Excerpt from Essays Moral and Entertaining, Vol. 1 of 2: On the Various Faculties and Passions of the Human Mind Nature would never corrupt us: We administer all the helps of industry and art to provoke our appetites, and to inflame our blood, and then we accuse nature for leading us into excesses; we kindle that fire that kindles our lust with a liceu tious diet, and then fan it into a flame with Oh scene discourses, and revile nature that it will not permit us to be chaste; we provoke and cherish our anger with unchristian principles of revenge, and then inveigh against nature for making us choleric: when, God knows, the little good we have in us, we owe only to the integrity of our na ture; which hath restrained us from many vices which our passions would hurry us into. Very many men, have remained or become temperate, by the very nauseating and aversion that nature bath to surfeits and excesses; and others have been restrained from making wicked attempts, by the horror and trembling that nature hath suggested to them in the approach. Many excellent men have grown to rare perfections in knowledge and in practice, to great learning, great wisdom, great virtue, without ever having felt the least repug nance in their 'nature to interrupt them in their progress; on the contrary their inclinations have been strengthened, their vivacity increased, from the very impulsion of their nature: but we may reasonably believe, that never man made a great. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.