OF QUALITIES USEFUL TO OURSELVES.



PART I.



IT seems evident, that where a quality or habit is subjected to
our examination, if it appear in any respect prejudicial to the
person possessed of it, or such as incapacitates him for business
and action, it is instantly blamed, and ranked among his faults
and imperfections. Indolence, negligence, want of order and
method, obstinacy, fickleness, rashness, credulity; these
qualities were never esteemed by any one indifferent to a
character; much less, extolled as accomplishments or virtues. The
prejudice, resulting from them, immediately strikes our eye, and
gives us the sentiment of pain and disapprobation.

No quality, it is allowed, is absolutely either blameable or
praiseworthy. It is all according to its degree. A due medium,
says the Peripatetics, is the characteristic of virtue. But this
medium is chiefly determined by utility. A proper celerity, for
instance, and dispatch in business, is commendable. When
defective, no progress is ever made in the execution of any
purpose: When excessive, it engages us in precipitate and ill-
concerted measures and enterprises: By such reasonings, we fix
the proper and commendable mediocrity in all moral and prudential
disquisitions; and never lose view of the advantages, which
result from any character or habit. Now as these advantages are