in a word, your happiness. Division and re-union are two indispensable means for introducing order into our ideas and actions, and may be considered as two generating principles, which must act first alternately, then simultaneously, in order to be productive.

6. Law of Exchanges. Establish beneficial exchanges between your different faculties, which ought by turns to assist one another. Let your physical powers resign, in some measure, their influence to the moral and intellectual power, when the latter ought to act; and let them in their turn borrow its energy and intensity, when a physical object claims your exclusive attention and all your means, those of the passions or moral affections, those of the mind or the thinking faculty, and those of the body. All is exchange between men and between other beings, as well as in man himself, between the different faculties of which he is constituted. Exchanges, which may be considered as the soul of society, or the basis of justice, morality, and the social relations, are a necessary principle of creation. Concurrence, the result of exchanges, is a principle of power.

7. Law of Equilibrium, or the Due Mean. Take great pains to restrain your soul, your fa

culties, your passions, your desires, your temper, within proper bounds, and use not your powers unless with moderation, keeping them in equilibrium, and attempering one by the other, instead of abusing and destroying them by baneful excesses.—In all things observe a due mean. This is the real point of wisdom and virtue. Stat medio virtus.

8. Law of Action and Re-action. Alternate motion and rest are requisite for the different faculties of man, if he would husband and preserve their energy. They have a reciprocal action and re-action upon one another, as we have observed in treating of the universal chain. Every thing in nature (and especially in morals and politics) is subject to the general law of action and reaction, or alternate motion.

9. Law of the Mixture of Good and Evil. Whilst indelibly impressing upon your mind this truth, numberless proofs of which every where present themselves to your view, namely, that there is in all human things a universal mixture of good and evil (which is a connection of things with man, and a necessary relation in our condition), learn to separate truth from error, which frequently differ only in a delicate and almost imperceptible shade. Your judgment will be

more steady and more sound, your reason more clear, your mind more accessible to truth. Learn too, on all occasions, to derive some advantage even from adverse circumstances; and form for yourself a practical philosophy to serve for a shield against the accidents of all kinds to which nature and fortune expose you. Acquire the happy knack of looking, even in the misfortunes that may befal you, at the most favourable aspect which they can present. The doctrine of optimism, or that whatever is, is best, confined within due limits, contributes materially to human happiness. Every thing on earth has to a certain degree its good and its bad side.

Acquire also from the particular consideration of mistakes an habitual disposition not to form your opinion of persons and things till you have subjected them to a strict and scrupulous examination. You will thus avoid misconceptions, the rock on which the human mind usually splits, the unfortunately too prolific cause of vices and crimes, of prejudices and errors, of individual and general calamities. You will learn above all to show an indulgent toleration in examining the different opinions of others, who are commonly warm partisans or bitter enemies of certain persons or doctrines, only because they have con

ceived imperfect, incomplete, and consequently false notions of them, by looking at them in a single point of view. Mistakes, arising from want of reflection or ignorance, produce the greater part of our faults and misfortunes.

10. Law of Obstacles converted into Means of Success. Most persons have an imagination that is ingenious in tormenting them, and the misdirected activity of which often changes the ele ments of preservation and the means of happiness into instruments of ruin and calamity. You ought, on the contrary, to strive to vanquish all obstacles by the efforts of cool and sober reason, in order to convert them into means of success: this is the triumph of wisdom and genius. Accustom yourself to bear with patience crosses, reverses, vicissitudes, misfortunes, which are useful to try fortitude, to strengthen virtue, to excite talent, to set in action the springs of the mind and soul, to enlighten, instruct, and improve by the lessons of experience. Every inconvenience and every obstacle may be converted, in some measure, into an element and medium of success; or at least we may in all cases derive from them some advantages.*

* Cardan, a philosopher of the fifteenth century, published a treatise, intituled: De utilitate ex adversis capienda-" On the

11. Law of Proportions. Apply also with intelligence and sagacity to your daily conduct our law of proportions or harmonies, which ought to govern and direct all your actions. Banish far from you all desires incongruous with your faculties. Embark in such undertakings only as are relative or proportionate to your means, and chuse the favourable moment for executing them properly. All things are relative.

12. Law of Aims. Lastly, never lose sight of the aim which you ought to propose to yourself in the whole and in the details of life: your preservation, your happiness, which are composed of three elements or particular aims; health, moral improvement, instruction. In all things there should be an aim. That of every prudent man is his welfare, his happiness, which he never separates, even for the sake of his interest, from the idea of the happiness of others.† All things are connected.

These different laws, or general rules, profoundly

benefit to be derived from adversity." Being duly sensible of the value of time, he adopted this motto:-Tempus mea possessio, ager meus-" Time is my possession, my estate."

This great moral truth, which is connected with all our general laws, belongs more especially to the three principles of the chain, exchanges, and action and re-action.