different states, should no longer exhibit the same obvious phenomena, _attracting_, perhaps, the very bodies which it before repelled, and _repelling_ the very bodies which it before attracted, and attracting and repelling with differences of force, and consequent differences of velocity in the bodies moved, the varieties of which it would require all the powers of our arithmetic to compute. When we observe, then, in a mind, which we have long known and valued, any marks of _altered character_,--when, for example, in one, who, by the favour, or rather by the cruelty of Fortune, has been raised, from a situation comparatively humble, to sudden distinctions of power and opulence, we see the neglect of all those virtues, the wider opportunity of exercising which seemed to him formerly the chief, or even the only, advantage that rendered such distinctions desirable,--the same frivolous vanity, which before appeared to him ridiculous in others, and the same contemptuous insolence of pride, which before appeared to him contemptible,--a craving and impatient desire of greater wealth, merely because he has no longer any use to make of it, unless, indeed that it has become more necessary to his _avarice_, than it ever was before to his _want_,--and a gay and scornful indifference to miseries, that are still sometimes able to force themselves upon his view, the relief of which, that once seemed to him so glorious a privilege, would now not require of him even the scanty merit of sacrificing a single superfluity: When we perceive this contrast, and almost say within ourselves, Is this the same being? we should remember that the influence of fortune is not confined to the mere trapping, which it gives or takes away,--that it operates _within_ as much as _without_,--and that, accordingly, in the case now imagined by us, the new external circumstances have been gradually modifying the mind, in the same manner, as new external circumstances of a different kind modify the bodies, which happen to be placed in them,--not affecting their _identity_, but altering their _state_; and that, if we could distinguish, as accurately, the series of changes, which take place in mind, as we can distinguish those which take place in matter, we should not be more astonished, that, in circumstances of rare and unhappy occurrence, a disposition once apparently generous is generous no more, than we are to observe a body, attracted to another body, at one distance, and afterwards repelled from it, in consequence merely of a change of their mutual position,--a change so very slight as to be altogether undistinguishable by our senses.