"Sir," said the Prince with great modesty, "as I, like all the rest
of mankind, am desirous of felicity, my closest attention has been
fixed upon your discourse: I doubt not the truth of a position
which a man so learned has so confidently advanced. Let me only
know what it is to live according to Nature."

"When I find young men so humble and so docile," said the
philosopher, "I can deny them no information which my studies have
enabled me to afford. To live according to Nature is to act always
with due regard to the fitness arising from the relations and
qualities of causes and effects; to concur with the great and
unchangeable scheme of universal felicity; to co-operate with the
general disposition and tendency of the present system of things."

The Prince soon found that this was one of the sages whom he should
understand less as he heard him longer. He therefore bowed and was
silent; and the philosopher, supposing him satisfied and the rest
vanquished, rose up and departed with the air of a man that had co-
operated with the present system.



CHAPTER XXIII--THE PRINCE AND HIS SISTER DIVIDE BETWEEN THEM THE
WORK OF OBSERVATION.



Rasselas returned home full of reflections, doubting how to direct
his future steps. Of the way to happiness he found the learned and