Page:The Works of Samuel Johnson ... A journey to the Hebrides. The vision of Theodore, the hermit of Teneriffe. The fountains. Prayers and meditations. Sermons.v. 10-11. Parliamentary debates.pdf/436

 others. No man can, by any natural or intrinsic faculties, maintain himself in a state of superiority; he is exalted to his place, whatever it be, by the concurrence of those who are, for a time, content to be counted his inferiours; he has no authority in himself; he is only able to control some, by the help of others. If dependence be a state of humiliation, every man has reason to be humble, for every man is dependent.

But however pleasing these considerations may be, however unequal our condition is to all our wishes or conceptions, we are not to admit impatience into our bosoms, or increase the evils of life, by vain throbs of discontent. To live in a world where all is vanity, has been decreed by our Creator to be the lot of man—a lot which we cannot alter by murmuring, but may soften by submission.

The consideration of the vanity of all human purposes and projects, deeply impressed upon the mind, necessarily produces that diffidence in all worldly good, which is necessary to the regulation of our passions, and the security of our innocence. In a smooth course of prosperity, an unobstructed progression from wish to wish, while the success of one design facilitates another, and the opening prospect of life shows pleasures at a distance; to conclude that the passage will be always clear, and that the delights which solicit from far, will, when they are attained, fill the soul with enjoyments, must necessarily produce violent desires, and eager pursuits, contempt of those that are behind, and malignity to those that are before. But the full persuasion that all earthly good is uncertain in the attainment, and unstable in the possession, and the frequent recollection of the slender supports on which we rest, and the dangers which are always hanging over us, will dictate inoffensive modesty, and mild benevolence. He does not rashly treat another with contempt, who doubts the duration of his own superiority: he will not refuse assistance to the distressed, who supposes that he may quickly need it himself. He that considers how imperfectly human wisdom can judge of