I yield entire faith to the doctrine before you, that, estimate these evils as highly as you may, a balance of enjoyment may still be struck in favor of life. I do not doubt, that more than one half the suffering and sorrow which every individual endures is simply of his own procuring, and not only that it might have been wholly avoided, but that positive enjoyment might have been substituted in its place. An inconceivable mass of misery would at once be struck from the sum if, as I have already remarked, we knew the physical, organic and moral laws of our being, and conformed ourselves to them. A uniform, consistent and thorough education would cure us of innumerable errors of opinion, injurious habits, and a servile conformity to established and prescribed prejudices, and would impart to us wisdom, force of character and resignation, to enable us to sustain, as we ought, those that are unavoidable. Imperfection, pain, decay and death, in the inevitable measures belonging to organized beings, would remain. The dignity of true philosophy, the stern consciousness of the necessity of courage, profound and filial submission to the divine will, and the well defined and investigated hopes of religion would accomplish the remainder. Consider one single evil--fear, unnecessary fear, an entirely gratuitous infusion of bitterness in the cup of life. I ask the man who has seen fourscore winters to tell me, were all that he has suffered in his pilgrimage cast into one account, what would be the greatest item in the sum? I believe that almost every one might answer, that more than half might be charged to one single source of suffering--fear--fear of opinion, reproach, shame, poverty, pain, danger, disease and death. I pause not to consider the usual dull illustrations of the wisdom and utility of assigning to us the instinct of fear, to put us on our guard and to enable us to ward off evils. It is not this instinctive shrinking and vigilance to avoid evil that I consider. Let education have its most perfect work in raising us superior to this servile and tormenting passion, and too much of it would still remain. Of all that we have suffered from fear, what portion has been of any service in shielding us from that which we apprehended? Not only have we avoided no evil in consequence, but the enervating indulgence of this passion has taken from us our quickness of foresight, our coolness of deliberation, our firmness of action and resolve, by the exercise of which, we might have escaped all that we dreaded. We may calculate then, that every pang we have felt from this source has been just so much gratuitous agony.