3

Why then we rack the value: then we find
The virtue that poffeffion would not shew us
Whilst it was ours.

Much ado about nothing, act 4. fc. 2.

The effect of custom with relation to a fpecific habit, is difplayed through all its varieties in the ufe of tobacco. The taste of that plant is at first ex tremely unpleasant; our difguft leffens gradually, till it vanish altogether; at which period the tafte is neither agreeable nor difagreeable: continuing the ufe of the plant, we begin to relish it; and our relish improves by ufe, till it arrive at perfection: from that period it gradually decays, while the habit is in a ftate of increment, and confequently the pain F of want. The refult is, that when the habit has acquired its greatest vigour, the relish is gone; and accordingly we often smoke and take snuff habitually, without fo much as being confcious of the operation. We must except gratification after the pain of want; the pleasure of which gratification is the greatest when the habit is the moft vigorous: it is of the fame kind with the pleasure one feels upon being delivered from the rack, the caufe of which is explained above.* This pleasure, however, is but occafionally the effect of habit; and however exquifite, is avoided as much as poffible because of the pain that precedes it.

With regard to the pain of want, I can difcover na difference between a generic and a specific habit. But these habits differ widely with refpect to the pofitive pleasure I have had occafion to obferve, that the pleasure of a specific habit decays gradually till it turn imperceptible: the pleafure of a generic habit, on the contrary, being fupported by variety of gratification, fuffers little or no decay after it comes to its height.

height. However it may be with other generic habits, the obfervation, I am certain, holds with refpect to the pleasures of virtue and of knowledge: the pleafure of doing good has an unbounded scope, and may be fo variously gratified that it can never decay : fcience is equally unbounded; our appetite for knowl edge having an ample range of gratification, where discoveries are recommended by novelty, by variety, by utility, or by all of them.

In this intricate inquiry, I have endeavoured, but without fuccefs, to difcover by what particular means it is that cuftom hath influence upon us and now nothing feems left, but to hold our nature to be fo framed as to be fufceptible of fuch influence. And fuppofing it purpofely fo framed, it will not be difficult to find out feveral important final causes. That the power of cuftom is a happy contrivance for our good, cannot have efcaped any one who reflects, that bufinefs is our province, and pleasure our relaxation only. Now fatiety is neceffary to check exquifite pleasures, which otherwife would engrofs the mind, and unqualify us for business. On the other hand, as bufinefs is fometimes painful, and is never pleasant beyond moderation, the habitual increase of moderate pleasure, and the converfion of pain into pleafure, are admirably contrived for difappointing the malice of Fortune, and for reconciling us to whatever courfe of life may be our lot:

How ufe doth breed a habit in a man!
This fhadowy defart, unfrequented woods,
I better book than flourishing peopled towns,
Here I can fit alone, unfeen of any,
And to the nightingale's complaining notes
Tune my diftreiles, and record my woes.

Two Gentlemen of Verona, at 5. f. 4.
As

As the foregoing diftinction between intenfe and moderate holds in pleasure only, every degree of pain being foftened by time, custom is a catholicon for pain and distress of every fort; and of that regulation the final cause requires no illuftration.

Another final caufe of cuftom will be highly relished by every person of humanity, and yet has in a great measure been overlooked; which is, that cuftom hath a greater influence than any other known cause, to put the rich and the poor upon a level: weak pleasures, the share of the latter, become fortunately stronger by cuftom; while voluptuous pleasures, the fhare of the former, are continually lofing ground by fatiety. Men of fortune, who poffefs palaces, fump tuous gardens, rich fields, enjoy them lefs than paffengers do. The goods of Fortune are not unequally distributed: the opulent poffefs what others enjoy.

And indeed, if it be the effect of habit, to produce the pain of want in a high degree while there is little pleasure in enjoyment, a voluptuous life is of all the leaft to be envied. Thofe who are habituated to high feeding, eafy vehicles, rich furniture, a crowd of valets, much deference and flattery, enjoy but a fmall fhare of happiness, while they are expofed to manifold diftreffes. To fuch a man, enflaved by ease and luxury, even the petty inconveniencies in travelling, of a rough road, bad weather, or homely fare, are ferious evils: he lofes his tone of mind, turns peevifh, and would wreak his refentment even upon the common accidents of life. Better far to use the goods of Fortune with moderation: a man who by temperance and activity hath acquired a hardy constitution, is, on the one hand, guarded against external accidents; and, on the other, is provided with great variety of enjoyment ever at command.

I fhall

I fhall close this chapter with an article more delicate than abftrufe, namely, what authority cuftom ought to have over our tafte in the fine arts. One particular is certain, that we cheerfully abandon to the authority of cuftom things that nature hath left indifferent. It is cuftom not nature that hath establifhed a difference between the right hand and the left, fo as to make it awkward and difagreeable to ufe the left where the right is commonly used. The various colours, though they affect us differently, are all of them agreeable in their purity: but cuftom has regulated that matter in another manner; a black fkin upon a human being, is to us difagreeable; and a white fkin probably no less fo to a negro. Thus things, originally indifferent, become agreeable or difagreeable, by the force of cuftom. Nor will this be furprising after the discovery made above, that the original agreeablenefs or difagreeablenefs of an object, is, by the influence of custom, often converted into the oppofite quality.

:

Proceeding to matters of tafte, where there is naturally a preference of one thing before another; it is certain, in the first place, that our faint and more delicate feelings are readily fufceptible of a bias from cuftom; and therefore that it is no proof of a defective taste to find these in fome measure influenced by cuftom drefs and the modes of external behaviour are regulated by cuftom in every country: the deep red or vermilion with which the ladies in France cover their cheeks, appears to them beautiful in fpite of nature; and ftrangers cannot altogether be justified in condemning that practice, confidering the lawful authority of cuftom, or of the fashion, as it is called: It is told of the people who inhabit the skirts of the Alps facing the north, that the fwelling they have univerfally in the neck is to them agreeable.

So

So far has custom power to change the nature of things, and to make an object originally difagreeable take on an oppofite appearance.

But, as to every particular that can be denominated proper or improper, right or wrong, cuftom has little authority, and ought to have none. The principle of duty takes naturally place of every other; and

argues a fhameful weakness or degeneracy of mind, to find it in any cafe fo far fubdued as to fubmit to cuftom.

These few hints may enable us to judge in fome measure of foreign manners, whether exhibited by foreign writers or our own. A comparison between the ancients and the moderns was fome time ago a favourite fubject: thofe who declared for ancient manners thought it fufficient that these manners were fupported by custom; their antagonists, on the other hand, refufing fubmiffion to cuftom as a standard of taste, condemned ancient manners as in feveral inftances irrational. In that controverfy, an appeal being made to different principles, without the flighteft attempt to establish a common ftandard, the dif pute could have no end. The hints above given tend to establish a standard for judging how far the authority of custom ought to be held lawful; and, for the fake of illuftration, we fhall apply that ftandard. in a few inftances.

Human facrifices, the moft difmal effect of bliad and groveling fuperftition, wore gradually out of ufe by the prevalence of reafon and humanity. In the days of Sophocles and Euripides, traces of that practice were still recent; and the Athenians, through the prevalence of custom, could without difguft fuffer human facrifices to be reprefented in their thea tre, of which the Iphigenia of Euripides is a proof

But