Page:John Adams - A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America Vol. I. (1787).djvu/168

130 and even the undertanding itelf, if not the concience too, until they become abolute and imperious maters of the whole mind, is a curious peculation. The cunning with which they hide themelves from others, and from the man himelf too; the patience with which they wait for opportunities; the torments they voluntarily uffer for a time, to ecure a full enjoyment at length; the inventions, the dicoveries, the contrivances they ugget to the undertanding, ometimes in the dullet dunces in the world, if they could be decribed in writing, would pas for great genius.

We are not enough acquainted with the phyical or metaphyical effects they may have on our bodies or minds, to be able to explain the particular reaon why every intance of indulgence trengthens and confirms the ubequent emotions of deire. The caue has been hitherto too deep, remote, and ubtle, for the earch of corporeal or intellectual microcopes; but the fact is too decided to deceive or ecape our obervation. Men hould endeavour at a balance of affections and appetites, under the monarchy of reaon and concience, within, as well as at a balance of power without. If they urrender the guidance, tor any coure of time, to any one paion, they may depend upon finding it, in the end, an uurping, domineering, cruel tyrant. They were intended by nature to live together in ociety, and in this way to retrain one another, and in general are very good kind of creatures; but they know each other's imbecility o well, that they ought never to lead one another into temptation. The paion that is long indulged, and continually gratified, becomes mad; it is a cies