6309. PAIN, Security against.—
The
most effectual means of being secure against
pain is to retire within ourselves and to suffice
for our own happiness. Those which depend on
ourselves are the only pleasures a wise man will
count on; for nothing is ours which another
may deprive us of. Hence the inestimable
value of intellectual pleasures. Ever in our
power, always leading us to something new,
never cloying, we ride serene and sublime above
the concerns of this mortal world, contemplating
truth and nature, matter and motion, the
laws which bind up their existence, and that
Eternal Being who made and bound them up
by those laws.—
To Mrs. Cosway. Washington ed. ii, 37.
Ford ed., iv, 317.
(P.
1786)
