the misery; yet when the same state is again at a distance,
imagination paints it as desirable. But the time will surely come
when desire will no longer be our torment and no man shall be
wretched but by his own fault.

"This," said a philosopher who had heard him with tokens of great
impatience, "is the present condition of a wise man. The time is
already come when none are wretched but by their own fault.
Nothing is more idle than to inquire after happiness which Nature
has kindly placed within our reach. The way to be happy is to live
according to Nature, in obedience to that universal and unalterable
law with which every heart is originally impressed; which is not
written on it by precept, but engraven by destiny; not instilled by
education, but infused at our nativity. He that lives according to
Nature will suffer nothing from the delusions of hope or
importunities of desire; he will receive and reject with equability
of temper; and act or suffer as the reason of things shall
alternately prescribe. Other men may amuse themselves with subtle
definitions or intricate ratiocination. Let them learn to be wise
by easier means: let them observe the hind of the forest and the
linnet of the grove: let them consider the life of animals, whose
motions are regulated by instinct; they obey their guide, and are
happy. Let us therefore at length cease to dispute, and learn to
live: throw away the encumbrance of precepts, which they who utter
them with so much pride and pomp do not understand, and carry with
us this simple and intelligible maxim: that deviation from Nature
is deviation from happiness.

When he had spoken he looked round him with a placid air, and
enjoyed the consciousness of his own beneficence.