Page:Johnsonian Miscellanies II.djvu/264

 ��Recollections of Dr. Johnson

��acting wickedly, with knowledge of good and evil, with conscience to admonish and to direct him to chuse the one and reject the other, he was, therefore, as criminal in the sight of God and oi man, and as deserving punishment for his evil deeds, as if no good had resulted from them x.

There was nothing Dr. Johnson used to say of which he was so certain as of the freedom of his will, and no man, I believe, was ever more attentive to preserve its rectitude, its acquired rectitude, I suppose I should say, in conformity with his religious tenets respecting original sin, and with his more general and common assertions that Man was by Nature much more inclined to evil than to good 2.

And another Axiom of his of the same gloomy tendency was that the pain and miseries of human life far outweighed its happiness and good 3. But on a lady's asking him whether he would not permit common ease to be put into the scale of happiness and good, he seem'd embarrassed (very unusual with him) and answering in the affirmative, instantly rose from his seat to avoid the inference.

But, indeed, much may be said in Dr. Johnson's justification, supposing these notions should not meet with universal approba tion, having, it is probable, imbibed them in the early part of his life, when under the pressure of adverse fortune, and in every period of it under the still heavier pressure and more adverse

��1 ' JOHNSON. " Moral evil is oc casioned by free will, which implies choice between good and evil. With all the evil that there is, there is no man but would rather be a free agent, than a mere machine without the evil ; and what is best for each individual, must be best for the whole. If a man would rather be the machine, I cannot argue with him. He is a different being from me.'" Life, v. 117. See also ib. v. 366, and ante, ii. 233.

2 ' This may appear rather incon sistent with his notions of free-will, but I will write the truth and nothing but the truth.' Miss REYNOLDS.

��See ante, i. 268 n., where Lady M'Leod starting at what Johnson maintained said, " This is worse than Swift." '

3 ' From the subject of death we passed to discourse of life, whether it was upon the whole more happy or miserable. Johnson was de cidedly for the balance of misery,' Life, iv. 300. But see post, p. 360, where 'he asserted that no man could pronounce he did not feei more pleasure than misery.'

Swift wrote : ' The miseries of man are all beaten out on his own anvil.' Swift's Works, ed. 1803,

XV. II.

influence

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