And indeed, if it be the effect of habit to produce the pain of want in a high degree while there is little pleasure in enjoyment, a voluptuous life is of all the least to be envied. Those who are accustomed to high feeding, easy vehicles, rich furniture, a crowd of valets, much deference and flattery, enjoy but a small share of happiness, while they are exposed to manifold distresses. To such a man, inslaved by ease and luxury, even the petty inconveniencies of a rough road, bad weather, or homely fare on a journey, are serious evils. He loses his tone of mind, becomes peevish, and would wreak his resentment even upon the common accidents of life. Better far to use the goods of Fortune with moderation. A man who by temperance and activity has acquired a hardy constitution, is, on the one hand, guarded against external accidents, and is, on the other, provided with great variety of enjoyment ever at command. I shall close this chapter with the discussion of a question more delicate than abstruse, _viz._ What authority custom ought to have over our taste in the fine arts? It is proper to be premised, that we chearfully abandon to its authority every thing that nature leaves to our choice, and where the preference we bestow has no foundation other than whim or fancy. There appears no original difference betwixt the right and the left hand: custom however has established a difference, so as to make it aukward and disagreeable to use the left where the right is commonly used. The various colours, though they affect us differently, are all of them agreeable in their purity. But custom has regulated this matter in another manner: a black skin upon a human creature, is to us disagreeable; and a white skin probably not less so to a negro. Thus things originally indifferent, become agreeable or disagreeable by the force of custom. Nor ought this to be surprising after the discovery made above, that the original agreeableness or disagreeableness of an object, is, by the influence of custom, often converted into the opposite quality.