Priestley thinks to give the turn of the scale to happiness, by making
it depend intirely upon health, notwithstanding he says in another
place that human sensations are a mass collected from the past, present
and future, and as a man grows up the present goes on to bear a less
proportion to the other two. It would indeed be a short but lame way of
proving that "happiness is the design of the creation" because health
is designed, and sickness is only an exception, not a general rule."
Many a healthy man has certainly been unhappy, or else had a man better
study health than virtue. If the mill-wright make a poor machine he is
a poor workman; God in like manner designing health and introducing
sickness is but a poor physician. In another place Dr. Priestley having
considered, that he had asserted that human sensations arise from ideas
of the past and future as well as the present, finds himself obliged to
alter his notions of happiness, so far as to say that happiness is more
intellectual than corporeal. But it is rather extraordinary to assert
at the same time, that happiness is the necessary consequence of
health, and that happiness is more from intellectual than corporeal
feelings. Surely health, if any thing, is corporeal. Another curious
fancy about pain and happiness is, that our finite nature not admitting
infinite or unlimited happiness we must leave it to the wisdom of the
Deity to determine which is best for us (since happiness must be
diminished) a little pain to be added to it or somewhat of happiness to
be taken away.
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