ESSAY IV.

A DEFENCE OF LEARNING AND THE ARTS, AGAINST SOME CHARGES OF ROUSSEAU, Con! tinued.

That luxury and corrupt manners are not the progeny of science and the arts,-in answer to Rousseau.

In the same celebrated essay to which the Academy of Dijon adjudged the prize, Rousseau aggravates the charge against science and the arts, by imputing to them the introduction of luxury and a general corruption of manners. In this I do not scruple to charge upon him the same confused and illogical understanding as in the former accusation. If he find but a cotemporaneous existence of two facts, he hastily concludes that the one is the cause of the other. Now as an argument is deemed to be bad, which concludes too much, so a rule of assigning a special

a special cause to an effect ought to be considered as bad, which infers too much. He might, if he had pleased, and he ought, whether he had pleased or no, to have observed a multitude of other characters to be coexistent with luxury, such as law, political science, philosophy natural and moral, christianity, deism, atheism; and for aught that I can observe of a connexion of cause and effect in what he has assigned, he might by the same rule, and with equal propriety, have referred to any one or to all of these conjointly, the introduction of luxury and that corruption of manners, which is opposed to simplicity.-Sir Isaac Newton has in physics established this rule of judging of cause and effect, that, where two phænomena are invariably found to be coexistent, and where the disappearance of the one is instantly attended with the disappearance of the other, and the re-introduction of the one withdrawn is immediately followed with the re-appearance of the other, and so uniformly in every instance; we may then safely con

clude

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clude that there is a connection of cause and effect between these phænomena. But this rule of judging is only meant to be applied where the actus operandi and the modus operandi are concealed from our view. Now no one can pretend, that if learning generate luxury, the very act, and the whole operation, can be concealed from our observation, as in the history of natural causes, It is incumbent therefore on any one, who sriminates learning as the operating cause of luxury, to state in clear terms and agreeably to obvious experience, the will, the act, and the history in the production of luxury by learning. This Rousseau has failed to do, and this every one will fail to do, who shall be hardy enough to make the attempt.

But admitting that the rule of Sir Isaac Newton is equally applicable to the discovery of moral as of natural causes, which perhaps it is, though the application be unnecessary; yet Rousseau would derive no advantage from the concession, for his conclusion would fail if examined by the test to which

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which the guarded mind of this sagacious philosopher has subjected his rule. The phænomena of learning and luxury are not always united, nor, having been previously united, is the disappearance of learning always followed by the disappearance of luxury. Let the court of Caligula, of Nero, of Heliogabulus, the Asiatic monarchies, and many other striking examples in antient and modern history make the reply. The truth is, there is nothing in the character of learning, which inclines her to luxury, but there is much that is unfavourable and averse to it. The Antonines were learned princes, particularly Aurelius, and they were equally eminent for temperance and moderation, for sober and chaste manners. A learned man may indeed be luxurious, but instances of this mixed character are singular; for learning does not smile upon luxury, nor is luxury propitious to learning.

Luxury is a general term, and answers to very different standards in different minds and in different circumstances. What a

cynic would call luxury, a more correct judge of manners would denominate taste and elegance. But it is to the praise of learning that taste and elegance are of her progeny; if not, it is a vice in the most learned of all beings, that he has embellished his creation with such a profusion of beauty and elegance, and exhibited to us those perpetual models, which according to Rousseau have misled man.The Genevan philosopher finds luxury and corrupt manners in learned nations alone. But with a more discerning eye, and a less prejudiced mind, he would have found them with equal excess, and with equal or more deformity, in rude and illiterate nations. The feast of a Kamschadale or an Esquimaux on a whale, a bear, or an otter, is a true and proper luxury, and marked with as intemperate indulgence as the rich and varied board of Lucullus or Apicius. The mind is of the same character in both; they differ only in external circumstances and condition being changed, but the mind unaltered, Apicius would

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