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life to be contented with a moderate scale of living; that you should early discover what is absolutely essential to intelligent living, and firmly determine to leave off the unessential; that you should accustom yourself to be satisfied with a degree of comfort not so great but that you may fairly hope to have laid by, at the age of fifty, the means of living on, on that scale; and, what is still more important, have fixed the habits which will make you content to do so.

It is an important help towards this to teach yourself early in life to see pretty things, and to like them, and to have a correct judgment about them, without coveting them. It will take a great deal of practice to make you perfect in this.

But remember that pure air, sunshine, green grass and trees, a few flowers, access to good books, warmth in winter, and a moderate table and healthful dress, make up the absolute essentials of the later part of life.

It is a great point carried to have always an object ahead of you in life. Until forty this is easy enough, if you are at all of a manly and enterprising disposition. But when you have come to the end of your first set of objects, when you have gained the standing-place in the world which you sought, then take care. At that point many men and women

perish from mere inanition. They have secured fortune, or competence, and they spend the rest of their days in accumulating comforts and luxuries, as though a pig should make his sty more elaborately convenient. Or they sink into poor health, or to death, because, in fact, the end has come for them. If you have means to travel, the best time for this enjoyment is after fifty. You will then have read enough to make travel useful and profitable.

Finally, remember always to maintain the true balance and perspective in your life. We are often curious to know how the other, the future life, will look to us: think sometimes, How will this life look to you from that other side? How trivial and insignificant many of those which we thought the most important events, will seem from that point of view! how vitally important some things which we thought little of here! How grateful you will be there for much that seemed hardship, disappointment, or sorrow here at the time-how deleterious you will see were many events which caused you satisfaction.

Yet that broader survey will be the first that can give you a true view of your life here.

NOTES.

I DID not choose to encumber my pages with footnotes, because these disturb the attention of the reader, and interrupt in his mind the course of the argument. But I add here, at the close, several extracts, referring each to the chapter it is intended to illus

trate.

NOTE TO CHAPTER VII.

The following passage from the "Ninth Bridgewater Treatise" of the celebrated mathematician Charles Babbage illustrates so well, and by so interesting an instance, the difference between the supporters and opponents of the theory of Evolution, that, though long, I give it in full here. I am the more moved to do this because the volume from which I take it is no longer easily accessible except in public libraries:

"To illustrate the distinction between a system to which the restoring hand of its contriver is applied, either frequently or at distant intervals, and one which had received at its first formation the impress of the will of its author, foreseeing the varied but yet necessary laws of its action, throughout the whole extent of its existence, we must have recourse to some machine, the produce of human skill. But far as all such engines must ever be placed at an immeasurable inter

val below the simplest of Nature's works, yet, from the vastness of those cycles which even human contrivance in some cases unfolds to our view, we may perhaps be enabled to form a faint estimate of the magnitude of that lowest step in the chain of reasoning which leads us up to Nature's God.

"The illustration which I shall here employ will be derived from the results afforded by the Calculating Engine; and this I am the more disposed to use, because my own views respecting the extent of the laws of Nature were greatly enlarged by considering it, and also because it incidentally presents matter for reflection on the subject of inductive reasoning. Nor will any difficulty arise from the complexity of that engine; no knowledge of its mechanism, nor any acquaintance with mathematical science, being necessary for comprehending the illustration, it being sufficient merely to conceive that computations of great complexity can be ef fected by mechanical means.

"Let the reader imagine that such an engine has been adjusted; and that it is moved by a weight; and that he sits down before it, and observes a wheel, which revolves through a small angle round its axis, at short intervals, presenting to his eye, successively, a series of numbers engraved on its divided circumference.

"Let the figures thus seen be the series 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc., of natural numbers, each of which exceeds its immediate antecedent by unity.

"Now, reader, let me ask how long you will have counted before you are firmly convinced that the engine has been so adjusted that it will continue, while its motion is maintained, to produce the same series of natural numbers? Some minds are so constituted, that after passing the first hundred terms, they will be satisfied that they are acquainted with the law. After seeing five hundred terms, few will doubt; and after the fifty-thousandth term the propensity to believe that the

succeeding term will be fifty thousand and one will be almost irresistible. That term will be fifty thousand and one; and the same regular succession will continue; the five-millionth and the fifty-millionth term will still appear in their expected order; and one unbroken chain of natural numbers will pass before your eyes, from one up to one hundred million. "True to the vast induction which has been made, the next succeeding term will be one hundred million and one; but the next number presented by the rim of the wheel, instead of being one hundred million and two, is one hundred million ten thousand and two. The whole series from the commencement being thus:

1

2

3

4

5

99,999,999

100,000,000

regularly as far as 100,000,001

100,010,002 the law changes

100,030,003

100,060,004

100,100,005

100,150,006

100,210,007

100,280,008

"The law which seemed at first to govern this series fails at

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