If a
man would rather be the machine, I cannot argue with him. He is a
different being from me.' BOSWELL. 'A man, as a machine, may have
agreeable sensations; for instance, he may have pleasure in musick.'
JOHNSON. 'No, Sir, he cannot have pleasure in musick; at least no power
of producing musick; for he who can produce musick may let it alone: he
who can play upon a fiddle may break it: such a man is not a machine.'
This reasoning satisfied me. It is certain, there cannot be a free
agent, unless there is the power of being evil as well as good. We must
take the inherent possibilities of things into consideration, in our
reasonings or conjectures concerning the works of GOD.
We came to Nairn to breakfast. Though a county town and a royal burgh,
it is a miserable place. Over the room where we sat, a girl was spinning
wool with a great wheel, and singing an Erse song[367]: 'I'll warrant
you, (said Dr. Johnson.) one of the songs of Ossian.' He then repeated
these lines:---
'Verse sweetens toil, however rude the sound.
All at her work the village maiden sings;
Nor while she turns the giddy wheel around,
Revolves the sad vicissitude of things[368].'
I thought I had heard these lines before. JOHNSON. 'I fancy not, Sir;
for they are in a detached poem, the name of which I do not remember,
written by one Giffard, a parson.
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