Elements of the philosophy of the human mind. By Dugald Stewart. Rev. and abridged, with critical and explanatory notes, for the use of colleges and schools. By Francis Bowen ...

20 THEII INFLUENCE OF CASUAL ASSOCIATIONSo
described. By learning to separate what is essential to morality
and to happiness, fiom those adventitious trifles which it is the
province of fashion to direct, he is equally guarded against the
follies of national prejudices, and a weak deviation, in matters
of indifference, from established ideas. UTpon his mind, thus
occupied with important subjects of reflection, the fluctuating
caprices and fashions of the times lose their influence; while
accustomed to avoid the slavery of local and arbitrary habits,
lie possesses, in his own genuine simplicity of character, the
same power of accommodation to external circumstances, which
men of the world derive from the pliability of their taste and
the versatility of their manners. As the order too, of his ideas
is accommodated, not to what is casually presented from without,
but to his own systematical principles, his associations are subject only to those slow and pleasing changes which arise from
his growing light and improving reason; and, in such a period
of the world as at present, when the press not only excludes
the possibility of a permanent retrogradation in human affairs,
but operates with an irresistible though gradual progress, in
undermining prejudices and in extending the triumphs of philosophy, he may reasonably indulge the hope, that society will
every day approach nearer and nearer to what he wishes it to
be. A man of such a character, instead of looking back on the
past with regret, finds himself (if I may use the expression)
more at home in the world, and more satisfied with its order,
the longer he lives in it. The melancholy contrast which old
men are sometimes disposed to state, between its condition
when they are about to leave it, and that in which they found it
at the commencement of their career, arises, in most cases,
friom the unlimited, influence which, in their early years, they
had allowed to the fashions of the times, in the formation of'
their characters. How different friom those sentiments and
prospects which dignified the retreat of Turgot, and brightened
the declining years of Franklin!
Hbow unconscious changes of opinion are produced. — The
querulous temper, however, which is incident to old men,
although it renders their manners disagreeable in the inters