom power to change the nature of things, and to make an object originally disagreeable take on an oppofite appearance.

But, as to every particular that can be denominated proper or improper, right or wrong, Dd 3 cuftom

custom has little authority, and ought to have none. The principle of duty takes naturally place of every other; and it argues a fhameful weakness or degeneracy of mind, to find it in any cafe so far fubdued as to fubmit to cuftom.

These few hints may enable us to judge in fome measure of foreign manners, whether exhibited by foreign writers or our own. A comparifon between the ancients and the moderns was fome time ago a favourite fubject: those who declared for ancient manners thought it fufficient that thefe manners were fupported by custom: their antagonists, on the other hand, refufing fubmiffion to cuftom as a ftandard of tafte, condemned ancient manners as in feveral inftances irrational. In that controverfy, an appeal being made to different principles, without the flightest attempt to establish a common ftandard, the dispute could have no end. The hints above given tend to establish a standard for judging how far the authority of cuftom ought to be held lawful; and, for the fake of illuftration, we shall apply that ftandard in a few inftances.

Human facrifices, the most difmal effect of blind and groveling fuperftition, wore gradually out of ufe by the prevalence of reafon and humanity. In the days of Sophocles and Euripides, traces of that practice were still recent; and the Athenians, through the prevalence of custom, could without difguft fuffer human facrifices to be reprefented in their theatre, of

which