While riches are so necessary to present convenience, and so much more
easily obtained by crimes than virtues, the mind can only be secured
from yielding to the continual impulse of covetousness by the
preponderation of unchangeable and eternal motives. Gold will turn the
intellectual balance, when weighed only against reputation; but will be
light and ineffectual when the opposite scale is charged with justice,
veracity, and piety[f].
No. 132. SATURDAY, JUNE 22, 1751.
--_Dociles imitandis
Turpibus ac pravis omnes sumus_.--JUV. Sat. xiv. 40.
The mind of mortals, in perverseness strong,
Imbibes with dire docility the wrong.
TO THE RAMBLER.
MR. RAMBLER,
I was bred a scholar, and after the usual course of education, found it
necessary to employ for the support of life that learning which I had
almost exhausted my little fortune in acquiring. The lucrative
professions drew my regard with equal attraction; each presented ideas
which excited my curiosity, and each imposed duties which terrified my
apprehension.
There is no temper more unpropitious to interest than desultory
application and unlimited inquiry, by which the desires are held in a
perpetual equipoise, and the mind fluctuates between different purposes
without determination.
Pages:
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195