Friendship has other enemies. Sufpicion is always hardening the cautious, and disgust repelling the delicate. Very flender differences will fome times part those whom long reciprocation of civility or beneficence has united. Lonelove and Ranger retired into the country to enjoy the company of each other, and returned in fix weeks cold and petulant; Ranger's pleasure was to walk in the fields, and Lonelove's to fit in a bower; each had complied with the other in his turn, and each was angry that compliance had been exacted.

The moft fatal difeafe of friendship is gradual decay, or diflike hourly encreased by causes too flender for complaint, and too numerous for removal. Those who are angry may be reconciled; those who have been injured may receive a recompence; but when the defire of pleafing and willingness to be pleased is filently diminished, the renovation of friendship is hopeless; as, when the vital powers fink into languor, there is no longer any use of the physician.

NUMB. 24. SATURDAY, September 30, 1758.

HEN man fees one of the inferior crea

WHI

tures perched upon a tree, or basking in

the funshine, without any apparent endeavour or pursuit, he often asks himself, or his companion, On what that animal can be fuppofed to be thinking?

Of this question, fince neither bird nor beaft can anfwer it, we must be content to live without the refolution. We know not how much the brutes recollect of the past, or anticipate of the future; what power they have of comparing and preferring; or whether their faculties may not reft in motionless indifference, till they are moved by the presence of their proper object, or stimulated to act by corporal fenfations.

I am the lefs inclined to thefe fuperfluous inquiries, because I have always been able to find fufficient matter for curiofity in my own fpecies. It is useless to go far in queft of that which may be found at home; a very narrow circle of obfervation will fupply a fufficient number of men and women, who might be asked with equal propriety, On what they can be thinking?

It is reafonable to believe, that thought, like every thing else, has its caufes and effects; that it muft proceed from fomething known, done, or fuffered; and muft produce fome action or event. Yet how great is the number of thofe in whose minds no fource of thought has ever been opened,

i

in whofe life no confequence of thought is ever difcovered; who have learned nothing upon which they can reflect; who have neither feen nor felt any thing which could leave its traces on the memory; who neither forefee nor defire any change of their condition, and have therefore neither fear, hope, nor defign, and yet are fuppofed to be thinking beings.

To every act a fubject is required. He that thinks, muft think upon fomething. But tell me, ye that pierce deepest into nature, ye that take the wideft furveys of life, inform me, kind fhades of Malbranche and of Locke, what that fomething can be, which excites and continues thought in maiden aunts with small fortunes; in younger brothers that live upon annuities; in traders retired from business; in foldiers abfent from their regiments; or in widows that have no children?

Life is commonly confidered as either active or contemplative; but furely this divifion, how long foever it has been received, is inadequate and fallacious. There are mortals whofe life is certainly not active, for they do neither good nor evil; and whofe life cannot be properly called contemplative, for they never attend either to the conduct of men, or the works of nature, but rise in the morning, look round them till night in careless ftupidity, go to bed and fleep, and rife again in the morning.

It has been lately a celebrated question in the schools of philofophy, Whether the foul always thinks? Some have defined the foul to be the power of thinking; concluded that its effence confifts in act; that if it should cease to act, it would ceafe

to

to be; and that ceffation of thought is but another name for extinction of mind. This argument is fubtle, but not conclufive; becaufe it fuppofes what cannot be proved, that the nature of mind is properly defined. Others affect to disdain fubtilty, when fubtilty will not ferve their purpose, and appeal to daily experience. We spend many hours, they fay, in fleep, without the least remembrance of any thoughts which then paffed in our minds and fince we can only by our own confcioufnefs be fure that we think, why fhould we imagine that we have had thought of which no confciousness remains?

This argument, which appeals to experience, may from experience be confuted. We every day do fomething which we forget when it is done, and know to have been done only by confequence. The waking hours are not denied to have been paffed in thought; yet he that fhall endeavour to recollect on one day the ideas of the former, will only turn the eye of reflection upon vacancy; he will find, that the greater part is irrevocably vanished, and wonder how the moments could come and go, and leave fo little behind them.

To discover only that the arguments on both fides are defective, and to throw back the tenet into its former uncertainty, is the fport of wanton or malevolent fcepticism, delighting to fee the fons of philofophy at work upon a task which never can be finished; at variance on a question that can never be decided. I fhall fuggeft an argument hitherto overlooked, which may perhaps determine the controverfy.

If it be impoffible to think without materials, there muft neceffarily be minds that do not always think; and whence fhall we furnish materials for the meditation of the glutton between his meals, of the fportfman in a rainy month, of the annuitant between the days of quarterly payment, of the politician when the mails are detained by contrary winds?

But how frequent foever may be the examples of existence without thought, it is certainly a ftate not much to be defired. He that lives in torpid infenfibility, wants nothing of a carcafe but putrefaction. It is the part of every inhabitant of the earth to partake the pains and pleasures of his fellow beings; and, as in a road through a country defart and uniform, the traveller languifhes for want of amusement, fo the paffage of life will be tedious and irkfome to him who does not beguile it by diverfified ideas.