XC8 9231

G5

1804

THE love of happiness is a passion predominant in the human breast, and for the enjoyment of which individuals of every description are anxiously concerned.

PREFACE.

To say in what this happiness consists, or how it may certainly be had, is an invidious task: because men of different tastes, dispositions, and capacities, not only view the subject in different lights, but adopt opposite means to obtain it. There can, however, it is presumed, be little risk of censure to him who shall assert, That whatever has a natural tendency to irradiate the mind, to regulate the affections, and to meliorate the conduct, must be friendly to happiness.

Such is the wisdom, and such the goodness of the great Pareni of the universe, that he has provided sources of pleasure exactly suited to the compound nature of man. But it is the indelible opprobrium of our species, that those enjoyments which are merely sensual, and of which, in subserviency to higher ends, we might lawfully partake, engross too frequently the avhole of our attention; while those of a refined and