earnestness and with incredible toil, to obtain things which are by no means advantageous, and even hurtful, to it, but which it pursues because it wills to have them. It is whimsical, and often throws its whole application into the most frivolous pursuits; it finds its whole delight in the most insipid, and preserves all its pride in the most contemptible. It is present to all states and in all conditions of life; it lives everywhere, it lives on every thing, it lives on nothing. It accommodates itself to advantages, and to the deprivation of them; it even goes over to the side of those who are at war with it; it enters into their schemes, and, what is wonderful, it joins them in hating itself, it conspires its own destruction, it labors for its own ruin. In short, it cares for nothing but its own existence, and, provided that it do exist, will readily become its own enemy. We must not be surprised, therefore, if it unites with the most rigid austerity, and enters boldly into league with it to work its own destruction, because, at the same time that it is overthrowing itself in one place it is re-establishing itself in another. When we suppose that it is relinquishing its pleasures, it does nothing but suspend or vary them; and even when defeated, and supposed to be annihilated, we find it tri-
