Lifes Progress Through the Passions | Page 3

indulge ourselves in errors which would seem small in
comparison with those presented to us.--There never yet was any one
man, in whom all the virtues, or all the vices, were summed up; for,
though reason and education may go a great way toward curbing the
passions, yet I believe experience will inform, even the best of men,
that they will sometimes launch out beyond their due bounds, in spite

of all the care can be taken to restrain them; nor do I think the very
worst, and most wicked, does not feel in himself, at some moments, a
propensity to good, though it may be possible he never brings it into
practice; at least, this was the opinion of the antients, as witness the
poet's words:
All men are born with seeds of good and _ill_; And each shoot forth, in
more or less degree: One you may cultivate with care and skill, But
from the other ne'er be wholly free.
The human mind may, I think, be compared to a chequer-work, where
light and shade appear by turns; and in proportion as either of these is
most conspicuous, the man is alone worthy of praise or censure; for
none there are can boast of being wholly bright.
I believe by this the reader will be convinced he must not expect to see
a faultless figure in the hero of the following pages; but to remove all
possibility of a disappointment on that score, I shall farther declare, that
I am an enemy to all romances, novels, and whatever carries the air of
them, tho' disguised under different appellations; and as it is a real, not
fictitious character I am about to present, I think myself obliged, for the
reasons I have already given, as well as to gratify my own inclinations,
to draw him such as he was, not such as some sanguine imaginations
might with him to have been.
I flatter myself, however, that truth will appear not altogether void of
charms, and the adventures I take upon me to relate, not be less
pleasing for being within the reach of probability, and such as might
have happened to any other as well as the person they did.--Few there
are, I am pretty certain, who will not find some resemblance of himself
in one part or other of his life, among the many various and surprizing
turns of fortune, which the subject of this little history experienced, as
also be reminded in what manner the passions operate in every stage of
life, and how far the constitution of the outward frame is concerned in
the emotions of the internal faculties.
These are things surely very necessary to be considered, and when they
are so, will, in a great measure, abate that unbecoming vehemence, with

which people are apt to testify their admiration, or abhorrence of
actions, which it very often happens would lose much of their eclat
either way, were the secret springs that give them motion, seen into
with the eyes of philosophy and reflection.
But this will be more clearly understood by a perusal of the facts herein
contained, from which I will no longer detain in the attention of my
reader.

BOOK the First.

CHAP. I.
Shews, in the example of Natura, how from our very birth, the passions,
to which the human soul is incident, are discoverable in us; and how far
the organs of sense, or what is called the constitution, has an effect over
us.
The origin of Natura would perhaps require more time to trace than the
benefit of the discovery would attone for: it shall therefore suffice to
say, that his ancestors were neither of the highest rank:--that if no
extraordinary action had signalized the names of any of them, so none
of them had been guilty of crimes to entail infamy on their posterity:
and that a moderate estate in the family had descended from father to
son for many generations, without being either remarkably improved or
embezzled.--His immediate parents were in very easy circumstances,
and he being their first son, was welcomed into the world with a joy
usual on such occasions.--I never heard that any prodigies preceded or
accompanied his nativity; or that the planets, or his mother's cravings
during her pregnancy, had sealed him with any particular mark or
badge of distinction: but have been well assured he was a fine boy,
sucked heartily of his mother's milk, and what they call a thriving child.
His weaning, I am told, was attended by some little ailments,
occasioned by his pining after the food to which he had been
accustomed; but proper means being found to make him lose the

memory of the breast, he soon recovered his flesh, increased in strength,
and could go about the