Select British Classics Volume 18 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1803 edition. Excerpt: ... No. DCXXXIV. FRIDAY, DECEMBER 17. The fewer our wants, the nearer we resemble the gods. IT was the common boast of the heathen philosophers, that by the efficacy of their several doctrines, they made human nature resemble the divine. How much mistaken soever they might be in the several means they proposed for this end, it must be owned that the design was great and glorious. The finest works of invention and imagination are of very little weight, when put in the balance with what refines and exalts the rational mind. Longinus excuses Homer very handsomely, when he says the poet made his gods like men, that he might make his men appear like the gods: but it must be allowed that several of the ancient philosophers acted, as Cicero wishes Homer had done; they endeavoured rather to make men like gods, than gods like men. According to this general maxim in philosophy, some of them have endeavoured to place men in such a state of pleasure, or indolence at least, as they vainly imagined the happiness of the Supreme Being to consist in. On the other hand, the most virtuous sect of philosophers had created a chimerical wise man, whom they made exempt from passion and pain, and thought it enough to pronounce him allsufficient. This last character, when divested of the glare of human philosophy that surrounds it, signifies no more, than that a good and a wise man should so arm himself with patience, as not to yield tamely to the violence of passion and pain; that he should learn so to suppress and contract his desires as to have fewwants; and that he should cherish so many virtues in his soui, as to have a perpetual source of pleasure in himself. The Christian religion requires: that, after having framed the best idea we are able, of the divine...