and knowledge, animates virtue and good refolution, fooths and allays the paffions, and finds employment for most of the vacant hours of life. Next to fuch an intimacy with a particular perfon, one would endeavour after a more general conversation with fuch as are able to entertain and improve those with whom they converse, which are qualifications that feldom go afunder. There are many other useful amusements of life, which one would endeavour to multiply, that one might on all occafions have recourfe to fomething rather than fuffer the mind to lie idle, or run adrift with any paffion that chances to rife in it.. A man that has a tafte in mufick, painting, or architecture, is like one that has another fenfe when compared with fuch as have no relish of those arts. The florift, the planter, the gardiner, the hufbandman, when they are only as accomplishments to the man of fortune, are great reliefs to a country life, and many ways useful to thofe who are poffeffed of them. But of all the diverfions of life, there is none fo proper to fill up its empty spaces as the reading of ufeful and entertaining authors. But this I thall only touch upon, because it in fome meafure interferes with the third method, which I fhall propofe in another paper, for the employment of our dead inactive hours, and which I fhall only mention in general to be the pursuit of knowledge. L MONDAY, No. 94. MONDAY, JUNE 18. Hoc eft Vivere bis, vita poffe priore frui. MART. Epig. xxiii. 1. 10 The prefent joys of life we doubly taste, HE laft method which I propofed in my Saturday's paper, for filling up thofe empty fpaces of life which are fo tedious and burdenfome to idle people, is the employing ourselves in the purfuit of knowledge. I remember Mr Boyle, fpeaking of a certain mineral, tells us, that a man may confume his whole life in the ftudy of it, without arriving at the knowledge of all its qualities. The truth of it is, there is not a single fcience, or any branch of it, that might not furnish a man with businefs for life, though it were much longer than it is. I thall not here engage on thofe beaten fubjects of the usefulness of knowledge, nor of the pleasure and perfection it gives the mind, nor on the methods of attaining it, nor recommend any particular branch of it, all which have been the topicks of many other writers; but shall indulge myself in a fpeculation that is more uncommon, and may therefore perhaps be more entertaining. I have before fhewn how the unemployed parts of life appear long and tedious, and fhall here endeavour to show how those parts of life which are exercifed in ftudy, reading, and the purfuits of knowledge, are long but not tedious, and by that means difcover a method of lengthening our lives, and at the fame time of turning all the parts of them to our advantage. Mr Lacke obferves, "That we get the idea of 66 time "time, or duration, by reflecting on that train of "ideas which fucceed one another in our minds : "That for this reason, when we fleep foundly with"out dreaming, we have no perception of time, "or the length of it, whilft we fleep; and that the 66 moment wherein we leave off to think, till "the moment we begin to think again, feems to "have no diftance." To which the author adds, "And fo I doubt not but it would be to a waking man, if it were poffible for him to keep only one "idea in his mind, without variation, and the fuc"ceffion of others; and we fee, that one who fixes "his thoughts very intently on one thing, fo as to "take but little notice of the fucceffion of ideas "that pass in his mind whilst he is taken up with "that earnest contemplation, lets flip out of his ac"count a good part of that duration, and thinks "that time thorter than it is." 66 We might carry this thought further, and confi der a man as, on one fide, fhortening his time by thinking on nothing, or but a few things; fo, on the other, as lengthening it, by employing his thoughts on many fubjects, or by entertaining a quick and conftant fucceffion of ideas. Accordingly Monfieur Mallebranche, in his Inquiry after Truth (which was published feveral years before Mr Locke's Effay on Human Understanding) tells us, That it is poffible fome creatures may think half an hour as long as we do a thousand years; or look upon that space of duration which we call a minute, as an hour, a week, a month, or a whole age. This notion of Monfieur Mallebranche is capable of fome little explanation from what I have quoted out of Mr Locke; for if our notion of time is produced by our reflecting on the fucceffion of ideas in our mind, and this fucceffion may be infinitely accele rated or retarded, it will follow, that different beings may have different notions of the fame parts of duration, according as their ideas, which we fuppofe pofe are equally diftinct in each of them, follow one another in a greater or leffer degree of rapidity. There is a famous paffage in the Alcoran, which looks as if Mahomet had been poffeffed of the notion we are now speaking of. It is there faid, That the angel Gabriel took Mahomet out of his bed one morning to give him a fight of all things in the Seven Heavens, in Paradife, and in Hell, which the Prophet took a distinct view of; and after having held ninetythousand conferences with God, was brought back again to his bed. All this, fays the Alcoran, was tranfacted in fo fmall a fpace of time, that Mahomet at his return found his bed ftill warm, and took up an earthen pitcher, (which was thrown down at the very inftant that the angel Gabriel carried him away) before the water was all fpilt. There is a very pretty flory in the Turkish Tales, which relates to this paffage of that famous Impoftor, and bears fome affinity to the fubject we are now upon. A fultan of Egypt, who was an infidel, ufed to laugh at this circumftance in Mahomet's life, as what was altogether impoffible and abfurd : But converfing one day with a great doctor in the law, who had the gift of working miracles, the doctor told him he would quickly convince him of the truth of this paffage in the hiftory of Mahomet, if he would confent to do what he fhould defire of him. Upon this the fultan was directed to place himself by an huge tub of water, which he did accordingly; and as he ftood by the tub amidit a circle of his great men, the holy man bid him plunge his head into the water, and draw it up again: The king accordingly thrust his head into the water, and at the fame time found himself at the foot of a mountain on a feafhore. The king immediately began to rage against his doctor for this piece of treachery and witchcraft; but at length, knowing it was in vain to be angry, he fet himfelf to think on proper methods for for getting a livelihood in this ftrange country: Accordingly he applied himself to fome people whom he faw at work in a neighbouring wood; thefe people conducted him to a town that stood at a little diftance from the wood, where, after fome adventures, he married a woman of great beauty and fortune. He lived with this woman fo long till he had by her feven fons and fever daughters: He was afterwards reduced to great want, and forced to think of plying in the ftreets as a porter for his livelihood. One day as he was walking alone by the fea-fide, being feized with many melancholy reflections upon his former and his present ftate of life, which had raised a fit of devotion in him, he threw off his clothes with a defign to wash himself, according to the custom of the Mahometans, before he said his prayers. After his firft plunge into the fea, he no fooner rafed his head above the water but he found himself standing by the fide of the tub, with the great men of his court about him, and the holy man at his fide. He immediately upbraided his teacher for having sent him on fuch a course of adventures, and betrayed him in so long a state of mifery and fervitude; but was wonderfully furprised when he heard that the state he talked of was only a dream and delufion; that he had not stirred from the place where he then ftood; and that he had only dipped his head into the water, and immediately taken it out again. The Mahometan doctor took this occafion of inftructing the fultan, that nothing was impoffible with God; and that He, with whom a thousand years are but as one day, can, if he pleases, make a fingle day, nay, a single moment, appear to any of his creatures as a thousand years. I fhall leave my reader to compare these eastern fables with the notions of these two great philofophers whom I have quoted in this paper; and fhall only, |