my own sensations, or the means of alleviating them. It would be easy to show from many things that mere appetite (generally, at least, in reasonable beings) is but the fragment of a selfmoving machine, but a sort of half organ, a subordinate instrument even in the accomplishment of its own purposes; that it does little or nothing without the aid of another faculty to inform and direct it. Before the impulses of appetite can be converted into the regular pursuit of a given object, they must first be communicated to the understanding, and modify the will through that. Consequently, as the desire of the ultimate gratification of the appetite is not the same with the appetite itself, that is mere physical uneasiness, but an indirect result of its communication to the thinking or imaginative principle, the influence of appetite over the will must depend on the extraordinary degree of force and vividness which it gives to the idea of a particular object; and we accordingly find that the same cause which irritates the desire of selfish gratification, increases our sensibility to the same desires and gratification in others, where they are consistent with our own, and where the violence of the physical impulse does not overpower every other consideration. ESSAY X I. ON THE CONDUCT OF LIFE; OR, ADVICE TO A SCHOOL-BOY. MY DEAR LITTLE FELLOW, You are now going to settle at school, and may consider this as your first entrance into the world. As my health is so indifferent, and I may not be with you long, I wish to leave you some advice (the best I can) for your conduct in life, both that it may be of use to you, and as something to remember me by. I may at least be able to caution you against my own errors, if nothing else. As we went along to your new place of destination, you often repeated that "You durst say they were a set of stupid, disagreeable people," meaning the people at the school. You were to blame in this. It is a good old rule to hope for the best. Always, my dear, believe things to be right, till you find them the contrary; and even then, instead of irritating yourself against them, endeavour to put up with them as well as |