agreed in giving the preference, very greatly, to the pleasures
of intellect; and that my own experience completely confirmed the
truth of their decisions; that I had found sensual pleasures
vain, transient, and continually attended with tedium and
disgust; but that intellectual pleasures appeared to me ever
fresh and young, filled up all my hours satisfactorily, gave a
new zest to life, and diffused a lasting serenity over my mind.
If he believe me, it can only be from respect and veneration for
my authority. It is credulity, and not conviction. I have not
said any thing, nor can any thing be said, of a nature to produce
real conviction. The affair is not an affair of reasoning, but of
experience. He would probably observe in reply, what you say may
be very true with regard to yourself and many other good men, but
for my own part I feel very differently upon the subject. I have
very frequently taken up a book and almost as frequently gone to
sleep over it; but when I pass an evening with a gay party, or a
pretty woman, I feel alive, and in spirits, and truly enjoy my
existence.

Under such circumstances, reasoning and arguments are not
instruments from which success can be expected. At some future
time perhaps, real satiety of sensual pleasures, or some
accidental impressions that awakened the energies of his mind,
might effect that, in a month, which the most patient and able
expostulations might be incapable of effecting in forty years.



CHAPTER 14