XXIX. All these disproportions, spring from, or grow out of one general principle, which is this; nature left to herself, is contented with a little, but by attempting to polish her, you fashion her into a fantastical lady, who craves every thing, and despises every thing. A human heart with three ventricles, in the year 1699, was presented to the Royal Academy of Sciences at Paris, as the most monstrous production that had ever been seen; but morally and politically speaking, it is a monster we see every day. The human heart, naturally contains but two large cavities; but if you fill these with worldly goods, a succession of others will begin to open, and others still without end. Pleasure and delight, are nothing to a man who does not consider and feel them as such, and no man considers that as a regale, which he is used and accustomed to; or which is adapted and familiar to his own sphere of life. Therefore delicate food, is delicate to him only, who has been used to eat plain victuals; but dainties, are familiar and common things to the man who has been accustomed to feed on them, and therefore, he craves something more exquisite. Even variety itself, to him who is used to vary his objects every day, that they may tally with his inclinations, loses all the enchantment which it originally contained. A poor man tastes more pleasure in feeding on a common fish at his own homely board, than Caius Hirtius, in eating with great pomp, his most regaling Murenas; and he is more happy, when he adds to his inheritance a foot of land, than Alexander was, when he added to his conquests the City of Tyre. SECT. IX. XXX. If we were to compare the anxieties incident to the one and the other state, as we have done the pleasures, we should find, that by much the greatest load of the first, would rest on the shoulders of the rich; either from the greater sensibility of the subjects, or from the greater magnitude, or multitude of their cares. The rich are of a delicate texture, liable to be moved and disturbed with every blast, or made of sonorous metal, which complains loudly at the gentlest touch. They may be compared to a well at Chiapa, a Province in New Spain, from which, by throwing in a small stone, you raise a horrible tempest. Hence the furious perturbations which in the opulent, are produced by slight causes. The Sultan Mahomed the Second, was seized with such a barbarous rage upon missing a melon out of his garden, that he ordered the stomachs of fourteen pages to be opened, to discover who had eaten it. And Otho Antonio, Duke of Urbino, ordered one of his servants to be burnt alive, for having neglected to wake him at the time he had appointed.