 his having any such event in view?'

 

 

CHAPTER VI

For some time after this he absented himself from me; and, when he returned, his manners were still more unequal; even his sentiments, and principles, at times, appeared to me equivocal, and his character seemed wholly changed. I tried, in vain, to accommodate myself to a disposition so various. My affection, my sensibility, my fear of offending—a thousand conflicting, torturing, emotions, threw a constraint over my behaviour.—My situation became absolutely intolerable—time was murdered, activity vain, virtue inefficient: yet, a secret hope inspired me, that indifference could not have produced the irritations, the inequalities, that thus harrassed me. I thought, I observed a conflict in his mind; his fits of absence, and reflection, were unusual, deep, and frequent: I watched them with anxiety, with terror, with breathless expectation. My health became affected, and my mind disordered. I perceived that it was impossible to proceed, in the manner we had hitherto done, much longer—I felt that it would, inevitably, destroy me.

I reflected, meditated, reasoned, with myself—'That one channel, into which my thoughts were incessantly impelled, was destructive of all order, of all connection.' New projects occurred to me, which I had never before ventured to encourage—I revolved them in my mind, examined them in every point of view, weighed their advantages and disadvantages, in a moral, in a prudential, scale.—Threatening evils appeared on all sides—I endeavoured, at once, to free my mind from prejudice, and from passion; and, in the critical and singular circumstances in which I had placed myself, coolly to survey the several arguments of the case, and nicely to calculate their force and importance.

'If, as we are taught to believe, the benevolent Author of nature be, indeed, benevolent,' said I, to myself, 'he surely must have intended the happiness of his creatures. Our morality cannot extend to him, but must consist in the knowledge, and practice, of those duties which we owe to ourselves and to each other.—Individual happiness constitutes the general good:—happiness is the only true end of existence;—all notions of morals, founded on any other principle, involve in themselves a contradiction, and must be erroneous. Man does right, when pursuing interest and pleasure—it argues no depravity—this is the fable of superstition: he ought to only be careful, that, in seeking his own good, he does not render it incompatible with the good of others—that he
