he will receive and reject with equability of temper; and act or suffer, as the reason of things shall alternately prescribe.  Other men may amuse themselves with subtile definitions, or intricate ratiocinations.  Let them learn to be wise by easier means; let them observe the hind of the forest, and the linnet of the grove; let them consider the life of animals, whose motions are regulated by instinct; they obey their guide, and are happy.  Let us, therefore, at length, cease to dispute, and learn to live; throw away the incumbrance of precepts, which they, who utter them, with so much pride and pomp, do not understand, and carry with us this simple and intelligible maxim:  That deviation from nature is deviation from happiness.”

When he had spoken, he looked round him with a placid air, and enjoyed the consciousness of his own beneficence.  “Sir,” said the prince, with great modesty, “as I, like all the rest of mankind, am desirous of felicity, my closest attention has been fixed upon your discourse:  I doubt not the truth of a position, which a man so learned has, so confidently, advanced.  Let me only know, what it is to live according to nature.”

“When I find young men so humble and so docile,” said the philosopher, “I can deny them no information which my studies have enabled me to afford.  To live according to nature, is to act always with due regard to the fitness arising from the relations and qualities of causes and effects; to concur with the great and unchangeable scheme of universal felicity; to cooperate with the general disposition and tendency of the present system of things.”

The prince soon found that this was one of the sages whom he should understand less, as he heard him longer.  He, therefore, bowed, and was silent, and the philosopher, supposing him satisfied, and the rest vanquished, rose up and departed, with the air of a man that had cooperated with the present system.

CHAP.  XXIII.

THE PRINCE AND HIS SISTER DIVIDE BETWEEN THEM THE WORK OF OBSERVATION.

Rasselas returned home full of reflections, doubtful how to direct his future steps.  Of the way to happiness, he found the learned and simple equally ignorant; but, as he was yet young, he flattered himself that he had time remaining for more experiments, and further inquiries.  He communicated to Imlac his observations and his doubts, but was answered by him with new doubts, and remarks that gave him no comfort.  He, therefore, discoursed more frequently and freely with his sister, who had yet the same hope with himself, and always assisted him to give some reason why, though he had been, hitherto, frustrated, he might succeed at last.