AN ENQUIRY

TOUCHING

HAPPINESS.

1. ANY man that compares the perfection of the buman nature with that of the animal nature, will eafily find a far greater excellence in the former than in the latter: For, 1. The faculties of the former are more fublime and noble. 2. The very external fabric of the former much more beautiful and fuller of majesty than the latter. 3. The latter feems to be in a very great measure ordained in fubferviency to the former; fome for his food, fome for clothing, fome for use and fervice, fome for delight. 4. All the inferior animals feem to be placed under the discipline, regiment, and order of mankind; fo that he brings them all, or the most of them, under his order or fubjection.

2. It is therefore just and reasonable for us to think, that if the inferior animals have a kind of felicity or happiness attending their being, and fuitable to it, that much more man, the nobler being, should not be destitute of any Happiness attending his being, and fuitable

to it.

3. But rather confequently, that man, being the nobler creature, should not only have an Happiness as well as inferior animals, but he should have it placed in fome more noble and excellent rank and kind than that wherein the brutes have their Happiness placed.

4. It is plain that the inferior animals have a Happi

ness

nefs or felicity proportionate to their nature and fabric; which as they exceedingly defire, fo they do in a great measure enjoy; namely, afenfible good, anfwering their fenfible appetite. Every thing hath organs and inftruments answering to the ufe and convenience of their faculties; organs for their fenfe and local motion, and for their feeding, for their generation of their kind; every thing hath its peculiar instincts, and connatural artifices and energies for the exercifes of their organs and faculties for their prefervation and nourishment: Every thing hath a supply of external objects answering thofe faculties, defires, and inftincts; meats proper for their nourishment, places proper for their repofe; difference of fexes in their feveral kinds anfwering their procreative appetite: and most commonly fuch a proportion of health and integrity of nature, as goes along to that period of time allotted for their duration; and in default thereof, they are, for the most part, furnifhed with medicines naturally provided for them, which they naturally know and ufe, fo that they feem to want nothing that is neceffary to the complement of a fenfible felicity.

It is true they are in a great meafure fubjected to the dominion of mankind, which is fometimes over feverely exercised; but then they have the benefit of fupplies from them, protection under them, and if they meet not with masters more unreasonable than themselves, they find moderation from them. They are alfo expofed to rapine one from another, the weaker beafts, birds and fishes, being commonly the prey of the greater: but yet they are commonly endued with nimbleness, artifices or fhifts to avoid their adverfaries 1. But be these what abatements of their fenfible happinefs may be, yet they have certain negative advantages that conduce very much to their Happiness, or at leaft remove very much of what might abate it, and thereby render their fruition more free and perfect and uninterrupted; for instance, they feem to have no anticipa1 Vid. Lactant. de. Opific. Dei. c. 2.

tions or fear of death as a common evil incident to their nature: they have no anticipations of dangers till they immediately prefent themfelves unto them: they have no great fenfe of apprehenfions of any thing better than what at prefent they enjoy: they are not under the obligation of any law, or under the fenfe of any fuch thing, and confequently the fincere nefs of what they enjoy, not interrupted by the strokes of conscience under a sense of deviation from duty or guilt.

5. It is therefore plain, that if the human nature have no greater or better Happiness than what is accommodated only to a fenfible nature, they have no greater Happiness than the beasts have, which is not reasonably to be fuppofed for a nature fo far exceeding them.

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6. Further yet; if human nature were not under a capacity of a greater Happiness than what is termi nated in fenfe, mankind were much more unhappy than the baseft animal; and the more excellent the human nature is above the beafts, nay, the more excellent any one individual of the human kind were above another; the more miserable he were, and the more incapable of being in any measure happy: For the more wife and fagacious any man were, the more he must needs be fenfible of death, which fense would four all the Happinefs of a fenfible good; the more fenfible he must needs be, not only of the fhortnefs and uncertainty of fenfible enjoyments, but also of their poornefs, emptinefs, infufficiency, diffatisfactorinefs. It is evident that a fool fets a greater rate upon a fenfible good, than a man truly wife; and confequently, the fool could be the only man capable of Happiness: For it is most certain, that according to the measure of the esteem that any man hath of any good he enjoys, fuch is the meafure of his Happinefs in that enjoyment, fince the Happiness is somewhat that is intrinfical to the fenfe or mind that enjoys it. A thing really good, can never make that man happy, who is under a fenfe of evil or inconvenience by that enjoyment, fo long as he is un

der

der that fenfe. Since therefore it is prepofterous and unreasonable to suppose that man, the best of terreftrial creatures, and wife men, the best of men, fhould be excluded from at least an equal degree of Happiness with the beasts that perifh; and fince it muft needs be, that a bare fenfible good can never communicate to a man an equal degree of Happiness with a beaft, nor to a wife man an equal degree of Happiness with a fool; it remains, there muft needs, in common reason, be fome other fubject wherein the Happiness of a man, of a wife man, must confift, that it is not barely fenfible good.

7. All the good things of this life, they are but fenfible goods, and therefore they cannot be the true matter of that Happiness which we may reasonably think belongs to the reasonable nature as fuch; the former will appear by an induction of particulars, which I fhall purfue in order, with the particular inftances of their infufficiencies to make up a true Happiness to the reasonable nature, as well as that general, that they are but fenfible goods, and merely accommodated to a fenfible life and nature.

1. Life itfelf is not fuch a fufficient conftituent of Happiness: And the inftance is evident, because it is poffible that life itfelf may be miferable: There may be life where there is fickness, pain, disgrace, poverty and all thofe external occurrences that may render life grievous and burthenfome. Life may indeed be the fubject of Happiness, when it hath all those contributions that concur to make it fuch; but life alone, and as fuch, cannot be Happiness, because there may be a miferable life.

2. Those bona corporis or compofiti,' the goods of 'the body,' are not fufficient to make up a fuitable Happiness to the reasonable nature, as health, ftrength; for the beafts themselves enjoy this, and for the most part, the brutes enjoy a greater measure of these than mankind; and befides ftill, there is that which is like the worm at the root of the gourd, that fpoils the Happiness that must arife from it; viz. mortality and

death,

death, which will certainly pull down this tabernacle and man hath an uninterinitted pre-apprehenfion of it, which fours the very enjoyment itfelf. And in this, as hath been faid, the beafts that perifh have a preeminence over mankind; for though both are mortal, yet the beaft is not under that pre-apprehenfion of it that man inceffantly hath, whereby his fruition of that Happinefs of health is the more fincere; and this confideration must run through all thofe other contributions of fenfible goods, that hereafter follow. And as for beauty, the Happiness thereof as it is but fading and empty, fo the felicity that it gives, is not to the party that hath it, but to others, unto whom perchance it may be a delightful and amiable fpectacle, but not to him that hath it.

3. There are a fecondary fort of bodily goods, namely, pleafures of the fenfes, as delightful meats, drinks, fights, mufic, pleafant odours, and other gratifications of the fenfitive appetite, or luft; as the lust of the flesh, the lust of revenge, the luft of defire, &c. These cannot make up a competent Happiness to the human nature. 1. They are but fenfible goods, com mon to the beafts as well as men. 2. Though they may be competent to make up the Happiness of the fenfible nature, yet they are not fuch to the reasonable nature; because they are still accompanied with a present concurring fenfe of mortality, which embitters their very enjoyments, and renders them infipid, if not bitter. 3. The wifer the man is, the lefs he values them, and confequently, are at beft a Happiness to fools, and fuch as degenerate from the noblenefs of the human nature into the degree of beafts, by fetting. an over-value upon them. Again, 4. They are tranfient, and the Happinefs of them is only before their enjoyment; when they are enjoyed to fatiety, they lofe their use and value. 5. Thefe placentæ fenfus1, especially of the fenfual appetite, are not for their own fakes, but in order to fomething elfe, viz. To invite pleasures of sense.

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