To the generality of men nothing is more melancholy and disagreeable than to find themselves alone, and obliged to review their own hearts. As vain passions carry us away, as many criminal attachments stain us, and as many thousand illicit desires occupy every moment of our heart, in entering into ourselves, we find only an answer of death, a frightful void, cruel remorses, dark thoughts, and melancholy reflections. We search, therefore, in the variety of occupations and continual distractions, an oblivion of ourselves: we dread leisure as the signal of weariness; and we expect to find, in the confusion and multiplicity of external cares, that happy intoxication which enables us to go on without perceiving it, and makes us no longer to feel the weight of ourselves.
But, alas! we deceive ourselves: weariness is never found but in irregularity, and in a life of confusion, where every thing is out of its place: it is in living by hazard that we are a burden to ourselves; that we continually search after new occupations, and that disgust soon obliges us to repent that we ever sought for them; that we incessantly change our situation, in order to fly from ourselves; and, that wherever we go, we carry ourselves: in a word, that our whole life is but a diversified art to shun weariness, and a miserable talent to find it. Wherever order is not, weariness must necessarily be found; and, far from a life of irregularity and confusion being a remedy, on the contrary, it is the most fruitful source and universal cause of it.
The just souls who live in regularity; they who yield nothing to caprice and temper, whose every occupation is exactly where it ought to be, whose moments are filled up, according to their destination, and to the will of the Lord who directs them, find, in order, a perfect remedy against, and protection from, weariness. That wise uniformity in the practice of duties which appear so gloomy in the eyes of the world, is the source of their joy, and of that happy equality of temper, which nothing can derange: never embarrassed with the present time which stated duties occupy; never in pain with regard to the future, for which new duties are arranged; never delivered up to themselves by the change of occupations which succeed each other; their days appear as moments, because every moment is in its place; time hangs not upon them, because it always has its distinction and use; and, in the arrangement of an uniform and occupied life, they find that peace and that joy which the rest of men in vain search for in* the confusion of a continual agitation.
Restlessness, by multiplying our occupations, leaves us therefore a prey to weariness and disgust; nor yet does it sanctify the use of our time: for if the moments, not regulated by the order of God, are moments lost, however occupied they may otherwise be; if the life of man ought to be a life of wisdom and regularity, where every occupation has its allotted place; what can be more opposite to such a life than this inconsistency, these eternal fluctuations in which restlessness makes us pass our time? But the passions
