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MORAL AND ENTERTAINING,

ON THE

VARIOUS FACULTIES AND PASSIONS

OF THE

HUMAN MIND.

BY THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

EDMUND, EARL OF CLARENDON.

IN TWO VOLUMES.

VOL. II.

LONDON:

RE-PRINTED FOR LONGMAN, HURST, REES, ORME, AND

BROWN, PATERNOSTER-Row.

ESSAYS

MORAL AND ENTERTAINING.

ON AN ACTIVE AND ON A CONTEMPLATIVE LIFE, AND WHEN AND WHY THE ONE OUGHT TO BE

PREFERRED BEFORE THE OTHER.--(CONTINUED.)

We have prosecuted our inquisition into a contemplative life, what is meant by it, and what it cannot mean, what fruit it may bear, and what fruit it can never bear, far enough; and therefore it is time to proceed to as strict an enquiry into the nature and function of that active life that we would have preferred before it; of which we can hardly take a view, without frequent reflections upon the defects which are inseparable from the other, and the benefits that must necessarily attend or accompany this. The first and the greatest objection that is made against it, is the perpetual temptations it exposes a man to, and the great difficulty to preserve innocence in the pursuit of a busy and solicitous life; that the industry of it is common

VOL. II.

ly founded upon ambition, which, how proud and insolent soever it is in its own nature, stoops to the basest offices, to the most sordid applications of flattery, to the grossest and most uningenuous importunities of the most worthless men, if they are able to contribute to his preferment. If activity be not transported with this vice, which by the way may be industrious and innocent too, and is naturally rather a spur to virtuous designs, than an incitation to low and vile thoughts, it is still sub. servient to some other as corrupt an end; it proceeds from covetousness, a love of money, and desire to be rich, which is a passion of that unlimited and insatiable extent, that it devours all that is in its way, and yields to all dishonourable condescensions that it may devour, and is always unre. strained from any prescription of decency and generosity, or by the most severe rules of justice itself. Should this restless inclination to action take up its habitation in a mind so rarely fortified by the principles of virtue, that it cannot be corrupt ed by those predominant passions which work upon vulgar constitutions; whose ambition is to be great for no other reason than that he may be able to make other men good, and to suppress the infectious vices of the age; who hath no other appetite of money than that he may dispose it to charitable and generous purposes; it will still be liable, even from the contagion of the company, from which it

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cannot be severed, to impressions of vanity and levity and incogitancy, which usher the way to other temptations, at least introduce an inquietude into a mind well prepared against more violent invasions. And if a man under all these assaults, and in all these conflicts, remains unhurt, retains the vigour and beauty of his integrity, which will be no less than a miraculous preservation in this pursuit, it is yet much more than an even wager that the very fame and reputation of his virtue and innocence may raise such a storm of envy and malice in the breasts of unrighteous men, as may oppress him in the noblest attempt, and utterly destroy him in the safest port, and leave his good name and memory torn with as many ghastly wounds, as his body or his fortune: to which shall be only added, that history or experience hath transmitted the memory of very few men to us who have been notoriously prosperous in the transactions of the world, and long possessed that station, whose characters have not retained the mention of some extraordinary vice or infirmity, as well as of many notable virtues, as if those strong flights could not be made without the assistance of some iniquity. Whereas the contemplative life is secure from all those or the like waves and billows; that retreat enjoys a perpetual calm; the contemplative man is never disturbed with ambition, because he knows not

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