OCR Text |
Show 136 ORIGIN OF SOCIETY. CANTO IV. The whip, the sting, the spur, the fiery brand, And, cursed Slavery! thy iron hand; And led by Luxury Disease's trains, Load human life with unextinguish'd pains. " I-1 ere laughs Ebriety more fell than arn1s, And thins the nations with her fatal charms, With Gout, and Hydrops groaning in her train, And cold Debility, and grinning Pain, With harlot's smiles deluded man salutes, Revenging all his cruelties to brutes 1 There the curst spells of Superstition blind, And fix her fetters on the tortured mind; She bids in dreams tormenting shapes appear, With shrieks that shock Imagination's ear~ 80 they cease to have their faculties excited into their usual activity, and become unhappy, I suppose from the too great accumulation of the sensorial power of volition; which wants the accustomed stimulus or motive to cause its expenditure. Here laughs Ebriety. 1. 77. Srevior armis Luxuria incubuit, victumque ulciscitur or bern. HoRAe. CANTU IY. OF GOOD AND EVIL. 137 E'en o'er the grave a deeper shadow flings, And madc.lening Conscience darts a thousand stings. :" There writhing Mania sits on Reason's throne, Or Melancholy marks it for her own, Sheds o'er the scene a voluntary gloorn, Requests oblivion, and c.lemands the tomb. And last Association's trains suggest Ideal ills, that harrow up the breast,. QO / E'en over. tlze grave, 1. 87~ Many theatric preachers arnong tileMethodists successfully i~t.culcate the fear of death and of Hell, and! live luxuriously on the folly of their hearer.s: those who suffer under this insanity, are generally most! innocent and harmless people, who. are then liable to accuse themselves of the greatest in1aginary crimes; and have so much intellectual cowardice, that they dare not reason about those things, which they are directed by their priests to believe. Where this intellectual cowardice is great, the vo:lce of reason is ineffectual; but that of ridicule may save many from these mad-making doctors, as the farces of Mr. Foot; though it is too. weak to cure those who are already hallucinated . .And last association, 1.. 93." The miseries and the·feli-cities .of life may -" be divided into· those which arise in consequence of irritation, sensation, volition, and association; ant.! consist in the actions of the extremities of the nerves of sense, which constitute our ideas; i£ they are much more exerted than usual, or much less exerted than· usual, they occasion pain; as when the finger is burnt in a candle; ow when we go into a cold bath: while their natural degree of exertion T |