PHILOSOPHY.

What excellent advice, if it were in every one’s power to adopt it: but the colour of a man’s philosophy is, after all, no more at his own disposal, than the colour of his eyebrows. Both depend upon the same cause, the temperament of the subject. The stoics and the epicureans have been thought to differ only in words; and, as far as mere reason is concerned, an accurate definition would force agreement between them. But till the stoic can be cured of his bile, and his habitually uneasy sensations, or the constitutional indolence of the epicurean can be broken down by disease and misfortunes, a real unity of sentiment is impossible. There is nothing, concerning which a man is more positive than his own sensations: and these determine the point of view from which every one regards the nature of things. The same landscape is before us all: but we see it through Claude Lorraine glasses—one man couleur de rose, another du plus beau noir: and then we fall to quarrel, like the knights, concerning the gold and silver shield! It is nearly the same thing with religion.