No
resource for this purpose: no machinery, in order merely to give
pleasure or ease: no fund of pure joy and contentment: no
indulgence, without some want or necessity accompanying it. At
least, the few phenomena of this nature are overbalanced by
opposite phenomena of still greater importance.
Our sense of music, harmony, and indeed beauty of all kinds,
gives satisfaction, without being absolutely necessary to the
preservation and propagation of the species. But what racking
pains, on the other hand, arise from gouts, gravels, megrims,
toothaches, rheumatisms, where the injury to the animal machinery
is either small or incurable? Mirth, laughter, play, frolic, seem
gratuitous satisfactions, which have no further tendency: spleen,
melancholy, discontent, superstition, are pains of the same
nature. How then does the Divine benevolence display itself, in
the sense of you Anthropomorphites? None but we Mystics, as you
were pleased to call us, can account for this strange mixture of
phenomena, by deriving it from attributes, infinitely perfect,
but incomprehensible.
And have you at last, said C/LEANTHES\ smiling, betrayed
your intentions, P/HILO\ ? Your long agreement with D/EMEA\ did
indeed a little surprise me; but I find you were all the while
erecting a concealed battery against me. And I must confess, that
you have now fallen upon a subject worthy of your noble spirit of
opposition and controversy.
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