In the steadiness of his industry and frugality, in his steadily
sacrificing the ease and enjoyment of the present moment for the
probable {190} expectation of the still greater ease and enjoyment of
a more distant but more lasting period of time, the prudent man is
always both supported and rewarded by the entire approbation of the
impartial spectator, and of the representative of the impartial
spectator, the man within the breast. The impartial spectator does not
feel himself worn out by the present labour of those whose conduct he
surveys; nor does he feel himself solicited by the importunate calls
of their present appetites. To him their present, and what is likely
to be their future, situation, are very nearly the same: he sees them
nearly at the same distance, and is affected by them very nearly in
the same manner. He knows, however, that to the persons principally
concerned, they are very far from being the same, and that they
naturally affect _them_ in a very different manner. He cannot
therefore but approve, and even applaud, that proper exertion of
self-command, which enables them to act as if their present and their
future situation affected them nearly in the same manner in which they
affect him.
The man who lives within his income, is naturally contented with his
situation, which, by continual, though small accumulations, is growing
better and better every day. He is enabled gradually to relax, both in
the rigour of his parsimony and in the severity of his application;
and he feels with double satisfaction this gradual increase of ease
and enjoyment, from having felt before the hardship which attended the
want of them. He has no anxiety to change so comfortable a situation
and does not go in quest of new enterprises and adventures, which
might endanger, but could not well increase the secure tranquillity
which he actually enjoys. If he enters into any new projects or
enterprises, they are likely to be well concerted and well prepared.
He can never be hurried or driven into them by any necessity, but has
always time and leisure to deliberate soberly and coolly concerning
what are likely to be their consequences.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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