Interest Is The Barometer Of The State.

If The Contemplation, Even Of Inanimate Beauty, Is So Delightful; If It Ravishes The Senses, Even When The Fair Form Is Foreign Tous: What Must Be The Effects Of Moral Beauty? And What Influence Must It Have, When It Embellishes Our Own Mind, And Is The Result Of Our Own Reflection And Industry?

We Find In The Course Of Nature That Though The Effects Be Many, The Principles From Which They Arise Are Commonly Few And Simple, And That It Is The Sign Of An Unskilled Naturalist To Have Recourse To A Different Quality In Order To Explain Every Different Operation.

There Is Nothing, In Itself, Valuable Or Despicable, Desirable Or Hateful, Beautiful Or Deformed; But That These Attributes Arise From The Particular Constitution And Fabric Of Human Sentiment And Affection.

Delicacy Of Taste Has The Same Effect As Delicacy Of Passion; It Enlarges The Sphere Both Of Our Happiness And Our Misery.

Courage, Of All National Qualities, Is The Most Precarious; Because It Is Exerted Only At Intervals, And By A Few In Every Nation; Whereas Industry, Knowledge, Civility, May Be Of Constant And Universal Use, And For Several Ages, May Become Habitual To The Whole People.