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Title: Thoughts on Man
His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with
Some Particulars Respecting the Author
Author: William Godwin
Release Date: December, 1996 [Etext #743]
Posting Date: November 30, 2009
Language: English
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THOUGHTS ON MAN
HIS NATURE, PRODUCTIONS AND DISCOVERIES INTERSPERSED WITH SOME
PARTICULARS RESPECTING THE AUTHOR
By William Godwin
Oh, the blood more stirs
To rouse a lion, than to start a hare!
SHAKESPEARE
LONDON:
EFFINGHAM WILSON, ROYAL EXCHANGE.
1831.
PREFACE
In the ensuing volume I have attempted to give a defined and permanent
form to a variety of thoughts, which have occurred to my mind in the
course of thirty-four years, it being so long since I published a
volume, entitled, the Enquirer,--thoughts, which, if they have presented
themselves to other men, have, at least so far as I am aware, never been
given to the public through the medium of the press. During a part of
this period I had remained to a considerable degree unoccupied in my
character of an author, and had delivered little to the press that bore
my name.--And I beg the reader to believe, that, since I entered in
1791 upon that which may be considered as my vocation in life, I
have scarcely in any instance contributed a page to any periodical
miscellany.
My mind has been constitutionally meditative, and I should not have
felt satisfied, if I had not set in order for publication these special
fruits of my meditations. I had entered upon a certain career; and I
held it for my duty not to abandon it.
One thing further I feel prompted to say. I have always regarded it as
my office to address myself to plain men, and in clear and unambiguous
terms. It has been my lot to have occasional intercourse with some of
those who consider themselves as profound, who deliver their oracles
in obscure phraseology, and who make it their boast that few men can
understand them, and those few only through a process of abstract
reflection, and by means of unwearied application.
To this class of the oracular I certainly did not belong. I felt that
I had nothing to say, that it should be very difficult to understand.
I resolved, if I could help it, not to "darken counsel by words without
knowledge." This was my principle in the Enquiry concerning Political
Justice. And I had my reward. I had a numerous audience of all classes,
of every age, and of either sex. The young and the fair did not feel
deterred from consulting my pages.
It may be that that book was published in a propitious season. I am
told that nothing coming from the press will now be welcomed, unless it
presents itself in the express form of amusement. He who shall propose
to himself for his principal end, to draw aside in one particular or
another the veil from the majesty of intellectual or moral truth, must
lay his account in being received with little attention.
I have not been willing to believe this: and I publish my speculations
accordingly. I have aimed at a popular, and (if I could reach it) an
interesting style; and, if I am thrust aside and disregarded, I shall
console myself with believing that I have not neglected what it was in
my power to achieve.
One characteristic of the present publication will not fail to
offer itself to the most superficial reader. I know many men who are
misanthropes, and profess to look down with disdain on their species. My
creed is of an opposite character. All that we observe that is best
and most excellent in the intellectual world, is man: and it is easy to
perceive in many cases, that the believer in mysteries does little
more, than dress up his deity in the choicest of human attributes and
qualifications. I have lived among, and I feel an ardent interest in and
love for, my brethren of mankind. This sentiment, which I regard with
complacency in my own breast, I would gladly cherish in others. In such
a cause I am well pleased to enrol myself a missionary.
February 15, 1831.
The particulars respecting the author, referred to in the title-page,
will be found principally in Essays VII, IX, XIV, and XVIII.
CONTENTS
Essay.
I. Of Body and Mind. The Prologue
II. Of the Distribution of Talents
III. Of Intellectual Abortion
IV. Of the Durability of Human Achievements and Productions
V. Of the Rebelliousness of Man
VI. Of Human Innocence
VII. Of the Duration of Human Life
VIII. Of Human Vegetation
IX. Of Leisure
X. Of Imitation and Invention
XI. Of Self-Love and Benevolence
XII. Of the Liberty of Human Actions
XIII. Of Belief
XIV. Of Youth and Age
XV. Of Love and Friendship
XVI. Of Frankness and Reserve
XVII. Of Ballot
XVIII. Of Diffidence
XIX. Of Self Complacence
XX. Of Phrenology
XXI. Of Astronomy
XXII. Of the Material Universe
XXIII. Of Human Virtue. The Epilogue
THOUGHTS, &c.
ESSAY I. OF BODY AND MIND.
THE PROLOGUE.
There is no subject that more frequently occupies the attention of the
contemplative than man: yet there are many circumstances concerning him
that we shall hardly admit to have been sufficiently considered.
Familiarity breeds contempt. That which we see every day and every hour,
it is difficult for us to regard with admiration. To almost every one
of our stronger emotions novelty is a necessary ingredient. The simple
appetites of our nature may perhaps form an exception. The appetite
for food is perpetually renewed in a healthy subject with scarcely any
diminution and love, even the most refined, being combined with one
of our original impulses, will sometimes for that reason withstand a
thousand trials, and perpetuate itself for years. In all other cases it
is required, that a fresh impulse should be given, that attention should
anew be excited, or we cannot admire. Things often seen pass feebly
before our senses, and scarcely awake the languid soul.
"Man is the most excellent and noble creature of the world, the
principal and mighty work of God, the wonder of nature, the marvel of
marvels(1)."
(1) Anatomy of Melancholy, p. 1.
Let us have regard to his corporeal structure. There is a simplicity in
it, that at first perhaps we slightly consider. But how exactly is it
fashioned for strength and agility! It is in no way incumbered. It
is like the marble when it comes out of the hand of the consummate
sculptor; every thing unnecessary is carefully chiseled away; and the
joints, the muscles, the articulations, and the veins come out, clean
and finished. It has long ago been observed, that beauty, as well as
virtue, is the middle between all extremes: that nose which is neither
specially long, nor short, nor thick, nor thin, is the perfect nose; and
so of the rest. In like manner, when I speak of man generally, I do not
regard any aberrations of form, obesity, a thick calf, a thin calf; I
take the middle between all extremes; and this is emphatically man.
Man cannot keep pace with a starting horse: but he can persevere, and
beats him in the end.
What an infinite variety of works is man by his corporeal form enabled
to accomplish! In this respect he casts the whole creation behind him.
What a machine is the human hand! When we analyse its parts and its
uses, it appears to be the most consummate of our members. And yet there
are other parts, that may maintain no mean rivalship against it.
What a sublimity is to be attributed to his upright form! He is not
fashioned, veluti pecora, quae natura prona atque ventri obedientia
finxit. He is made coeli convexa tueri. The looks that are given him in
his original structure, are "looks commercing with the skies."
How surpassingly beautiful are the features of his countenance; the
eyes, the nose, the mouth! How noble do they appear in a state of
repose! With what never-ending variety and emphasis do they express the
emotions of his mind! In the visage of man, uncorrupted and undebased,
we read the frankness and ingenuousness of his soul, the clearness
of his reflections, the penetration of his spirit. What a volume of
understanding is unrolled in his broad, expanded, lofty brow! In his
countenance we see expressed at one time sedate confidence and awful
intrepidity, and at another godlike condescension and the most melting
tenderness. Who can behold the human eye, suddenly suffused with
moisture, or gushing with tears unbid, and the quivering lip, without
unspeakable emotion? Shakespear talks of an eye, "whose bend could awe
the world."
What a miraculous thing is the human complexion! We are sent into the
world naked, that all the variations of the blood might be made visible.
However trite, I cannot avoid quoting here the lines of the most
deep-thinking and philosophical of our poets:
We understood
Her by her sight: her pure and eloquent blood
Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought,
That one might almost say her body thought.
What a curious phenomenon is that of blushing! It is impossible to
witness this phenomenon without interest and sympathy. It comes at once,
unanticipated by the person in whom we behold it. It comes from the
soul, and expresses with equal certainty shame, modesty, and vivid,
uncontrollable affection. It spreads, as it were in so many stages, over
the cheeks, the brow, and the neck, of him or her in whom the sentiment
that gives birth to it is working.
Thus far I have not mentioned speech, not perhaps the most inestimable
of human gifts, but, if it is not that, it is at least the endowment,
which makes man social, by which principally we impart our sentiments to
each other, and which changes us from solitary individuals, and
bestows on us a duplicate and multipliable existence. Beside which
it incalculably increases the perfection of one. The man who does not
speak, is an unfledged thinker; and the man that does not write, is but
half an investigator.
Not to enter into all the mysteries of articulate speech and the
irresistible power of eloquence, whether addressed to a single hearer,
or instilled into the ears of many,--a topic that belongs perhaps less
to the chapter of body than mind,--let us for a moment fix our thoughts
steadily upon that little implement, the human voice. Of what unnumbered
modulations is it susceptible! What terror may it inspire! How may it
electrify the soul, and suspend all its functions! How infinite is its
melody! How instantly it subdues the hearer to pity or to love! How does
the listener hang upon every note praying that it may last for ever,
----that even silence
Was took ere she was ware, and wished she might
Deny her nature, and be never more,
Still to be so displaced.
It is here especially that we are presented with the triumphs of
civilisation. How immeasurable is the distance between the voice of the
clown, who never thought of the power that dwells in this faculty, who
delivers himself in a rude, discordant and unmodulated accent, and is
accustomed to confer with his fellow at the distance of two fields, and
the man who understands his instrument as Handel understood the organ,
and who, whether he thinks of it or no, sways those that hear him as
implicitly as Orpheus is said to have subdued the brute creation!
From the countenance of man let us proceed to his figure. Every limb
is capable of speaking, and telling its own tale. What can equal the
magnificence of the neck, the column upon which the head reposes! The
ample chest may denote an almost infinite strength and power. Let us
call to mind the Apollo Belvidere, and the Venus de Medicis, whose very
"bends are adornings." What loftiness and awe have I seen expressed in
the step of an actress, not yet deceased, when first she advanced, and
came down towards the audience! I was ravished, and with difficulty kept
my seat! Pass we to the mazes of the dance, the inimitable charms and
picturesque beauty that may be given to the figure while still unmoved,
and the ravishing grace that dwells in it during its endless changes and
evolutions.
The upright figure of man produces, incidentally as it were, and by the
bye, another memorable effect. Hence we derive the power of meeting
in halls, and congregations, and crowded assemblies. We are found "at
large, though without number," at solemn commemorations and on festive
occasions. We touch each other, as the members of a gay party are
accustomed to do, when they wait the stroke of an electrical machine,
and the spark spreads along from man to man. It is thus that we have
our feelings in common at a theatrical representation and at a public
dinner, that indignation is communicated, and patriotism become
irrepressible.
One man can convey his sentiments in articulate speech to a thousand;
and this is the nursing mother of oratory, of public morality, of public
religion, and the drama. The privilege we thus possess, we are indeed
too apt to abuse; but man is scarcely ever so magnificent and so awful,
as when hundreds of human heads are assembled together, hundreds of
faces lifted up to contemplate one object, and hundreds of voices
uttered in the expression of one common sentiment.
But, notwithstanding the infinite beauty, the magazine of excellencies
and perfections, that appertains to the human body, the mind claims,
and justly claims, an undoubted superiority. I am not going into an
enumeration of the various faculties and endowments of the mind of man,
as I have done of his body. The latter was necessary for my purpose.
Before I proceeded to consider the ascendancy of mind, the dominion and
loftiness it is accustomed to assert, it appeared but just to recollect
what was the nature and value of its subject and its slave.
By the mind we understand that within us which feels and thinks, the
seat of sensation and reason. Where it resides we cannot tell, nor
can authoritatively pronounce, as the apostle says, relatively to a
particular phenomenon, "whether it is in the body, or out of the body."
Be it however where or what it may, it is this which constitutes the
great essence of, and gives value to, our existence; and all the wonders
of our microcosm would without it be a form only, destined immediately
to perish, and of no greater account than as a clod of the valley.
It was an important remark, suggested to me many years ago by an eminent
physiologer and anatomist, that, when I find my attention called to any
particular part or member of my body, I may be morally sure that there
is something amiss in the processes of that part or member. As long as
the whole economy of the frame goes on well and without interruption,
our attention is not called to it. The intellectual man is like a
disembodied spirit.
He is almost in the state of the dervise in the Arabian Nights, who had
the power of darting his soul into the unanimated body of another, human
or brute, while he left his own body in the condition of an insensible
carcase, till it should be revivified by the same or some other spirit.
When I am, as it is vulgarly understood, in a state of motion, I use my
limbs as the implements of my will. When, in a quiescent state of the
body, I continue to think, to reflect and to reason, I use, it may be,
the substance of the brain as the implement of my thinking, reflecting
and reasoning; though of this in fact we know nothing.
We have every reason to believe that the mind cannot subsist without the
body; at least we must be very different creatures from what we are at
present, when that shall take place. For a man to think, agreeably and
with serenity, he must be in some degree of health. The corpus sanum is
no less indispensible than the mens sana. We must eat, and drink, and
sleep. We must have a reasonably good appetite and digestion, and a
fitting temperature, neither too hot nor cold. It is desirable that we
should have air and exercise. But this is instrumental merely. All these
things are negatives, conditions without which we cannot think to the
best purpose, but which lend no active assistance to our thinking.
Man is a godlike being. We launch ourselves in conceit into illimitable
space, and take up our rest beyond the fixed stars. We proceed without
impediment from country to country, and from century to century,
through all the ages of the past, and through the vast creation of the
imaginable future. We spurn at the bounds of time and space; nor would
the thought be less futile that imagines to imprison the mind within
the limits of the body, than the attempt of the booby clown who is said
within a thick hedge to have plotted to shut in the flight of an eagle.
We never find our attention called to any particular part or member of
the body, except when there is somewhat amiss in that part or member.
And, in like manner as we do not think of any one part or member in
particular, so neither do we consider our entire microcosm and frame.
The body is apprehended as no more important and of intimate connection
to a man engaged in a train of reflections, than the house or
apartment in which he dwells. The mind may aptly be described under
the denomination of the "stranger at home." On set occasions and at
appropriate times we examine our stores, and ascertain the various
commodities we have, laid up in our presses and our coffers. Like the
governor of a fort in time of peace, which was erected to keep out a
foreign assailant, we occasionally visit our armoury, and take account
of the muskets, the swords, and other implements of war it contains, but
for the most part are engaged in the occupations of peace, and do not
call the means of warfare in any sort to our recollection.
The mind may aptly be described under the denomination of the "stranger
at home." With their bodies most men are little acquainted. We are "like
unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass, who beholdeth himself,
and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he is."
In the ruminations of the inner man, and the dissecting our thoughts and
desires, we employ our intellectual arithmetic, we add, and subtract,
and multiply, and divide, without asking the aid, without adverting to
the existence, of our joints and members. Even as to the more corporeal
part of our avocations, we behold the external world, and proceed
straight to the object of our desires, without almost ever thinking
of this medium, our own material frame, unaided by which none of these
things could be accomplished. In this sense we may properly be said
to be spiritual existences, however imperfect may be the idea we are
enabled to affix to the term spirit.
Hence arises the notion, which has been entertained ever since the birth
of reflection and logical discourse in the world, and which in some
faint and confused degree exists probably even among savages, that the
body is the prison of the mind. It is in this sense that Waller, after
completing fourscore years of age, expresses himself in these affecting
and interesting couplets.
When we for age could neither read nor write,
The subject made us able to indite.
The soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed,
Lets in new light by chinks that time hath made:
Stronger by weakness, wiser, men become,
As they draw near to their eternal home.
Thus it is common with persons of elevated soul to talk of neglecting,
overlooking, and taking small account of the body. It is in this spirit
that the story is recorded of Anaxarchus, who, we are told, was ordered
by Nicocreon, tyrant of Salamis, to be pounded in a mortar, and who,
in contempt of his mortal sufferings, exclaimed, "Beat on, tyrant! thou
dost but strike upon the case of Anaxarchus; thou canst not touch the
man himself." And it is in something of the same light that we must
regard what is related of the North American savages. Beings, who scoff
at their tortures, must have an idea of something that lies beyond the
reach of their assailants.
It is just however to observe, that some of the particulars here
related, belong not less to the brute creation than to man. If men are
imperfectly acquainted with their external figure and appearance,
this may well be conceived to be still more predicable of the inferior
animals. It is true that all of them seem to be aware of the part in
their structure, where lie their main strength and means of hostility.
Thus the bull attacks with his horns, and the horse with his heels, the
beast of prey with his claws, the bird with his beak, and insects and
other venomous creatures with their sting. We know not by what
impulse they are prompted to the use of the various means which are so
intimately connected with their preservation and welfare; and we call it
instinct. We may be certain it does not arise from a careful survey of
their parts and members, and a methodised selection of the means which
shall be found most effectual for the accomplishment of their ends.
There is no premeditation; and, without anatomical knowledge, or any
distinct acquaintance with their image and likeness, they proceed
straight to their purpose.
Hence, even as men, they are more familiar with the figures and
appearance of their fellows, their allies, or their enemies, than with
their own.
Man is a creature of mingled substance. I am many times a day compelled
to acknowledge what a low, mean and contemptible being I am. Philip of
Macedon had no need to give it in charge to a page, to repair to him
every morning, and repeat, "Remember, sir, you are a man." A variety of
circumstances occur to us, while we eat, and drink, and submit to the
humiliating necessities of nature, that may well inculcate into us this
salutary lesson. The wonder rather is, that man, who has so many things
to put him in mind to be humble and despise himself, should ever have
been susceptible of pride and disdain. Nebuchadnezzar must indeed have
been the most besotted of mortals, if it were necessary that he should
be driven from among men, and made to eat grass like an ox, to convince
him that he was not the equal of the power that made him.
But fortunately, as I have said, man is a "stranger at home." Were it
not for this, how incomprehensible would be
The ceremony that to great ones 'longs,
The monarch's crown, and the deputed sword,
The marshal's truncheon, and the judge's robe!
How ludicrous would be the long procession and the caparisoned horse,
the gilded chariot and the flowing train, the colours flying, the drums
beating, and the sound of trumpets rending the air, which after all only
introduce to us an ordinary man, no otherwise perhaps distinguished from
the vilest of the ragged spectators, than by the accident of his birth!
But what is of more importance in the temporary oblivion we are enabled
to throw over the refuse of the body, it is thus we arrive at the
majesty of man. That sublimity of conception which renders the poet, and
the man of great literary and original endowments "in apprehension like
a God," we could not have, if we were not privileged occasionally
to cast away the slough and exuviae of the body from incumbering and
dishonouring us, even as Ulysses passed over his threshold, stripped of
the rags that had obscured him, while Minerva enlarged his frame, and
gave loftiness to his stature, added a youthful beauty and grace to his
motions, and caused his eyes to flash with more than mortal fire. With
what disdain, when I have been rapt in the loftiest moods of mind, do I
look down upon my limbs, the house of clay that contains me, the gross
flesh and blood of which my frame is composed, and wonder at a lodging,
poorly fitted to entertain so divine a guest!
A still more important chapter in the history of the human mind has its
origin in these considerations. Hence it is that unenlightened man, in
almost all ages and countries, has been induced, independently of
divine revelation, to regard death, the most awful event to which we are
subject, as not being the termination of his existence. We see the
body of our friend become insensible, and remain without motion, or
any external indication of what we call life. We can shut it up in an
apartment, and visit it from day to day. If we had perseverance enough,
and could so far conquer the repugnance and humiliating feeling with
which the experiment would be attended, we might follow step by step the
process of decomposition and putrefaction, and observe by what degrees
the "dust returned unto earth as it was." But, in spite of this
demonstration of the senses, man still believes that there is something
in him that lives after death. The mind is so infinitely superior
in character to this case of flesh that incloses it, that he cannot
persuade himself that it and the body perish together.
There are two considerations, the force of which made man a religious
animal. The first is, his proneness to ascribe hostility or benevolent
intention to every thing of a memorable sort that occurs to him in the
order of nature. The second is that of which I have just treated, the
superior dignity of mind over body. This, we persuade ourselves,
shall subsist uninjured by the mutations of our corporeal frame, and
undestroyed by the wreck of the material universe.
ESSAY II. OF THE DISTRIBUTION OF TALENTS.
{Greek--omitted} Thucydides, Lib.I, cap. 84.
SECTION I.
PRESUMED DEARTH OF INTELLECTUAL POWER.--SCHOOLS FOR THE EDUCATION OF
YOUTH CONSIDERED.--THE BOY AND THE MAN COMPARED.
One of the earliest judgments that is usually made by those whose
attention is turned to the characters of men in the social state, is
of the great inequality with which the gifts of the understanding are
distributed among us.
Go into a miscellaneous society; sit down at table with ten or twelve
men; repair to a club where as many are assembled in an evening to relax
from the toils of the day--it is almost proverbial, that one or two of
these persons will perhaps be brilliant, and the rest "weary, stale,
flat and unprofitable."
Go into a numerous school--the case will be still more striking. I have
been present where two men of superior endowments endeavoured to enter
into a calculation on the subject; and they agreed that there was not
above one boy in a hundred, who would be found to possess a penetrating
understanding, and to be able to strike into a path of intellect that
was truly his own. How common is it to hear the master of such a school
say, "Aye, I am proud of that lad; I have been a schoolmaster these
thirty years, and have never had such another!"
The society above referred to, the dinner-party, or the club, was to
a considerable degree select, brought together by a certain supposed
congeniality between the individuals thus assembled. Were they
taken indiscriminately, as boys are when consigned to the care of
a schoolmaster, the proportion of the brilliant would not be a whit
greater than in the latter case.
A main criterion of the superiority of the schoolboy will be found in
his mode of answering a casual question proposed by the master. The
majority will be wholly at fault, will shew that they do not understand
the question, and will return an answer altogether from the purpose. One
in a hundred perhaps, perhaps in a still less proportion, will reply
in a laudable manner, and convey his ideas in perspicuous and spirited
language.
It does not certainly go altogether so ill, with men grown up to years
of maturity. They do not for the most part answer a plain question in a
manner to make you wonder at their fatuity.
A main cause of the disadvantageous appearance exhibited by the ordinary
schoolboy, lies in what we denominate sheepishness. He is at a loss, and
in the first place stares at you, instead of giving an answer. He does
not make by many degrees so poor a figure among his equals, as when he
is addressed by his seniors.
One of the reasons of the latter phenomenon consists in the torpedo
effect of what we may call, under the circumstances, the difference of
ranks. The schoolmaster is a despot to his scholar; for every man is
a despot, who delivers his judgment from the single impulse of his own
will. The boy answers his questioner, as Dolon answers Ulysses in the
Iliad, at the point of the sword. It is to a certain degree the same
thing, when the boy is questioned merely by his senior. He fears he
knows not what,--a reprimand, a look of lofty contempt, a gesture
of summary disdain. He does not think it worth his while under these
circumstances, to "gird up the loins of his mind." He cannot return a
free and intrepid answer but to the person whom he regards as his equal.
There is nothing that has so disqualifying an effect upon him who is
to answer, as the consideration that he who questions is universally
acknowledged to be a being of a higher sphere, or, as between the
boy and the man, that he is the superior in conventional and corporal
strength.
Nor is it simple terror that restrains the boy from answering his senior
with the same freedom and spirit, as he would answer his equal. He does
not think it worth his while to enter the lists. He despairs of doing
the thing in the way that shall gain approbation, and therefore will not
try. He is like a boxer, who, though skilful, will not fight with one
hand tied behind him. He would return you the answer, if it occurred
without his giving himself trouble; but he will not rouse his soul, and
task his strength to give it. He is careless; and prefers trusting to
whatever construction you may put upon him, and whatever treatment you
may think proper to bestow upon him. It is the most difficult thing in
the world, for the schoolmaster to inspire into his pupil the desire to
do his best.
Among full-grown men the case is different. The schoolboy, whether under
his domestic roof, or in the gymnasium, is in a situation similar to
that of the Christian slaves in Algiers, as described by Cervantes in
his History of the Captive. "They were shut up together in a species of
bagnio, from whence they were brought out from time to time to perform
certain tasks in common: they might also engage in pranks, and get into
scrapes, as they pleased; but the master would hang up one, impale
another, and cut off the ears of a third, for little occasion, or even
wholly without it." Such indeed is the condition of the child almost
from the hour of birth. The severities practised upon him are not so
great as those resorted to by the proprietor of slaves in Algiers; but
they are equally arbitrary and without appeal. He is free to a certain
extent, even as the captives described by Cervantes; but his freedom is
upon sufferance, and is brought to an end at any time at the pleasure of
his seniors. The child therefore feels his way, and ascertains by
repeated experiments how far he may proceed with impunity. He is like
the slaves of the Romans on the days of the Saturnalia. He may do
what he pleases, and command tasks to his masters, but with this
difference--the Roman slave knew when the days of his licence would be
over, and comported himself accordingly; but the child cannot foresee at
any moment when the bell will be struck, and the scene reversed. It is
commonly enough incident to this situation, that the being who is at the
mercy of another, will practise, what Tacitus calls, a "vernacular
urbanity," make his bold jests, and give utterance to his saucy
innuendoes, with as much freedom as the best; but he will do it with a
wary eye, not knowing how soon he may feel his chain plucked! and
himself compulsorily reduced into the established order. His more usual
refuge therefore is, to do nothing, and to wrap himself up in that
neutrality towards his seniors, that may best protect him from their
reprimand and their despotism.
The condition of the full-grown man is different from that of the child,
and he conducts himself accordingly. He is always to a certain degree
under the control of the political society of which he is a member. He
is also exposed to the chance of personal insult and injury from
those who are stronger than he, or who may render their strength more
considerable by combination and numbers. The political institutions
which control him in certain respects, protect him also to a given
degree from the robber and assassin, or from the man who, were it
not for penalties and statutes, would perpetrate against him all the
mischiefs which malignity might suggest. Civil policy however subjects
him to a variety of evils, which wealth or corruption are accustomed to
inflict under the forms of justice; at the same time that it can never
wholly defend him from those violences to which he would be every moment
exposed in what is called the state of nature.
The full-grown man in the mean time is well pleased when he escapes
from the ergastulum where he had previously dwelt, and in which he had
experienced corporal infliction and corporal restraint. At first, in the
newness of his freedom, he breaks out into idle sallies and escapes, and
is like the full-fed steed that manifests his wantonness in a thousand
antics and ruades. But this is a temporary extravagance. He presently
becomes as wise and calculating, as the schoolboy was before him.
The human being then, that has attained a certain stature, watches and
poises his situation, and considers what he may do with impunity. He
ventures at first with no small diffidence, and pretends to be twice
as assured as he really is. He accumulates experiment after experiment,
till they amount to a considerable volume. It is not till he has passed
successive lustres, that he attains that firm step, and temperate and
settled accent, which characterise the man complete. He then no longer
doubts, but is ranged on the full level of the ripened members of the
community.
There is therefore little room for wonder, if we find the same
individual, whom we once knew a sheepish and irresolute schoolboy, that
hung his head, that replied with inarticulated monotony, and stammered
out his meaning, metamorphosed into a thoroughly manly character, who
may take his place on the bench with senators, and deliver a grave and
matured opinion as well as the best. It appears then that the trial and
review of full-grown men is not altogether so disadvantageous to the
reckoning of our common nature, as that of boys at school.
It is not however, that the full-grown man is not liable to be checked,
reprimanded and rebuked, even as the schoolboy is. He has his wife
to read him lectures, and rap his knuckles; he has his master, his
landlord, or the mayor of his village, to tell him of his duty in an
imperious style, and in measured sentences; if he is a member of a
legislature, even there he receives his lessons, and is told, either
in phrases of well-conceived irony, or by the exhibition of facts and
reasonings which take him by surprise, that he is not altogether the
person he deemed himself to be. But he does not mind it. Like Iago in
the play, he "knows his price, and, by the faith of man, that he is
worth no worse a place" than that which he occupies. He finds out the
value of the check he receives, and lets it "pass by him like the idle
wind"--a mastery, which the schoolboy, however he may affect it, never
thoroughly attains to.
But it unfortunately happens, that, before he has arrived at that degree
of independence, the fate of the individual is too often decided for
ever. How are the majority of men trampled in the mire, made "hewers
of wood, and drawers of water," long, very long, before there was an
opportunity of ascertaining what it was of which they were capable! Thus
almost every one is put in the place which by nature he was least fit
for: and, while perhaps a sufficient quantity of talent is extant in
each successive generation, yet, for want of each man's being duly
estimated, and assigned his appropriate duty, the very reverse may
appear to be the case. By the time that they have attained to that sober
self-confidence that might enable them to assert themselves, they are
already chained to a fate, or thrust down to a condition, from which no
internal energies they possess can ever empower them to escape.
SECTION II.
EQUALITY OF MAN WITH MAN.--TALENTS EXTENSIVELY DISTRIBUTED.--WAY IN
WHICH THIS DISTRIBUTION IS COUNTERACTED.--THE APTITUDE OF CHILDREN
FOR DIFFERENT PURSUITS SHOULD BE EARLY SOUGHT OUT.--HINTS FOR A BETTER
SYSTEM OF EDUCATION.--AMBITION AN UNIVERSAL PRINCIPLE.
The reflections thus put down, may assist us in answering the question
as to the way in which talents are distributed among men by the hand of
nature.
All things upon the earth and under the earth, and especially all
organised bodies of the animal or vegetable kingdom, fall into classes.
It is by this means, that the child no sooner learns the terms, man,
horse, tree, flower, than, if an object of any of these kinds which
he has never seen before, is exhibited to him, he pronounces without
hesitation, This is a man, a horse, a tree, a flower.
All organised bodies of the animal or vegetable kingdom are cast in a
mould of given dimension and feature belonging to a certain number of
individuals, though distinguished by inexhaustible varieties. It is by
means of those features that the class of each individual is determined.
To confine ourselves to man.
All men, the monster and the lusus naturae excepted, have a certain
form, a certain complement of limbs, a certain internal structure, and
organs of sense--may we not add further, certain powers of intellect?
Hence it seems to follow, that man is more like and more equal to
man, deformities of body and abortions of intellect excepted, than the
disdainful and fastidious censors of our common nature are willing to
admit.
I am inclined to believe, that, putting idiots and extraordinary cases
out of the question, every human creature is endowed with talents,
which, if rightly directed, would shew him to be apt, adroit,
intelligent and acute, in the walk for which his organisation especially
fitted him.
But the practices and modes of civilised life prompt us to take the
inexhaustible varieties of man, as he is given into our guardianship by
the bountiful hand of nature, and train him in one uniform exercise, as
the raw recruit is treated when he is brought under the direction of his
drill-serjeant.
The son of the nobleman, of the country-gentleman, and of those parents
who from vanity or whatever other motive are desirous that their
offspring should be devoted to some liberal profession, is in nearly all
instances sent to the grammar-school. It is in this scene principally,
that the judgment is formed that not above one boy in a hundred
possesses an acute understanding, or will be able to strike into a path
of intellect that shall be truly his own.
I do not object to this destination, if temperately pursued. It is fit
that as many children as possible should have their chance of figuring
in future life in what are called the higher departments of intellect.
A certain familiar acquaintance with language and the shades of language
as a lesson, will be beneficial to all. The youth who has expended only
six months in acquiring the rudiments of the Latin tongue, will probably
be more or less the better for it in all his future life.
But seven years are usually spent at the grammar-school by those who are
sent to it. I do not in many cases object to this. The learned languages
are assuredly of slow acquisition. In the education of those who are
destined to what are called the higher departments of intellect, a long
period may advantageously be spent in the study of words, while the
progress they make in theory and dogmatical knowledge is too generally
a store of learning laid up, to be unlearned again when they reach the
period of real investigation and independent judgment. There is small
danger of this in the acquisition of words.
But this method, indiscriminately pursued as it is now, is productive
of the worst consequences. Very soon a judgment may be formed by the
impartial observer, whether the pupil is at home in the study of the
learned languages, and is likely to make an adequate progress.
But parents are not impartial. There are also two reasons why the
schoolmaster is not the proper person to pronounce: first, because,
if he pronounces in the negative, he will have reason to fear that the
parent will be offended; and secondly, because he does not like to lose
his scholar. But the very moment that it can be ascertained, that the
pupil is not at home in the study of the learned languages, and is
unlikely to make an adequate progress, at that moment he should be taken
from it.
The most palpable deficiency that is to be found in relation to the
education of children, is a sound judgment to be formed as to the
vocation or employment in which each is most fitted to excel.
As, according to the institutions of Lycurgus, as soon as a boy was
born, he was visited by the elders of the ward, who were to decide
whether he was to be reared, and would be made an efficient member of
the commonwealth, so it were to be desired that, as early as a clear
discrimination on the subject might be practicable, a competent decision
should be given as to the future occupation and destiny of a child.
But this is a question attended with no common degree of difficulty.
To the resolving such a question with sufficient evidence, a very
considerable series of observations would become necessary. The child
should be introduced into a variety of scenes, and a magazine, so to
speak, of those things about which human industry and skill may be
employed, should be successively set before him. The censor who is to
decide on the result of the whole, should be a person of great sagacity,
and capable of pronouncing upon a given amount of the most imperfect
and incidental indications. He should be clear-sighted, and vigilant
to observe the involuntary turns of an eye, expressions of a lip, and
demonstrations of a limb.
The declarations of the child himself are often of very small use in the
case. He may be directed by an impulse, which occurs in the morning, and
vanishes in the evening. His preferences change as rapidly as the shapes
we sometimes observe in the evening clouds, and are governed by whim
or fantasy, and not by any of those indications which are parcel of his
individual constitution. He desires in many instances to be devoted to
a particular occupation, because his playfellow has been assigned to it
before him.
The parent is not qualified to judge in this fundamental question,
because he is under the dominion of partiality, and wishes that his
child may become a lord chancellor, an archbishop, or any thing else,
the possessor of which condition shall be enabled to make a splendid
figure in the world. He is not qualified, because he is an interested
party, and, either from an exaggerated estimate of his child's merits,
or from a selfish shrinking from the cost it might require to mature
them, is anxious to arrive at a conclusion not founded upon the
intrinsic claims of the case to be considered.
Even supposing it to be sufficiently ascertained in what calling it is
that the child will be most beneficially engaged, a thousand extrinsical
circumstances will often prevent that from being the calling chosen.
Nature distributes her gifts without any reference to the distinctions
of artificial society. The genius that demanded the most careful and
assiduous cultivation, that it might hereafter form the boast and
ornament of the world, will be reared amidst the chill blasts of
poverty; while he who was best adapted to make an exemplary carpenter
or artisan, by being the son of a nobleman is thrown a thousand fathoms
wide of his true destination.
Human creatures are born into the world with various dispositions.
According to the memorable saying of Themistocles, One man can play upon
a psaltery or harp, and another can by political skill and ingenuity
convert a town of small account, weak and insignificant, into a city
noble, magnificent and great.
It is comparatively a very little way that we can penetrate into the
mysteries of nature.
Music seems to be one of the faculties most clearly defined in early
youth. The child who has received that destination from the hands of
nature, will even in infancy manifest a singular delight in musical
sounds, and will in no long time imitate snatches of a tune. The present
professor of music in the university of Oxford contrived for himself,
I believe at three years old, a way for playing on an instrument, the
piano forte, unprompted by any of the persons about him. This is called
having an ear.
Instances nearly as precocious are related of persons, who afterwards
distinguished themselves in the art of painting.
These two kinds of original destination appear to be placed beyond the
reach of controversy.
Horace says, The poet is born a poet, and cannot be made so by the
ingenuity of art: and this seems to be true. He sees the objects about
him with an eye peculiarly his own; the sounds that reach his ear,
produce an effect upon him, and leave a memory behind, different
from that which is experienced by his fellows. His perceptions have a
singular vividness.
The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And his imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown,
It is not probable that any trainings of art can give these endowments
to him who has not received them from the gift of nature.
The subtle network of the brain, or whatever else it is, that makes a
man more fit for, and more qualified to succeed in, one occupation than
another, can scarcely be followed up and detected either in the living
subject or the dead one. But, as in the infinite variety of human beings
no two faces are so alike that they cannot be distinguished, nor even
two leaves plucked from the same tree(2), so it may reasonably be
presumed, that there are varieties in the senses, the organs, and the
internal structure of the human species, however delicate, and to the
touch of the bystander evanescent, which may give to each individual a
predisposition to rise to a supreme degree of excellence in some certain
art or attainment, over a million of competitors.
(2) Papers between Clarke and Leibnitz, p. 95.
It has been said that all these distinctions and anticipations are
idle, because man is born without innate ideas. Whatever is the
incomprehensible and inexplicable power, which we call nature, to which
he is indebted for his formation, it is groundless to suppose, that
that power is cognisant of, and guides itself in its operations by, the
infinite divisibleness of human pursuits in civilised society. A child
is not designed by his original formation to be a manufacturer of shoes,
for he may be born among a people by whom shoes are not worn, and
still less is he destined by his structure to be a metaphysician, an
astronomer, or a lawyer, a rope-dancer, a fortune-teller, or a juggler.
It is true that we cannot suppose nature to be guided in her operations
by the infinite divisibleness of human pursuits in civilised society.
But it is not the less true that one man is by his structure best fitted
to excel in some one in particular of these multifarious pursuits,
however fortuitously his individual structure and that pursuit may be
brought into contact. Thus a certain calmness and steadiness of purpose,
much flexibility, and a very accurate proportion of the various limbs of
the body, are of great advantage in rope-dancing; while lightness of the
fingers, and a readiness to direct our thoughts to the rapid execution
of a purpose, joined with a steadiness of countenance adapted to what is
figuratively called throwing dust in the eyes of the bystander, are of
the utmost importance to the juggler: and so of the rest.
It is as much the temper of the individual, as any particular subtlety
of organ or capacity, that prepares him to excel in one pursuit rather
than a thousand others. And he must have been a very inattentive
observer of the indications of temper in an infant in the first
months of his existence, who does not confess that there are various
peculiarities in that respect which the child brings into the world with
him.
There is excellent sense in the fable of Achilles in the island of
Scyros. He was placed there by his mother in female attire among the
daughters of Lycomedes, that he might not be seduced to engage in the
Trojan war. Ulysses was commissioned to discover him, and, while he
exhibited jewels and various woman's ornaments to the princesses,
contrived to mix with his stores a suit of armour, the sight of which
immediately awakened the spirit of the hero.
Every one has probably within him a string more susceptible than the
rest, that demands only a kindred impression to be made, to call forth
its latent character. Like the war-horse described in the Book of Job:
"He paweth in the valley, and rejoiceth in his strength; he goeth on to
meet the armed men; he smelleth the battle afar off, the thunder of the
captains, and the shouting."
Nothing can be more unlike than the same man to himself, when he is
touched, and not touched, upon
the master-string
That makes most harmony or discord to him.
It is like the case of Manlius Torquatus in Livy, who by his father was
banished among his hinds for his clownish demeanour and untractableness
to every species of instruction that was offered him, but who,
understanding that his parent was criminally arraigned for barbarous
treatment of him, first resolutely resorted to the accuser, compelling
him upon pain of death to withdraw his accusation, and subsequently,
having surmounted this first step towards an energetic carriage and
demeanour, proved one of the most illustrious characters that the Roman
republic had to boast.
Those children whose parents have no intention of training them to
the highest departments of intellect, and have therefore no thought of
bestowing on them a classical education, nevertheless for the most part
send them to a school where they are to be taught arithmetic, and the
principles of English grammar. I should say in this case, as I said
before on the subject of classical education, that a certain initiation
in these departments of knowledge, even if they are pursued a very
little way, will probably be beneficial to all.
But it will often be found, in these schools for more ordinary
education, as in the school for classical instruction, that the majority
of the pupils will be seen to be unpromising, and, what is usually
called, dull. The mistake is, that the persons by whom this is
perceived, are disposed to set aside these pupils as blockheads, and
unsusceptible of any species of ingenuity.
It is unreasonable that we should draw such a conclusion.
In the first place, as has been already observed, it is the most
difficult thing in the world for the schoolmaster to inspire into his
pupil the desire to do his best. An overwhelming majority of lads at
school are in their secret hearts rebels to the discipline under which
they are placed. The instructor draws, one way, and the pupil another.
The object of the latter is to find out how he may escape censure and
punishment with the smallest expence of scholastic application. He
looks at the task that is set him, without the most distant desire of
improvement, but with alienated and averted eye. And, where this is the
case, the wonder is not that he does not make a brilliant figure. It is
rather an evidence of the slavish and subservient spirit incident to
the majority of human beings, that he learns any thing. Certainly
the schoolmaster, who judges of the powers of his pupil's mind by the
progress he makes in what he would most gladly be excused from learning,
must be expected perpetually to fall into the most egregious mistakes.
The true test of the capacity of the individual, is where the desire to
succeed, and accomplish something effective, is already awakened in the
youthful mind. Whoever has found out what it is in which he is qualified
to excel, from that moment becomes a new creature. The general torpor
and sleep of the soul, which is incident to the vast multitude of the
human species, is departed from him. We begin, from the hour in which
our limbs are enabled to exert themselves freely, with a puerile love of
sport. Amusement is the order of the day. But no one was ever so fond
of play, that he had not also his serious moments. Every human creature
perhaps is sensible to the stimulus of ambition. He is delighted
with the thought that he also shall be somebody, and not a mere
undistinguished pawn, destined to fill up a square in the chess-board
of human society. He wishes to be thought something of, and to be gazed
upon. Nor is it merely the wish to be admired that excites him: he acts,
that he may be satisfied with himself. Self-respect is a sentiment dear
to every heart. The emotion can with difficulty be done justice to, that
a man feels, who is conscious that he is breathing his true element,
that every stroke that he strikes will have the effect he designs, that
he has an object before him, and every moment approaches nearer to
that object. Before, he was wrapped in an opake cloud, saw nothing
distinctly, and struck this way and that at hazard like a blind man. But
now the sun of understanding has risen upon him; and every step that he
takes, he advances with an assured and undoubting confidence.
It is an admirable remark, that the book which we read at the very time
that we feel a desire to read it, affords us ten times the improvement,
that we should have derived from it when it was taken up by us as a
task. It is just so with the man who chooses his occupation, and feels
assured that that about which he is occupied is his true and native
field. Compare this person with the boy that studies the classics, or
arithmetic, or any thing else, with a secret disinclination, and, as
Shakespear expresses it, "creeps like snail, unwillingly, to school."
They do not seem as if they belonged to the same species.
The result of these observations certainly strongly tends to support the
proposition laid down early in the present Essay, that, putting idiots
and extraordinary cases out of the question, every human creature is
endowed with talents, which, if rightly directed, would shew him to
be apt, adroit, intelligent and acute, in the walk for which his
organisation especially fitted him.
SECTION III.
ENCOURAGING VIEW OF OUR COMMON NATURE.--POWER OF SOUND EXPOSITION
AFFORDED TO ALL.--DOCTRINE OF THIS ESSAY AND THE HYPOTHESIS OF HELVETIUS
COMPARED.--THE WILLING AND UNWILLING PUPIL CONTRASTED.--MISCHIEVOUS
TENDENCY OF THE USUAL MODES OF EDUCATION.
What a beautiful and encouraging view is thus afforded us of our common
nature! It is not true, as certain disdainful and fastidious censurers
of their fellow-men would persuade us to believe, that a thousand seeds
are sown in the wide field of humanity, for no other purpose than that
half-a-dozen may grow up into something magnificent and splendid, and
that the rest, though not absolutely extinguished in the outset, are
merely suffered to live that they may furnish manure and nourishment to
their betters. On the contrary, each man, according to this hypothesis,
has a sphere in which he may shine, and may contemplate the exercise of
his own powers with a well-grounded satisfaction. He produces something
as perfect in its kind, as that which is effected under another form
by the more brilliant and illustrious of his species. He stands forward
with a serene confidence in the ranks of his fellow-creatures, and says,
"I also have my place in society, that I fill in a manner with which I
have a right to be satisfied." He vests a certain portion of ingenuity
in the work he turns out. He incorporates his mind with the labour
of his hands; and a competent observer will find character and
individuality in it.
He has therefore nothing of the sheepishness of the ordinary schoolboy,
the tasks imposed upon whom by his instructor are foreign to the true
bent of his mind, and who stands cowed before his seniors, shrinking
under the judgment they may pass upon him, and the oppression they may
exercise towards him. He is probably competent to talk in a manner that
may afford instruction to men in other respects wise and accomplished,
and is no less clear and well-digested in his discourse respecting the
subjects to which his study and labour have been applied, than they are
on the questions that have exercised the powers of analysis with which
they are endowed. Like Elihu in the Book of Job, he says, "I am young,
and you are old; I said therefore, Days shall speak, and multitude
of years shall teach wisdom. But there is a spirit in man; and the
inspiration of the Almighty giveth him understanding. Great men are not
always wise; neither do the aged understand judgment. Hearken therefore
to me; and I also will shew my opinion."
What however in the last instance is affirmed, is not always realised
in the experiment. The humblest mechanic, who works con amore, and feels
that he discharges his office creditably, has a sober satisfaction in
the retrospect, and is able to express himself perspicuously and well on
the subject that has occupied his industry. He has a just confidence in
himself. If the occasion arises, on which he should speak on the subject
of what he does, and the methods he adopts for effecting it, he will
undoubtedly acquit himself to the satisfaction of those who hear him. He
knows that the explanations he can afford will be sound and masculine,
and will stand the test of a rigid examination.
But, in proportion as he feels the ground on which he stands, and his
own power to make it good, he will not fail to retire from an audience
that is not willing to be informed by him. He will often appear in the
presence of those, whom the established arrangements of society call
his superiors, who are more copiously endowed with the treasures of
language, and who, confident perhaps in the advantage of opulence, and
what is called, however they may have received it, a liberal education,
regard with disdain his artless and unornamented explanations. He did
not, it may be, expect this. And, having experienced several times such
unmerited treatment, he is not willing again to encounter it. He knew
the worth of what he had to offer. And, finding others indisposed to
listen to his suggestions, he contentedly confines them within the
circle of his own thoughts.
To this it must be added that, though he is able to explain himself
perspicuously, yet he is not master of the graces of speech, nor even
perhaps of the niceties of grammar. His voice is not tuned to those
winning inflections by which men, accustomed to the higher ranks of
society, are enabled so to express themselves,
That aged ears play truant at their tales,
And younger hearings are quite ravished,
So sweet and voluble is their discourse.
On the contrary there is a ruggedness in his manner that jars upon
the sense. It is easy for the light and supercilious to turn him into
ridicule. And those who will not be satisfied with the soundness of his
matter, expounded, as he is able to expound it, in clear and appropriate
terms, will yield him small credit, and listen to him with little
delight.
These considerations therefore bring us back again to the reasons of
the prevalent opinion, that the majority of mankind are dull, and of
apprehension narrow and confused. The mass of boys in the process of
their education appear so, because little of what is addressed to them
by their instructors, awakens their curiosity, and inspires them with
the desire to excel. The concealed spark of ambition is not yet cleared
from the crust that enveloped it as it first came from the hand of
nature. And in like manner the elder persons, who have not experienced
the advantages of a liberal education, or by whom small profit was made
by those advantages, being defective in exterior graces, are generally
listened to with impatience, and therefore want the confidence and the
inclination to tell what they know.
But these latter, if they are not attended to upon the subjects to which
their attention and ingenuity have been applied, do not the less possess
a knowledge and skill which are intrinsically worthy of applause. They
therefore contentedly shut up the sum of their acquisitions in their own
bosoms, and are satisfied with the consciousness that they have not been
deficient in performing an adequate part in the generation of men among
whom they live.
Those persons who favour the opinion of the incessant improveableness of
the human species, have felt strongly prompted to embrace the creed of
Helvetius, who affirms that the minds of men, as they are born into
the world, are in a state of equality, alike prepared for any kind
of discipline and instruction that may be afforded them, and that
it depends upon education only, in the largest sense of that word,
including every impression that may be made upon the mind, intentional
or accidental, from the hour of our birth, whether we shall be poets
or philosophers, dancers or singers, chemists or mathematicians,
astronomers or dissectors of the faculties of our common nature.
But this is not true. It has already appeared in the course of this
Essay, that the talent, or, more accurately speaking, the original
suitableness of the individual for the cultivation, of music or
painting, depends upon certain peculiarities that we bring into the
world with us. The same thing may be affirmed of the poet. As, in the
infinite variety of human beings, there are no two faces so alike that
they cannot be distinguished, nor even two leaves plucked from the same
tree, so there are varieties in the senses, the organs, and the internal
structure of the human species, however delicate, and to the touch of
the bystander evanescent, which give to each individual a predisposition
to rise to excellence in one particular art or attainment, rather than
in any other.
And this view of things, if well considered, is as favourable, nay, more
so, to the hypothesis of the successive improveableness of the human
species, as the creed of Helvetius. According to that philosopher, every
human creature that is born into the world, is capable of becoming,
or being made, the equal of Homer, Bacon or Newton, and as easily and
surely of the one as the other. This creed, if sincerely embraced, no
doubt affords a strong stimulus to both preceptor and pupil, since, if
true, it teaches us that any thing can be made of any thing, and that,
wherever there is mind, it is within the compass of possibility, not
only that that mind can be raised to a high pitch of excellence, but
even to a high pitch of that excellence, whatever it is, that we shall
prefer to all others, and most earnestly desire.
Still this creed will, after all, leave both preceptor and pupil in a
state of feeling considerably unsatisfactory. What it sets before us,
is too vast and indefinite. We shall be left long perhaps in a state of
balance as to what species of excellence we shall choose; and, in
the immense field of accessible improvement it offers to us, without
land-mark or compass for the direction of our course, it is scarcely
possible that we should feel that assured confidence and anticipation of
success, which are perhaps indispensibly required to the completion of a
truly arduous undertaking.
But, upon the principles laid down in this Essay, the case is widely
different. We are here presented in every individual human creature with
a subject better fitted for one sort of cultivation than another. We
are excited to an earnest study of the individual, that we may the
more unerringly discover what pursuit it is for which his nature and
qualifications especially prepare him. We may be long in choosing.
We may be even on the brink of committing a considerable mistake. Our
subsequent observations may enable us to correct the inference we were
disposed to make from those which went before. Our sagacity is flattered
by the result of the laborious scrutiny which this view of our common
nature imposes upon us.
In addition to this we reap two important advantages.
In the first place, we feel assured that every child that is born has
his suitable sphere, to which if he is devoted, he will not fail to make
an honourable figure, or, in other words, will be seen to be endowed
with faculties, apt, adroit, intelligent and acute. This consideration
may reasonably stimulate us to call up all our penetration for the
purpose of ascertaining the proper destination of the child for whom we
are interested.
And, secondly, having arrived at this point, we shall find ourselves
placed in a very different predicament from the guardian or instructor,
who, having selected at random the pursuit which his fancy dictates, and
in the choice of which he is encouraged by the presumptuous assertions
of a wild metaphysical philosophy, must often, in spite of himself, feel
a secret misgiving as to the final event. He may succeed, and present to
a wondering world a consummate musician, painter, poet, or philosopher;
for even blind chance may sometimes hit the mark, as truly as the most
perfect skill. But he will probably fail. Sudet multum, frustraque
laboret. And, if he is disappointed, he will not only feel that
disappointment in the ultimate result, but also in every step of his
progress. When he has done his best, exerted his utmost industry, and
consecrated every power of his soul to the energies he puts forth,
he may close every day, sometimes with a faint shadow of success, and
sometimes with entire and blank miscarriage. And the latter will happen
ten thousand times, for once that the undertaking shall be blessed with
a prosperous event.
But, when the destination that is given to a child has been founded
upon a careful investigation of the faculties, tokens, and accidental
aspirations which characterise his early years, it is then that
every step that is made with him, becomes a new and surer source of
satisfaction. The moment the pursuit for which his powers are adapted is
seriously proposed to him, his eyes sparkle, and a second existence, in
addition to that which he received at his birth, descends upon him. He
feels that he has now obtained something worth living for. He feels
that he is at home, and in a sphere that is appropriately his own. Every
effort that he makes is successful. At every resting-place in his
race of improvement he pauses, and looks back on what he has done with
complacency. The master cannot teach him so fast, as he is prompted to
acquire.
What a contrast does this species of instruction exhibit, to the
ordinary course of scholastic education! There, every lesson that is
prescribed, is a source of indirect warfare between the instructor and
the pupil, the one professing to aim at the advancement of him that
is taught, in the career of knowledge, and the other contemplating
the effect that is intended to be produced upon him with aversion, and
longing to be engaged in any thing else, rather than in that which is
pressed upon his foremost attention. In this sense a numerous school
is, to a degree that can scarcely be adequately described, the
slaughter-house of mind. It is like the undertaking, related by Livy,
of Accius Navius, the augur, to cut a whetstone with a razor--with this
difference, that our modern schoolmasters are not endowed with the gift
of working miracles, and, when the experiment falls into their hands,
the result of their efforts is a pitiful miscarriage. Knowledge is
scarcely in any degree imparted. But, as they are inured to a dogged
assiduity, and persist in their unavailing attempts, though the shell
of science, so to speak, is scarcely in the smallest measure penetrated,
yet that inestimable gift of the author of our being, the sharpness of
human faculties, is so blunted and destroyed, that it can scarcely ever
be usefully employed even for those purposes which it was originally
best qualified to effect.
A numerous school is that mint from which the worst and most flagrant
libels on our nature are incessantly issued. Hence it is that we are
taught, by a judgment everlastingly repeated, that the majority of our
kind are predestinated blockheads.
Not that it is by any means to be recommended, that a little writing and
arithmetic, and even the first rudiments of classical knowledge, so far
as they can be practicably imparted, should be withheld from any. The
mischief is, that we persist, month after month, and year after year,
in sowing our seed, when it has already been fully ascertained, that no
suitable and wholsome crop will ever be produced.
But what is perhaps worse is, that we are accustomed to pronounce, that
that soil, which will not produce the crop of which we have attempted to
make it fertile, is fit for nothing. The majority of boys, at the very
period when the buds of intellect begin to unfold themselves, are so
accustomed to be told that they are dull and fit for nothing, that
the most pernicious effects are necessarily produced. They become half
convinced by the ill-boding song of the raven, perpetually croaking in
their ears; and, for the other half, though by no means assured that
the sentence of impotence awarded against them is just, yet, folding
up their powers in inactivity, they are contented partly to waste their
energies in pure idleness and sport, and partly to wait, with minds
scarcely half awake, for the moment when their true destination shall be
opened before them.
Not that it is by any means to be desired that the child in his earlier
years should meet with no ruggednesses in his way, and that he should
perpetually tread "the primrose path of dalliance." Clouds and tempests
occasionally clear the atmosphere of intellect, not less than that
of the visible world. The road to the hill of science, and to the
promontory of heroic virtue, is harsh and steep, and from time to time
puts to the proof the energies of him who would ascend their topmost
round.
There are many things which every human creature should learn, so far
as, agreeably to the constitution of civilised society, they can be
brought within his reach. He should be induced to learn them, willingly
if possible, but, if that cannot be thoroughly effected, yet with half a
will. Such are reading, writing, arithmetic, and the first principles of
grammar; to which shall be added, as far as may be, the rudiments of all
the sciences that are in ordinary use. The latter however should not be
brought forward too soon; and, if wisely delayed, the tyro himself
will to a certain degree enter into the views of his instructor, and be
disposed to essay Quid valeant humeri, quid ferre recusent. But, above
all, the beginnings of those studies should be encouraged, which
unfold the imagination, familiarise us with the feelings, the joys and
sufferings of our fellow-beings, and teach us to put ourselves in their
place and eagerly fly to their assistance.
SECTION IV.
HOW FAR OUR GENUINE PROPENSITIES AND VOCATION SHOULD BE
FAVOURED.--SELF-REVERENCE RECOMMENDED.--CONCLUSION.
I knew a man of eminent intellectual faculties(3), one of whose
favourite topics of moral prudence was, that it is the greatest mistake
in the world to suppose, that, when we have discovered the special
aspiration of the youthful mind, we are bound to do every thing in our
power to assist its progress. He maintained on the contrary, that it is
our true wisdom to place obstacles in its way, and to thwart it: as we
may be well assured that, unless it is a mere caprice, it will shew its
strength in conquering difficulties, and that all the obstacles that
we can conjure up will but inspire it with the greater earnestness to
attain final success.
(3) Henry Fuseli.
The maxim here stated, taken to an unlimited extent, is doubtless a very
dangerous one. There are obstacles that scarcely any strength of man
would be sufficient to conquer. "Chill penury" will sometimes "repress
the noblest rage," that almost ever animated a human spirit: and our
wisest course will probably be, secretly to favour, even when we seem
most to oppose, the genuine bent of the youthful aspirer.
But the thing of greatest importance is, that we should not teach him
to estimate his powers at too low a rate. One of the wisest of all the
precepts comprised in what are called the Golden Verses of Pythagoras,
is that, in which he enjoins his pupil to "reverence himself." Ambition
is the noblest root that can be planted in the garden of the human soul:
not the ambition to be applauded and admired, to be famous and looked up
to, to be the darling theme of "stupid starers and of loud huzzas;" but
the ambition to fill a respectable place in the theatre of society, to
be useful and to be esteemed, to feel that we have not lived in vain,
and that we are entitled to the most honourable of all dismissions, an
enlightened self-approbation. And nothing can more powerfully tend to
place this beyond our acquisition, even our contemplation, than the
perpetual and hourly rebuffs which ingenuous youth is so often doomed
to sustain from the supercilious pedant, and the rigid decision of his
unfeeling elders.
Self-respect to be nourished in the mind of the pupil, is one of the
most valuable results of a well conducted education. To accomplish this,
it is most necessary that it should never be inculcated into him,
that he is dull. Upon the principles of this Essay, any unfavourable
appearances that may present themselves, do not arise from the dulness
of the pupil, but from the error of those upon whose superintendence he
is cast, who require of him the things for which he is not adapted, and
neglect those in which he is qualified to excel.
It is further necessary, if self-respect is one of the most desirable
results of a well-conducted education, that, as we should not humble
the pupil in his own eyes by disgraceful and humiliating language, so
we should abstain, as much as possible, from personal ill-treatment, and
the employing towards him the measures of an owner towards his purchased
or indentured slave. Indignity is of all things the most hostile to the
best purposes of a liberal education. It may be necessary occasionally
to employ, towards a human creature in his years of nonage, the
stimulants of exhortation and remonstrance even in the pursuits to which
he is best adapted, for the purpose of overcoming the instability and
fits of idleness to which all men, and most of all in their early
years, are subject: though in such pursuits a necessity of this sort can
scarcely be supposed. The bow must not always be bent; and it is good
for us that we should occasionally relax and play the fool. It may more
readily be imagined, that some incitement may be called for in those
things which, as has been mentioned above, it may be fit he should learn
though with but half a will. All freaks must not be indulged; admonition
is salutary, and that the pupil should be awakened by his instructor to
sober reflection and to masculine exertion. Every Telemachus should have
his Mentor.--But through the whole it is necessary that the spirit of
the pupil should not be broken, and that he should not be treated with
contumely. Stripes should in all instances be regarded as the last
resort, and as a sort of problem set up for the wisdom of the wise to
solve, whether the urgent case can arise in which it shall be requisite
to have recourse to them.
The principles here laid down have the strongest tendency to prove to
us how little progress has yet been made in the art of turning human
creatures to the best account. Every man has his place, in which if
he can be fixed, the most fastidious judge cannot look upon him with
disdain. But, to effect this arrangement, an exact attention is required
to ascertain the pursuit in which he will best succeed. In India the
whole mass of the members of the community is divided into castes; and,
instead of a scrupulous attention being paid to the early intimations of
individual character, it is already decided upon each, before he comes
into the world, which child shall be a priest, and which a soldier, a
physician, a lawyer, a merchant, and an artisan. In Europe we do not
carry this so far, and are not so elaborately wrong. But the rudiments
of the same folly flourish among us; and the accident of birth for
the most part decides the method of life to which each individual with
whatever violence shall be dedicated. A very few only, by means of
energies that no tyranny can subdue, escape from the operation of this
murderous decree.
Nature never made a dunce. Imbecility of mind is as rare, as deformity
of the animal frame. If this position be true, we have only to bear it
in mind, feelingly to convince ourselves, how wholesale the error
is into which society has hitherto fallen in the destination of its
members, and how much yet remains to be done, before our common nature
can be vindicated from the basest of all libels, the most murderous of
all proscriptions.
There is a passage in Voltaire, in which he expresses himself to this
effect: "It is after all but a slight line of separation that divides
the man of genius from the man of ordinary mould." I remember the place
where, and the time when, I read this passage. But I have been unable to
find the expression. It is however but reasonable that I should refer
to it on this occasion, that I may hereby shew so eminent a modern
concurring with the venerable ancient in an early era of letters, whose
dictum I have prefixed to this Essay, to vouch to a certain extent for
the truth of the doctrine I have delivered.
ESSAY III. OF INTELLECTUAL ABORTION.
In the preceding Essay I have endeavoured to establish the proposition,
that every human creature, idiots and extraordinary cases excepted, is
endowed with talents, which, if rightly directed, would shew him to
be apt, adroit, intelligent and acute, in the walk for which his
organisation especially fitted him.
There is however a sort of phenomenon, by no means of rare occurrence,
which tends to place the human species under a less favourable point of
view. Many men, as has already appeared, are forced into situations and
pursuits ill assorted to their talents, and by that means are exhibited
to their contemporaries in a light both despicable and ludicrous.
But this is not all. Men are not only placed, by the absurd choice
of their parents, or an imperious concurrence of circumstances,
in destinations and employments in which they can never appear to
advantage: they frequently, without any external compulsion, select
for themselves objects of their industry, glaringly unadapted to their
powers, and in which all their efforts must necessarily terminate in
miscarriage.
I remember a young man, who had been bred a hair-dresser, but who
experienced, as he believed, the secret visitations of the Muse, and
became inspired. "With sad civility, and aching head," I perused no
fewer than six comedies from the pen of this aspiring genius, in no page
of which I could discern any glimmering of poetry or wit, or in reality
could form a guess what it was that the writer intended in his elaborate
effusions. Such are the persons enumerated by Pope in the Prologue to
his Satires,
a parson, much bemused in beer,
A maudlin poetess, a rhyming peer,
A clerk, foredoomed his father's sou to cross,
Who pens a stanza, when he should engross.
Every manager of a theatre, and every publishing bookseller of eminence,
can produce you in each revolving season whole reams, almost cartloads,
of blurred paper, testifying the frequent recurrence of this phenomenon.
The cause however of this painful mistake does not lie in the
circumstance, that each man has not from the hand of nature an
appropriate destination, a sphere assigned him, in which, if life
should be prolonged to him, he might be secure of the respect of his
neighbours, and might write upon his tomb, "I have filled an honourable
career; I have finished my course."
One of the most glaring infirmities of our nature is discontent. One of
the most unquestionable characteristics of the human mind is the love
of novelty. Omne ignotum pro magnifico est. We are satiated with those
objects which make a part of our business in every day, and are desirous
of trying something that is a stranger to us. Whatever we see through
a mist, or in the twilight, is apt to be apprehended by us as something
admirable, for the single reason that it is seen imperfectly. What we
are sure that we can easily and adequately effect, we despise. He that
goes into battle with an adversary of more powerful muscle or of greater
practice than himself, feels a tingling sensation, not unallied to
delight, very different from that which would occur to him, when his
victory was easy and secure.
Each man is conscious what it is that he can certainly effect. This does
not therefore present itself to him as an object of ambition. We have
many of us internally something of the spirit expressed by the apostle:
"Forgetting the things that are behind, we press forward to those that
remain." And, so long as this precept is soberly applied, no conduct can
be more worthy of praise. Improvement is the appropriate race of man. We
cannot stand still. If we do not go forward, we shall inevitably recede.
Shakespear, when he wrote his Hamlet, did not know that he could produce
Macbeth and Othello.
But the progress of a man of reflection will be, to a considerable
degree, in the path he has already entered. If he strikes into a new
career, it will not be without deep premeditation. He will attempt
nothing wantonly. He will carefully examine his powers, and see for what
they are adapted. Sudet multum. He will be like the man, who first in a
frail bark committed himself to the treachery of the waves. He will
keep near to the shore; he will tremble for the audaciousness of
his enterprise; he will feel that it calls for all his alertness and
vigilance. The man of reflection will not begin, till he feels his mind
swelling with his purposed theme, till his blood flows fitfully and
with full pulses through his veins, till his eyes sparkle with the
intenseness of his conceptions, and his "bosom labours with the God."
But the fool dashes in at once. He does not calculate the dangers of his
enterprise. He does not study the map of the country he has to traverse.
He does not measure the bias of the ground, the rising knolls and the
descending slopes that are before him. He obeys a blind and unreflecting
impulse.
His case bears a striking resemblance to what is related of Oliver
Goldsmith. Goldsmith was a man of the most felicitous endowments. His
prose flows with such ease, copiousness and grace, that it resembles the
song of the sirens. His verses are among the most spirited, natural and
unaffected in the English language. Yet he was not contented. If he saw
a consummate dancer, he knew no reason why he should not do as well,
and immediately felt disposed to essay his powers. If he heard an
accomplished musician, he undertook to enter the lists with him. His
conduct was of a piece with that of the countryman, who, cheapening
spectacles, and making experiment of them for ever in vain upon the
book before him, was at length asked, "Could you ever read without
spectacles?" to which he was obliged to answer, "I do not know; I never
tried." The vanity of Goldsmith was infinite; and his failure in such
attempts must necessarily have been ludicrous.
The splendour of the thing presented to our observation, awakens
the spirit within us. The applause and admiration excited by certain
achievements and accomplishments infects us with desire. We are like
the youthful Themistocles, who complained that the trophies of Miltiades
would not let him sleep. We are like the novice Guido, who, while
looking on the paintings of Michael Angelo, exclaimed, "I also am a
painter." Themistocles and Guido were right, for they were of kindred
spirit to the great men they admired. But the applause bestowed on
others will often generate uneasiness and a sigh, in men least of all
qualified by nature to acquire similar applause. We are not contented to
proceed in the path of obscure usefulness and worth. We are eager to be
admired, and thus often engage in pursuits for which perhaps we are of
all men least adapted Each one would be the man above him.
And this is the cause why we see so many individuals, who might have
passed their lives with honour, devote themselves to incredible efforts,
only that they may be made supremely ridiculous.
To this let it be added, that the wisest man that ever existed, never
yet knew himself, especially in the morning of life. The person, who
ultimately stamped his history with the most heroic achievements, was
far perhaps even from suspecting, in the dawn of his existence, that he
should realise the miracles that mark its maturity. He might be ready to
exclaim, with Hazael in the Scriptures, "Is thy servant more than man,
that he should do this great thing?" The sublimest poet that ever sung,
was peradventure, while a stripling, unconscious of the treasures which
formed a part of the fabric of his mind, and unsuspicious of the high
destiny that in the sequel awaited him. What wonder then, that, awaking
from the insensibility and torpor which precede the activity of the
soul, some men should believe in a fortune that shall never be theirs,
and anticipate a glory they are fated never to sustain! And for the same
reason, when unanticipated failure becomes their lot, they are unwilling
at first to be discouraged, and find a certain gallantry in persevering,
and "against hope believing in hope."
This is the explanation of a countless multitude of failures that
occur in the career of literature. Nor is this phenomenon confined to
literature. In all the various paths of human existence, that appear
to have something in them splendid and alluring, there are perpetual
instances of daring adventures, unattended with the smallest rational
hope of success. Optat ephippia bos piger.
All quit their sphere, and rush into the skies.
But, beside these instances of perfect and glaring miscarriage, there
are examples worthy of a deeper regret, where the juvenile candidate
sets out in the morning of life with the highest promise, with colours
flying, and the spirit-stirring note of gallant preparation, when yet
his voyage of life is destined to terminate in total discomfiture. I
have seen such an one, whose early instructors regarded him with
the most sanguine expectation, and his elders admired him, while his
youthful competitors unreluctantly confessed his superiority, and gave
way on either side to his triumphant career; and all this has terminated
in nothing.
In reality the splendid march of genius is beset with a thousand
difficulties. "The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to
the strong." A multitude of unthought-of qualifications are required;
and it depends at least as much upon the nicely maintained balance
of these, as upon the copiousness and brilliancy of each, whether the
result shall be auspicious. The progress of genius is like the flight of
an arrow; a breath may turn it out of its course, and cause that course
to terminate many a degree wide of its purposed mark. It is therefore
scarcely possible that any sharpness of foresight can pronounce of the
noblest beginnings whether they shall reach to an adequate conclusion.
I have seen such a man, with the most fervent imagination, with the
most diligent study, with the happiest powers of memory, and with an
understanding that apparently took in every thing, and arranged every
thing, at the same time that by its acuteness it seemed able to add to
the accumulated stores of foregone wisdom and learning new treasures of
its own; and yet this man shall pass through the successive stages of
human life, in appearance for ever active, for ever at work, and leave
nothing behind that shall embalm his name to posterity, certainly
nothing in any degree adequately representing those excellencies, which
a chosen few, admitted to his retired and his serenest hours, knew to
reside in him.
There are conceptions of the mind, that come forth like the coruscations
of lightning. If you could fix that flash, it would seem as if it
would give new brightness to the sons of men, and almost extinguish the
luminary of day. But, ere you can say it is here, it is gone. It
appears to reveal to us the secrets of the world unknown; but the clouds
congregate again, and shut in upon us, before we had time to apprehend
its full radiance and splendour.
To give solidity and permanence to the inspirations of genius two things
are especially necessary. First, that the idea to be communicated should
be powerfully apprehended by the speaker or writer; and next, that he
should employ words and phrases which might convey it in all its truth
to the mind of another. The man who entertains such conceptions, will
not unfrequently want the steadiness of nerve which is required for
their adequate transmission. Suitable words will not always wait upon
his thoughts. Language is in reality a vast labyrinth, a scene like the
Hercinian Forest of old, which, we are told, could not be traversed in
less than sixty days. If we do not possess the clue, we shall infallibly
perish in the attempt, and our thoughts and our memory will expire with
us.
The sentences of this man, when he speaks, or when he writes, will be
full of perplexity and confusion. They will be endless, and never
arrive at their proper termination. They will include parenthesis on
parenthesis. We perceive the person who delivers them, to be perpetually
labouring after a meaning, but never reaching it. He is like one flung
over into the sea, unprovided with the skill that should enable him
to contend with the tumultuous element. He flounders about in pitiable
helplessness, without the chance of extricating himself by all his
efforts. He is lost in unintelligible embarrassment. It is a delightful
and a ravishing sight, to observe another man come after him, and
tell, without complexity, and in the simplicity of self-possession,
unconscious that there was any difficulty, all that his predecessor had
fruitlessly exerted himself to unfold.
There are a multitude of causes that will produce a miscarriage of this
sort, where the richest soil, impregnated with the choicest seeds of
learning and observation, shall entirely fail to present us with such
a crop as might rationally have been anticipated. Many such men waste
their lives in indolence and irresolution. They attempt many things,
sketch out plans, which, if properly filled up, might illustrate the
literature of a nation, and extend the empire of the human mind, but
which yet they desert as soon as begun, affording us the promise of a
beautiful day, that, ere it is noon, is enveloped in darkest tempests
and the clouds of midnight. They skim away from one flower in the
parterre of literature to another, like the bee, without, like the bee,
gathering sweetness from each, to increase the public stock, and
enrich the magazine of thought. The cause of this phenomenon is an
unsteadiness, ever seduced by the newness of appearances, and never
settling with firmness and determination upon what had been chosen.
Others there are that are turned aside from the career they might have
accomplished, by a visionary and impracticable fastidiousness. They can
find nothing that possesses all the requisites that should fix their
choice, nothing so good that should authorise them to present it to
public observation, and enable them to offer it to their contemporaries
as something that we should "not willingly let die." They begin often;
but nothing they produce appears to them such as that they should say of
it, "Let this stand." Or they never begin, none of their thoughts being
judged by them to be altogether such as to merit the being preserved.
They have a microscopic eye, and discern faults unworthy to be
tolerated, in that in which the critic himself might perceive nothing
but beauty.
These phenomena have introduced a maxim which is current with many,
that the men who write nothing, and bequeath no record of themselves
to posterity, are not unfrequently of larger calibre, and more gigantic
standard of soul, than such as have inscribed their names upon the
columns of the temple of Fame. And certain it is, that there are
extraordinary instances which appear in some degree to countenance this
assertion. Many men are remembered as authors, who seem to have owed the
permanence of their reputation rather to fortune than merit. They were
daring, and stepped into a niche that was left in the gallery of art or
of science, where others of higher qualifications, but of unconquerable
modesty, held back. At the same time persons, whose destiny caused them
to live among the elite of an age, have seen reason to confess that they
have heard such talk, such glorious and unpremeditated discourse, from
men whose thoughts melted away with the breath that uttered them, as the
wisest of their vaunted contemporary authors would in vain have sought
to rival.
The maxim however, notwithstanding these appearances, may safely be
pronounced to be a fallacious one. It has been received in various
quarters with the greater indulgence, inasmuch as the human mind is
prone in many cases to give a more welcome reception to seeming truths,
that present us at the first blush the appearance of falshood.
It must however be recollected that the human mind consists in the first
instance merely of faculties prepared to be applied to certain purposes,
and susceptible of improvement. It cannot therefore happen, that the
man, who has chosen a subject towards which to direct the energy of his
faculties, who has sought on all sides for the materials that should
enable him to do that subject justice, who has employed upon it his
contemplations by day, and his meditations during the watches of the
night, should not by such exercise greatly invigorate his powers. In
this sense there was much truth in the observation of the author who
said, "I did not write upon the subject you mention because I understood
it; but I understood it afterward, because I had written upon it."
The man who merely wanders through the fields of knowledge in search
of its gayest flowers and of whatever will afford him the most enviable
amusement, will necessarily return home at night with a very slender
collection. He that shall apply himself with self-denial and
an unshrinking resolution to the improvement of his mind, will
unquestionably be found more fortunate in the end.
He is not deterred by the gulphs that yawn beneath his feet, or the
mountains that may oppose themselves to his progress. He knows that the
adventurer of timid mind, and that is infirm of purpose, will never make
himself master of those points which it would be most honourable to him
to subdue. But he who undertakes to commit to writing the result of
his researches, and to communicate his discoveries to mankind, is the
genuine hero. Till he enters on this task, every thing is laid up in
his memory in a certain confusion. He thinks he possesses a thing whole;
but, when he brings it to the test, he is surprised to find how much he
was deceived. He that would digest his thoughts and his principles into
a regular system, is compelled in the first place to regard them in all
their clearness and perspicuity, and in the next place to select the
fittest words by which they may be communicated to others. It is through
the instrumentality of words that we are taught to think accurately and
severely for ourselves; they are part and parcel of all our propositions
and theories. It is therefore in this way that a preceptor, by
undertaking to enlighten the mind of his pupil, enlightens his own. He
becomes twice the man in the sequel, that he was when he entered on his
task. We admire the amateur student in his public essays, as we admire
a jackdaw or a parrot: he does considerably more than could have been
expected from him.
In attending to the subject of this Essay we have been led to observe
the different ways, in which the mind of man may be brought into
a position tending to exhibit its powers in a less creditable and
prepossessing point of view, than that in which all men, idiots and
extraordinary cases excepted, are by nature qualified to appear. Many,
not contented with those occupations, modest and humble in certain
cases, to which their endowments and original bent had designed them,
shew themselves immoderately set upon more alluring and splendid
pursuits in which they are least qualified to excel. Other instances
there are, still more entitled to our regret, where the individual is
seen to be gifted with no ordinary qualities, where his morning of life
has proved auspicious, and the highest expectations were formed of a
triumphant career, while yet in the final experiment he has been found
wanting, and the "voyage of his life" has passed "in shallows and in
miseries."
But our survey of the subject of which I treat will not be complete,
unless we add to what has been said, another striking truth respecting
the imperfection of man collectively taken. The examples of which the
history of our species consists, not only abound in cases, where, from
mistakes in the choice of life, or radical and irremediable imperfection
in the adventurer, the most glaring miscarriages are found to
result,--but it is also true, that all men, even the most illustrious,
have some fatal weakness, obliging both them and their rational admirers
to confess, that they partake of human frailty, and belong to a race of
beings which has small occasion to be proud. Each man has his assailable
part. He is vulnerable, though it be only like the fabled Achilles in
his heel. We are like the image that Nebuchadnezzar saw in his dream, of
which though the head was of fine gold, and the breast and the arms were
silver, yet the feet were partly only of iron, and partly of clay. No
man is whole and entire, armed at all points, and qualified for every
undertaking, or even for any one undertaking, so as to carry it through,
and to make the achievement he would perform, or the work he would
produce, in all its parts equal and complete.
It is a gross misapprehension in such men as, smitten with admiration of
a certain cluster of excellencies, or series of heroic acts, are
willing to predicate of the individual to whom they belong, "This man
is consummate, and without alloy." Take the person in his retirement, in
his hours of relaxation, when he has no longer a part to play, and one
or more spectators before whom he is desirous to appear to advantage,
and you shall find him a very ordinary man. He has "passions,
dimensions, senses, affections, like the rest of his fellow-creatures,
is fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, warmed and
cooled by the same summer and winter." He will therefore, when narrowly
observed, be unquestionably found betraying human weaknesses, and
falling into fits of ill humour, spleen, peevishness and folly. No man
is always a sage; no bosom at all times beats with sentiments lofty,
self-denying and heroic. It is enough if he does so, "when the matter
fits his mighty mind."
The literary genius, who undertakes to produce some consummate work,
will find himself pitiably in error, if he expects to turn it out of his
hands, entire in all its parts, and without a flaw.
There are some of the essentials of which it is constituted, that he has
mastered, and is sufficiently familiar with them; but there are others,
especially if his work is miscellaneous and comprehensive, to which he
is glaringly incompetent. He must deny his nature, and become another
man, if he would execute these parts, in a manner equal to that which
their intrinsic value demands, or to the perfection he is able to give
to his work in those places which are best suited to his powers. There
are points in which the wisest man that ever existed is no stronger than
a child. In this sense the sublimest genius will be found infelix operas
summa, nam ponere totum nescit. And, if he properly knows himself, and
is aware where lies his strength, and where his weakness, he will look
for nothing more in the particulars which fall under the last of these
heads, than to escape as he can, and to pass speedily to things in which
he finds himself at home and at his ease.
Shakespear we are accustomed to call the most universal genius that ever
existed. He has a truly wonderful variety. It is almost impossible
to pronounce in which he has done best, his Hamlet, Macbeth, Lear,
or Othello. He is equally excellent in his comic vein as his tragic.
Falstaff is in his degree to the full as admirable and astonishing, as
what he achieved that is noblest under the auspices of the graver
muse. His poetry and the fruits of his imagination are unrivalled. His
language, in all that comes from him when his genius is most alive, has
a richness, an unction, and all those signs of a character which admits
not of mortality and decay, for ever fresh as when it was first uttered,
which we recognise, while we can hardly persuade ourselves that we
are not in a delusion. As Anthony Wood says(4), "By the writings of
Shakespear and others of his time, the English tongue was exceedingly
enriched, and made quite another thing than what it was before." His
versification on these occasions has a melody, a ripeness and variety
that no other pen has reached.
(4) Athenae Oxonienses, vol. i. p. 592.
Yet there were things that Shakespear could not do. He could not make
a hero. Familiar as he was with the evanescent touches of mind en
dishabille, and in its innermost feelings, he could not sustain the
tone of a character, penetrated with a divine enthusiasm, or fervently
devoted to a generous cause, though this is truly within the compass of
our nature, and is more than any other worthy to be delineated. He could
conceive such sentiments, for there are such in his personage of Brutus;
but he could not fill out and perfect what he has thus sketched. He
seems even to have had a propensity to bring the mountain and the
hill to a level with the plain. Caesar is spiritless, and Cicero is
ridiculous, in his hands. He appears to have written his Troilus and
Cressida partly with a view to degrade, and hold up to contempt, the
heroes of Homer; and he has even disfigured the pure, heroic affection
which the Greek poet has painted as existing between Achilles and
Patroclus with the most odious imputations.
And, as he could not sustain an heroic character throughout, so neither
could he construct a perfect plot, in which the interest should be
perpetually increasing, and the curiosity of the spectator kept alive
and in suspense to the last moment. Several of his plays have an unity
of subject to which nothing is wanting; but he has not left us any
production that should rival that boast of Ancient Greece in the conduct
of a plot, the OEdipus Tyrannus, a piece in which each act rises upon
the act before, like a tower that lifts its head story above story to
the skies. He has scarcely ever given to any of his plays a fifth act,
worthy of those that preceded; the interest generally decreases after
the third.
Shakespear is also liable to the charge of obscurity. The most sagacious
critics dispute to this very hour, whether Hamlet is or is not mad,
and whether Falstaff is a brave man or a coward. This defect is perhaps
partly to be imputed to the nature of dramatic writing. It is next to
impossible to make words, put into the mouth of a character, develop all
those things passing in his mind, which it may be desirable should be
known.
I spoke, a short time back, of the language of Shakespear in his finest
passages, as of unrivalled excellence and beauty; I might almost have
called it miraculous. O, si sic omnia! It is to be lamented that this
felicity often deserts him. He is not seldom cramp, rigid and pedantic.
What is best in him is eternal, of all ages and times; but what is
worst, is crusted with an integument, almost more cumbrous than that of
any other writer, his contemporary, the merits of whose works continue
to invite us to their perusal.
After Shakespear, it is scarcely worth while to bring forward any
other example, of a writer who, notwithstanding his undoubted claims to
excellencies of the highest order, yet in his productions fully displays
the inequality and non-universality of his genius. One of the most
remarkable instances may be alleged in Richardson, the author of
Clarissa. In his delineation of female delicacy, of high-souled
and generous sentiments, of the subtlest feelings and even mental
aberrations of virtuous distress strained beyond the power of human
endurance, nothing ever equalled this author. But he could not shape
out the image of a perfect gentleman, or of that winning gaiety of soul,
which may indeed be exemplified, but can never be defined, and never be
resisted. His profligate is a man without taste; and his coquettes are
insolent and profoundly revolting. He has no resemblance of the art,
so conspicuous in Fletcher and Farquhar, of presenting to the reader
or spectator an hilarity, bubbling and spreading forth from a perennial
spring, which we love as surely as we feel, which communicates its own
tone to the bystander, and makes our very hearts dance within us with
a responsive sportiveness. We are astonished however that the formal
pedant has acquitted himself of his uncongenial task with so great a
display of intellectual wealth; and, though he has not presented to us
the genuine picture of an intellectual profligate, or of that lovely
gaiety of the female spirit which we have all of us seen, but which it
is scarcely possible to fix and to copy, we almost admire the more the
astonishing talent, that, having undertaken a task for which it was so
eminently unfit, yet has been able to substitute for the substance so
amazing a mockery, and has treated with so much copiousness and power
what it was unfit ever to have attempted.
ESSAY IV. OF THE DURABILITY OF HUMAN ACHIEVEMENTS AND PRODUCTIONS.
There is a view of the character of man, calculated more perhaps than
any other to impress us with reverence and awe.
Man is the only creature we know, that, when the term of his natural
life is ended, leaves the memory of himself behind him.
All other animals have but one object in view in their more considerable
actions, the supply of the humbler accommodations of their nature. Man
has a power sufficient for the accomplishment of this object, and a
residue of power beyond, which he is able, and which he not unfrequently
feels himself prompted, to employ in consecutive efforts, and thus,
first by the application and arrangement of material substances, and
afterward by the faculty he is found to possess of giving a permanent
record to his thoughts, to realise the archetypes and conceptions which
previously existed only in his mind.
One method, calculated to place this fact strongly before us, is, to
suppose ourselves elevated, in a balloon or otherwise, so as to enable
us to take an extensive prospect of the earth on which we dwell. We
shall then see the plains and the everlasting hills, the forests and the
rivers, and all the exuberance of production which nature brings
forth for the supply of her living progeny. We shall see multitudes of
animals, herds of cattle and of beasts of prey, and all the varieties
of the winged tenants of the air. But we shall also behold, in a manner
almost equally calculated to arrest our attention, the traces and the
monuments of human industry. We shall see castles and churches, and
hamlets and mighty cities. We shall see this strange creature, man,
subjecting all nature to his will. He builds bridges, and he constructs
aqueducts. He "goes down to the sea in ships," and variegates the ocean
with his squadrons and his fleets. To the person thus mounted in the
air to take a wide and magnificent prospect, there seems to be a sort
of contest between the face of the earth, as it may be supposed to have
been at first, and the ingenuity of man, which shall occupy and possess
itself of the greatest number of acres. We cover immense regions of the
globe with the tokens of human cultivation.
Thus the matter stands as to the exertions of the power of man in the
application and arrangement of material substances.
But there is something to a profound and contemplative mind much more
extraordinary, in the effects produced by the faculty we possess of
giving a permanent record to our thoughts.
From the development of this faculty all human science and literature
take their commencement. Here it is that we most distinctly, and with
the greatest astonishment, perceive that man is a miracle. Declaimers
are perpetually expatiating to us upon the shortness of human life.
And yet all this is performed by us, when the wants of our nature have
already by our industry been supplied. We manufacture these sublimities
and everlasting monuments out of the bare remnants and shreds of our
time.
The labour of the intellect of man is endless. How copious is the
volume, and how extraordinary the variety, of our sciences and our
arts! The number of men is exceedingly great in every civilised state of
society, that make these the sole object of their occupation. And this
has been more or less the condition of our species in all ages, ever
since we left the savage and the pastoral modes of existence.
From this view of the history of man we are led by an easy transition
to the consideration of the nature and influence of the love of fame in
modifying the actions of the human mind. We have already stated it to be
one of the characteristic distinctions of our species to erect monuments
which outlast the existence of the persons that produced them. This at
first was accidental, and did not enter the design of the operator. The
man who built himself a shed to protect him from the inclemency of
the seasons, and afterwards exchanged that shed for a somewhat more
commodious dwelling, did not at first advert to the circumstance that
the accommodation might last, when he was no longer capable to partake
of it.
In this way perhaps the wish to extend the memory of ourselves beyond
the term of our mortal existence, and the idea of its being practicable
to gratify that wish, descended upon us together. In contemplating
the brief duration and the uncertainty of human life, the idea must
necessarily have occurred, that we might survive those we loved, or that
they might survive us. In the first case we inevitably wish more or less
to cherish the memory of the being who once was an object of affection
to us, but of whose society death has deprived us. In the second case
it can scarcely happen but that we desire ourselves to be kindly
recollected by those we leave behind us. So simple is the first germ
of that longing after posthumous honour, which presents us with so
memorable effects in the page of history.
But, previously to the further consideration of posthumous fame, let us
turn our attention for a moment to the fame, or, as in that sense it
is more usually styled, popularity, which is the lot of a few favoured
individuals while they live. The attending to the subject in this point
of view, will be found to throw light upon the more extensive prospect
of the question to which we will immediately afterwards proceed.
Popularity is an acquisition more level to the most ordinary capacities,
and therefore is a subject of more general ambition, than posthumous
fame. It addresses itself to the senses. Applause is a species of good
fortune to which perhaps no mortal ear is indifferent. The persons who
constitute the circle in which we are applauded, receive us with smiles
of approbation and sympathy. They pay their court to us, seem to be made
happy by our bare presence among them, and welcome us to their houses
with congratulation and joy. The vulgar portion of mankind scarcely
understand the question of posthumous fame, they cannot comprehend how
panegyric and honour can "soothe the dull, cold ear of death:" but
they can all conceive the gratification to be derived from applauding
multitudes and loud huzzas.
One of the most obvious features however that attends upon popularity,
is its fugitive nature. No man has once been popular, and has lived
long, without experiencing neglect at least, if he were not also at some
time subjected to the very intelligible disapprobation and censure of
his fellows. The good will and kindness of the multitude has a devouring
appetite, and is like a wild beast that you should stable under your
roof, which, if you do not feed with a continual supply, will turn about
and attack its protector.
One touch of nature makes the whole world kin,--
That all, with one consent, praise new-born gauds,
And give to dust, that is a little gilt,
More laud than they will give to gold o'erdusted.
Cromwel well understood the nature of this topic, when he said, as we
are told, to one of his military companions, who called his attention to
the rapturous approbation with which they were received by the crowd on
their return from a successful expedition, "Ah, my friend, they would
accompany us with equal demonstrations of delight, if, upon no distant
occasion, they were to see us going to be hanged!"
The same thing which happens to the popularity attendant on the real
or imaginary hero of the multitude, happens also in the race after
posthumous fame.
As has already been said, the number of men is exceedingly great
in every civilised state of society, who make the sciences and arts
engendered by the human mind, the sole or the principal objects of their
occupation.
This will perhaps be most strikingly illustrated by a retrospect of
the state of European society in the middle, or, as they are frequently
styled, the dark ages.
It has been a vulgar error to imagine, that the mind of man, so far as
relates to its active and inventive powers, was sunk into a profound
sleep, from which it gradually recovered itself at the period when
Constantinople was taken by the Turks, and the books and the teachers of
the ancient Greek language were dispersed through Europe. The epoch from
which modern invention took its rise, commenced much earlier. The feudal
system, one of the most interesting contrivances of man in society, was
introduced in the ninth century; and chivalry, the offspring of that
system, an institution to which we are mainly indebted for refinement
of sentiment, and humane and generous demeanour, in the eleventh. Out of
these grew the originality and the poetry of romance.
These were no mean advancements. But perhaps the greatest debt which
after ages have contracted to this remote period, arose out of the
system of monasteries and ecclesiastical celibacy. Owing to these a
numerous race of men succeeded to each other perpetually, who were
separated from the world, cut off from the endearments of conjugal and
parental affection, and who had a plenitude of leisure for solitary
application. To these men we are indebted for the preservation of
the literature of Rome, and the multiplied copies of the works of the
ancients. Nor were they contented only with the praise of never-ending
industry. They forged many works, that afterwards passed for classical,
and which have demanded all the perspicacity of comparative criticism to
refute. And in these pursuits the indefatigable men who were dedicated
to them, were not even goaded by the love of fame. They were satisfied
with the consciousness of their own perseverance and ingenuity.
But the most memorable body of men that adorned these ages, were the
Schoolmen. They may be considered as the discoverers of the art of
logic. The ancients possessed in an eminent degree the gift of genius;
but they have little to boast on the score of arrangement, and discover
little skill in the strictness of an accurate deduction. They rather
arrive at truth by means of a felicity of impulse, than in consequence
of having regularly gone through the process which leads to it. The
schools of the middle ages gave birth to the Irrefragable and
the Seraphic doctors, the subtlety of whose distinctions, and the
perseverance of whose investigations, are among the most wonderful
monuments of the intellectual power of man. The thirteenth century
produced Thomas Aquinas, and Johannes Duns Scotus, and William Occam,
and Roger Bacon. In the century before, Thomas a Becket drew around him
a circle of literary men, whose correspondence has been handed down to
us, and who deemed it their proudest distinction that they called each
other philosophers. The Schoolmen often bewildered themselves in their
subtleties, and often delivered dogmas and systems that may astonish
the common sense of unsophisticated understandings. But such is man.
So great is his persevering labour, his invincible industry, and the
resolution with which he sets himself, year after year, and lustre after
lustre, to accomplish the task which his judgment and his zeal have
commanded him to pursue.
But I return to the question of literary fame. All these men, and men of
a hundred other classes, who laboured most commendably and gallantly in
their day, may be considered as swept away into the gulph of oblivion.
As Swift humorously says in his Dedication to Prince Posterity, "I had
prepared a copious list of Titles to present to your highness, as an
undisputed argument of the prolificness of human genius in my own time:
the originals were posted upon all gates and corner's of streets: but,
returning in a very few hours to take a review, they were all torn down,
and fresh ones put in their places. I enquired after them among readers
and booksellers, but in vain: the memorial of them was lost among men;
their place was no more to be found."
It is a just remark that had been made by Hume(5): "Theories of abstract
philosophy, systems of profound theology, have prevailed during one
age. In a successive period these have been universally exploded; their
absurdity has been detected; other theories and systems have supplied
their place, which again gave way to their successors; and nothing has
been experienced more liable to the revolutions of chance and fashion
than these pretended decisions of science. The case is not the same with
the beauties of eloquence and poetry. Just expressions of passion and
nature are sure, after a little time, to gain public applause, which
they maintain for ever. Aristotle and Plato and Epicurus and Descartes
may successively yield to each other: but Terence and Virgil maintain
an universal, undisputed empire over the minds of men. The abstract
philosophy of Cicero has lost its credit: the vehemence of his oratory
is still the object of our admiration."
(5) Essays, Part 1, Essay xxiii.
A few examples of the instability of fame will place this question in
the clearest light.
Nicholas Peiresk was born in the year 1580. His progress in knowledge
was so various and unprecedented, that, from the time that he was
twenty-one years of age, he was universally considered as holding the
helm of learning in his hand, and guiding the commonwealth of letters.
He died at the age of fifty-seven. The academy of the Humoristi at Rome
paid the most extraordinary honours to his memory; many of the cardinals
assisted at his funeral oration; and a collection of verses in his
praise was published in more than forty languages.
Salmasius was regarded as a prodigy of learning; and various princes
and powers entered into a competition who should be so fortunate as to
secure his residence in their states. Christina, queen of Sweden,
having obtained the preference, received him with singular reverence and
attention; and, Salmasius being taken ill at Stockholm, and confined to
his bed, the queen persisted with her own hand to prepare his caudles,
and mend his fire. Yet, but for the accident of his having had Milton
for his adversary, his name would now be as little remembered, even by
the generality of the learned, as that of Peiresk.
Du Bartas, in the reign of Henry the Fourth of France, was one of the
most successful poets that ever existed. His poem on the Creation of the
World went through upwards of thirty editions in the course of five
or six years, was translated into most European languages, and
its commentators promised to equal in copiousness and number the
commentators on Homer.
One of the most admired of our English poets about the close of the
sixteenth century, was Donne. Unlike many of those trivial writers of
verse who succeeded him after an interval of forty or fifty years, and
who won for themselves a brilliant reputation by the smoothness of their
numbers, the elegance of their conceptions, and the politeness of their
style, Donne was full of originality, energy and vigour. No man can
read him without feeling himself called upon for earnest exercise of
his thinking powers, and, even with the most fixed attention and
application, the student is often obliged to confess his inability
to take in the whole of the meaning with which the poet's mind was
perceptibly fraught. Every sentence that Donne writes, whether in verse
or prose, is exclusively his own. In addition to this, his thoughts are
often in the noblest sense of the word poetical; and passages may be
quoted from him that no English poet may attempt to rival, unless it be
Milton and Shakespear. Ben Jonson observed of him with great truth and a
prophetic spirit: "Donne for not being understood will perish." But this
is not all. If Waller and Suckling and Carew sacrificed every thing to
the Graces, Donne went into the other extreme. With a few splendid and
admirable exceptions, his phraseology and versification are crabbed and
repulsive. And, as poetry is read in the first place for pleasure, Donne
is left undisturbed on the shelf, or rather in the sepulchre; and
not one in an hundred even among persons of cultivation, can give any
account of him, if in reality they ever heard of his productions.
The name of Shakespear is that before which every knee must bow. But it
was not always so. When the first novelty of his pieces was gone, they
were seldom called into requisition. Only three or four of his plays
were upon the acting list of the principal company of players during
the reign of Charles the Second; and the productions of Beaumont and
Fletcher, and of Shirley, were acted three times for once of his. At
length Betterton revived, and by his admirable representation gave
popularity to, Macbeth, Hamlet and Lear, a popularity they have ever
since retained. But Macbeth was not revived (with music, and alterations
by sir William Davenant) till 1674; and Lear a few years later, with
love scenes and a happy catastrophe by Nahum Tate.
In the latter part of the reign of Charles the Second, Dryden and Otway
and Lee held the undisputed supremacy in the serious drama.
Such was the insensibility of the English public to nature, and her high
priest, Shakespear. The only one of their productions that has survived
upon the theatre, is Venice Preserved: and why it has done so it is
difficult to say; or rather it would be impossible to assign a just and
honourable reason for it. All the personages in this piece are of an
abandoned and profligate character. Pierre is a man resolved to destroy
and root up the republic by which he was employed, because his mistress,
a courtesan, is mercenary, and endures the amorous visits of an
impotent old lecher. Jaffier, without even the profession of any public
principle, joins in the conspiracy, because he has been accustomed
to luxury and prodigal expence and is poor. He has however no sooner
entered into the plot, than he betrays it, and turns informer to the
government against his associates. Belvidera instigates him to this
treachery, because she cannot bear the thought of having her father
murdered, and is absurd enough to imagine that she and her husband shall
be tender and happy lovers ever after. Their love in the latter acts of
the play is a continued tirade of bombast and sounding nonsense, without
one real sentiment, one just reflection, or one strong emotion working
from the heart, and analysing the nature of man. The folly of this love
can only be exceeded, by the abject and despicable crouching and fawning
of Jaffier to the man he had so basely betrayed, and their subsequent
reconciliation. There is not a production in the whole realms of
fiction, that has less pretension to manly, or even endurable feeling,
or to common propriety. The total defect of a moral sense in this piece
is strongly characteristic of the reign in which it was written. It has
in the mean while a richness of melody, and a picturesqueness of action,
that enables it to delude, and that even draws tears from the eyes
of, persons who can be won over by the eye and the ear, with almost
no participation of the understanding. And this unmeaning rant and
senseless declamation sufficed for the time to throw into shade those
exquisite delineations of character, those transcendent bursts of
passion, and that perfect anatomy of the human heart, which render the
master-pieces of Shakespear a property for all nations and all times.
While Shakespear was partly forgotten, it continued to be totally
unknown that he had contemporaries as inexpressibly superior to the
dramatic writers that have appeared since, as these contemporaries were
themselves below the almighty master of scenic composition. It was the
fashion to say, that Shakespear existed alone in a barbarous age, and
that all his imputed crudities, and intermixture of what was noblest
with unparalleled absurdity and buffoonery, were to be allowed for to
him on that consideration.
Cowley stands forward as a memorable instance of the inconstancy of
fame. He was a most amiable man; and the loveliness of his mind shines
out in his productions. He had a truly poetic frame of soul; and he
pours out the beautiful feelings that possessed him unreservedly and
at large. He was a great sufferer in the Stuart cause, he had been a
principal member of the court of the exiled queen; and, when the king
was restored, it was a deep sentiment among his followers and friends
to admire the verses of Cowley. He was "the Poet." The royalist rhymers
were set lightly by in comparison with him. Milton, the republican, who,
by his collection published during the civil war, had shewn that he was
entitled to the highest eminence, was unanimously consigned to oblivion.
Cowley died in 1667; and the duke of Buckingham, the author of the
Rehearsal, eight years after, set up his tomb in the cemetery of the
nation, with an inscription, declaring him to be at once "the Pindar,
the Horace and Virgil of his country, the delight and the glory of
his age, which by his death was left a perpetual mourner."--Yet--so
capricious is fame--a century has nearly elapsed, since Pope said,
Who now reads Cowley? If he pleases yet,
His moral pleases, not his pointed wit;
Forgot his epic, nay, Pindaric art,
But still I love the language of his heart.
As Cowley was the great royalist poet after the Restoration, Cleveland
stood in the same rank during the civil war. In the publication of his
works one edition succeeded to another, yearly or oftener, for more than
twenty years. His satire is eminently poignant; he is of a strength and
energy of thinking uncommonly masculine; and he compresses his meaning
so as to give it every advantage. His imagination is full of coruscation
and brilliancy. His petition to Cromwel, lord protector of England, when
the poet was under confinement for his loyal principles, is a singular
example of manly firmness, great independence of mind, and a happy
choice of topics to awaken feelings of forbearance and clemency. It is
unnecessary to say that Cleveland is now unknown, except to such as feel
themselves impelled to search into things forgotten.
It would be endless to adduce all the examples that might be found of
the caprices of fame. It has been one of the arts of the envious to set
up a contemptible rival to eclipse the splendour of sterling merit. Thus
Crowne and Settle for a time disturbed the serenity of Dryden. Voltaire
says, the Phaedra of Pradon has not less passion than that of Racine,
but expressed in rugged verse and barbarous language. Pradon is now
forgotten: and the whole French poetry of the Augustan age of Louis the
Fourteenth is threatened with the same fate. Hayley for a few years was
applauded as the genuine successor of Pope; and the poem of Sympathy
by Pratt went through twelve editions. For a brief period almost each
successive age appears fraught with resplendent genius; but they go out
one after another; they set, "like stars that fall, to rise no more."
Few indeed are endowed with that strength of construction, that should
enable them to ride triumphant on the tide of ages.
It is the same with conquerors. What tremendous battles have been
fought, what oceans of blood have been spilled, by men who were resolved
that their achievements should be remembered for ever! And now even
their names are scarcely preserved; and the very effects of the
disasters they inflicted on mankind seem to be swept away, as of no more
validity than things that never existed. Warriors and poets, the authors
of systems and the lights of philosophy, men that astonished the earth,
and were looked up to as Gods, even like an actor on the stage, have
strutted their hour, and then been heard of no more.
Books have the advantage of all other productions of the human head or
hand. Copies of them may be multiplied for ever, the last as good as
the first, except so far as some slight inadvertent errors may have
insinuated themselves. The Iliad flourishes as green now, as on the
day that Pisistratus is said first to have stamped upon it its present
order. The songs of the Rhapsodists, the Scalds, and the Minstrels,
which once seemed as fugitive as the breath of him who chaunted them,
repose in libraries, and are embalmed in collections. The sportive
sallies of eminent wits, and the Table Talk of Luther and Selden, may
live as long as there shall be men to read, and judges to appreciate
them.
But other human productions have their date. Pictures, however
admirable, will only last as long as the colours of which they are
composed, and the substance on which they are painted. Three or four
hundred years ordinarily limit the existence of the most favoured. We
have scarcely any paintings of the ancients, and but a small portion of
their statues, while of these a great part are mutilated, and various
members supplied by later and inferior artists. The library of Bufo is
by Pope described,
where busts of poets dead,
And a true Pindar stood without a head.
Monumental records, alike the slightest and the most solid, are
subjected to the destructive operation of time, or to the being removed
at the caprice or convenience of successive generations. The pyramids
of Egypt remain, but the names of him who founded them, and of him
whose memory they seemed destined to perpetuate, have perished together.
Buildings for the use or habitation of man do not last for ever. Mighty
cities, as well as detached edifices, are destined to disappear. Thebes,
and Troy, and Persepolis, and Palmyra have vanished from the face of the
earth.
"Thorns and brambles have grown up in their palaces: they are
habitations for serpents, and a court for the owl."
There are productions of man however that seem more durable than any
of the edifices he has raised. Such are, in the first place, modes of
government. The constitution of Sparta lasted for seven hundred years.
That of Rome for about the same period. Institutions, once deeply
rooted in the habits of a people, will operate in their effects through
successive revolutions. Modes of faith will sometimes be still more
permanent. Not to mention the systems of Moses and Christ, which we
consider as delivered to us by divine inspiration, that of Mahomet
has continued for twelve hundred years, and may last, for aught that
appears, twelve hundred more. The practices of the empire of China are
celebrated all over the earth for their immutability.
This brings us naturally to reflect upon the durability of the sciences.
According to Bailly, the observation of the heavens, and a calculation
of the revolutions of the heavenly bodies, in other words, astronomy,
subsisted in maturity in China and the East, for at least three thousand
years before the birth of Christ: and, such as it was then, it bids fair
to last as long as civilisation shall continue. The additions it has
acquired of late years may fall away and perish, but the substance shall
remain. The circulation of the blood in man and other animals, is a
discovery that shall never be antiquated. And the same may be averred
of the fundamental elements of geometry and of some other sciences.
Knowledge, in its most considerable branches shall endure, as long as
books shall exist to hand it down to successive generations.
It is just therefore, that we should regard with admiration and awe the
nature of man, by whom these mighty things have been accomplished, at
the same time that the perishable quality of its individual monuments,
and the temporary character and inconstancy of that fame which in many
instances has filled the whole earth with its renown, may reasonably
quell the fumes of an inordinate vanity, and keep alive in us the
sentiment of a wholsome diffidence and humility.
ESSAY V. OF THE REBELLIOUSNESS OF MAN.
There is a particular characteristic in the nature of the human mind,
which is somewhat difficult to be explained.
Man is a being of a rational and an irrational nature.
It has often been said that we have two souls. Araspes, in the
Cyropedia, adopts this language to explain his inconsistency, and
desertion of principle and honour. The two souls of man, according to
this hypothesis, are, first, animal, and, secondly, intellectual.
But I am not going into any thing of this slight and every-day
character.
Man is a rational being. It is by this particular that he is eminently
distinguished from the brute creation. He collects premises and deduces
conclusions. He enters into systems of thinking, and combines systems of
action, which he pursues from day to day, and from year to year. It is
by this feature in his constitution that he becomes emphatically the
subject of history, of poetry and fiction. It is by this that he is
raised above the other inhabitants of the globe of earth, and that the
individuals of our race are made the partners of "gods, and men like
gods."
But our nature, beside this, has another section. We start occasionally
ten thousand miles awry. We resign the sceptre of reason, and the high
dignity that belongs to us as beings of a superior species; and, without
authority derived to us from any system of thinking, even without the
scheme of gratifying any vehement and uncontrolable passion, we are
impelled to do, or at least feel ourselves excited to do, something
disordinate and strange. It seems as if we had a spring within us, that
found the perpetual restraint of being wise and sober insupportable.
We long to be something, or to do something, sudden and unexpected,
to throw the furniture of our apartment out at window, or, when we are
leaving a place of worship, in which perhaps the most solemn feelings
of our nature have been excited, to push the grave person that is
just before us, from the top of the stairs to the bottom. A thousand
absurdities, wild and extravagant vagaries, come into our heads, and we
are only restrained from perpetrating them by the fear, that we may be
subjected to the treatment appropriated to the insane, or may perhaps be
made amenable to the criminal laws of our country.
A story occurs to me, which I learned from the late Dr. Parr at Hatton,
that may not unhappily illustrate the point I am endeavouring to
explain.
Dr. Samuel Clarke, rector of St. James's, Westminster, the especial
friend of Sir Isaac Newton, the distinguished editor of the poems of
Homer, and author of the Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of
God, was one day summoned from his study, to receive two visitors in
the parlour. When he came downstairs, and entered the room, he saw
a foreigner, who by his air seemed to be a person of distinction, a
professor perhaps of some university on the continent; and an alderman
of London, a relation of the doctor, who had come to introduce the
foreigner. The alderman, a man of uncultivated mind and manners, and
whom the doctor had been accustomed to see in sordid attire, surrounded
with the incumbrances of his trade, was decked out for the occasion in a
full-dress suit, with a wig of majestic and voluminous structure. Clarke
was, as it appears, so much struck with the whimsical nature of this
unexpected metamorphosis, and the extraordinary solemnity of his
kinsman's demeanour, as to have felt impelled, almost immediately upon
entering the room, to snatch the wig from the alderman's head, and throw
it against the ceiling: after which this eminent person immediately
escaped, and retired to his own apartment. I was informed from the same
authority, that Clarke, after exhausting his intellectual faculties by
long and intense study, would not unfrequently quit his seat, leap upon
the table, and place himself cross-legged like a tailor, being prompted,
by these antagonist sallies, to relieve himself from the effect of the
too severe strain he had previously put upon his intellectual powers.
But the deviousness and aberration of our human faculties frequently
amount to something considerably more serious than this.
I will put a case.
I will suppose myself and another human being together, in some spot
secure from the intrusion of spectators. A musket is conveniently at
hand. It is already loaded. I say to my companion, "I will place myself
before you; I will stand motionless: take up that musket, and shoot me
through the heart." I want to know what passes in the mind of the man to
whom these words are addressed.
I say, that one of the thoughts that will occur to many of the persons
who should be so invited, will be, "Shall I take him at his word?"
There are two things that restrain us from acts of violence and crime.
The first is, the laws of morality. The second is, the construction that
will be put upon our actions by our fellow-creatures, and the treatment
we shall receive from them.--I put out of the question here any
particular value I may entertain for my challenger, or any degree of
friendship and attachment I may feel for him.
The laws of morality (setting aside the consideration of any documents
of religion or otherwise I may have imbibed from my parents and
instructors) are matured within us by experience. In proportion as I am
rendered familiar with my fellow-creatures, or with society at large, I
come to feel the ties which bind men to each other, and the wisdom
and necessity of governing my conduct by inexorable rules. We are thus
further and further removed from unexpected sallies of the mind, and the
danger of suddenly starting away into acts not previously reflected on
and considered.
With respect to the censure and retaliation of other men on my
proceeding, these, by the terms of my supposition, are left out of the
question.
It may be taken for granted, that no man but a madman, would in the
case I have stated take the challenger at his word. But what I want to
ascertain is, why the bare thought of doing so takes a momentary hold of
the mind of the person addressed?
There are three principles in the nature of man which contribute to
account for this.
First, the love of novelty.
Secondly, the love of enterprise and adventure. I become insupportably
wearied with the repetition of rotatory acts and every-day occurrences.
I want to be alive, to be something more than I commonly am, to change
the scene, to cut the cable that binds my bark to the shore, to launch
into the wide sea of possibilities, and to nourish my thoughts with
observing a train of unforeseen consequences as they arise.
A third principle, which discovers itself in early childhood, and which
never entirely quits us, is the love of power. We wish to be assured
that we are something, and that we can produce notable effects upon
other beings out of ourselves. It is this principle, which instigates
a child to destroy his playthings, and to torment and kill the animals
around him.
But, even independently of the laws of morality, and the fear of censure
and retaliation from our fellow-creatures, there are other things which
would obviously restrain us from taking the challenger in the above
supposition at his word.
If man were an omnipotent being, and at the same time retained all
his present mental infirmities, it would be difficult to say of what
extravagances he would be guilty. It is proverbially affirmed that power
has a tendency to corrupt the best dispositions. Then what would not
omnipotence effect?
If, when I put an end to the life of a fellow-creature, all vestiges of
what I had done were to disappear, this would take off a great part of
the control upon my actions which at present subsists. But, as it is,
there are many consequences that "give us pause." I do not like to see
his blood streaming on the ground. I do not like to witness the spasms
and convulsions of a dying man. Though wounded to the heart, he may
speak. Then what may be chance to say? What looks of reproach may he
cast upon me? The musket may miss fire. If I wound him, the wound may be
less mortal than I contemplated. Then what may I not have to fear? His
dead body will be an incumbrance to me. It must be moved from the place
where it lies. It must be buried. How is all this to be done by me? By
one precipitate act, I have involved myself in a long train of loathsome
and heart-sickening consequences.
If it should be said, that no one but a person of an abandoned character
would fail, when the scene was actually before him, to feel an instant
repugnance to the proposition, yet it will perhaps be admitted, that
almost every reader, when he regards it as a supposition merely, says to
himself for a moment, "Would I? Could I?"
But, to bring the irrationality of man more completely to the test,
let us change the supposition. Let us imagine him to be gifted with the
powers of the fabled basilisk, "to monarchise, be feared, and kill with
looks." His present impulses, his passions, his modes of reasoning
and choosing shall continue; but his "will is neighboured to his act;"
whatever he has formed a conception of with preference, is immediately
realised; his thought is succeeded by the effect; and no traces are
left behind, by means of which a shadow of censure or suspicion can be
reflected on him.
Man is in truth a miracle. The human mind is a creature of celestial
origin, shut up and confined in a wall of flesh. We feel a kind of
proud impatience of the degradation to which we are condemned. We beat
ourselves to pieces against the wires of our cage, and long to escape,
to shoot through the elements, and be as free to change at any instant
the place where we dwell, as to change the subject to which our thoughts
are applied.
This, or something like this, seems to be the source of our most
portentous follies and absurdities. This is the original sin upon which
St. Austin and Calvin descanted. Certain Arabic writers seem to have had
this in their minds, when they tell us, that there is a black drop
of blood in the heart of every man, in which is contained the fomes
peccati, and add that, when Mahomet was in the fourth year of his age,
the angel Gabriel caught him up from among his playfellows, and taking
his heart from his bosom, squeezed out of it this first principle of
frailty, in consequence of which he for ever after remained inaccessible
to the weaknesses of other men(6).
(6) Life of Mahomet, by Prideaux.
It is the observation of sir Thomas Browne: "Man is a noble animal,
splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave." One of the most remarkable
examples of this is to be found in the pyramids of Egypt. They are
generally considered as having been erected to be the tombs of the kings
of that country. They have no opening by which for the light of heaven
to enter, and afford no means for the accommodation of living man. An
hundred thousand men are said to have been constantly employed in the
building; ten years to have been consumed in hewing and conveying the
stones, and twenty more in completing the edifice. Of the largest the
base is a square, and the sides are triangles, gradually diminishing as
they mount in the air. The sides of the base are two hundred and twenty
feet in length, and the perpendicular height is above one hundred and
fifty-five feet. The figure of the pyramid is precisely that which is
most calculated for duration: it cannot perish by accident; and it would
require almost as much labour to demolish it, as it did to raise it at
first.
What a light does this fact convey into the inmost recesses of the human
heart! Man reflects deeply, and with feelings of a mortified nature,
upon the perishableness of his frame, and the approaching close, so far
as depends upon the evidence of our senses, of his existence. He has
indeed an irrepressible "longing after immortality;" and this is one of
the various and striking modes in which he has sought to give effect to
his desire.
Various obvious causes might be selected, which should be calculated to
give birth to the feeling of discontent.
One is, the not being at home.
I will here put together some of the particulars which make up the idea
of home in the most emphatical sense of the word.
Home is the place where a man is principally at his ease. It is the
place where he most breathes his native air: his lungs play without
impediment; and every respiration brings a pure element, and a
cheerful and gay frame of mind. Home is the place where he most easily
accomplishes all his designs; he has his furniture and materials and the
elements of his occupations entirely within his reach. Home is the place
where he can be uninterrupted. He is in a castle which is his in full
propriety. No unwelcome guests can intrude; no harsh sounds can disturb
his contemplations; he is the master, and can command a silence equal to
that of the tomb, whenever he pleases.
In this sense every man feels, while cribbed in a cabin of flesh,
and shut up by the capricious and arbitrary injunctions of human
communities, that he is not at home.
Another cause of our discontent is to be traced to the disparity of the
two parts of which we are composed, the thinking principle, and the body
in which it acts. The machine which constitutes the visible man, bears
no proportion to our thoughts, our wishes and desires. Hence we are
never satisfied; we always feel the want of something we have not; and
this uneasiness is continually pushing us on to precipitate and abortive
resolves.
I find in a book, entitled, Illustrations of Phrenology, by Sir George
Mackenzie, Baronet, the following remark. 'If this portrait be correctly
drawn, the right side does not quite agree with the left in the
region of ideality. This dissimilarity may have produced something
contradictory in the feelings of the person it represents, which he may
have felt extremely annoying(7).' An observation of this sort may be
urged with striking propriety as to the dissimilar attributes of the
body and the thinking principle in man.
(7) The remark thus delivered is applied to the portrait of the author
of the present volume.
It is perhaps thus that we are to account for a phenomenon, in itself
sufficiently obvious, that our nature has within it a principle of
boundless ambition, a desire to be something that we are not, a feeling
that we are out of our place, and ought to be where we are not. This
feeling produces in us quick and earnest sallies and goings forth of the
mind, a restlessness of soul, and an aspiration after some object that
we do not find ourselves able to chalk out and define.
Hence comes the practice of castle-building, and of engaging the soul in
endless reveries and imaginations of something mysterious and unlike
to what we behold in the scenes of sublunary life. Many writers, having
remarked this, have endeavoured to explain it from the doctrine of
a preexistent state, and have said that, though we have no clear and
distinct recollection of what happened to us previously to our being
launched in our present condition, yet we have certain broken and
imperfect conceptions, as if, when the tablet of the memory was cleared
for the most part of the traces of what we had passed through in some
other mode of being, there were a few characters that had escaped the
diligence of the hand by which the rest had been obliterated.
It is this that, in less enlightened ages of the world, led men to
engage so much of their thoughts upon supposed existences, which,
though they might never become subject to our organs of vision, were yet
conceived to be perpetually near us, fairies, ghosts, witches, demons
and angels. Our ancestors often derived suggestions from these, were
informed of things beyond the ken of ordinary faculties, were tempted to
the commission of forbidden acts, or encouraged to proceed in the paths
of virtue.
The most remarkable of these phenomena was that of necromancy, sorcery
and magic. There were men who devoted themselves to "curious arts," and
had books fraught with hidden knowledge. They could "bedim"
The noon-tide sun, call forth the mutinous winds,
And 'twixt the green sea and the azured vault
Set roaring war: to the dread, rattling thunder
They could give fire, and rift even Jove's stout oak
With his own bolt--graves at their command
Have waked their sleepers, oped and let them forth.
And of these things the actors in them were so certain, that many
witches were led to the stake, their guilt being principally established
on their own confessions. But the most memorable matters in the history
of the black art, were the contracts which those who practised it not
unfrequently entered into with the devil, that he should assist them by
his supernatural power for ten or twenty years, and, in consideration of
this aid, they consented to resign their souls into his possession, when
the period of the contract was expired.
In the animal creation there are some species that may be tamed, and
others whose wildness is irreclaimable. Horace says, that all men are
mad: and no doubt mankind in general has one of the features of madness.
In the ordinary current of our existence we are to a considerable degree
rational and tractable. But we are not altogether safe. I may converse
with a maniac for hours; he shall talk as soberly, and conduct himself
with as much propriety, as any other of the species who has never been
afflicted with his disease; but touch upon a particular string, and,
before you are aware of it, he shall fly out into the wildest and most
terrifying extravagances. Such, though in a greatly inferior degree, are
the majority of human beings.
The original impulse of man is uncontrolableness. When the spirit of
life first descends upon us, we desire and attempt to be as free as air.
We are impatient of restraint. This is the period of the empire of will.
There is a power within us that wars against the restraint of another.
We are eager to follow our own impulses and caprices, and are with
difficulty subjected to those who believe they best know how to control
inexperienced youth in a way that shall tend to his ultimate advantage.
The most moderate and auspicious method in which the old may endeavour
to guide and control the pursuits of the young, undoubtedly is by the
conviction of the understanding. But this is not always easy. It is not
at all times practicable fully to explain to the apprehension of a very
young person the advantage, which at a period a little more advanced he
would be able clearly to recognise.
There is a further evil appertaining to this view of the subject.
A young man even, in the early season of life, is not always disposed to
obey the convictions of his understanding. He has prescribed to himself
a task which returns with the returning day; but he is often not
disposed to apply. The very sense that it is what he conceives to be an
incumbent duty, inspires him with reluctance.
An obvious source of this reluctance is, that the convictions of our
understanding are not always equally present to us. I have entered into
a deduction of premises, and arrived at a conclusion; but some of the
steps of the chain are scarcely obvious to me, at the time that I am
called upon to act upon the conclusion I have drawn. Beside which,
there was a freshness in the first conception of the reasons on which
my conduct was to be framed, which, by successive rehearsals, and
by process of time, is no longer in any degree spirit-stirring and
pregnant.
This restiveness and impracticability are principally incident to us in
the period of youth. By degrees the novelties of life wear out, and we
become sober. We are like soldiers at drill, and in a review. At first
we perform our exercise from necessity, and with an ill grace. We had
rather be doing almost any thing else.
By degrees we are reconciled to our occupation. We are like horses in a
manege, or oxen or dogs taught to draw the plough, or be harnessed to a
carriage. Our stubbornness is subdued; we no longer exhaust our strength
in vain efforts to free ourselves from the yoke.
Conviction at first is strong. Having arrived at years of discretion,
I revolve with a sobered mind the different occupations to which my
efforts and my time may be devoted, and determine at length upon
that which under all the circumstances displays the most cogent
recommendations. Having done so, I rouse my faculties and direct my
energies to the performance of my task. By degrees however my resolution
grows less vigorous, and my exertions relax. I accept any pretence to be
let off, and fly into a thousand episodes and eccentricities.
But, as the newness of life subsides, the power of temptation becomes
less. That conviction, which was at first strong, and gradually became
fainter and less impressive, is made by incessant repetitions a part
of my nature. I no more think of doubting its truth, than of my own
existence. Practice has rendered the pursuits that engage me more easy,
till at length I grow disturbed and uncomfortable if I am withheld from
them. They are like my daily bread. If they are not afforded me, I grow
sick and attenuated, and my life verges to a close. The sun is not surer
to rise, than I am to feel the want of my stated employment.
It is the business of education to tame the wild ass, the restive and
rebellious principle, in our nature. The judicious parent or instructor
essays a thousand methods to accomplish his end. The considerate elder
tempts the child with inticements and caresses, that he may win his
attention to the first rudiments of learning.
He sets before him, as he grows older, all the considerations
and reasons he can devise, to make him apprehend the advantage of
improvement and literature. He does his utmost to make his progress
easy, and to remove all impediments. He smooths the path by which he
is to proceed, and endeavours to root out all its thorns. He exerts his
eloquence to inspire his pupil with a love for the studies in which he
is engaged. He opens to him the beauties and genius of the authors he
reads, and endeavours to proceed with him hand in hand, and step by
step. He persuades, he exhorts, and occasionally he reproves. He awakens
in him the love of excellence, the fear of disgrace, and an ambition to
accomplish that which "the excellent of the earth" accomplished before
him.
At a certain period the young man is delivered into his own hands,
and becomes an instructor to himself. And, if he is blessed with an
ingenuous disposition, he will enter on his task with an earnest desire
and a devoted spirit. No person of a sober and enlarged mind can for a
moment delude himself into the opinion that, when he is delivered into
his own hands, his education is ended. In a sense to which no one is
a stranger, the education of man and his life terminate together. We
should at no period of our existence be backward to receive information,
and should at all times preserve our minds open to conviction. We
should through every day of our lives seek to add to the stores of our
knowledge and refinement. But, independently of this more extended sense
of the word, a great portion of the education of the young man is left
to the direction of the man himself. The epoch of entire liberty is a
dangerous period, and calls upon him for all his discretion, that he
may not make an ill use of that, which is in itself perhaps the first of
sublunary blessings. The season of puberty also, and all the excitements
from this source, "that flesh is heir to," demand the utmost vigilance
and the strictest restraint. In a word, if we would counteract the
innate rebelliousness of man, that indocility of mind which is at all
times at hand to plunge us into folly, we must never slumber at our
post, but govern ourselves with steady severity, and by the dictates
of an enlightened understanding. We must be like a skilful pilot in a
perilous sea, and be thoroughly aware of all the rocks and quicksands,
and the multiplied and hourly dangers that beset our navigation.
In this Essay I have treated of nothing more than the inherent
restiveness and indocility of man, which accompany him at least through
all the earlier sections and divisions of his life. I have not treated
of those temptations calculated to lead him into a thousand excesses and
miseries, which originate in our lower nature, and are connected with
what we call the passion of love. Nor have I entered upon the still
more copious chapter, of the incentives and provocations which are
administered to us by those wants which at all times beset us as living
creatures, and by the unequal distribution of property generally in
civil society. I have not considered those attributes of man which may
serve indifferently for good or for ill, as he may happen to be or not
to be the subject of those fiercer excitements, that will oft times
corrupt the most ingenuous nature, and have a tendency to inspire into
us subtle schemes and a deep contrivance. I have confined myself to
the consideration of man, as yet untamed to the modes of civilised
community, and unbroken to the steps which are not only prescribed by
the interests of our social existence, but which are even in some degree
indispensible to the improvement and welfare of the individual. I have
considered him, not as he is often acted upon by causes and motives
which seem almost to compel him to vice, but merely as he is restless,
and impatient, and disdainful both of the control of others, and the
shackles of system.
For the same reason I have not taken notice of another species of
irrationality, and which seems to answer more exactly to the Arabic
notion of the fomes peccati, the black drop of blood at the bottom of
the heart. We act from motives apprehended by the judgment; but we do
not stop at them. Once set in motion, it will not seldom happen that we
proceed beyond our original mark. We are like Othello in the play:
Our blood begins our safer guides to rule;
And passion, having our best judgment quelled,
Assays to lead the way.
This is the explanation of the greatest enormities that have been
perpetrated by man, and the inhuman deeds of Nero and Caligula. We
proceed from bad to worse. The reins of our discretion drop from our
hands. It fortunately happens however, that we do not in the majority of
cases, like Phaeton in the fable, set the world on fire; but that, with
ordinary men, the fiercest excesses of passion extend to no greater
distance than can be reached by the sound of their voice.
ESSAY VI. OF HUMAN INNOCENCE.
One of the most obvious views which are presented to us by man
in society is the inoffensiveness and innocence that ordinarily
characterise him.
Society for the greater part carries on its own organization. Each man
pursues his proper occupation, and there are few individuals that feel
the propensity to interrupt the pursuits of their neighbours by personal
violence. When we observe the quiet manner in which the inhabitants of a
great city, and, in the country, the frequenters of the fields, the
high roads, and the heaths, pass along, each engrossed by his private
contemplations, feeling no disposition to molest the strangers he
encounters, but on the contrary prepared to afford them every courteous
assistance, we cannot in equity do less than admire the innocence of our
species, and fancy that, like the patriarchs of old, we have fallen in
with "angels unawares."
There are a few men in every community, that are sons of riot and
plunder, and for the sake of these the satirical and censorious throw a
general slur and aspersion upon the whole species.
When we look at human society with kind and complacent survey, we are
more than half tempted to imagine that men might subsist very well in
clusters and congregated bodies without the coercion of law; and in
truth criminal laws were only made to prevent the ill-disposed few
from interrupting the regular and inoffensive proceedings of the vast
majority.
From what disposition in human nature is it that all this accommodation
and concurrence proceed?
It is not primarily love. We feel in a very slight degree excited to
good will towards the stranger whom we accidentally light upon in our
path.
Neither is it fear.
It is principally forecast and prudence. We have a sensitiveness, that
forbids us for a slight cause to expose ourselves to we know not what.
We are unwilling to be disturbed.
We have a mental vis inertiae, analogous to that quality in material
substances, by means of which, being at rest, they resist being put into
a state of motion. We love our security; we love our respectability;
and both of these may be put to hazard by our rashly and unadvisedly
thrusting ourselves upon the course of another. We like to act for
ourselves. We like to act with others, when we think we can foresee the
way in which the proposed transaction will proceed, and that it will
proceed to our wish.
Let us put the case, that I am passing along the highway, destitute and
pennyless, and without foresight of any means by which I am to procure
the next meal that my nature requires.
The vagrant, who revolves in his mind the thought of extorting from
another the supply of which he is urgently in need, surveys the person
upon whom he meditates this violence with a scrutinising eye. He
considers, Will this man submit to my summons without resistance, or in
what manner will he repel my trespass? He watches his eye, he measures
his limbs, his strength, and his agility. Though they have met in the
deserts of Africa, where there is no law to punish the violator, he
knows that he exposes himself to a fearful hazard; and he enters upon
his purpose with desperate resolve. All this and more must occur to the
man of violence, within the pale of a civilised community.
Begging is the mildest form in which a man can obtain from the stranger
he meets, the means of supplying his urgent necessities.
But, even here, the beggar knows that he exposes himself not only to
refusal, but to the harsh and opprobrious terms in which that refusal
may be conveyed. In this city there are laws against begging; and
the man that asks alms of me, is an offender against the state. In
country-towns it is usual to remark a notice upon entering, to say,
Whoever shall be found begging in this place, shall be set in the
stocks.
There are modes however in which I may accost a stranger, with small
apprehension that I shall be made to repent of it. I may enquire of him
my way to the place towards which my business or my pleasure invites me.
Ennius of old has observed, that lumen de lumine, to light my candle
at my neighbour's lamp, is one of the privileges that the practices of
civil society concede.
But it is not merely from forecast and prudence that we refrain from
interrupting the stranger in his way. We have all of us a certain degree
of kindness for a being of our own species. A multitude of men feel this
kindness for every thing that has animal life. We would not willingly
molest the stranger who has done us no injury. On the contrary we would
all of us to a certain extent assist him, under any unforeseen casualty
and tribulation. A part therefore of the innocence that characterises
our species is to be attributed to philanthropy.
Childhood is diffident. Children for the most part are averse to the
addressing themselves to strangers, unless in cases where, from the mere
want of anticipation and reflection, they proceed as if they were wholly
without the faculty of making calculations and deducing conclusions. The
child neither knows himself nor the stranger he meets in his path. He
has not measured either the one or the other. He does not know what the
stranger may be able, or may likely be prompted to do to him, nor what
are his own means of defence or escape. He takes refuge therefore in a
wary, sometimes an obstinate silence. It is for this reason that a boy
at school often appears duller and more inept, than would be the amount
of a fair proportion to what he is found to be when grown up to a man.
As we improve in judgment and strength, we know better ourselves and
others, and in a majority of instances take our due place in the ranks
of society. We acquire a modest and cautious firmness, yield what
belongs to another, and assert what is due to ourselves. To the last
however, we for the most part retain the inoffensiveness described in
the beginning of this Essay.
How comes it then that our nature labours under so bitter an aspersion?
We have been described as cunning, malicious and treacherous. Other
animals herd together for mutual convenience; and their intercourse with
their species is for the most part a reciprocation of social feeling
and kindness. But community among men, we are told, is that condition of
human existence, which brings out all our evil qualities to the face
of day. We lie in wait for, and circumvent each other by multiplied
artifices. We cannot depend upon each other for the truth of what is
stated to us; and promises and the most solemn engagements often seem
as if they were made only to mislead. We are violent and deadly in our
animosities, easily worked up to ferocity, and satisfied with scarcely
any thing short of mutilation and blood. We are revengeful: we lay up an
injury, real or imaginary, in the store-house of an undecaying memory,
waiting only till we can repay the evil we have sustained tenfold, at a
time when our adversary shall be lulled in unsuspecting security. We
are rapacious, with no symptom that the appetite for gain within us will
ever be appeased; and we practise a thousand deceits, that it may be
the sooner, and to the greater degree glutted. The ambition of man is
unbounded; and he hesitates at no means in the course it prompts him to
pursue. In short, man is to man ever the most fearful and dangerous foe:
and it is in this view of his nature that the king of Brobdingnag says
to Gulliver, "I cannot but conclude the bulk of your race to be the most
pernicious generation of little, odious vermin, that were ever suffered
to crawl upon the surface of the earth." The comprehensive faculties of
man therefore, and the refinements and subtlety of his intellect, serve
only to render him the more formidable companion, and to hold us up as a
species to merited condemnation.
It is obvious however that the picture thus drawn is greatly
overcharged, that it describes a very small part of our race, and that
even as to them it sets before us a few features only, and a partial
representation.
History--the successive scenes of the drama in which individuals play
their part--is a labyrinth, of which no man has as yet exactly seized
the clue.
It has long since been observed, that the history of the four great
monarchies, of tyrannies and free states, of chivalry and clanship, of
Mahometanism and the Christian church, of the balance of Europe and
the revolution of empires, is little else than a tissue of crimes,
exhibiting nations as if they were so many herds of ferocious animals,
whose genuine occupation was to tear each other to pieces, and to deform
their mother-earth with mangled carcases and seas of blood.
But it is not just that we should establish our opinion of human nature
purely from the records of history. Man is alternately devoted to
tranquillity and to violence. But the latter only affords the proper
materials of narration. When he is wrought upon by some powerful
impulse, our curiosity is most roused to observe him. We remark his
emotions, his energies, his tempest. It is then that he becomes the
person of a drama. And, where this disquietude is not the affair of a
single individual, but of several persons together, of nations, it is
there that history finds her harvest. She goes into the field with all
the implements of her industry, and fills her storehouses and magazines
with the abundance of her crop. But times of tranquillity and peace
furnish her with no materials. They are dismissed in a few slight
sentences, and leave no memory behind.
Let us divide this spacious earth into equal compartments, and see in
which violence, and in which tranquillity prevails. Let us look through
the various ranks and occupations of human society, and endeavour to
arrive at a conclusion of a similar sort. The soldier by occupation,
and the officer who commands him, would seem, when they are employed
in their express functions, to be men of strife. Kings and ministers of
state have in a multitude of instances fallen under this description.
Conquerors, the firebrands of the earth, have sufficiently displayed
their noxious propensities.
But these are but a small part of the tenantry of the many-peopled
globe. Man lives by the sweat of his brow. The teeming earth is
given him, that by his labour he may raise from it the means of his
subsistence. Agriculture is, at least among civilised nations, the
first, and certainly the most indispensible of professions. The
profession itself is the emblem of peace. All its occupations, from
seed-time to harvest, are tranquil; and there is nothing which belongs
to it, that can obviously be applied to rouse the angry passions, and
place men in a frame of hostility to each other. Next to the cultivator,
come the manufacturer, the artificer, the carpenter, the mason, the
joiner, the cabinet-maker, all those numerous classes of persons, who
are employed in forming garments for us to wear, houses to live in,
and moveables and instruments for the accommodation of the species. All
these persons are, of necessity, of a peaceable demeanour. So are those
who are not employed in producing the conveniencies of life, but in
conducting the affairs of barter and exchange. Add to these, such as
are engaged in literature, either in the study of what has already been
produced, or in adding to the stock, in science or the liberal arts,
in the instructing mankind in religion and their duties, or in the
education of youth. "Civility," "civil," are indeed terms which express
a state of peaceable occupation, in opposition to what is military, and
imply a tranquil frame of mind, and the absence of contention, uproar
and violence. It is therefore clear, that the majority of mankind are
civil, devoted to the arts of peace, and so far as relates to acts of
violence innocent, and that the sons of rapine constitute the exception
to the general character.
We come into the world under a hard and unpalatable law, "In the
sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread." It is a bitter decree that is
promulgated against us, "He that will not work, neither shall he eat."
We all of us love to do our own will, and to be free from the manacles
of restraint. What our hearts "find us to do," that we are disposed
to execute "with all our might." Some men are lovers of strenuous
occupation. They build and they plant; they raise splendid edifices, and
lay out pleasure-grounds of mighty extent. Or they devote their minds to
the acquisition of knowledge; they
----outwatch the bear,
With thrice great Hermes, or unsphere
The spirit of Plato, to unfold
What worlds, or what vast regions hold
The immortal mind.
Others again would waste perhaps their whole lives in reverie and
idleness. They are constituted of materials so kindly and serene,
that their spirits never flag from want of occupation and external
excitement. They could lie for ever on a sunny bank, in a condition
divided between thinking and no thinking, refreshed by the fanning
breeze, viewing the undulations of the soil, and the rippling of the
brook, admiring the azure heavens, and the vast, the bold, and the
sublime figure of the clouds, yielding themselves occasionally to
"thick-coming fancies," and day-dreams, and the endless romances of an
undisciplined mind;
And find no end, in wandering mazes lost.
But all men, alike the busy of constitution and the idle, would desire
to follow the impulses of their own minds, unbroken in upon by harsh
necessity, or the imperious commands of their fellows.
We cannot however, by the resistless law of our existence, live, except
the few who by the accident of their birth are privileged to draw
their supplies from the labour of others, without exerting ourselves to
procure by our efforts or ingenuity the necessaries of food, lodging and
attire. He that would obtain them for himself in an uninhabited island,
would find that this amounted to a severe tax upon that freedom of
motion and thought which would otherwise be his inheritance. And he who
has his lot cast in a populous community, exists in a condition somewhat
analogous to that of a negro slave, except that he may to a limited
extent select the occupation to which he shall addict himself, or may at
least starve, in part or in whole, uncontroled, and at his choice. Such
is, as it were, the universal lot.
'Tis destiny unshunnable like death:
Even then this dire necessity falls on us,
When we do quicken.
I go forth in the streets, and observe the occupations of other men.
I remark the shops that on every side beset my path. It is curious and
striking, how vast are the ingenuity and contrivance of human beings, to
wring from their fellow-creatures, "from the hard hands of peasants"
and artisans, a part of their earnings, that they also may live. We
soon become feelingly convinced, that we also must enter into the vast
procession of industry, upon pain that otherwise,
Like to an entered tide, they all rush by,
And leave you hindmost: there you lie,
For pavement to the abject rear, o'errun
And trampled on.
It is through the effect of this necessity, that civilised communities
become what they are. We all fall into our ranks. Each one is member of
a certain company or squadron. We know our respective places, and are
marshaled and disciplined with an exactness scarcely less than that of
the individuals of a mighty army. We are therefore little disposed to
interrupt the occupations of each other. We are intent upon the peculiar
employment to which we have become devoted. We "rise up early, and lie
down late," and have no leisure to trouble ourselves with the pursuits
of others. Hence of necessity it happens in a civilised community, that
a vast majority of the species are innocent, and have no inclination to
molest or interrupt each other's avocations.
But, as this condition of human society preserves us in comparative
innocence, and renders the social arrangement in the midst of which we
exist, to a certain degree a soothing and agreeable spectacle, so on the
other hand it is not less true that its immediate tendency is, to clip
the wings of the thinking principle within us, and plunge the members
of the community in which we live into a barren and ungratifying
mediocrity. Hence it should be the aim of those persons, who from
their situation have more or less the means of looking through the
vast assemblage of their countrymen, of penetrating "into the seeds" of
character, and determining "which grain will grow, and which will not,"
to apply themselves to the redeeming such as are worthy of their care
from the oblivious gulph into which the mass of the species is of
necessity plunged. It is therefore an ill saying, when applied in the
most rigorous extent, "Let every man maintain himself, and be his own
provider: why should we help him?"
The help however that we should afford to our fellow-men requires of
us great discernment in its administration. The deceitfulness of
appearances is endless. And nothing can well be at the same time more
lamentable and more ludicrous, than the spectacle of those persons, the
weaver, the thresher, and the mechanic, who by injudicious patronage
are drawn from their proper sphere, only to exhibit upon a larger stage
their imbecility and inanity, to shew those moderate powers, which in
their proper application would have carried their possessors through
life with respect, distorted into absurdity, and used in the attempt to
make us look upon a dwarf, as if he were one of the Titans who in the
commencement of recorded time astonished the earth.
It is also true to a great degree, that those efforts of the human
mind are most healthful and vigorous, in which the possessor of talents
"administers to himself," and contends with the different obstacles that
arise,
--------throwing them aside,
And stemming them with hearts of controversy.
Many illustrious examples however may be found in the annals of
literature, of patronage judiciously and generously applied, where
men have been raised by the kindness of others from the obscurest
situations, and placed on high, like beacons, to illuminate the world.
And, independently of all examples, a sound application of the common
sense of the human mind would teach us, that the worthies of the earth,
though miracles, are not omnipotent, and that a certain aid, from those
who by counsel or opulence are enabled to afford it, have oft times
produced the noblest effects, have carried on the generous impulse that
works within us, and prompted us manfully to proceed, when the weakness
of our nature was ready to give in from despair.
But the thing that in this place it was most appropriate to say, is,
that we ought not quietly to affirm, of the man whose mind nature or
education has enriched with extraordinary powers, "Let him maintain
himself, and be his own provider: why should we help him?" It is a thing
deeply to be regretted, that such a man will frequently be compelled to
devote himself to pursuits comparatively vulgar and inglorious, because
he must live. Much of this is certainly inevitable. But what glorious
things might a man with extraordinary powers effect, were he not hurried
unnumbered miles awry by the unconquerable power of circumstances? The
life of such a man is divided between the things which his internal
monitor strongly prompts him to do, and those which the external power
of nature and circumstances compels him to submit to. The struggle on
the part of his better self is noble and admirable. The less he gives
way, provided he can accomplish the purpose to which he has vowed
himself, the more he is worthy of the admiration of the world. If, in
consequence of listening too much to the loftier aspirations of his
nature, he fails, it is deeply to be regretted--it is a man to a certain
degree lost--but surely, if his miscarriage be not caused by undue
presumption, or the clouds and unhealthful atmosphere of self-conceit,
he is entitled to the affectionate sympathy and sorrow of every generous
mind.
ESSAY VII. OF THE DURATION OF HUMAN LIFE.
The active and industrious portion of the human species in civilised
countries, is composed of those who are occupied in the labour of the
hand, and in the labour of the head.
The following remarks expressly apply only to the latter of these
classes, principally to such as are occupied in productive literature.
They may however have their use to all persons a considerable portion of
whose time is employed in study and contemplation, as, if well founded,
they will form no unimportant chapter in the science of the human mind.
In relation to all the members of the second class then, I should say,
that human life is made up of term and vacation, in other words, of
hours that may be intellectually employed, and of hours that cannot be
so employed.
Human life consists of years, months and days: each day contains
twenty-four hours. Of these hours how many belong to the province of
intellect?
"There is," as Solomon says, "a time for all things." There must be a
time for sleep, a time for recreation, a time for exercise, a time for
supplying the machine with nourishment, and a time for digestion. When
all these demands have been supplied, how many hours will be left for
intellectual occupation?
These remarks, as I have said, are intended principally to apply to the
subject of productive literature. Now, of the hours that remain when
all the necessary demands of human life have been supplied, it is but a
portion, perhaps a small portion, that can be beneficially, judiciously,
employed in productive literature, or literary composition.
It is true, that there are many men who will occupy eight, ten, or
twelve hours in a day, in the labour of composition. But it may be
doubted whether they are wisely so occupied.
It is the duty of an author, inasmuch as he is an author, to consider,
that he is to employ his pen in putting down that which shall be fit for
other men to read. He is not writing a letter of business, a letter
of amusement, or a letter of sentiment, to his private friend. He is
writing that which shall be perused by as many men as can be prevailed
on to become his readers. If he is an author of spirit and ambition,
he wishes his productions to be read, not only by the idle, but by the
busy, by those who cannot spare time to peruse them but at the expence
of some occupations which ought not to be suspended without an adequate
occasion. He wishes to be read not only by the frivolous and the
lounger, but by the wise, the elegant, and the fair, by those who are
qualified to appreciate the merit of a work, who are endowed with a
quick sensibility and a discriminating taste, and are able to pass a
sound judgment on its beauties and defects. He advances his claim
to permanent honours, and desires that his lucubrations should be
considered by generations yet unborn.
A person, so occupied, and with such aims, must not attempt to pass
his crudities upon the public. If I may parody a celebrated aphorism
of Quintilian, I would say, "Magna debetur hominibus reverentia(8):" in
other words, we should carefully examine what it is that we propose
to deliver in a permanent form to the taste and understanding of our
species. An author ought only to commit to the press the first fruits of
his field, his best and choicest thoughts. He ought not to take up the
pen, till he has brought his mind into a fitting tone, and ought to lay
it down, the instant his intellect becomes in any degree clouded, and
his vital spirits abate of their elasticity.
(8) Mankind is to be considered with reverence.
There are extraordinary cases. A man may have so thoroughly prepared
himself by long meditation and study, he may have his mind so charged
with an abundance of thought, that it may employ him for ten or twelve
hours consecutively, merely to put down or to unravel the conceptions
already matured in his soul. It was in some such way, that Dryden,
we are told, occupied a whole night, and to a late hour in the next
morning, in penning his Alexander's Feast. But these are the exceptions.
In most instances two or three hours are as much as an author can spend
at a time in delivering the first fruits of his field, his choicest
thoughts, before his intellect becomes in some degree clouded, and his
vital spirits abate of their elasticity.
Nor is this all. He might go on perhaps for some time longer with a
reasonable degree of clearness. But the fertility which ought to be his
boast, is exhausted. He no longer sports in the meadows of thought,
or revels in the exuberance of imagination, but becomes barren and
unsatisfactory. Repose is necessary, and that the soil should be
refreshed with the dews of another evening, the sleep of a night, and
the freshness and revivifying influence of another morning.
These observations lead, by a natural transition, to the question of the
true estimate and value of human life, considered as the means of the
operations of intellect.
A primary enquiry under this head is as to the duration of life: Is it
long, or short?
The instant this question is proposed, I hear myself replied to from
all quarters: What is there so well known as the brevity of human life?
"Life is but a span." It is "as a tale that is told." "Man cometh
forth like a flower, and is cut down: he fleeth also as a shadow, and
continueth not." We are "as a sleep; or as grass: in the morning
it flourisheth, and groweth up; in the evening it is cut down, and
withereth."
The foundation of this sentiment is obvious. Men do not live for ever.
The longest duration of human existence has an end: and whatever it is
of which that may be affirmed, may in some sense be pronounced to be
short. The estimation of our existence depends upon the point of
view from which we behold it. Hope is one of our greatest enjoyments.
Possession is something. But the past is as nothing. Remorse may give it
a certain solidity; the recollection of a life spent in acts of virtue
may be refreshing. But fruition, and honours, and fame, and even pain,
and privations, and torment, when they ere departed, are but like a
feather; we regard them as of no account. Taken in this sense, Dryden's
celebrated verses are but a maniac's rant:
To-morrow, do thy worst, for I have lived to-day:
Be fair, or foul, or rain, or shine,
The joys I have possessed, in spite of fate are mine.
Not heaven itself upon the past has power,
But what has been has been, and I have had my hour.
But this way of removing the picture of human life to a certain distance
from us, and considering those things which were once in a high degree
interesting as frivolous and unworthy of regard, is not the way by which
we shall arrive at a true and just estimation of life. Whatever is now
past, and is of little value, was once present: and he who would form a
sound judgment, must look upon every part of our lives as present in its
turn, and not suffer his opinion to be warped by the consideration of
the nearness or remoteness of the object he contemplates.
One sentence, which has grown into a maxim for ever repeated, is
remarkable for the grossest fallacy: Ars longa, vita brevis(9). I would
fain know, what art, compared with the natural duration of human life
from puberty to old age, is long.
(9) Art is long; life is short.
If it is intended to say, that no one man can be expected to master all
possible arts, or all arts that have at one time or another been the
subject of human industry, this indeed is true. But the cause of this
does not lie in the limited duration of human life, but in the nature of
the faculties of the mind. Human understanding and human industry cannot
embrace every thing. When we take hold of one thing, we must let go
another. Science and art, if we would pursue them to the furthest extent
of which we are capable, must be pursued without interruption. It would
therefore be more to the purpose to say, Man cannot be for ever
young. In the stream of human existence, different things have their
appropriate period. The knowledge of languages can perhaps be most
effectually acquired in the season of nonage.
At riper years one man devotes himself to one science or art, and
another man to another. This man is a mathematician; a second studies
music; a third painting. This man is a logician; and that man an orator.
The same person cannot be expected to excel in the abstruseness of
metaphysical science, and in the ravishing effusions of poetical genius.
When a man, who has arrived at great excellence in one department of art
or science, would engage himself in another, he will be apt to find the
freshness of his mind gone, and his faculties no longer distinguished by
the same degree of tenacity and vigour that they formerly displayed. It
is with the organs of the brain, as it is with the organs of speech,
in the latter of which we find the tender fibres of the child easily
accommodating themselves to the minuter inflections and variations of
sound, which the more rigid muscles of the adult will for the most part
attempt in vain.
If again, by the maxim, Ars longa, vita brevis, it is intended to
signify, that we cannot in any art arrive at perfection; that in reality
all the progress we can make is insignificant; and that, as St. Paul
says, we must "not count ourselves to have already attained; but that,
forgetting the things that are behind, it becomes us to press forward
to the prize of our calling,"--this also is true. But this is only
ascribable to the limitation of our faculties, and that even the shadow
of perfection which man is capable to reach, can only be attained by
the labour of successive generations. The cause does not lie in the
shortness of human life, unless we would include in its protracted
duration the privilege of being for ever young; to which we ought
perhaps to add, that our activity should never be exhausted, the
freshness of our minds never abate, and our faculties for ever retain
the same degree of tenacity and vigour, as they had in the morning of
life, when every thing was new, when all that allured or delighted us
was seen accompanied with charms inexpressible, and, as Dryden expresses
it(10), "the first sprightly running" of the wine of life afforded a
zest never after to be hoped for.
(10) Aurengzebe.
I return then to the consideration of the alleged shortness of life. I
mentioned in the beginning of this Essay, that "human life consists of
years, months and days; each day containing twenty-four hours." But,
when I said this, I by no means carried on the division so far as it
might be carried. It has been calculated that the human mind is capable
of being impressed with three hundred and twenty sensations in a second
of time.(11)
(11) See Watson on Time, Chapter II.
"How infinitely rapid is the succession of thought! While I am speaking,
perhaps no two ideas are in my mind at the same time, and yet with
what facility do I slide from one to another! If my discourse be
argumentative, how often do I pass in review the topics of which it
consists, before I utter them; and, even while I am speaking, continue
the review at intervals, without producing any pause in my discourse!
How many other sensations are experienced by me during this period,
without so much as interrupting, that is, without materially diverting,
the train of my ideas! My eye successively remarks a thousand objects
that present themselves. My mind wanders to the different parts of my
body, and receives a sensation from the chair on which I sit, or the
table on which I lean. It reverts to a variety of things that occurred
in the course of the morning, in the course of yesterday, the most
remote from, the most unconnected with, the subject that might seem
wholly to engross me. I see the window, the opening of a door, the
snuffing of a candle. When these most perceptibly occur, my mind passes
from one to the other, without feeling the minutest obstacle, or being
in any degree distracted by their multiplicity(12)."
(12) Political Justice, Book IV, Chapter ix.
If this statement should appear to some persons too subtle, it may
however prepare us to form a due estimate of the following remarks.
"Art is long." No, certainly, no art is long, compared with the natural
duration of human life from puberty to old age. There is perhaps no art
that may not with reasonable diligence be acquired in three years, that
is, as to its essential members and its skilful exercise. We may improve
afterwards, but it will be only in minute particulars, and only by fits.
Our subsequent advancement less depends upon the continuance of our
application, than upon the improvement of the mind generally, the
refining of our taste, the strengthening our judgment, and the
accumulation of our experience.
The idea which prevails among the vulgar of mankind is, that we must
make haste to be wise. The erroneousness of this notion however has from
time to time been detected by moralists and philosophers; and it has
been felt that he who proceeds in a hurry towards the goal, exposes
himself to the imminent risk of never reaching it.
The consciousness of this danger has led to the adoption of the modified
maxim, Festina lente, Hasten, but with steps deliberate and cautious.
It would however be a more correct advice to the aspirant, to say, Be
earnest in your application, but let your march be vigilant and slow.
There is a doggrel couplet which I have met with in a book on elocution:
Learn to speak slow: all other graces
Will follow in their proper places.
I could wish to recommend a similar process to the student in the course
of his reading.
Toplady, a celebrated methodist preacher of the last age, somewhere
relates a story of a coxcomb, who told him that he had read over
Euclid's Elements of Geometry one afternoon at his tea, only leaving out
the A's and B's and crooked lines, which seemed to be intruded merely to
retard his progress.
Nothing is more easy than to gabble through a work replete with the
profoundest elements of thinking, and to carry away almost nothing, when
we have finished.
The book does not deserve even to be read, which does not impose on
us the duty of frequent pauses, much reflecting and inward debate,
or require that we should often go back, compare one observation and
statement with another, and does not call upon us to combine and knit
together the disjecta membra.
It is an observation which has often been repeated, that, when we come
to read an excellent author a second and a third time, we find in him a
multitude of things, that we did not in the slightest degree perceive
in a first reading. A careful first reading would have a tendency in a
considerable degree to anticipate this following crop.
Nothing is more certain than that a schoolboy gathers much of his most
valuable instruction when his lesson is not absolutely before him.
In the same sense the more mature student will receive most important
benefit, when he shuts his book, and goes forth in the field, and
ruminates on what he has read. It is with the intellectual, as with the
corporeal eye: we must retire to a certain distance from the object we
would examine, before we can truly take in the whole. We must view it
in every direction, "survey it," as Sterne says, "transversely, then
foreright, then this way, and then that, in all its possible directions
and foreshortenings(13);" and thus only can it be expected that we
should adequately comprehend it.
(13) Tristram Shandy, Vol. IV, Chap. ii.
But the thing it was principally in my purpose to say is, that it is one
of the great desiderata of human life, not to accomplish our purposes
in the briefest time, to consider "life as short, and art as long," and
therefore to master our ends in the smallest number of days or of years,
but rather to consider it as an ample field that is spread before us,
and to examine how it is to be filled with pleasure, with advantage, and
with usefulness. Life is like a lordly garden, which it calls forth all
the skill of the artist to adorn with exhaustless variety and beauty; or
like a spacious park or pleasure-ground, all of whose inequalities
are to be embellished, and whose various capacities of fertilisation,
sublimity or grace, are to be turned to account, so that we may wander
in it for ever, and never be wearied.
We shall perhaps understand this best, if we take up the subject on a
limited scale, and, before we consider life in its assigned period of
seventy years, first confine our attention to the space of a single day.
And we will consider that day, not as it relates to the man who earns
his subsistence by the labour of his hands, or to him who is immersed in
the endless details of commerce. But we will take the case of the man,
the whole of whose day is to be disposed of at his own discretion.
The attention of the curious observer has often been called to the
tediousness of existence, how our time hangs upon our hands, and in
how high estimation the art is held, of giving wings to our hours, and
making them pass rapidly and cheerfully away. And moralists of a
cynical disposition have poured forth many a sorrowful ditty upon the
inconsistency of man, who complains of the shortness of life, at
the same time that he is put to the greatest straits how to give an
agreeable and pleasant occupation to its separate portions. "Let us
hear no more," say these moralists, "of the transitoriness of human
existence, from men to whom life is a burthen, and who are willing to
assign a reward to him that shall suggest to them an occupation or an
amusement untried before."
But this inconsistency, if it merits the name, is not an affair of
artificial and supersubtle refinement, but is based in the fundamental
principles of our nature. It is unavoidable that, when we have reached
the close of any great epoch of our existence, and still more when we
have arrived at its final term, we should regret its transitory nature,
and lament that we have made no more effectual use of it. And yet the
periods and portions of the stream of time, as they pass by us, will
often be felt by us as insufferably slow in their progress, and we would
give no inconsiderable sum to procure that the present section of our
lives might come to an end, and that we might turn over a new leaf in
the volume of existence.
I have heard various men profess that they never knew the minutes
that hung upon their hands, and were totally unacquainted with what,
borrowing a term from the French language, we call ennui. I own I have
listened to these persons with a certain degree of incredulity, always
excepting such as earn their subsistence by constant labour, or as,
being placed in a situation of active engagement, have not the leisure
to feel apathy and disgust.
But we are talking here of that numerous class of human beings, who
are their own masters, and spend every hour of the day at the choice of
their discretion. To these we may add the persons who are partially so,
and who, having occupied three or four hours of every day in discharge
of some function necessarily imposed on them, at the striking of a given
hour go out of school, and employ themselves in a certain industry or
sport purely of their own election.
To go back then to the consideration of the single day of a man, all
of whose hours are at his disposal to spend them well or ill, at the
bidding of his own judgment, or the impulse of his own caprice.
We will suppose that, when he rises from his bed, he has sixteen hours
before him, to be employed in whatever mode his will shall decide. I
bar the case of travelling, or any of those schemes for passing the day,
which by their very nature take the election out of his hands, and fill
up his time with a perpetual motion, the nature of which is ascertained
from the beginning.
With such a man then it is in the first place indispensibly necessary,
that he should have various successive occupations. There is no one
study or intellectual enquiry to which a man can apply sixteen hours
consecutively, unless in some extraordinary instances which can occur
but seldom in the course of a life. And even then the attention will
from time to time relax, and the freshness of mental zeal and activity
give way, though perhaps, after the lapse of a few minutes they may be
revived and brought into action again.
In the ordinary series of human existence it is desirable that, in
the course of the same day, a man should have various successive
occupations. I myself for the most part read in one language at one part
of the day, and in another at another. I am then in the best health and
tone of spirits, when I employ two or three hours, and no more, in the
act of writing and composition. There must also in the sixteen hours
be a time for meals. There should be a time for fresh air and bodily
exercise. It is in the nature of man, that we should spend a part of
every day in the society of our fellows, either at public spectacles and
places of concourse, or in the familiar interchange of conversation
with one, two, or more persons with whom we can give ourselves up to
unrestrained communication. All human life, as I have said, every day
of our existence, consists of term and vacation; and the perfection
of practical wisdom is to interpose these one with another, so as to
produce a perpetual change, a well-chosen relief, and a freshness and
elastic tone which may bid defiance to weariness.
Taken then in this point of view, what an empire does the man of leisure
possess in each single day of his life! He disposes of his hours much
in the same manner, as the commander of a company of men whom it is his
business to train in the discipline of war.
This officer directs one party of his men to climb a mountain, and
another to ford or swim a stream which rushes along the valley. He
orders this set to rush forward with headlong course, and the other
to wheel, and approach by circuitous progress perhaps to the very same
point. He marches them to the right and the left. He then dismisses them
from the scene of exercise, to furbish their arms, to attend to their
accoutrements, or to partake of necessary refection. Not inferior to
this is the authority of the man of leisure in disposing of the hours
of one single day of his existence. And human life consists of many
such days, there being three hundred and sixty-five in each year that we
live.
How infinitely various may be the occupations of the life of man from
puberty to old age! We may acquire languages; we may devote ourselves
to arts; we may give ourselves up to the profoundness of science. Nor is
any one of these objects incompatible with the others, nor is there
any reason why the same man should not embrace many. We may devote one
portion of the year to travelling, and another to all the abstractions
of study. I remember when I was a boy, looking forward with terror to
the ample field of human life, and saying, When I have read through all
the books that have been written, what shall I do afterwards? And there
is infinitely more sense in this, than in the ludicrous exclamations of
men who complain of the want of time, and say that life affords them no
space in which to act their imaginings.
On the contrary, when a man has got to the end of one art or course of
study, he is compelled to consider what he shall do next. And, when
we have gone through a cycle of as many acquisitions, as, from the
limitation of human faculties, are not destructive of each other, we
shall find ourselves frequently reduced to the beginning some of them
over again. Nor is this the least agreeable occupation of human leisure.
The book that I read when I was a boy, presents quite a new face to me
as I advance in the vale of years. The same words and phrases suggest to
me a new train of ideas. And it is no mean pleasure that I derive from
the singular sensation of finding the same author and the same book,
old and yet not old, presenting to me cherished and inestimable
recollections, and at the same time communicating mines of wealth, the
shaft of which was till now unexplored.
The result then of these various observations is to persuade the
candid and ingenuous man, to consider life as an important and ample
possession, to resolve that it shall be administered with as much
judgment and deliberation as a person of true philanthropy and wisdom
would administer a splendid income, and upon no occasion so much to
think upon the point of in how short a time an interesting pursuit is
to be accomplished, as by what means it shall be accomplished in a
consummate and masterly style. Let us hear no more, from those who have
to a considerable degree the command of their hours, the querulous and
pitiful complaint that they have no time to do what they ought to do and
would wish to do; but let them feel that they have a gigantic store of
minutes and hours and days and months, abundantly sufficient to enable
them to effect what it is especially worthy of a noble mind to perform!
ESSAY VIII. OF HUMAN VEGETATION.
There is another point of view from which we may look at the subject of
time as it is concerned with the business of human life, that will lead
us to conclusions of a very different sort from those which are set down
in the preceding Essay.
Man has two states of existence in a striking degree distinguished from
each other: the state in which he is found during his waking hours; and
the state in which he is during sleep.
The question has been agitated by Locke and other philosophers, "whether
the soul always thinks," in other words, whether the mind, during those
hours in which our limbs lie for the most part in a state of
inactivity, is or is not engaged by a perpetual succession of images and
impressions. This is a point that can perhaps never be settled. When the
empire of sleep ceases, or when we are roused from sleep, we are often
conscious that we have been to that moment busily employed with that
sort of conceptions and scenes which we call dreams. And at times when,
on waking, we have no such consciousness, we can never perhaps be sure
that the shock that waked us, had not the effect of driving away these
fugitive and unsubstantial images. There are men who are accustomed to
say, they never dream. If in reality the mind of man, from the hour of
his birth, must by the law of its nature be constantly occupied with
sensations or images (and of the contrary we can never be sure), then
these men are all their lives in the state of persons, upon whom the
shock that wakes them, has the effect of driving away such fugitive
and unsubstantial images.--Add to which, there may be sensations in
the human subject, of a species confused and unpronounced, which never
arrive at that degree of distinctness as to take the shape of what we
call dreaming.
So much for man in the state of sleep.
But during our waking hours, our minds are very differently occupied at
different periods of the day. I would particularly distinguish the two
dissimilar states of the waking man, when the mind is indolent, and when
it is on the alert.
While I am writing this Essay, my mind may be said to be on the alert.
It is on the alert, so long as I am attentively reading a book of
philosophy, of argumentation, of eloquence, or of poetry.
It is on the alert, so long as I am addressing a smaller or a greater
audience, and endeavouring either to amuse or instruct them. It is on
the alert, while in silence and solitude I endeavour to follow a train
of reasoning, to marshal and arrange a connected set of ideas, or in any
other way to improve my mind, to purify my conceptions, and to advance
myself in any of the thousand kinds of intellectual process. It is on
the alert, when I am engaged in animated conversation, whether my cue
be to take a part in the reciprocation of alternate facts and remarks in
society, or merely to sit an attentive listener to the facts and remarks
of others.
This state of the human mind may emphatically be called the state of
activity and attention.
So long as I am engaged in any of the ways here enumerated, or in any
other equally stirring mental occupations which are not here set down,
my mind is in a frame of activity.
But there is another state in which men pass their minutes and hours,
that is strongly contrasted with this. It depends in some men upon
constitution, and in others upon accident, how their time shall be
divided, how much shall be given to the state of activity, and how much
to the state of indolence.
In an Essay I published many years ago there is this passage.
"The chief point of difference between the man of talent and the
man without, consists in the different ways in which their minds are
employed during the same interval. They are obliged, let us suppose,
to walk from Temple-Bar to Hyde-Park-Corner. The dull man goes straight
forward; he has so many furlongs to traverse. He observes if he meets
any of his acquaintance; he enquires respecting their health and their
family. He glances perhaps the shops as he passes; he admires the
fashion of a buckle, and the metal of a tea-urn. If he experiences any
flights of fancy, they are of a short extent; of the same nature as the
flights of a forest-bird, clipped of his wings, and condemned to pass
the rest of his life in a farm-yard. On the other hand the man of talent
gives full scope to his imagination. He laughs and cries. Unindebted to
the suggestions of surrounding objects, his whole soul is employed.
He enters into nice calculations; he digests sagacious reasonings.
In imagination he declaims or describes, impressed with the deepest
sympathy, or elevated to the loftiest rapture. He makes a thousand
new and admirable combinations. He passes through a thousand imaginary
scenes, tries his courage, tasks his ingenuity, and thus becomes
gradually prepared to meet almost any of the many-coloured events of
human life. He consults by the aid of memory the books he has read, and
projects others for the future instruction and delight of mankind. If he
observe the passengers, he reads their countenances, conjectures their
past history, and forms a superficial notion of their wisdom or folly,
their virtue or vice, their satisfaction or misery. If he observe the
scenes that occur, it is with the eye of a connoisseur or an artist.
Every object is capable of suggesting to him a volume of reflections.
The time of these two persons in one respect resembles; it has brought
them both to Hyde-Park-Corner. In almost every other respect it is
dissimilar;(14)."
(14) Enquirer, Part 1, Essay V.
This passage undoubtedly contains a true description of what may happen,
and has happened.
But there lurks in this statement a considerable error.
It has appeared in the second Essay of this volume, that there is not
that broad and strong line of distinction between the wise man and the
dull that has often been supposed. We are all of us by turns both the
one and the other. Or, at least, the wisest man that ever existed
spends a portion of his time in vacancy and dulness; and the man, whose
faculties are seemingly the most obtuse, might, under proper management
from the hour of his birth, barring those rare exceptions from the
ordinary standard of mind which do not deserve to be taken into the
account, have proved apt, adroit, intelligent and acute, in the walk for
which his organisation especially fitted him(15).
(15) See above, Essay 3.
Many men without question, in a walk of the same duration as that above
described between Temple-Bar and Hyde-Park-Corner, have passed their
time in as much activity, and amidst as strong and various excitements,
as those enumerated in the passage above quoted.
But the lives of all men, the wise, and those whom by way of contrast
we are accustomed to call the dull, are divided between animation and
comparative vacancy; and many a man, who by the bursts of his genius has
astonished the world, and commanded the veneration of successive
ages, has spent a period of time equal to that occupied by a walk from
Temple-Bar to Hyde-Park-Corner, in a state of mind as idle, and as
little affording materials for recollection, as the dullest man that
ever breathed the vital air.
The two states of man which are here attempted to be distinguished, are,
first, that in which reason is said to fill her throne, in which will
prevails, and directs the powers of mind or of bodily action in one
channel or another; and, secondly, that in which these faculties, tired
of for ever exercising their prerogatives, or, being awakened as it were
from sleep, and having not yet assumed them, abandon the helm, even as
a mariner might be supposed to do, in a wide sea, and in a time when
no disaster could be apprehended, and leave the vessel of the mind to
drift, exactly as chance might direct.
To describe this last state of mind I know not a better term that can
be chosen, than that of reverie. It is of the nature of what I have seen
denominated BROWN STUDY(16) a species of dozing and drowsiness, in which
all men spend a portion of the waking part of every day of their lives.
Every man must be conscious of passing minutes, perhaps hours of the
day, particularly when engaged in exercise in the open air, in this
species of neutrality and eviration. It is often not unpleasant at the
time, and leaves no sinking of the spirits behind. It is probably of
a salutary nature, and may be among the means, in a certain degree
beneficial like sleep, by which the machine is restored, and the man
comes forth from its discipline reinvigorated, and afresh capable of his
active duties.
(16) Norris, and Johnson, Dictionary of the English Language.
This condition of our nature has considerably less vitality in it, than
we experience in a complete and perfect dream. In dreaming we are often
conscious of lively impressions, of a busy scene, and of objects and
feelings succeeding each other with rapidity. We sometimes imagine
ourselves earnestly speaking: and the topics we treat, and the words we
employ, are supplied to us with extraordinary fluency. But the sort
of vacancy and inoccupation of which I here treat, has a greater
resemblance to the state of mind, without distinct and clearly unfolded
ideas, which we experience before we sink into sleep. The mind is in
reality in a condition, more properly accessible to feeling and capable
of thought, than actually in the exercise of either the one or the
other. We are conscious of existence and of little more. We move our
legs, and continue in a peripatetic state; for the man who has gone out
of his house with a purpose to walk, exercises the power of volition
when he sets out, but proceeds in his motion by a semi-voluntary act,
by a sort of vis inertiae, which will not cease to operate without
an express reason for doing so, and advances a thousand steps without
distinctly willing any but the first. When it is necessary to turn to
the right or the left, or to choose between any two directions on which
he is called upon to decide, his mind is so far brought into action as
the case may expressly require, and no further.
I have here instanced in the case of the peripatetic: but of how
many classes and occupations of human life may not the same thing be
affirmed? It happens to the equestrian, as well as to him that walks on
foot. It occurs to him who cultivates the fruits of the earth, and to
him who is occupied in any of the thousand manufactures which are the
result of human ingenuity. It happens to the soldier in his march, and
to the mariner on board his vessel. It attends the individuals of
the female sex through all their diversified modes of industry, the
laundress, the housemaid, the sempstress, the netter of purses, the
knotter of fringe, and the worker in tambour, tapestry and embroidery.
In all, the limbs or the fingers are employed mechanically; the
attention of the mind is only required at intervals; and the thoughts
remain for the most part in a state of non-excitation and repose.
It is a curious question, but extremely difficult of solution, what
portion of the day of every human creature must necessarily be spent in
this sort of intellectual indolence. In the lower classes of society its
empire is certainly very great; its influence is extensive over a large
portion of the opulent and luxurious; it is least among those who are
intrusted in the more serious affairs of mankind, and among the
literary and the learned, those who waste their lives, and consume the
midnight-oil, in the search after knowledge.
It appeared with sufficient clearness in the immediately preceding
Essay, that the intellect cannot be always on the stretch, nor the bow
of the mind for ever bent. In the act of composition, unless where the
province is of a very inferior kind, it is likely that not more than two
or three hours at a time can be advantageously occupied. But in literary
labour it will often occur, that, in addition to the hours expressly
engaged in composition, much time may be required for the collecting
materials, the collating of authorities, and the bringing together a
variety of particulars, so as to sift from the mass those circumstances
which may best conduce to the purpose of the writer. In all these
preliminary and inferior enquiries it is less necessary that the mind
should be perpetually awake and on the alert, than in the direct
office of composition. The situation is considerably similar of the
experimental philosopher, the man who by obstinate and unconquerable
application resolves to wrest from nature her secrets, and apply them
to the improvement of social life, or to the giving to the human mind
a wider range or a more elevated sphere. A great portion of this
employment consists more in the motion of the hands and the opportune
glance of the eye, than in the labour of the head, and allows to the
operator from time to time an interval of rest from the momentous
efforts of invention and discovery, and the careful deduction of
consequences in the points to be elucidated.
There is a distinction, sufficiently familiar to all persons who occupy
a portion of their time in reading, that is made between books of
instruction, and books of amusement. From the student of mathematics or
any of the higher departments of science, from the reader of books of
investigation and argument, an active attention is demanded. Even in the
perusal of the history of kingdoms and nations, or of certain
memorable periods of public affairs, we can scarcely proceed with any
satisfaction, unless in so far as we collect our thoughts, compare one
part of the narrative with another, and hold the mind in a state of
activity.
We are obliged to reason while we read, and in some degree to construct
a discourse of our own, at the same time that we follow the statements
of the author before us. Unless we do this, the sense and spirit of what
we read will be apt to slip from under our observation, and we shall by
and by discover that we are putting together words and sounds only,
when we purposed to store our minds with facts and reflections. We
apprehended not the sense of the writer even when his pages were under
our eye, and of consequence have nothing laid up in the memory after the
hour of reading is completed.
In works of amusement it is otherwise, and most especially in writings
of fiction. These are sought after with avidity by the idle, because
for the most part they are found to have the virtue of communicating
impressions to the reader, even while his mind remains in a state of
passiveness. He finds himself agreeably affected with fits of mirth or
of sorrow, and carries away the facts of the tale, at the same time that
he is not called upon for the act of attention. This is therefore one of
the modes of luxury especially cultivated in a highly civilized state of
society.
The same considerations will also explain to us the principal part of
the pleasure that is experienced by mankind in all states of society
from public shews and exhibitions. The spectator is not called upon to
exert himself; the amusement and pleasure come to him, while he remains
voluptuously at his ease; and it is certain that the exertion we make
when we are compelled to contribute to, and become in part the cause
of our own entertainment, is more than the human mind is willing to
sustain, except at seasons in which we are specially on the alert and
awake.
This is further one of the causes why men in general feel prompted to
seek the society of their fellows. We are in part no doubt called upon
in select society to bring our own information along with us, and a
certain vein of wit, humour or narrative, that we may contribute our
proportion to the general stock. We read the newspapers, the newest
publications, and repair to places of fashionable amusement and resort;
partly that we may at least be upon a par with the majority of the
persons we are likely to meet. But many do not thus prepare themselves,
nor does perhaps any one upon all occasions.
There is another state of human existence in which we expressly dismiss
from our hands the reins of the mind, and suffer our minutes and our
hours to glide by us undisciplined and at random.
This is, generally speaking, the case in a period of sickness. We have
no longer the courage to be on the alert, and to superintend the march
of our thoughts. It is the same with us for the most part when at any
time we lie awake in our beds. To speak from my own experience, I am in
a restless and uneasy state while I am alone in my sitting-room, unless
I have some occupation of my own choice, writing or reading, or any of
those employments the pursuit of which was chosen at first, and which is
more or less under the direction of the will afterwards. But when awake
in my bed, either in health or sickness, I am reasonably content to let
my thoughts flow on agreeably to those laws of association by which I
find them directed, without giving myself the trouble to direct them
into one channel rather than another, or to marshal and actively to
prescribe the various turns and mutations they may be impelled to
pursue.
It is thus that we are sick; and it is thus that we die. The man that
guides the operations of his own mind, is either to a certain degree
in bodily health, or in that health of mind which shall for a longer or
shorter time stand forward as the substitute of the health of the body.
When we die, we give up the game, and are not disposed to contend any
further. It is a very usual thing to talk of the struggles of a man in
articulo mortis. But this is probably, like so many other things that
occur to us in this sublunary stage, a delusion. The bystander mistakes
for a spontaneous contention and unwillingness to die, what is in
reality nothing more than an involuntary contraction and convulsion of
the nerves, to which the mind is no party, and is even very probably
unconscious.--But enough of this, the final and most humiliating state
through which mortal men may be called on to pass.
I find then in the history of almost every human creature four different
states or modes of existence. First, there is sleep. In the strongest
degree of contrast to this there is the frame in which we find
ourselves, when we write! or invent and steadily pursue a consecutive
train of thinking unattended with the implements of writing, or read
in some book of science or otherwise which calls upon us for a fixed
attention, or address ourselves to a smaller or greater audience, or are
engaged in animated conversation. In each of these occupations the mind
may emphatically be said to be on the alert.
But there are further two distinct states or kinds of mental indolence.
The first is that which we frequently experience during a walk or any
other species of bodily exercise, where, when the whole is at an end,
we scarcely recollect any thing in which the mind has been employed, but
have been in what I may call a healthful torpor, where our limbs have
been sufficiently in action to continue our exercise, we have felt the
fresh breeze playing on our cheeks, and have been in other respects in
a frame of no unpleasing neutrality. This may be supposed greatly to
contribute to our bodily health. It is the holiday of the faculties:
and, as the bow, when it has been for a considerable time unbent, is
said to recover its elasticity, so the mind, after a holiday of this
sort, comes fresh, and with an increased alacrity, to those occupations
which advance man most highly in the scale of being.
But there is a second state of mental indolence, not so complete as
this, but which is still indolence, inasmuch as in it the mind is
passive, and does not assume the reins of empire. Such is the state in
which we are during our sleepless hours in bed; and in this state our
ideas, and the topics that successively occur, appear to go forward
without remission, while it seems that it is this busy condition of the
mind, and the involuntary activity of our thoughts, that prevent us from
sleeping.
The distinction then between these two sorts of indolence is, that
in the latter our ideas are perfectly distinct, are attended with
consciousness, and can, as we please, be called up to recollection. This
therefore is not what we understand by reverie. In these waking hours
which are spent by us in bed, the mind is no less busy, than it is
in sleep during a dream. The other and more perfect sort of mental
indolence, is that which we often experience during our exercise in the
open air. This is of the same nature as the condition of thought which
seems to be the necessary precursor of sleep, and is attended with no
precise consciousness.
By the whole of the above statement we are led to a new and a modified
estimate of the duration of human life.
If by life we understand mere susceptibility, a state of existence in
which we are accessible at any moment to the onset of sensation, for
example, of pain--in this sense our life is commensurate, or nearly
commensurate, to the entire period, from the quickening of the child in
the womb, to the minute at which sense deserts the dying man, and his
body becomes an inanimate mass.
But life, in the emphatical sense, and par excellence, is reduced to
much narrower limits. From this species of life it is unavoidable that
we should strike off the whole of the interval that is spent in sleep;
and thus, as a general rule, the natural day of twenty-four hours is
immediately reduced to sixteen.
Of these sixteen hours again, there is a portion that falls under the
direction of will and attention, and a portion that is passed by us in a
state of mental indolence. By the ordinary and least cultivated class of
mankind, the husbandman, the manufacturer, the soldier, the sailor, and
the main body of the female sex, much the greater part of every day
is resigned to a state of mental indolence. The will does not actively
interfere, and the attention is not roused. Even the most intellectual
beings of our species pass no inconsiderable portion of every day in a
similar condition. Such is our state for the most part during the time
that is given to bodily exercise, and during the time in which we read
books of amusement merely, or are employed in witnessing public shews
and exhibitions.
That portion of every day of our existence which is occupied by us with
a mind attentive and on the alert, I would call life in a transcendant
sense. The rest is scarcely better than a state of vegetation.
And yet not so either. The happiest and most valuable thoughts of the
human mind will sometimes come when they are least sought for, and we
least anticipated any such thing. In reading a romance, in witnessing a
performance at a theatre, in our idlest and most sportive moods, a
vein in the soil of intellect will sometimes unexpectedly be broken
up, "richer than all the tribe" of contemporaneous thoughts, that shall
raise him to whom it occurs, to a rank among his species altogether
different from any thing he had looked for. Newton was led to the
doctrine of gravitation by the fall of an apple, as he indolently
reclined under the tree on which it grew. "A verse may find him, who
a sermon flies." Polemon, when intoxicated, entered the school of
Xenocrates, and was so struck with the energy displayed by the master,
and the thoughts he delivered, that from that moment he renounced the
life of dissipation he had previously led, and applied himself entirely
to the study of philosophy. --But these instances are comparatively of
rare occurrence, and do not require to be taken into the account.
It is still true therefore for the most part, that not more than eight
hours in the day are passed by the wisest and most energetic, with a
mind attentive and on the alert. The remainder is a period of vegetation
only. In the mean time we have all of us undoubtedly to a certain degree
the power of enlarging the extent of the period of transcendant life in
each day of our healthful existence, and causing it to encroach upon the
period either of mental indolence or of sleep.--With the greater part
of the human species the whole of their lives while awake, with the
exception of a few brief and insulated intervals, is spent in a passive
state of the intellectual powers. Thoughts come and go, as chance, or
some undefined power in nature may direct, uninterfered with by the
sovereign will, the steersman of the mind. And often the understanding
appears to be a blank, upon which if any impressions are then made, they
are like figures drawn in the sand which the next tide obliterates, or
are even lighter and more evanescent than this.
Let me add, that the existence of the child for two or three years from
the period of his birth, is almost entirely a state of vegetation. The
impressions that are made upon his sensorium come and go, without
either their advent or departure being anticipated, and without the
interference of the will. It is only under some express excitement, that
the faculty of will mounts its throne, and exercises its empire. When
the child smiles, that act is involuntary; but, when he cries,
will presently comes to mix itself with the phenomenon. Wilfulness,
impatience and rebellion are infallible symptoms of a mind on the alert.
And, as the child in the first stages of its existence puts forth the
faculty of will only at intervals, so for a similar reason this
period is but rarely accompanied with memory, or leaves any traces of
recollection for our after-life.
There are other memorable states of the intellectual powers, which if
I did not mention, the survey here taken would seem to be glaringly
imperfect. The first of these is madness. In this humiliating condition
of our nature the sovereignty of reason is deposed:
Chaos umpire sits,
And by decision more embroils the fray.
The mind is in a state of turbulence and tempest in one instant, and in
another subsides into the deepest imbecility; and, even when the will is
occasionally roused, the link which preserved its union with good sense
and sobriety is dissolved, and the views by which it has the appearance
of being regulated, are all based in misconstruction and delusion.
Next to madness occur the different stages of spleen, dejection
and listlessness. The essence of these lies in the passiveness and
neutrality of the intellectual powers. In as far as the unhappy sufferer
could be roused to act, the disease would be essentially diminished,
and might finally be expelled. But long days and months are spent by the
patient in the midst of all harassing imaginations, and an everlasting
nightmare seems to sit on the soul, and lock up its powers in
interminable inactivity. Almost the only interruption to this, is when
the demands of nature require our attention, or we pay a slight and
uncertain attention to the decencies of cleanliness and attire.
In all these considerations then we find abundant occasion to humble
the pride and vain-glory of man. But they do not overturn the principles
delivered in the preceding Essay respecting the duration of human life,
though they certainly interpose additional boundaries to limit the
prospects of individual improvement.
ESSAY IX. OF LEISURE.
The river of human life is divided into two streams; occupation and
leisure--or, to express the thing more accurately, that occupation,
which is prescribed, and may be called the business of life, and that
occupation, which arises contingently, and not so much of absolute and
set purpose, not being prescribed: such being the more exact description
of these two divisions of human life, inasmuch as the latter is often
not less earnest and intent in its pursuits than the former.
It would be a curious question to ascertain which of these is of the
highest value.
To this enquiry I hear myself loudly and vehemently answered from
all hands in favour of the first. "This," I am told by unanimous
acclamation, "is the business of life."
The decision in favour of what we primarily called occupation, above
what we called leisure, may in a mitigated sense be entertained as true.
Man can live with little or no leisure, for millions of human beings
do so live: but the species to which we belong, and of consequence
the individuals of that species, cannot exist as they ought to exist,
without occupation.
Granting however the paramount claims that occupation has to our regard,
let us endeavour to arrive at a just estimate of the value of leisure.
It has been said by some one, with great appearance of truth, that
schoolboys learn as much, perhaps more, of beneficial knowledge in their
hours of play, as in their hours of study.
The wisdom of ages has been applied to ascertain what are the most
desirable topics for the study of the schoolboy. They are selected for
the most part by the parent. There are few parents that do not feel a
sincere and disinterested desire for the welfare of their children. It
is an unquestionable maxim, that we are the best judges of that of which
we have ourselves had experience; and all parents have been children.
It is therefore idle and ridiculous to suppose that those studies
which have for centuries been chosen by the enlightened mature for the
occupation of the young, have not for the most part been well chosen. Of
these studies the earliest consist in the arts of reading and writing.
Next follows arithmetic, with perhaps some rudiments of algebra and
geometry. Afterward comes in due order the acquisition of languages,
particularly the dead languages; a most fortunate occupation for those
years of man, in which the memory is most retentive, and the reasoning
powers have yet acquired neither solidity nor enlargement. Such are the
occupations of the schoolboy in his prescribed hours of study.
But the schoolboy is cooped up in an apartment, it may be with a number
of his fellows. He is seated at a desk, diligently conning the portion
of learning that is doled out to him, or, when he has mastered his
lesson, reciting it with anxious brow and unassured lips to the senior,
who is to correct his errors, and pronounce upon the sufficiency of his
industry. All this may be well: but it is a new and more exhilarating
spectacle that presents itself to our observation, when he is dismissed
from his temporary labours, and rushes impetuously out to the open air,
and gives free scope to his limbs and his voice, and is no longer under
the eye of a censor that shall make him feel his subordination and
dependence.
Meanwhile the question under consideration was, not in which state he
experienced the most happiness, but which was productive of the greatest
improvement.
The review of the human subject is conveniently divided under the heads
of body and mind.
There can be no doubt that the health of the body is most promoted by
those exercises in which the schoolboy is engaged during the hours of
play. And it is further to be considered that health is required, not
only that we may be serene, contented and happy, but that we may be
enabled effectually to exert the faculties of the mind.
But there is another way, in which we are called upon to consider the
division of the human subject under the heads of body and mind.
The body is the implement and instrument of the mind, the tool by which
most of its purposes are to be effected. We live in the midst of
a material world, or of what we call such. The greater part of the
pursuits in which we engage, are achieved by the action of the limbs and
members of the body upon external matter.
Our communications with our fellow-men are all of them carried on by
means of the body.
Now the action of the limbs and members of the body is infinitely
improved by those exercises in which the schoolboy becomes engaged
during his hours of play. In the first place it is to be considered that
we do those things most thoroughly and in the shortest time, which are
spontaneous, the result of our own volition; and such are the exercises
in which the schoolboy engages during this period. His heart and soul
are in what he does. The man or the boy must be a poor creature indeed,
who never does any thing but as he is bid by another. It is in his
voluntary acts and his sports, that he learns the skilful and effective
use of his eye and his limbs. He selects his mark, and he hits it. He
tries again and again, effort after effort, and day after day, till he
has surmounted the difficulty of the attempt, and the rebellion of
his members. Every articulation and muscle of his frame is called into
action, till all are obedient to the master-will; and his limbs are
lubricated and rendered pliant by exercise, as the limbs of the Grecian
athleta were lubricated with oil.
Thus he acquires, first dexterity of motion, and next, which is of no
less importance, a confidence in his own powers, a consciousness that
he is able to effect what he purposes, a calmness and serenity which
resemble the sweeping of the area, and scattering of the saw-dust, upon
which the dancer or the athlete is to exhibit with grace, strength and
effect.
So much for the advantages reaped by the schoolboy during his hours of
play as to the maturing his bodily powers, and the improvement of those
faculties of his mind which more immediately apply to the exercise of
his bodily powers.
But, beside this, it is indispensible to the well-being and advantage
of the individual, that he should employ the faculties of his mind in
spontaneous exertions. I do not object, especially during the period
of nonage, to a considerable degree of dependence and control. But
his greatest advancement, even then, seems to arise from the interior
impulses of his mind. The schoolboy exercises his wit, and indulges in
sallies of the thinking principle. This is wholsome; this is fresh; it
has twice the quickness, clearness and decision in it, that are to be
found in those acts of the mind which are employed about the lessons
prescribed to him.
In school our youth are employed about the thoughts, the acts and
suggestions of other men. This is all mimicry, and a sort of second-hand
business. It resembles the proceeding of the fresh-listed soldier at
drill; he has ever his eye on his right-hand man, and does not raise his
arm, nor advance his foot, nor move his finger, but as he sees another
perform the same motion before him. It is when the schoolboy proceeds to
the playground, that he engages in real action and real discussion. It
is then that he is an absolute human being and a genuine individual.
The debates of schoolboys, their discussions what they shall do, and how
it shall be done, are anticipations of the scenes of maturer life. They
are the dawnings of committees, and vestries, and hundred-courts, and
ward-motes, and folk-motes, and parliaments. When boys consult when and
where their next cricket-match shall be played, it may be regarded as
the embryo representation of a consult respecting a grave enterprise to
be formed, or a colony to be planted. And, when they enquire respecting
poetry and prose, and figures and tropes, and the dictates of taste,
this happily prepares them for the investigations of prudence, and
morals, and religious principles, and what is science, and what is
truth.
It is thus that the wit of man, to use the word in the old Saxon sense,
begins to be cultivated. One boy gives utterance to an assertion; and
another joins issue with him, and retorts. The wheels of the engine of
the brain are set in motion, and, without force, perform their healthful
revolutions. The stripling feels himself called upon to exert his
presence of mind, and becomes conscious of the necessity of an immediate
reply. Like the unfledged bird, he spreads his wings, and essays their
powers. He does not answer, like a boy in his class, who tasks his
understanding or not, as the whim of the moment shall prompt him, where
one boy honestly performs to the extent of his ability, and others
disdain the empire assumed over them, and get off as cheaply as they
can. He is no longer under review, but is engaged in real action. The
debate of the schoolboy is the combat of the intellectual gladiator,
where he fences and parries and thrusts with all the skill and judgment
he possesses.
There is another way in which the schoolboy exercises his powers during
his periods of leisure. He is often in society; but he is ever and anon
in solitude. At no period of human life are our reveries so free
and untrammeled, as at the period here spoken of. He climbs the
mountain-cliff; and penetrates into the depths of the woods. His
joints are well strung; he is a stranger to fatigue. He rushes down the
precipice, and mounts again with ease, as though he had the wings of
a bird. He ruminates, and pursues his own trains of reflection and
discovery, "exhausting worlds," as it appears to him, "and then
imagining new." He hovers on the brink of the deepest philosophy,
enquiring how came I here, and to what end. He becomes a castle-builder,
constructing imaginary colleges and states, and searching out the
businesses in which they are to be employed, and the schemes by which
they are to be regulated. He thinks what he would do, if he possessed
uncontrolable strength, if he could fly, if he could make himself
invisible. In this train of mind he cons his first lessons of liberty
and independence. He learns self-reverence, and says to himself, I also
am an artist, and a maker. He ruffles himself under the yoke, and feels
that he suffers foul tyranny when he is driven, and when brute force is
exercised upon him, to compel him to a certain course, or to chastise
his faults, imputed or real.
Such are the benefits of leisure to the schoolboy: and they are not less
to man when arrived at years of discretion. It is good for us to have
some regular and stated occupation. Man may be practically too free;
this is frequently the case with those who have been nurtured in the lap
of opulence and luxury. We were sent into the world under the condition,
"In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread." And those who, by the
artificial institutions of society, are discharged from this necessity,
are placed in a critical and perilous situation. They are bound, if
they would consult their own well-being, to contrive for themselves a
factitious necessity, that may stand them in the place of that necessity
which is imposed without appeal on the vast majority of their brethren.
But, if it is desirable that every man should have some regular and
stated occupation, so it is certainly not less desirable, that every man
should have his seasons of relaxation and leisure.
Unhappy is the wretch, whose condition it is to be perpetually bound to
the oar, and who is condemned to labour in one certain mode, during all
the hours that are not claimed by sleep, or as long as the muscles of
his frame, or the fibres of his fingers will enable him to persevere.
"Apollo himself," says the poet, "does not always bend the bow." There
should be a season, when the mind is free as air, when not only we
should follow without restraint any train of thinking or action, within
the bounds of sobriety, and that is not attended with injury to others,
that our own minds may suggest to us, but should sacrifice at the shrine
of intellectual liberty, and spread our wings, and take our flight into
untried regions. It is good for man that he should feel himself at some
time unshackled and autocratical, that he should say, This I do, because
it is prescribed to me by the conditions without which I cannot exist,
or by the election which in past time I deliberately made; and this,
because it is dictated by the present frame of my spirit, and is
therefore that in which the powers my nature has entailed upon me may be
most fully manifested. In addition to which we are to consider, that a
certain variety and mutation of employments is best adapted to humanity.
When my mind or my body seems to be overwrought by one species of
occupation, the substitution of another will often impart to me new
life, and make me feel as fresh as if no labour had before engaged me.
For all these reasons it is to be desired, that we should possess the
inestimable privilege of leisure, that in the revolving hours of every
day a period should arrive, at which we should lay down the weapons
of our labour, and engage in a sport that may be no less active and
strenuous than the occupation which preceded it.
A question, which deserves our attention in this place, is, how much of
every day it behoves us to give to regular and stated occupation, and
how much is the just and legitimate province of leisure. It has been
remarked in a preceding Essay(17), that, if my main and leading pursuit
is literary composition, two or three hours in the twenty-four will
often be as much as can advantageously and effectually be so employed.
But this will unavoidably vary according to the nature of the
occupation: the period above named may be taken as the MINIMUM.
(17) See above, Essay 7.
Such, let us say, is the portion of time which the man of letters is
called on to devote to literary composition.
It may next be fitting to enquire as to the humbler classes of society,
and those persons who are engaged in the labour of the hands, how much
time they ought to be expected to consume in their regular and stated
occupations, and how much would remain to them for relaxation and
leisure. It has been said(18), that half an hour in the day given by
every member of the community to manual labour, might be sufficient for
supplying the whole with the absolute necessaries of life. But there are
various considerations that would inevitably lengthen this period. In
a community which has made any considerable advance in the race of
civilisation, many individuals must be expected to be excused from any
portion of manual labour. It is not desirable that any community should
be contented to supply itself with necessaries only. There are many
refinements in life, and many advances in literature and the arts, which
indispensibly conduce to the rendering man in society a nobler and more
exalted creature than he could otherwise be; and these ought not to be
consigned to neglect.
(18) Political Justice, Book VIII, Chap. VI.
On the other hand however it is certain, that much of the ostentation
and a multitude of the luxuries which subsist in European and Asiatic
society are just topics of regret, and that, if ever those improvements
in civilisation take place which philosophy has essayed to delineate,
there would be a great abridgment of the manual labour that we now see
around us, and the humbler classes of the community would enter into the
inheritance of a more considerable portion of leisure than at present
falls to their lot.
But it has been much the habit, for persons not belonging to the humbler
classes of the community, and who profess to speculate upon the genuine
interests of human society, to suppose, however certain intervals
of leisure may conduce to the benefit of men whose tastes have been
cultivated and refined, and who from education have many resources of
literature and reflection at all times at their beck, yet that leisure
might prove rather pernicious than otherwise to the uneducated and
the ignorant. Let us enquire then how these persons would be likely to
employ the remainder of their time, if they had a greater portion of
leisure than they at present enjoy.--I would add, that the individuals
of the humbler classes of the community need not for ever to merit the
appellation of the uneducated and ignorant.
In the first place, they would engage, like the schoolboy, in active
sports, thereby giving to their limbs, which, in rural occupation and
mechanical labour, are somewhat too monotonously employed, and contract
the stiffness and experience the waste of a premature old age, the
activity and freedom of an athlete, a cricketer, or a hunter. Nor do
these occupations only conduce to the health of the body, they also
impart a spirit and a juvenile earnestness to the mind.
In the next place, they may be expected to devote a part of the day,
more than they do at present, to their wives and families, cultivating
the domestic affections, watching the expanding bodies and minds of
their children, leading them on in the road of improvement, warning them
against the perils with which they are surrounded, and observing with
somewhat of a more jealous and parental care, what it is for which by
their individual qualities they are best adapted, and in what particular
walk of life they may most advantageously be engaged. The father and
the son would grow in a much greater degree friends, anticipating each
other's wishes, and sympathising in each other's pleasures and pains.
Thirdly, one infallible consequence of a greater degree of leisure
in the lower classes would be that reading would become a more common
propensity and amusement. It is the aphorism of one of the most
enlightened of my contemporaries, "The schoolmaster is abroad:" and many
more than at present would desire to store up in their little hoard a
certain portion of the general improvement. We should no longer have
occasion to say,
But knowledge to their eyes her ample page,
Rich with the spoils of time, did ne'er unrol.
Nor should we be incited to fear that ever wakeful anticipation of the
illiberal, that, by the too great diffusion of the wisdom of the wise,
we might cease to have a race of men adapted to the ordinary pursuits
of life. Our ploughmen and artificers, who obtained the improvements
of intellect through the medium of leisure, would have already received
their destination, and formed their habits, and would be disposed to
consider the new lights that were opened upon them, as the ornament
of existence, not its substance. Add to which, as leisure became more
abundant, and the opportunities of intellectual improvement increased,
they would have less motive to repine at their lot. It is principally
while knowledge and information are new, that they are likely to
intoxicate the brain of those to whose share they have fallen; and, when
they are made a common stock upon which all men may draw, sound thinking
and sobriety may be expected to be the general result.
One of the scenes to which the leisure of the laborious classes is seen
to induce them to resort, is the public-house; and it is inferred
that, if their leisure were greater, a greater degree of drunkenness,
dissipation and riot would inevitably prevail.
In answer to this anticipation, I would in the first place assert, that
the merits and demerits of the public-house are very unjustly rated by
the fastidious among the more favoured orders of society.
We ought to consider that the opportunities and amusements of the lower
orders of society are few. They do not frequent coffee-houses; theatres
and places of public exhibition are ordinarily too expensive for them;
and they cannot engage in rounds of visiting, thus cultivating a private
and familiar intercourse with the few whose conversation might be most
congenial to them. We certainly bear hard upon persons in this rank of
society, if we expect that they should take all the severer labour, and
have no periods of unbending and amusement.
But in reality what occurs in the public-house we are too much in the
habit of calumniating. If we would visit this scene, we should find it
pretty extensively a theatre of eager and earnest discussion. It is here
that the ardent and "unwashed artificer," and the sturdy husbandman,
compare notes and measure wits with each other. It is their arena of
intellectual combat, the ludus literarius of their unrefined university.
It is here they learn to think. Their minds are awakened from the sleep
of ignorance; and their attention is turned into a thousand channels of
improvement. They study the art of speaking, of question, allegation
and rejoinder. They fix their thought steadily on the statement that is
made, acknowledge its force, or detect its insufficiency. They examine
the most interesting topics, and form opinions the result of that
examination. They learn maxims of life, and become politicians. They
canvas the civil and criminal laws of their country, and learn the value
of political liberty. They talk over measures of state, judge of the
intentions, sagacity and sincerity of public men, and are likely in time
to become in no contemptible degree capable of estimating what modes of
conducting national affairs, whether for the preservation of the rights
of all, or for the vindication and assertion of justice between man and
man, may be expected to be crowned with the greatest success: in a word,
they thus become, in the best sense of the word, citizens.
As to excess in drinking, the same thing may be expected to occur here,
as has been remarked of late years in better company in England. In
proportion as the understanding is cultivated, men are found to be less
the victims of drinking and the grosser provocatives of sense. The king
of Persia of old made it his boast that he could drink large quantities
of liquor with greater impunity than any of his subjects. Such was
not the case with the more polished Greeks. In the dark ages the most
glaring enormities of that kind prevailed. Under our Charles the
Second coarse dissipation and riot characterised the highest circles.
Rochester, the most accomplished man and the greatest wit of our island,
related of himself that, for five years together, he could not affirm
that for any one day he had been thoroughly sober. In Ireland, a
country less refined than our own, the period is not long past, when on
convivial occasions the master of the house took the key from his door,
that no one of his guests might escape without having had his dose. No
small number of the contemporaries of my youth fell premature victims
to the intemperance which was then practised. Now wine is merely used
to excite a gayer and livelier tone of the spirits; and inebriety is
scarcely known in the higher circles. In like manner, it may readily
be believed that, as men in the lower classes of society become less
ignorant and obtuse, as their thoughts are less gross, as they wear off
the vestigia ruris, the remains of a barbarous state, they will find
less need to set their spirits afloat by this animal excitement, and
will devote themselves to those thoughts and that intercourse which
shall inspire them with better and more honourable thoughts of our
common nature.
ESSAY X. OF IMITATION AND INVENTION.
Of the sayings of the wise men of former times none has been oftener
repeated than that of Solomon, "The thing that hath been, is that which
is; and that which is done, is that which shall be done; and there is no
new thing under the sun."
The books of the Old Testament are apparently a collection of the whole
literary remains of an ancient and memorable people, whose wisdom may
furnish instruction to us, and whose poetry abounds in lofty flights
and sublime imagery. How this collection came indiscriminately to
be considered as written by divine inspiration, it is difficult to
pronounce. The history of the Jews, as contained in the Books of Kings
and of Chronicles, certainly did not require the interposition of
the Almighty for its production; and the pieces we receive as the
compositions of Solomon have conspicuously the air of having emanated
from a conception entirely human.
In the book of Ecclesiastes, from which the above sentence is taken,
are many sentiments not in accordance with the religion of Christ. For
example; "That which befalleth the sons of men, befalleth beasts; as the
one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath, so that a
man hath no preeminence above a beast: all go to one place; all are of
the dust, and turn to dust again. Wherefore I perceive that there is
nothing better, than that a man should rejoice in his works." And again,
"The living know that they shall die; but the dead know not any thing;
their love, and their hatred, and their envy are perished; neither have
they any more a reward." Add to this, "Wherefore I praise the dead which
are already dead, more than the living which are yet alive: yea, better
is he than both they, which hath not yet been." There can therefore be
no just exception taken against our allowing ourselves freely to canvas
the maxim cited at the head of this Essay.
It certainly contains a sufficient quantity of unquestionable truth,
to induce us to regard it as springing from profound observation, and
comprehensive views of what is acted "under the sun."
A wise man would look at the labours of his own species, in much the
same spirit as he would view an ant-hill through a microscope. He would
see them tugging a grain of corn up a declivity; he would see the tracks
that are made by those who go, and who return; their incessant activity;
and would find one day the copy of that which went before; and their
labours ending in nothing: I mean, in nothing that shall carry forward
the improvement of the head and the heart, either in the individual or
society, or that shall add to the conveniences of life, or the better
providing for the welfare of communities of men. He would smile at their
earnestness and zeal, all spent in supplying the necessaries of the day,
or, at most, providing for the revolution of the seasons, or for that
ephemeral thing we call the life of man.
Few things can appear more singular, when duly analysed, than that
articulated air, which we denominate speech. It is not to be wondered at
that we are proud of the prerogative, which so eminently distinguishes
us from the rest of the animal creation. The dog, the cat, the horse,
the bear, the lion, all of them have voice. But we may almost consider
this as their reproach. They can utter for the greater part but one
monotonous, eternal sound.
The lips, the teeth, the palate, the throat, which in man are
instruments of modifying the voice in such endless variety, are in this
respect given to them in vain: while all the thoughts that occur,
at least to the bulk of mankind, we are able to express in words, to
communicate facts, feelings, passions, sentiments, to discuss, to argue,
to agree, to issue commands on the one part, and report the execution on
the other, to inspire lofty conceptions, to excite the deepest feeling
of commiseration, and to thrill the soul with extacy, almost too mighty
to be endured.
Yet what is human speech for the most part but mere imitation? In the
most obvious sense this stands out on the surface. We learn the same
words, we speak the same language, as our elders. Not only our words,
but our phrases are the same. We are like players, who come out as if
they were real persons, but only utter what is set down for them. We
represent the same drama every day; and, however stale is the eternal
repetition, pass it off upon others, and even upon ourselves, as if it
were the suggestion of the moment. In reality, in rural or vulgar
life, the invention of a new phrase ought to be marked down among the
memorable things in the calendar. We afford too much honour to ordinary
conversation, when we compare it to the exhibition of the recognised
theatres, since men ought for the most part to be considered as no more
than puppets. They perform the gesticulations; but the words come from
some one else, who is hid from the sight of the general observer. And
not only the words, but the cadence: they have not even so much honour
as players have, to choose the manner they may deem fittest by which to
convey the sense and the passion of what they speak. The pronunciation,
the dialect, all, are supplied to them, and are but a servile
repetition. Our tempers are merely the work of the transcriber. We are
angry, where we saw that others were angry; and we are pleased, because
it is the tone to be pleased. We pretend to have each of us a judgment
of our own: but in truth we wait with the most patient docility, till he
whom we regard as the leader of the chorus gives us the signal, Here you
are to applaud, and Here you are to condemn.
What is it that constitutes the manners of nations, by which the
people of one country are so eminently distinguished from the people
of another, so that you cannot cross the channel from Dover to Calais,
twenty-one miles, without finding yourself in a new world? Nay, I need
not go among the subjects of another government to find examples of
this; if I pass into Ireland, Scotland or Wales, I see myself surrounded
with a new people, all of whose characters are in a manner cast in one
mould, and all different from the citizens of the principal state and
from one another. We may go further than this. Not only nations,
but classes of men, are contrasted with each other. What can be more
different than the gentry of the west end of this metropolis, and the
money-making dwellers in the east? From them I will pass to Billingsgate
and Wapping. What more unlike than a soldier and a sailor? the children
of fashion that stroll in St. James's and Hyde Park, and the care-worn
hirelings, that recreate themselves, with their wives and their brats,
with a little fresh air on a Sunday near Islington? The houses of lords
and commons have each their characteristic manners. Each profession has
its own, the lawyer, the divine, and the man of medicine. We are all
apes, fixing our eyes upon a model, and copying him, gesture by gesture.
We are sheep, rushing headlong through the gap, when the bell-wether
shews us the way. We are choristers, mechanically singing in a certain
key, and giving breath to a certain tone.
Our religion, our civil practices, our political creed, are all
imitation. How many men are there, that have examined the evidences of
their religious belief, and can give a sound "reason of the faith that
is in them?" When I was a child, I was taught that there were four
religions in the world, the Popish, the Protestant, the Mahometan, the
Pagan. It is a phenomenon to find the man, who has held the balance
steadily, and rendered full and exact justice to the pretensions of each
of these. No: tell me the longitude and latitude in which a man is born,
and I will tell you his religion.
By education most have been misled;
So they believe, because they so were bred:
The priest continues what the nurse began,
And thus the child imposes on the man.
And, if this happens, where we are told our everlasting salvation is at
issue, we may easily judge of the rest.
The author, with one of whose dicta I began this Essay, has observed,
"One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh; but the
earth abideth for ever." It is a maxim of the English constitution, that
"the king never dies;" and the same may with nearly equal propriety be
observed of every private man, especially if he have children. "Death,"
say the writers of natural history, "is the generator of life:" and what
is thus true of animal corruption, may with small variation be affirmed
of human mortality. I turn off my footman, and hire another; and he puts
on the livery of his predecessor: he thinks himself somebody; but he
is only a tenant. The same thing is true, when a country-gentleman, a
noble, a bishop, or a king dies. He puts off his garments, and another
puts them on. Every one knows the story of the Tartarian dervise,
who mistook the royal palace for a caravansera, and who proved to his
majesty by genealogical deduction, that he was only a lodger. In this
sense the mutability, which so eminently characterises every thing
sublunary, is immutability under another name.
The most calamitous, and the most stupendous scenes are nothing but an
eternal and wearisome repetition: executions, murders, plagues, famine
and battle. Military execution, the demolition of cities, the conquest
of nations, have been acted a hundred times before. The mighty
conqueror, who "smote the people in wrath with a continual stroke," who
"sat in the seat of God, shewing himself that he was God," and assuredly
persuaded himself that he was doing something to be had in everlasting
remembrance, only did that which a hundred other vulgar conquerors had
done in successive ages of the world, whose very names have long since
perished from the records of mankind.
Thus it is that the human species is for ever engaged in laborious
idleness. We put our shoulder to the wheel, and raise the vehicle out of
the mire in which it was swallowed, and we say, I have done something;
but the same feat under the same circumstances has been performed
a thousand times before. We make what strikes us as a profound
observation; and, when fairly analysed, it turns out to be about as
sagacious, as if we told what's o'clock, or whether it is rain or
sunshine. Nothing can be more delightfully ludicrous, than the important
and emphatical air with which the herd of mankind enunciate the most
trifling observations. With much labour we are delivered of what is to
us a new thought; and, after a time, we find the same in a musty volume,
thrown by in a corner, and covered with cobwebs and dust.
This is pleasantly ridiculed in the well known exclamation, "Deuce take
the old fellows who gave utterance to our wit, before we ever thought of
it!"
The greater part of the life of the mightiest genius that ever existed
is spent in doing nothing, and saying nothing. Pope has observed of
Shakespear's plays, that, "had all the speeches been printed without the
names of the persons, we might have applied them with certainty to
every speaker." To which another critic has rejoined, that that was
impossible, since the greater part of what every man says is unstamped
with peculiarity. We have all more in us of what belongs to the common
nature of man, than of what is peculiar to the individual.
It is from this beaten, turnpike road, that the favoured few of mankind
are for ever exerting themselves to escape. The multitude grow up,
and are carried away, as grass is carried away by the mower. The
parish-register tells when they were born, and when they died: "known by
the ends of being to have been." We pass away, and leave nothing behind.
Kings, at whose very glance thousands have trembled, for the most
part serve for nothing when their breath has ceased, but as a sort of
distance-posts in the race of chronology. "The dull swain treads on"
their relics "with his clouted shoon." Our monuments are as perishable
as ourselves; and it is the most hopeless of all problems for the most
part, to tell where the mighty ones of the earth repose.
All men are aware of the frailty of life, and how short is the span
assigned us. Hence every one, who feels, or thinks he feels the power to
do so, is desirous to embalm his memory, and to be thought of by a late
posterity, to whom his personal presence shall be unknown. Mighty are
the struggles; everlasting the efforts. The greater part of these we
well know are in vain. It is Aesop's mountain in labour: "Dire was the
tossing, deep the groans:" and the result is a mouse. But is it always
so?
This brings us back to the question: "Is there indeed nothing new under
the sun?"
Most certainly there is something that is new. If, as the beast dies,
so died man, then indeed we should be without hope. But it is his
distinguishing faculty, that he can leave something behind, to testify
that he has lived. And this is not only true of the pyramids of Egypt,
and certain other works of human industry, that time seems to have no
force to destroy. It is often true of a single sentence, a single word,
which the multitudinous sea is incapable of washing away:
Quod non imber edax, non Aquilo impotens
Possit diruere, aut innumerabilis
Annorum series, et fuga temporum.
It is the characteristic of the mind and the heart of man, that they are
progressive. One word, happily interposed, reaching to the inmost soul,
may "take away the heart of stone, and introduce a heart of flesh."
And, if an individual may be thus changed, then his children, and his
connections, to the latest page of unborn history.
This is the true glory of man, that "one generation doth not pass away,
and another come, velut unda supervenit undam;" but that we leave our
improvements behind us. What infinite ages of refinement on refinement,
and ingenuity on ingenuity, seem each to have contributed its quota, to
make up the accommodations of every day of civilised man; his table,
his chair, the bed he lies on, the food he eats, the garments that cover
him! It has often been said, that the four quarters of the world are
put under contribution, to provide the most moderate table. To this
what mills, what looms, what machinery of a thousand denominations, what
ship-building, what navigation, what fleets are required! Man seems
to have been sent into the world a naked, forked, helpless animal, on
purpose to call forth his ingenuity to supply the accommodations that
may conduce to his well-being. The saying, that "there is nothing new
under the sun," could never have been struck out, but in one of the two
extreme states of man, by the naked savage, or by the highly civilised
beings among whom the perfection of refinement has produced an
artificial feeling of uniformity.
The thing most obviously calculated to impress us with a sense of the
power, and the comparative sublimity of man, is, if we could make a
voyage of some duration in a balloon, over a considerable tract of the
cultivated and the desert parts of the earth. A brute can scarcely move
a stone out of his way, if it has fallen upon the couch where he would
repose. But man cultivates fields, and plants gardens; he constructs
parks and canals; he turns the course of rivers, and stretches vast
artificial moles into the sea; he levels mountains, and builds a bridge,
joining in giddy height one segment of the Alps to another; lastly, he
founds castles, and churches, and towers, and distributes mighty cities
at his pleasure over the face of the globe. "The first earth has passed
away, and another earth has come; and all things are made new."
It is true, that the basest treacheries, the most atrocious cruelties,
butcheries, massacres, violations of all the restraints of decency, and
all the ties of nature, fields covered with dead bodies, and flooded
with human gore, are all of them vulgar repetitions of what had been
acted countless times already. If Nero or Caligula thought to perpetrate
that which should stand unparalleled, they fell into the grossest error.
The conqueror, who should lay waste vast portions of the globe, and
destroy mighty cities, so that "thorns should come up in the palaces,
and nettles in the fortresses thereof, and they should be a habitation
of serpents, and a court for owls, and the wild beasts of the desert
should meet there," would only do what Tamerlane, and Aurengzebe, and
Zingis, and a hundred other conquerors, in every age and quarter of the
world, had done before. The splendour of triumphs, and the magnificence
of courts, are so essentially vulgar, that history almost disdains to
record them.
And yet there is something that is new, and that by the reader of
discernment is immediately felt to be so.
We read of Moses, that he was a child of ordinary birth, and, when he
was born, was presently marked, as well as all the male children of his
race, for destruction. He was unexpectedly preserved; and his first act,
when he grew up, was to slay an Egyptian, one of the race to whom
all his countrymen were slaves, and to fly into exile. This man, thus
friendless and alone, in due time returned, and by the mere energy of
his character prevailed upon his whole race to make common cause with
him, and to migrate to a region, in which they should become sovereign
and independent. He had no soldiers, but what were made so by the
ascendancy of his spirit no counsellors but such as he taught to be
wise, no friends but those who were moved by the sentiment they caught
from him. The Jews he commanded were sordid and low of disposition,
perpetually murmuring against his rule, and at every unfavourable
accident calling to remembrance "the land of Egypt, where they had
sat by the fleshpots, and were full." Yet over this race he retained a
constant mastery, and finally made of them a nation whose customs and
habits and ways of thinking no time has availed to destroy. This was
a man then, that possessed the true secret to make other men his
creatures, and lead them with an irresistible power wherever he pleased.
This history, taken entire, has probably no parallel in the annals of
the world.
The invasion of Greece by the Persians, and its result, seem to
constitute an event that stands alone among men. Xerxes led against this
little territory an army of 5,280,000 men. They drank up rivers, and
cut their way through giant-mountains. They were first stopped at
Thermopylae by Leonidas and his three hundred Spartans. They fought for
a country too narrow to contain the army by which the question was to be
tried. The contest was here to be decided between despotism and liberty,
whether there is a principle in man, by which a handful of individuals,
pervaded with lofty sentiments, and a conviction of what is of most
worth in our nature, can defy the brute force, and put to flight the
attack, of bones, joints and sinews, though congregated in multitudes,
numberless as the waves of the sea, or the sands on its shore. The flood
finally rolled back: and in process of time Alexander, with these Greeks
whom the ignorance of the East affected to despise, founded another
universal monarchy on the ruins of Persia. This is certainly no vulgar
history.
Christianity is another of those memorable chapters in the annals of
mankind, to which there is probably no second. The son of a carpenter in
a little, rocky country, among a nation despised and enslaved, undertook
to reform the manners of the people of whom he was a citizen. The
reformation he preached was unpalatable to the leaders of the state; he
was persecuted; and finally suffered the death reserved for the lowest
malefactors, being nailed to a cross. He was cut off in the very
beginning of his career, before he had time to form a sect. His
immediate representatives and successors were tax-gatherers and
fishermen. What could be more incredible, till proved by the event, than
that a religion thus begun, should have embraced in a manner the whole
civilised world, and that of its kingdom there should be no visible end?
This is a novelty in the history of the world, equally if we consider
it as brought about by the immediate interposition of the author of all
things, or regard it, as some pretend to do, as happening in the course
of mere human events.
Rome, "the eternal city," is likewise a subject that stands out from
the vulgar history of the human race. Three times, in three successive
forms, has she been the mistress of the world. First, by the purity, the
simplicity, the single-heartedness, the fervour and perseverance of her
original character she qualified herself to subdue all the nations
of mankind. Next, having conquered the earth by her virtue and by the
spirit of liberty, she was able to maintain her ascendancy for centuries
under the emperors, notwithstanding all her astonishing profligacy and
anarchy. And, lastly, after her secular ascendancy had been destroyed by
the inroads of the northern barbarians, she rose like the phoenix from
her ashes, and, though powerless in material force, held mankind in
subjection by the chains of the mind, and the consummateness of her
policy. Never was any thing so admirably contrived as the Catholic
religion, to subdue the souls of men by the power of its worship over
the senses, and, by its contrivances in auricular confession,
purgatory, masses for the dead, and its claim magisterially to determine
controversies, to hold the subjects it had gained in everlasting
submission.
The great principle of originality is in the soul of man. And here again
we may recur to Greece, the parent of all that is excellent in art.
Painting, statuary, architecture, poetry, in their most exquisite and
ravishing forms, originated in this little province. Is not the Iliad a
thing new, and that will for ever remain new? Whether it was written by
one man, as I believe, or, as the levellers of human glory would have
us think, by many, there it stands: all the ages of the world present us
nothing that can come in competition with it.
Shakespear is another example of unrivalled originality. His fame is
like the giant-rivers of the world: the further it flows, the wider it
spreads out its stream, and the more marvellous is the power with which
it sweeps along.
But, in reality, all poetry and all art, that have a genuine claim to
originality, are new, the smallest, as well as the greatest.
It is the mistake of dull minds only, to suppose that every thing
has been said, that human wit is exhausted, and that we, who have
unfortunately fallen upon the dregs of time, have no alternative left,
but either to be silent, or to say over and over again, what has been
well said already.
There remain yet immense tracts of invention, the mines of which have
been untouched. We perceive nothing of the strata of earth, and the
hidden fountains of water, that we travel over, unconscious of the
treasures that are immediately within our reach, till some person,
endowed with the gift of a superior sagacity, comes into the country,
who appears to see through the opake and solid mass, as we see through
the translucent air, and tells us of things yet undiscovered, and
enriches us with treasures, of which we had been hitherto entirely
ignorant. The nature of the human mind, and the capabilities of our
species are in like manner a magazine of undiscovered things, till some
mighty genius comes to break the surface, and shew us the wonderful
treasures that lay beneath uncalled for and idle.
Human character is like the contents of an ample cabinet, brought
together by the untired zeal of some curious collector, who tickets his
rarities with numbers, and has a catalogue in many volumes, in which are
recorded the description and qualities of the things presented to our
view. Among the most splendid examples of character which the genius
of man has brought to light, are Don Quixote and his trusty squire, sir
Roger de Coverley, Parson Adams, Walter Shandy and his brother Toby.
Who shall set bounds to the everlasting variety of nature, as she has
recorded her creations in the heart of man? Most of these instances
are recent, and sufficiently shew that the enterprising adventurer, who
would aspire to emulate the illustrious men from whose writings these
examples are drawn, has no cause to despair.
Vulgar observers pass carelessly by a thousand figures in the crowded
masquerade of human society, which, when inscribed on the tablet by
the pencil of a master, would prove not less wondrous in the power
of affording pleasure, nor less rich as themes for inexhaustible
reflection, than the most admirable of these. The things are there, and
all that is wanting is an eye to perceive, and a pen to record them.
As to a great degree we may subscribe to the saying of the wise man,
that "there is nothing new under the sun," so in a certain sense it
may also be affirmed that nothing is old. Both of these maxims may be
equally true. The prima materia, the atoms of which the universe is
composed, is of a date beyond all record; and the figures which have
yet been introduced into the most fantastic chronology, may perhaps be
incompetent to represent the period of its birth. But the ways in which
they may be compounded are exhaustless. It is like what the writers on
the Doctrine of Chances tell us of the throwing of dice. How many men
now exist on the face of the earth? Yet, if all these were brought
together, and if, in addition to this, we could call up all the men that
ever lived, it may be doubted, whether any two would be found so
much alike, that a clear-sighted and acute observer might not surely
distinguish the one from the other. Leibnitz informs us, that no
two leaves of a tree exist in the most spacious garden, that, upon
examination, could be pronounced perfectly similar(19).
(19) See above, Essay 2.
The true question is not, whether any thing can be found that is new,
but whether the particulars in which any thing is new may not be so
minute and trifling, as scarcely to enter for any thing, into that
grand and comprehensive view of the whole, in which matters of obvious
insignificance are of no account.
But, if art and the invention of the human mind are exhaustless, science
is even more notoriously so. We stand but on the threshold of the
knowledge of nature, and of the various ways in which physical power may
be brought to operate for the accommodation of man. This is a business
that seems to be perpetually in progress; and, like the fall of bodies
by the power of gravitation, appears to gain in momentum, in proportion
as it advances to a greater distance from the point at which the impulse
was given. The discoveries which at no remote period have been made,
would, if prophesied of, have been laughed to scorn by the ignorant
sluggishness of former generations; and we are equally ready to regard
with incredulity the discoveries yet unmade, which will be familiar
to our posterity. Indeed every man of a capacious and liberal mind is
willing to admit, that the progress of human understanding in science,
which is now going on, is altogether without any limits that by the
most penetrating genius can be assigned. It is like a mighty river, that
flows on for ever and for ever, as far as the words, "for ever," can
have a meaning to the comprehension of mortals. The question that
remains is, our practicable improvement in literature and morals, and
here those persons who entertain a mean opinion of human nature, are
constantly ready to tell us that it will be found to amount to nothing.
However we may be continually improving in mechanical knowledge and
ingenuity, we are assured by this party, that we shall never surpass
what has already been done in poetry and literature, and, which is
still worse, that, however marvellous may be our future acquisitions in
science and the application of science, we shall be, as much as ever,
the creatures of that vanity, ostentation, opulence and the spirit of
exclusive accumulation, which has hitherto, in most countries (not in
all countries), generated the glaring inequality of property, and the
oppression of the many for the sake of pampering the folly of the few.
There is another circumstance that may be mentioned, which, particularly
as regards the question of repetition and novelty that is now under
consideration, may seem to operate in an eminent degree in favour of
science, while it casts a most discouraging veil over poetry and the
pure growth of human fancy and invention. Poetry is, after all, nothing
more than new combinations of old materials. Nihil est in intellectu,
quod non fuit prius in sensu. The poet has perhaps in all languages been
called a maker, a creator: but this seems to be a vain-glorious and an
empty boast. He is a collector of materials only, which he afterwards
uses as best he may be able. He answers to the description I have heard
given of a tailor, a man who cuts to pieces whatever is delivered to him
from the loom, that he may afterwards sew it together again. The poet
therefore, we may be told, adds nothing to the stock of ideas and
conceptions already laid up in the storehouse of mind. But the man who
is employed upon the secrets of nature, is eternally in progress; day
after day he delivers in to the magazine of materials for thinking and
acting, what was not there before; he increases the stock, upon which
human ingenuity and the arts of life are destined to operate. He does
not, as the poet may be affirmed by his censurers to do, travel for
ever in a circle, but continues to hasten towards a goal, while at every
interval we may mark how much further he has proceeded from the point at
which his race began.
Much may be said in answer to this, and in vindication and honour of the
poet and the artist. All that is here alleged to their disadvantage,
is in reality little better than a sophism. The consideration of the
articles he makes use of, does not in sound estimate detract from the
glories of which he is the artificer. Materiem superat opus. He changes
the nature of what he handles; all that he touches is turned into
gold. The manufacture he delivers to us is so new, that the thing it
previously was, is no longer recognisable. The impression that he makes
upon the imagination and the heart, the impulses that he communicates to
the understanding and the moral feeling, are all his own; and, "if there
is any thing lovely and of good report, if there is any virtue and any
praise," he may well claim our applauses and our thankfulness for what
he has effected.
There is a still further advantage that belongs to the poet and the
votarist of polite literature, which ought to be mentioned, as strongly
calculated to repress the arrogance of the men of science, and the
supercilious contempt they are apt to express for those who are
engrossed by the pursuits of imagination and taste. They are for ever
talking of the reality and progressiveness of their pursuits, and
telling us that every step they take is a point gained, and gained for
the latest posterity, while the poet merely suits himself to the taste
of the men among whom he lives, writes up to the fashion of the day,
and, as our manners turn, is sure to be swept away to the gulph of
oblivion. But how does the matter really stand? It is to a great degree
the very reverse of this.
The natural and experimental philosopher has nothing sacred and
indestructible in the language and form in which he delivers truths. New
discoveries and experiments come, and his individual terms and phrases
and theories perish. One race of natural philosophers does but prepare
the way for another race, which is to succeed. They "blow the trumpet,
and give out the play." And they must be contented to perish before the
brighter knowledge, of which their efforts were but the harbingers. The
Ptolemaic system gave way to Tycho Brahe, and his to that of Copernicus.
The vortices of Descartes perished before the discoveries of Newton;
and the philosophy of Newton already begins to grow old, and is found
to have weak and decaying parts mixed with those which are immortal and
divine. In the science of mind Aristotle and Plato are set aside; the
depth of Malebranche, and the patient investigation of Locke have had
their day; more penetrating, and concise, and lynx-eyed reasoners of
our own country have succeeded; the German metaphysicians seem to have
thrust these aside; and it perhaps needs no great degree of sagacity
to foresee, that Kant and Fichte will at last fare no better than those
that went before them.
But the poet is immortal. The verses of Homer are of workmanship no less
divine, than the armour of his own Achilles. His poems are as fresh and
consummate to us now, as they were to the Greeks, when the old man of
Chios wandered in person through the different cities, rehearsing
his rhapsodies to the accompaniment of his lute. The language and the
thoughts of the poet are inextricably woven together; and the first
is no more exposed to decay and to perish than the last. Presumptuous
innovators have attempted to modernise Chaucer, and Spenser, and other
authors, whose style was supposed to have grown obsolete. But true taste
cannot endure the impious mockery. The very words that occurred to these
men, when the God descended, and a fire from heaven tingled in all their
veins, are sacred, are part of themselves; and you may as well attempt
to preserve the man when you have deprived him of all his members, as
think to preserve the poet when you have taken away the words that he
spoke. No part of his glorious effusions must perish; and "the hairs of
his head are all numbered."
ESSAY XI. OF SELF-LOVE AND BENEVOLENCE.
NO question has more memorably exercised the ingenuity of men who
have speculated upon the structure of the human mind, than that of
the motives by which we are actuated in our intercourse with our
fellow-creatures. The dictates of a plain and unsophisticated
understanding on the subject are manifest; and they have been asserted
in the broadest way by the authors of religion, the reformers of
mankind, and all persons who have been penetrated with zeal and
enthusiasm for the true interests of the race to which they belong.
"The end of the commandment," say the authors of the New Testament, "is
love." "This is the great commandment of the law, Thou shalt love thy
maker with all thy heart; and the second is like unto it, Thou shalt
love thy neighbour as thyself." "Though I bestow all my goods to feed
the poor, and give my body to be burned, and have not love, it profiteth
me nothing." "For none of us liveth to himself; and no man dieth to
himself."
The sentiments of the ancient Greeks and Romans, for so many centuries
as their institutions retained their original purity, were cast in a
mould of a similar nature. A Spartan was seldom alone; they were always
in society with each other. The love of their country and of the public
good was their predominant passion, they did not imagine that they
belonged to themselves, but to the state. After the battle of Leuctra,
in which the Spartans were defeated by the Thebans, the mothers of those
who were slain congratulated one another, and went to the temples to
thank the Gods, that their children had done their duty; while the
relations of those who survived the defeat were inconsolable.
The Romans were not less distinguished by their self-denying patriotism.
It was in this spirit that Brutus put his two sons to death for
conspiring against their country. It was in this spirit that the Fabii
perished at their fort on the Cremera, and the Decii devoted themselves
for the public. The rigour of self-denial in a true Roman approached to
a temper which moderns are inclined to denominate savage.
In the times of the ancient republics the impulse of the citizens was to
merge their own individuality in the interests of the state. They held
it their duty to live but for their country. In this spirit they were
educated; and the lessons of their early youth regulated the conduct of
their riper years.
In a more recent period we have learned to model our characters by a
different standard. We seldom recollect the society of which we are
politically members, as a whole, but are broken into detached parties,
thinking only for the most part of ourselves and our immediate
connections and attachments.
This change in the sentiments and manners of modern times has among its
other consequences given birth to a new species of philosophy. We have
been taught to affirm, that we can have no express and pure regard for
our fellow-creatures, but that all our benevolence and affection come to
us through the strainers of a gross or a refined self-love. The coarser
adherents of this doctrine maintain, that mankind are in all cases
guided by views of the narrowest self-interest, and that those who
advance the highest claims to philanthropy, patriotism, generosity
and self-sacrifice, are all the time deceiving others, or deceiving
themselves, and use a plausible and high-sounding language merely, that
serves no other purpose than to veil from observation "that hideous
sight, a naked human heart."
The more delicate and fastidious supporters of the doctrine of universal
self-love, take a different ground. They affirm that "such persons
as talk to us of disinterestedness and pure benevolence, have not
considered with sufficient accuracy the nature of mind, feeling and
will. To understand," they say, "is one thing, and to choose another."
The clearest proposition that ever was stated, has, in itself, no
tendency to produce voluntary action on the part of the percipient. It
can be only something apprehended as agreeable or disagreeable to
us, that can operate so as to determine the will. Such is the law
of universal nature. We act from the impulse of our own desires and
aversions; and we seek to effect or avert a thing, merely because it is
viewed by us as an object of gratification or the contrary.
The virtuous man and the vicious are alike governed by the same
principle; and it is therefore the proper business of a wise instructor
of youth, and of a man who would bring his own sentiments and feelings
into the most praise-worthy frame, to teach us to find our interest and
gratification in that which shall be most beneficial to others."
When we proceed to examine the truth of these statements, it certainly
is not strictly an argument to say, that the advocate of self-love
on either of these hypotheses cannot consistently be a believer in
Christianity, or even a theist, as theism is ordinarily understood. The
commandments of the author of the Christian religion are, as we have
seen, purely disinterested: and, especially if we admit the latter of
the two explanations of self-love, we shall be obliged to confess, on
the hypothesis of this new philosophy, that the almighty author of
the universe never acts in any of his designs either of creation or
providence, but from a principle of self-love. In the mean time, if
this is not strictly an argument, it is however but fair to warn the
adherents of the doctrine I oppose, of the consequences to which their
theory leads. It is my purpose to subvert that doctrine by means of
the severest demonstration; but I am not unwilling, before I begin,
to conciliate, as far as may be, the good-will of my readers to the
propositions I proceed to establish.
I will therefore further venture to add, that, upon the hypothesis
of self-love, there can be no such thing as virtue. There are two
circumstances required, to entitle an action to be denominated virtuous.
It must have a tendency to produce good rather than evil to the race
of man, and it must have been generated by an intention to produce such
good. The most beneficent action that ever was performed, if it did not
spring from the intention of good to others, is not of the nature
of virtue. Virtue, where it exists in any eminence, is a species of
conduct, modelled upon a true estimate of the good intended to be
produced. He that makes a false estimate, and prefers a trivial and
partial good to an important and comprehensive one, is vicious(20).
(20) Political Justice, Book 11, Chap. IV.
It is admitted on all hands, that it is possible for a man to sacrifice
his own existence to that of twenty others. But the advocates of the
doctrine of self-love must say, that he does this that he may escape
from uneasiness, and because he could not bear to encounter the inward
upbraiding with which he would be visited, if he acted otherwise. This
in reality would change his action from an act of virtue to an act
of vice. So far as belongs to the real merits of the case, his own
advantage or pleasure is a very insignificant consideration, and the
benefit to be produced, suppose to a world, is inestimable. Yet he
falsely and unjustly prefers the first, and views the latter as trivial;
nay, separately taken, as not entitled to the smallest regard. If the
dictates of impartial justice be taken into the account, then, according
to the system of self-love, the best action that ever was performed,
may, for any thing we know, have been the action, in the whole world, of
the most exquisite and deliberate injustice. Nay, it could not have been
otherwise, since it produced the greatest good, and therefore was
the individual instance, in which the greatest good was most directly
postponed to personal gratification(21). Such is the spirit of the
doctrine I undertake to refute.
(21) Political Justice, Book IV, Chap. X.
But man is not in truth so poor and pusillanimous a creature as this
system would represent.
It is time however to proceed to the real merits of the question, to
examine what in fact is the motive which induces a good man to elect a
generous mode of proceeding.
Locke is the philosopher, who, in writing on Human Understanding, has
specially delivered the doctrine, that uneasiness is the cause which
determines the will, and urges us to act. He says(22), "The motive we
have for continuing in the same state, is only the present satisfaction
we feel in it; the motive to change is always some uneasiness: nothing
setting us upon the change of state, or upon any new action, but some
uneasiness. This is the great motive that works on the mind."
(22) Book II, Chap. XXI, Sect. 29.
It is not my concern to enquire, whether Locke by this statement meant
to assert that self-love is the only principle of human action. It has
at any rate been taken to express the doctrine which I here propose to
refute.
And, in the first place, I say, that, if our business is to discover
the consideration entertained by the mind which induces us to act, this
tells us nothing. It is like the case of the Indian philosopher(23),
who, being asked what it was that kept the earth in its place, answered,
that it was supported by an elephant, and that elephant again rested on
a tortoise. He must be endowed with a slender portion of curiosity, who,
being told that uneasiness is that which spurs on the mind to act, shall
rest satisfied with this explanation, and does not proceed to enquire,
what makes us uneasy?
(23) Locke on Understanding, Book 11, Chap. XIII, Sect. 19.
An explanation like this is no more instructive, than it would be, if,
when we saw a man walking, or grasping a sword or a bludgeon, and we
enquired into the cause of this phenomenon, any one should inform us
that he walks, because he has feet, and he grasps, because he has hands.
I could not commodiously give to my thoughts their present form, unless
I had been previously furnished with pens and paper. But it would be
absurd to say, that my being furnished with pens and paper, is the cause
of my writing this Essay on Self-love and Benevolence.
The advocates of self-love have, very inartificially and unjustly,
substituted the abstract definition of a voluntary agent, and made that
stand for the motive by which he is prompted to act. It is true, that
we cannot act without the impulse of desire or uneasiness; but we do not
think of that desire and uneasiness; and it is the thing upon which the
mind is fixed that constitutes our motive. In the boundless variety of
the acts, passions and pursuits of human beings, it is absurd on the
face of it to say that we are all governed by one motive, and that,
however dissimilar are the ends we pursue, all this dissimilarity is the
fruit of a single cause.
One man chooses travelling, another ambition, a third study, a fourth
voluptuousness and a mistress. Why do these men take so different
courses?
Because one is partial to new scenes, new buildings, new manners,
and the study of character. Because a second is attracted by the
contemplation of wealth and power. Because a third feels a decided
preference for the works of Homer, or Shakespear, or Bacon, or Euclid.
Because a fourth finds nothing calculated to stir his mind in comparison
with female beauty, female allurements, or expensive living.
Each of these finds the qualities he likes, intrinsically in the thing
he chooses. One man feels himself strongly moved, and raised to extacy,
by the beauties of nature, or the magnificence of architecture. Another
is ravished with the divine excellencies of Homer, or of some other of
the heroes of literature. A third finds nothing delights him so much
as the happiness of others, the beholding that happiness increased, and
seeing pain and oppression and sorrow put to flight. The cause of these
differences is, that each man has an individual internal structure,
directing his partialities, one man to one thing, and another to
another.
Few things can exceed the characters of human beings in variety. There
must be something abstractedly in the nature of mind, which renders it
accessible to these varieties. For the present we will call it taste.
One man feels his spirits regaled with the sight of those things which
constitute wealth, another in meditating the triumphs of Alexander or
Caesar, and a third in viewing the galleries of the Louvre. Not one of
these thinks in the outset of appropriating these objects to himself;
not one of them begins with aspiring to be the possessor of vast
opulence, or emulating the triumphs of Caesar, or obtaining in property
the pictures and statues the sight of which affords him so exquisite
delight. Even the admirer of female beauty, does not at first think of
converting this attractive object into a mistress, but on the contrary
desires, like Pygmalion, that the figure he beholds might become his
solace and companion, because he had previously admired it for itself.
Just so the benevolent man is an individual who finds a peculiar delight
in contemplating the contentment, the peace and heart's ease of other
men, and sympathises in no ordinary degree with their sufferings. He
rejoices in the existence and diffusion of human happiness, though he
should not have had the smallest share in giving birth to the thing he
loves. It is because such are his tastes, and what above all things he
prefers, that he afterwards becomes distinguished by the benevolence of
his conduct.
The reflex act of the mind, which these new philosophers put forward as
the solution of all human pursuits, rarely presents itself but to the
speculative enquirer in his closet. The savage never dreams of it. The
active man, engaged in the busy scenes of life, thinks little, and on
rare occasions of himself, but much, and in a manner for ever, of the
objects of his pursuit.
Some men are uniform in their character, and from the cradle to the
grave prefer the same objects that first awakened their partialities.
Other men are inconsistent and given to change, are "every thing by
starts, and nothing long." Still it is probable that, in most cases,
he who performs an act of benevolence, feels for the time that he has a
peculiar delight in contemplating the good of his fellow-man.
The doctrine of the modern philosophers on this point, is in many ways
imbecil and unsound. It is inauspicious to their creed, that the
reflex act of the mind is purely the affair of experience. Why did the
liberal-minded man perform his first act of benevolence? The answer of
these persons ought to be, because the recollection of a generous deed
is a source of the truest delight. But there is an absurdity on the face
of this solution.
We do not experimentally know the delight which attends the recollection
of a generous deed, till a generous deed has been performed by us. We do
not learn these things from books. And least of all is this solution
to the purpose, when the business is to find a solution that suits the
human mind universally, the unlearned as well as the learned, the savage
as well as the sage.
And surely it is inconsistent with all sound reasoning, to represent
that as the sole spring of our benevolent actions, which by the very
terms will not fit the first benevolent act in which any man engaged.
The advocates of the doctrine of "self-love the source of all our
actions," are still more puzzled, when the case set before them is that
of the man, who flies, at an instant's warning, to save the life of the
child who has fallen into the river, or the unfortunate whom he
beholds in the upper story of a house in flames. This man, as might
be illustrated in a thousand instances, treats his own existence as
unworthy of notice, and exposes it to multiplied risks to effect the
object to which he devotes himself.
They are obliged to say, that this man anticipates the joy he will feel
in the recollection of a noble act, and the cutting and intolerable pain
he will experience in the consciousness that a human being has perished,
whom it was in his power to save. It is in vain that we tell them that,
without a moment's consideration, he tore off his clothes, or plunged
into the stream with his clothes on, or rushed up a flaming stair-case.
Still they tell us, that he recollected what compunctious visitings
would be his lot if he remained supine--he felt the sharpest uneasiness
at sight of the accident before him, and it was to get rid of that
uneasiness, and not for the smallest regard to the unhappy being he has
been the means to save, that he entered on the hazardous undertaking.
Uneasiness, the knowledge of what inwardly passes in the mind, is a
thing not in the slightest degree adverted to but in an interval of
leisure. No; the man here spoken of thinks of nothing but the object
immediately before his eyes; he adverts not at all to himself; he acts
only with an undeveloped, confused and hurried consciousness that he may
be of some use, and may avert the instantly impending calamity. He has
scarcely even so much reflection as amounts to this.
The history of man, whether national or individual, and consequently the
acts of human creatures which it describes, are cast in another mould
than that which the philosophy of self-love sets before us. A topic that
from the earliest accounts perpetually presents itself in the records
of mankind, is self-sacrifice, parents sacrificing themselves for their
children, and children for their parents. Cimon, the Athenian, yet in
the flower of his youth, voluntarily became the inmate of a prison, that
the body of his father might receive the honours of sepulture. Various
and unquestionable are the examples of persons who have exposed
themselves to destruction, and even petitioned to die, that so they
might save the lives of those, whose lives they held dearer than their
own. Life is indeed a thing, that is notoriously set at nothing by
generous souls, who have fervently devoted themselves to an overwhelming
purpose. There have been instances of persons, exposed to all the
horrors of famine, where one has determined to perish by that slowest
and most humiliating of all the modes of animal destruction, that
another, dearer to him than life itself, might, if possible, be
preserved.
What is the true explanation of these determinations of the human will?
Is it, that the person, thus consigning himself to death, loved nothing
but himself, regarded only the pleasure he might reap, or the uneasiness
he was eager to avoid? Or, is it, that he had arrived at the exalted
point of self-oblivion, and that his whole soul was penetrated and
ingrossed with the love of those for whom he conceived so exalted a
partiality?
This sentiment so truly forms a part of our nature, that a multitude
of absurd practices, and a multitude of heart-rending fables, have been
founded upon the consciousness of man in different ages and nations,
that these modes of thinking form a constituent part of our common
existence. In India there was found a woman, whose love to the deceased
partner of her soul was so overwhelming, that she resolved voluntarily
to perish on his funeral pile. And this example became so fascinating
and admirable, that, by insensible degrees, it grew into a national
custom with the Hindoos, that, by a sort of voluntary constraint, the
widows of all men of a certain caste, should consign themselves to the
flames with the dead bodies of their husbands. The story of Zopyrus
cutting off his nose and ears, and of Curtius leaping into the gulph,
may be fictitious: but it was the consciousness of those by whom these
narratives were written that they drew their materials from the mighty
store-house of the heart of man, that prompted them to record them.
The institutions of clientship and clans, so extensively diffused in
different ages of the world, rests upon this characteristic of our
nature, that multitudes of men may be trained and educated so, as to
hold their existence at no price, when the life of the individual they
were taught unlimitedly to reverence might be preserved, or might be
defended at the risk of their destruction.
The principal circumstance that divides our feelings for others from
our feelings for ourselves, and that gives, to satirical observers, and
superficial thinkers, an air of exclusive selfishness to the human
mind, lies in this, that we can fly from others, but cannot fly from
ourselves. While I am sitting by the bed-side of the sufferer, while
I am listening to the tale of his woes, there is comparatively but a
slight line of demarcation, whether they are his sorrows or my own. My
sympathy is vehemently excited towards him, and I feel his twinges and
anguish in a most painful degree. But I can quit his apartment and the
house in which he dwells, can go out in the fields, and feel the fresh
air of heaven fanning my hair, and playing upon my cheeks. This is at
first but a very imperfect relief. His image follows me; I cannot forget
what I have heard and seen; I even reproach myself for the mitigation
I involuntarily experience. But man is the creature of his senses. I am
every moment further removed, both in time and place, from the object
that distressed me. There he still lies upon the bed of agony: but
the sound of his complaint, and the sight of all that expresses his
suffering, are no longer before me. A short experience of human life
convinces us that we have this remedy always at hand ("I am unhappy,
only while I please")(24); and we soon come therefore to anticipate the
cure, and so, even while we are in the presence of the sufferer, to feel
that he and ourselves are not perfectly one.
(24) Douglas.
But with our own distempers and adversities it is altogether different.
It is this that barbs the arrow. We may change the place of our local
existence; but we cannot go away from ourselves. With chariots, and
embarking ourselves on board of ships, we may seek to escape from the
enemy. But grief and apprehension enter the vessel along with us; and,
when we mount on horseback, the discontent that specially annoyed
us, gets up behind, and clings to our sides with a hold never to be
loosened(25).
(25) Horace.
Is it then indeed a proof of selfishness, that we are in a greater or
less degree relieved from the anguish we endured for our friend, when
other objects occupy us, and we are no longer the witnesses of his
sufferings? If this were true, the same argument would irresistibly
prove, that we are the most generous of imaginable beings, the most
disregardful of whatever relates to ourselves. Is it not the first
ejaculation of the miserable, "Oh, that I could fly from myself? Oh,
for a thick, substantial sleep!" What the desperate man hates is his own
identity. But he knows that, if for a few moments he loses himself in
forgetfulness, he will presently awake to all that distracted him. He
knows that he must act his part to the end, and drink the bitter cup
to the dregs. He can do none of these things by proxy. It is the
consciousness of the indubitable future, from which we can never be
divorced, that gives to our present calamity its most fearful empire.
Were it not for this great line of distinction, there are many that
would feel not less for their friend than for themselves. But they are
aware, that his ruin will not make them beggars, his mortal disease will
not bring them to the tomb, and that, when he is dead, they may yet be
reserved for many years of health, of consciousness and vigour.
The language of the hypothesis of self-love was well adapted to
the courtiers of the reign of Louis the Fourteenth. The language of
disinterestedness was adapted to the ancient republicans in the purest
times of Sparta and Rome.
But these ancients were not always disinterested; and the moderns are
not always narrow, self-centred and cold. The ancients paid, though with
comparative infrequency, the tax imposed upon mortals, and thought
of their own gratification and ease; and the moderns are not utterly
disqualified for acts of heroic affection.
It is of great consequence that men should come to think correctly on
this subject. The most snail-blooded man that exists, is not so selfish
as he pretends to be. In spite of all the indifference he professes
towards the good of others, he will sometimes be detected in a very
heretical state of sensibility towards his wife, his child or his
friend; he will shed tears at a tale of distress, and make considerable
sacrifices of his own gratification for the relief of others.
But his creed is a pernicious one. He who for ever thinks, that
his "charity must begin at home," is in great danger of becoming an
indifferent citizen, and of withering those feelings of philanthropy,
which in all sound estimation constitute the crowning glory of man. He
will perhaps have a reasonable affection towards what he calls his own
flesh and blood, and may assist even a stranger in a case of urgent
distress.--But it is dangerous to trifle with the first principles and
sentiments of morality. And this man will scarcely in any case have his
mind prepared to hail the first dawnings of human improvement, and to
regard all that belongs to the welfare of his kind as parcel of his own
particular estate.
The creed of self-love will always have a tendency to make us Frenchmen
in the frivolous part of that character, and Dutchmen in the plodding
and shopkeeping spirit of barter and sale. There is no need that we
should beat down the impulse of heroism in the human character, and
be upon our guard against the effervescences and excess of a generous
sentiment. One of the instructors of my youth was accustomed to say to
his pupils, "Do not be afraid to commit your thoughts to paper in all
the fervour and glow of your first conception: when you come to look at
them the next day, you will find this gone off to a surprising degree."
As this was no ill precept for literary composition, even so in our
actions and moral conduct we shall be in small danger of being too
warm-hearted and too generous.
Modern improvements in education are earnest in recommending to us the
study of facts, and that we should not waste the time of young persons
upon the flights of imagination. But it is to imagination that we
are indebted for our highest enjoyments; it tames the ruggedness of
uncivilised nature, and is the never-failing associate of all the
considerable advances of social man, whether in throwing down the strong
fences of intellectual slavery, or in giving firmness and duration to
the edifice of political freedom.
And who does not feel that every thing depends upon the creed we
embrace, and the discipline we exercise over our own souls?
The disciple of the theory of self-love, if of a liberal disposition,
will perpetually whip himself forward "with loose reins," upon a
spiritless Pegasus, and say, "I will do generous things; I will not
bring into contempt the master I serve--though I am conscious all
the while that this is but a delusion, and that, however I brag of
generosity, I do not set a step forward, but singly for my own ends,
and my own gratification." Meanwhile, this is all a forced condition of
thought; and the man who cherishes it, will be perpetually falling back
into the cold, heartless convictions he inwardly retains. Self-love is
the unwholesome, infectious atmosphere in which he dwells; and, however
he may seek to rise, the wings of his soul will eternally be drawn
downwards, and he cannot be pervaded, as he might have been, with
the free spirit of genuine philanthropy. To be consistent, he ought
continually to grow colder and colder; and the romance, which fired his
youth, and made him forget the venomous potion he had swallowed,
will fade away in age, rendering him careless of all but himself, and
indifferent to the adversity and sufferings of all of whom he hears, and
all with whom he is connected.
On the other hand, the man who has embraced the creed of disinterested
benevolence, will know that it is not his fitting element to "live for
himself, or to die for himself." Whether he is under the dominion of
family-affection, friendship, patriotism, or a zeal for his brethren
of mankind, he will feel that he is at home. The generous man therefore
looks forward to the time when the chilling and wretched philosophy
of the reign of Louis the Fourteenth shall be forgotten, and a fervent
desire for the happiness and improvement of the human species shall
reign in all hearts.
I am not especially desirous of sheltering my opinions under the
authority of great names: but, in a question of such vital importance
to the true welfare of men in society, no fair advantage should be
neglected. The author of the system of "self-love the source of all
our actions" was La Rochefoucault; and the whole herd of the French
philosophers have not been ashamed to follow in the train of their
vaunted master. I am grieved to say, that, as I think, the majority of
my refining and subtilising countrymen of the present day have enlisted
under his banner. But the more noble and generous view of the subject
has been powerfully supported by Shaftesbury, Butler, Hutcheson and
Hume. On the last of these I particularly pique myself; inasmuch as,
though he became naturalised as a Frenchman in a vast variety of topics,
the greatness of his intellectual powers exempted him from degradation
in this.
That however which I would chiefly urge in the way of authority, is the
thing mentioned in the beginning of this Essay, I mean, the sentiments
that have animated the authors of religion, that characterise the best
ages of Greece and Rome, and that in all cases display themselves when
the loftiest and most generous sentiments of the heart are called into
action. The opposite creed could only have been engendered in the dregs
of a corrupt and emasculated court; and human nature will never shew
itself what it is capable of being, till the last remains of a doctrine,
invented in the latter part of the seventeenth century, shall have been
consigned to the execration they deserve.
ESSAY XII. OF THE LIBERTY OF HUMAN ACTIONS.
The question, which has been attended with so long and obstinate
debates, concerning the metaphysical doctrines of liberty and
necessity, and the freedom of human actions, is not even yet finally and
satisfactorily settled.
The negative is made out by an argument which seems to amount to
demonstration, that every event requires a cause, a cause why it is as
it is and not otherwise, that the human will is guided by motives, and
is consequently always ruled by the strongest motive, and that we can
never choose any thing, either without a motive of preference, or in the
way of following the weaker, and deserting the stronger motive(26).
(26) Political Justice, Book IV, Chap. VII.
Why is it then that disbelief or doubt should still subsist in a
question so fully decided?
For the same reason that compels us to reject many other demonstrations.
The human mind is so constituted as to oblige us, if not theoretically,
at least practically, to reject demonstration, and adhere to our senses.
The case is thus in the great question of the non-existence of an
external world, or of matter. How ever much the understanding may be
satisfied of the truth of the proposition by the arguments of Berkeley
and others, we no sooner go out into actual life, than we become
convinced, in spite of our previous scepticism or unbelief, of the real
existence of the table, the chair, and the objects around us, and of the
permanence and reality of the persons, both body and mind, with whom we
have intercourse. If we were not, we should soon become indifferent to
their pleasure and pain, and in no long time reason ourselves into the
opinion that the one was not more desirable than the other, and conduct
ourselves accordingly.
But there is a great difference between the question of a material
world, and the question of liberty and necessity. The most strenuous
Berkleian can never say, that there is any contradiction or
impossibility in the existence of matter. All that he can consistently
and soberly maintain is, that, if the material world exists, we can
never perceive it, and that our sensations, and trains of impressions
and thinking go on wholly independent of that existence.
But the question of the freedom of human actions is totally of another
class. To say that in our choice we reject the stronger motive, and that
we choose a thing merely because we choose it, is sheer nonsense and
absurdity; and whoever with a sound understanding will fix his mind upon
the state of the question will perceive its impossibility.
In the mean time it is not less true, that every man, the necessarian as
well as his opponent, acts on the assumption of human liberty, and can
never for a moment, when he enters into the scenes of real life, divest
himself of this persuasion.
Let us take separately into our consideration the laws of matter and
of mind. We acknowledge generally in both an established order of
antecedents and consequents, or of causes and effects. This is the
sole foundation of human prudence and of all morality. It is because we
foresee that certain effects will follow from a certain mode of conduct,
that we act in one way rather than another. It is because we foresee
that, if the soil is prepared in a certain way, and if seed is properly
scattered and covered up in the soil thus prepared, a crop will follow,
that we engage in the labours of agriculture. In the same manner, it
is because we foresee that, if lessons are properly given, and a young
person has them clearly explained to him, certain benefits will result,
and because we are apprised of the operation of persuasion, admonition,
remonstrance, menace, punishment and reward, that we engage in the
labours of education. All the studies of the natural philosopher and the
chemist, all our journeys by land and our voyages by sea, and all the
systems and science of government, are built upon this principle, that
from a certain method of proceeding, regulated by the precepts of wisdom
and experience, certain effects may be expected to follow.
Yet, at the same time that we admit of a regular series of cause and
effect in the operations both of matter and mind, we never fail, in our
reflections upon each, to ascribe to them an essential difference. In
the laws by which a falling body descends to the earth, and by which the
planets are retained in their orbits, in a word, in all that relates to
inanimate nature, we readily assent to the existence of absolute laws,
so that, when we have once ascertained the fundamental principles
of astronomy and physics, we rely with perfect assurance upon the
invariable operation of these laws, yesterday, to-day, and for ever. As
long as the system of things, of which we are spectators, and in
which we act our several parts, shall remain, so long have the general
phenomena of nature gone on unchanged for more years of past ages than
we can define, and will in all probability continue to operate for as
many ages to come. We admit of no variation, but firmly believe that,
if we were perfectly acquainted with all the causes, we could, without
danger of error, predict all the effects. We are satisfied that,
since first the machine of the universe was set going, every thing in
inanimate nature has taken place in a regular course, and nothing has
happened and can happen, otherwise than as it actually has been and will
be.
But we believe, or, more accurately speaking, we feel, that it is
otherwise in the universe of mind. Whoever attentively observes the
phenomena of thinking and sentient beings, will be convinced, that men
and animals are under the influence of motives, that we are subject
to the predominance of the passions, of love and hatred, of desire
and aversion, of sorrow and joy, and that the elections we make are
regulated by impressions supplied to us by these passions. But we are
fully penetrated with the notion, that mind is an arbiter, that it sits
on its throne, and decides, as an absolute prince, this may or that;
in short, that, while inanimate nature proceeds passively in an eternal
chain of cause and effect, mind is endowed with an initiating power, and
forms its determinations by an inherent and indefeasible prerogative.
Hence arises the idea of contingency relative to the acts of living and
sentient beings, and the opinion that, while, in the universe of matter,
every thing proceeds in regular course, and nothing has happened or
can happen, otherwise than as it actually has been or will be, in the
determinations and acts of living beings each occurrence may be or not
be, and waits the mastery of mind to decide whether the event shall
be one way or the other, both issues being equally possible till that
decision has been made.
Thus, as was said in the beginning, we have demonstration, all the
powers of our reasoning faculty, on one side, and the feeling, of our
minds, an inward persuasion of which with all our efforts we can never
divest ourselves, on the other. This phenomenon in the history of every
human creature, had aptly enough been denominated, the "delusive sense
of liberty(27)."
(27) The first writer, by whom this proposition was distinctly
enunciated, seems to have been Lord Kaimes, in his Essays on the
Principles of Morality and Natural Religion, published in 1751. But this
ingenious author was afterwards frightened with the boldness of his
own conclusions, and in the subsequent editions of his work endeavoured
ineffectually to explain away what he had said.
And, though the philosopher in his closet will for the most part fully
assent to the doctrine of the necessity of human actions, yet this
indestructible feeling of liberty, which accompanies us from the cradle
to the grave, is entitled to our serious attention, and has never
obtained that consideration from the speculative part of mankind,
which must by no means be withheld, if we would properly enter into
the mysteries of our nature. The necessarian has paid it very imperfect
attention to the impulses which form the character of man, if he
omits this chapter in the history of mind, while on the other hand the
advocate of free will, if he would follow up his doctrine rigorously
into all its consequences, would render all speculations on human
character and conduct superfluous, put an end to the system of
persuasion, admonition, remonstrance, menace, punishment and reward,
annihilate the very essence of civil government, and bring to a close
all distinction between the sane person and the maniac.
With the disciples of the latter of these doctrines I am by no means
specially concerned. I am fully persuaded, as far as the powers of my
understanding can carry me, that the phenomena of mind are governed by
laws altogether as inevitable as the phenomena of matter, and that the
decisions of our will are always in obedience to the impulse of the
strongest motive.
The consequences of the principle implanted in our nature, by which men
of every creed, when they descend into the scene of busy life, pronounce
themselves and their fellow-mortals to be free agents, are sufficiently
memorable.
From hence there springs what we call conscience in man, and a sense of
praise or blame due to ourselves and others for the actions we perform.
How poor, listless and unenergetic would all our performances be,
but for this sentiment! It is in vain that I should talk to myself or
others, of the necessity of human actions, of the connection between
cause and effect, that all industry, study and mental discipline will
turn to account, and this with infinitely more security on the principle
of necessity, than on the opposite doctrine, every thing I did would
be without a soul. I should still say, Whatever I may do, whether it be
right or wrong, I cannot help it; wherefore then should I trouble
the master-spirit within me? It is either the calm feeling of
self-approbation, or the more animated swell of the soul, the quick
beatings of the pulse, the enlargement of the heart, the glory sparkling
in the eye, and the blood flushing into the cheek, that sustains me in
all my labours. This turns the man into what we conceive of a God, arms
him with prowess, gives him a more than human courage, and inspires him
with a resolution and perseverance that nothing can subdue.
In the same manner the love or hatred, affection or alienation, we
entertain for our fellow-men, is mainly referable for its foundation
to the "delusive sense of liberty." "We approve of a sharp knife rather
than a blunt one, because its capacity is greater. We approve of its
being employed in carving food, rather than in maiming men or other
animals, because that application of its capacity is preferable. But
all approbation or preference is relative to utility or general good. A
knife is as capable as a man, of being employed in purposes of utility;
and the one is no more free than the other as to its employment. The
mode in which a knife is made subservient to these purposes, is by
material impulse. The mode in which a man is made subservient, is
by inducement and persuasion. But both are equally the affair of
necessity(28)." These are the sentiments dictated to us by the doctrine
of the necessity of human actions.
(28) Political Justice, Book IV, Chap. VIII.
But how different are the feelings that arise within us, as soon as
we enter into the society of our fellow-creatures! "The end of the
commandment is love." It is the going forth of the heart towards those
to whom we are bound by the ties of a common nature, affinity, sympathy
or worth, that is the luminary of the moral world. Without it there
would have been "a huge eclipse of sun and moon;" or at best, as a
well-known writer(29) expresses it in reference to another subject,
we should have lived in "a silent and drab-coloured creation." We are
prepared by the power that made us for feelings and emotions; and,
unless these come to diversify and elevate our existence, we should
waste our days in melancholy, and scarcely be able to sustain ourselves.
The affection we entertain for those towards whom our partiality and
kindness are excited, is the life of our life. It is to this we are
indebted for all our refinement, and, in the noblest sense of the word,
for all our humanity. Without it we should have had no sentiment (a
word, however abused, which, when properly defined, comprises every
thing that is the crown of our nature), and no poetry.--Love and
hatred, as they regard our fellow-creatures, in contradistinction to the
complacency, or the feeling of an opposite nature, which is excited in
us towards inanimate objects, are entirely the offspring of the delusive
sense of liberty.
(29) Thomas Paine.
The terms, praise and blame, express to a great degree the same
sentiments as those of love and hatred, with this difference, that
praise and blame in their simplest sense apply to single actions,
whereas love and hatred are produced in us by the sum of those actions
or tendencies, which constitute what we call character. There is also
another difference, that love and hatred are engendered in us by other
causes as well as moral qualities; but praise and blame, in the sense in
which they are peculiarly applied to our fellow-mortals, are founded on
moral qualities only. In love and hatred however, when they are intense
or are lasting, some reference to moral qualities is perhaps necessarily
implied. The love between the sexes, unless in cases where it is of a
peculiarly transient nature, always comprises in it a belief that the
party who is the object of our love, is distinguished by tendencies
of an amiable nature, which we expect to see manifesting themselves in
affectionate attentions and acts of kindness. Even the admiration we
entertain for the features, the figure, and personal graces of the
object of our regard, is mixed with and heightened by our expectation of
actions and tones that generate approbation, and, if divested of this,
would be of small signification or permanence. In like manner in
the ties of affinity, or in cases where we are impelled by the
consideration, "He also is a man as well as I," the excitement will
carry us but a little way, unless we discover in the being towards whom
we are moved some peculiarities which may beget a moral partiality and
regard.
And, as towards our fellow-creatures, so in relation to ourselves, our
moral sentiments are all involved with, and take their rise in, the
delusive sense of liberty. It is in this that is contained the peculiar
force of the terms virtue, duty, guilt and desert. We never pronounce
these words without thinking of the action to which they refer, as that
which might or might not be done, and therefore unequivocally approve
or disapprove in ourselves and others. A virtuous man, as the term
is understood by all, as soon as we are led to observe upon those
qualities, and the exhibition of those qualities in actual life, which
constitute our nature, is a man who, being in full possession of the
freedom of human action, is engaged in doing those things which a sound
judgment of the tendencies of what we do pronounces to be good.
Duty is a term that can scarcely be said to have a meaning, except that
which it derives from the delusive sense of liberty. According to the
creed of the necessarian, it expresses that mode of action on the part
of the individual, which constitutes the best possible application of
his capacity to the general benefit(30). In the mean time, if we confine
ourselves to this definition, it may as well be taken to describe the
best application of a knife, or any other implement proceeding from the
hands of the manufacturer, as of the powers of a human being.
But we surely have a very different idea in our minds, when we employ
the term duty. It is not agreeable to the use of language that we should
use this term, except we speak of a being in the exercise of volition.
(30) Political Justice, Book II, Chap. IV.
Duty then means that which may justly be required of a human creature in
the possession of liberty of action. It includes in its proper sense the
conception of the empire of will, the notion that mind is an arbiter,
that it sits on its throne, and decides, as an absolute prince, this way
or that.
Duty is the performance of what is due, the discharge of a debt
(debitum). But a knife owes nothing, and can in no sense be said to be
held to one sort of application rather than another; the debt can only
belong to a human being in possession of his liberty, by whom the knife
may be applied laudably or otherwise.
A multitude of terms instantly occur to us, the application of which
is limited in the same manner as the term duty is limited: such are, to
owe, obligation, debt, bond, right, claim, sin, crime, guilt, merit and
desert. Even reward and punishment, however they may be intelligible
when used merely in the sense of motives employed, have in general
acceptation a sense peculiarly derived from the supposed freedom of the
human will.
The mode therefore in which the advocates of the doctrine of necessity
have universally talked and written, is one of the most memorable
examples of the hallucination of the human intellect. They have at
all times recommended that we should translate the phrases in which
we usually express ourselves on the hypothesis of liberty, into the
phraseology of necessity, that we should talk no other language than
that which is in correspondence with the severest philosophy, and that
we should exert ourselves to expel all fallacious notions and delusions
so much as from our recollection. They did not perceive what a wide
devastation and destruction they were proposing of all the terms and
phrases that are in use in the communications between man and man
in actual life.--They might as well have recommended that we should
rigorously bear in mind on the ordinary occasions of life, that there is
no such thing as colour, that which we ordinary call by that name having
no existence in external objects, but belonging only to our way of
perceiving them.
The language which is suggested to us by the conception of the freedom
of human actions, moulds the very first articulations of a child,
"I will," and "I will not;" and is even distinctly conveyed by his
gestures, before he arrives at the power of articulation. This is the
explanation and key to his vehement and ungovernable movements, and his
rebellion. The petulance of the stripling, the fervent and energetic
exertions of the warrior, and the calm and unalterable resolution of
the sage, all imply the same thing. Will, and a confidence in its
efficiency, "travel through, nor quit us till we die." It is this which
inspires us with invincible perseverance, and heroic energies, while
without it we should be the most inert and soulless of blocks, the
shadows of what history records and poetry immortalises, and not men.
Free will is an integral part of the science of man, and may be said to
constitute its most important chapter. We might with as much propriety
overlook the intelligence of the senses, that medium which acquaints us
with an external world or what we call such, we might as well overlook
the consideration of man's reason, his imagination or taste, as fail to
dwell with earnest reflection and exposition upon that principle which
lies at the foundation of our moral energies, fills us with a moral
enthusiasm, prompts all our animated exertions on the theatre of the
world, whether upon a wide or a narrow scale, and penetrates us with
the most lively and fervent approbation or disapprobation of the acts
of ourselves and others in which the forwarding or obstructing human
happiness is involved.
But, though the language of the necessarian is at war with the
indestructible feelings of the human mind, and though his demonstrations
will for ever crumble into dust, when brought to the test of the
activity of real life, yet his doctrines, to the reflecting and
enlightened, will by no means be without their use. In the sobriety of
the closet, we inevitably assent to his conclusions; nor is it easy to
conceive how a rational man and a philosopher abstractedly can entertain
a doubt of the necessity of human actions. And the number of these
persons is perpetually increasing; enlarged and dispassionate views of
the nature of man and the laws of the universe are rapidly spreading in
the world. We cannot indeed divest ourselves of love and hatred, of
the sentiments of praise and blame, and the ideas of virtue, duty,
obligation, debt, bond, right, claim, sin, crime, guilt, merit and
desert. And, if we could do so, the effects would be most pernicious,
and the world be rendered a blank. We shall however unquestionably,
as our minds grow enlarged, be brought to the entire and unreserved
conviction, that man is a machine, that he is governed by external
impulses, and is to be regarded as the medium only through the
intervention of which previously existing causes are enabled to produce
certain effects. We shall see, according to an expressive phrase, that
he "could not help it," and, of consequence, while we look down from the
high tower of philosophy upon the scene of human affairs, our prevailing
emotion will be pity, even towards the criminal, who, from the qualities
he brought into the world, and the various circumstances which act upon
him from infancy, and form his character, is impelled to be the means
of the evils, which we view with so profound disapprobation, and the
existence of which we so entirely regret.
There is an old axiom of philosophy, which counsels us to "think with
the learned, and talk with the vulgar;" and the practical application of
this axiom runs through the whole scene of human affairs. Thus the
most learned astronomer talks of the rising and setting of the sun,
and forgets in his ordinary discourse that the earth is not for ever at
rest, and does not constitute the centre of the universe. Thus, however
we reason respecting the attributes of inanimate matter and the nature
of sensation, it never occurs to us, when occupied with the affairs
of actual life, that there is no heat in fire, and no colour in the
rainbow.
In like manner, when we contemplate the acts of ourselves and our
neighbours, we can never divest ourselves of the delusive sense of
the liberty of human actions, of the sentiment of conscience, of the
feelings of love and hatred, the impulses of praise and blame, and the
notions of virtue, duty, obligation, right, claim, guilt, merit and
desert. And it has sufficiently appeared in the course of this Essay,
that it is not desirable that we should do so. They are these ideas
to which the world we live in is indebted for its crowning glory and
greatest lustre. They form the highest distinction between men and
other animals, and are the genuine basis of self-reverence, and the
conceptions of true nobility and greatness, and the reverse of these
attributes, in the men with whom we live, and the men whose deeds are
recorded in the never-dying page of history.
But, though the doctrine of the necessity of human actions can never
form the rule of our intercourse with others, it will still have its
use. It will moderate our excesses, and point out to us that middle path
of judgment which the soundest philosophy inculcates. We shall learn,
according to the apostolic precept, to "be angry, and sin not, neither
let the sun go down upon our wrath." We shall make of our fellow-men
neither idols to worship, nor demons to be regarded with horror and
execration. We shall think of them, as of players, "that strut and fret
their hour upon the stage, and then are heard no more." We shall "weep,
as though we wept not, and rejoice, as though we rejoiced not, seeing
that the fashion of this world passeth away." And, most of all, we shall
view with pity, even with sympathy, the men whose frailties we behold,
or by whom crimes are perpetrated, satisfied that they are parts of one
great machine, and, like ourselves, are driven forward by impulses over
which they have no real control.
ESSAY XIII. OF BELIEF.
One of the prerogatives by which man is eminently distinguished from all
other living beings inhabiting this globe of earth, consists in the gift
of reason.
Beasts reason. They are instructed by experience; and, guided by what
they have already known of the series of events, they infer from the
sense of what has gone before, an assured expectation of what is to
follow. Hence, "beast walks with man, joint tenant of the shade;" and
their sagacity is in many instances more unerring than ours, because
they have no affectation to mislead them; they follow no false lights,
no glimmering intimation of something half-anticipating a result,
but trust to the plain, blunt and obvious dictates of their simple
apprehension. This however is but the first step in the scale of reason,
and is in strictness scarcely entitled to the name.
We set off from the same point from which they commence their career.
But the faculty of articulate speech comes in, enabling us to form
the crude elements of reason and inference into a code. We digest
explanations of things, assigning the particulars in which they resemble
other classes, and the particulars by which they are distinguished
from whatever other classes have fallen under our notice. We frame
propositions, and, detaching ourselves from the immediate impressions of
sense, proceed to generalities, which exist only, in a way confused, and
not distinctly adverted to, in the conceptions of the animal creation.
It is thus that we arrive at science, and go forward to those
subtleties, and that perspicuity of explanation, which place man in a
distinct order of being, leaving all the other inhabitants of earth at
an immeasurable distance below him. It is thus that we communicate our
discoveries to each other, and hand down the knowledge we have acquired,
unimpaired and entire, through successive ages, and to generations yet
unborn.
But in certain respects we pay a very high price for this distinction.
It is to it that we must impute all the follies, extravagances and
hallucinations of human intellect. There is nothing so absurd that some
man has not affirmed, rendering himself the scorn and laughing-stock
of persons of sounder understanding. And, which is worst, the more
ridiculous and unintelligible is the proposition he has embraced,
the more pertinaciously does he cling to it; so that creeds the most
outrageous and contradictory have served as the occasion or pretext for
the most impassioned debates, bloody wars, inhuman executions, and all
that most deeply blots and dishonours the name of man--while often, the
more evanescent and frivolous are the distinctions, the more furious and
inexpiable have been the contentions they have produced.
The result of the whole, in the vast combinations of men into tribes
and nations, is, that thousands and millions believe, or imagine they
believe, propositions and systems, the terms of which they do not fully
understand, and the evidence of which they have not considered. They
believe, because so their fathers believed before them. No phrase
is more commonly heard than, "I was born a Christian;" "I was born a
Catholic, or a Protestant."
The priest continues what the nurse began,
And thus the child imposes on the man.
But this sort of belief forms no part of the subject of the present
Essay. My purpose is to confine myself to the consideration of those
persons, who in some degree, more or less, exercise the reasoning
faculty in the pursuit of truth, and, having attempted to examine the
evidence of an interesting and weighty proposition, satisfy themselves
that they have arrived at a sound conclusion.
It is however the rarest thing in the world, for any one to found his
opinion, simply upon the evidence that presents itself to him of the
truth of the proposition which comes before him to be examined. Where
is the man that breaks loose from all the shackles that in his youth had
been imposed upon hills, and says to Truth, "Go on; whithersoever thou
leadest, I am prepared to follow?" To weigh the evidence for and
against a proposition, in scales so balanced, that the "division of the
twentieth part of one poor scruple, the estimation of a hair," shall be
recognised and submitted to, is the privilege of a mind of no ordinary
fairness and firmness.
The Scriptures say "The heart of man is deceitful above all things." The
thinking principle within us is so subtle, has passed through so many
forms of instruction, and is under the influence and direction of such a
variety of causes, that no man can accurately pronounce by what impulse
he has been led to the conclusion in which he finally reposes. Every
ingenuous person, who is invited to embrace a certain profession, that
of the church for example, will desire, preparatorily to his final
determination, to examine the evidences and the merits of the religion
he embraces, that he may enter upon his profession under the influence
of a sincere conviction, and be inspired with that zeal, in singleness
of heart, which can alone prevent his vocation from being disgraceful
to him. Yet how many motives are there, constraining him to abide in an
affirmative conclusion? His friends expect this from him. Perhaps his
own inclination leads him to select this destination rather than any
other. Perhaps preferment and opulence wait upon his decision. If the
final result of his enquiries lead him to an opposite judgment, to how
much obloquy will he be exposed! Where is the man who can say that
no unconscious bias has influenced him in the progress of his
investigation? Who shall pronounce that, under very different
circumstances, his conclusions would not have been essentially other
than they are?
But the enquiry of an active and a searching mind does not terminate on
a certain day. He will be for ever revising and reconsidering his first
determinations. It is one of the leading maxims of an honourable mind,
that we must be, at all times, and to the last hour of our existence,
accessible to conviction built upon new evidence, or upon evidence
presented in a light in which it had not before been viewed. If then the
probationer for the clerical profession was under some bias in his
first investigation, how must it be expected to be with him, when he has
already taken the vow, and received ordination? Can he with a calm and
unaltered spirit contemplate the possibility, that the ground shall be
cut away from under him, and that, by dint of irrefragable argument, he
shall be stripped of his occupation, and turned out naked and friendless
into the world?
But this is only one of the broadest and most glaring instances. In
every question of paramount importance there is ever a secret influence
urging me earnestly to desire to find one side of the question right and
the other wrong. Shall I be a whig or a tory, believe a republic or
a mixed monarchy most conducive to the improvement and happiness of
mankind, embrace the creed of free will or necessity? There is in all
cases a "strong temptation that waketh in the heart." Cowardice urges
me to become the adherent of that creed, which is espoused by my nearest
friends, or those who are most qualified to serve me. Enterprise and
a courageous spirit on the contrary bid me embrace the tenet, the
embracing of which shall most conduce to my reputation for extraordinary
perspicuity and acuteness, and gain me the character of an intrepid
adventurer, a man who dares commit himself to an unknown voyage.
In the question of religion, even when the consideration of the
profession of an ecclesiastic does not occur, yet we are taught to
believe that there is only one set of tenets that will lead us in
the way of salvation. Faith is represented as the first of all
qualifications. "If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not
had sin." With what heart then does a man set himself to examine, and
scrupulously weigh the evidence on one side and the other, when some
undiscerned frailty, some secret bias that all his care cannot detect,
may lurk within, and insure for him the "greater condemnation?" I well
remember in early life, with what tingling sensation and unknown horror
I looked into the books of the infidels and the repositories of unlawful
tenets, lest I should be seduced. I held it my duty to "prove all
things;" but I knew not how far it might be my fate; to sustain the
penalty attendant even upon an honourable and virtuous curiousity.
It is one of the most received arguments of the present day against
religious persecution, that the judgments we form are not under the
authority of our will, and that, for what it is not in our power to
change, it is unjust we should be punished: and there is much truth in
this. But it is not true to the fullest extent. The sentiments we shall
entertain, are to a considerable degree at the disposal of inticements
on the one side, and of menaces and apprehension on the other. That
which we wish to believe, we are already greatly in progress to embrace;
and that which will bring upon us disgrace and calamity, we are more
than half prepared to reject. Persecution however is of very equivocal
power: we cannot embrace one faith and reject another at the word of
command.
It is a curious question to decide how far punishments and rewards may
be made effectual to determine the religion of nations and generations
of men. They are often unsuccessful. There is a feeling in the human
heart, that prompts us to reject with indignation this species of
tyranny. We become more obstinate in clinging to that which we are
commanded to discard. We place our honour and our pride in the firmness
of our resistance. "The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church."
Yet there is often great efficacy in persecution. It was the policy of
the court of Versailles that brought almost to nothing the Huguenots of
France. And there is a degree of persecution, if the persecuting party
has the strength and the inexorableness to employ it, that it is perhaps
beyond the prowess of human nature to stand up against.
The mind of the enquiring man is engaged in a course of perpetual
research; and ingenuousness prompts us never to be satisfied with the
efforts that we have made, but to press forward. But mind, as well as
body, has a certain vis inertiae, and moves only as it is acted upon by
impulses from without. With respect to the adopting new opinions, and
the discovery of new truths, we must be indebted in the last resort,
either to books, or the oral communications of our fellow-men, or to
ideas immediately suggested to us by the phenomena of man or nature. The
two former are the ordinary causes of a change of judgment to men:
they are for the most part minds of a superior class only, that are
susceptible of hints derived straight from the external world, without
the understandings of other men intervening, and serving as a conduit to
the new conceptions introduced. The two former serve, so to express it,
for the education of man, and enable us to master, in our own persons,
the points already secured, and the wisdom laid up in the great magazine
of human knowledge; the last imparts to us the power of adding to the
stock, and carrying forward by one step and another the improvements of
which our nature is susceptible.
It is much that books, the unchanging records of the thoughts of men in
former ages, are able to impart to us. For many of the happiest moments
of our lives, for many of the purest and most exalted feelings of the
human heart, we are indebted to them. Education is their province;
we derive from them civilization and refinement; and we may affirm of
literature, what Otway has said of woman, "We had been brutes without
you." It is thus that the acquisitions of the wise are handed down from
age to age, and that we are enabled to mount step after step on the
ladder of paradise, till we reach the skies.
But, inestimable as is the benefit we derive from books, there is
something more searching and soul-stirring in the impulse of oral
communication. We cannot shut our ears, as we shut our books; we cannot
escape from the appeal of the man who addresses us with earnest speech
and living conviction. It is thus, we are told, that, when Cicero
pleaded before Caesar for the life of Ligarius, the conqueror of the
world was troubled, and changed colour again and again, till at length
the scroll prepared for the condemnation of the patriot fell from his
hand. Sudden and irresistible conviction is chiefly the offspring of
living speech. We may arm ourselves against the arguments of an author;
but the strength of reasoning in him who addresses us, takes us at
unawares. It is in the reciprocation of answer and rejoinder that the
power of conversion specially lies. A book is an abstraction. It is but
imperfectly that we feel, that a real man addresses us in it, and that
what he delivers is the entire and deep-wrought sentiment of a being of
flesh and blood like ourselves, a being who claims our attention, and
is entitled to our deference. The living human voice, with a countenance
and manner corresponding, constrains us to weigh what is said, shoots
through us like a stroke of electricity, will not away from our memory,
and haunts our very dreams. It is by means of this peculiarity in the
nature of mind, that it has been often observed that there is from
time to time an Augustan age in the intellect of nations, that men of
superior powers shock with each other, and that light is struck from
the collision, which most probably no one of these men would have given
birth to, if they had not been thrown into mutual society and communion.
And even so, upon a narrower scale, he that would aspire to do the most
of which his faculties are susceptible, should seek the intercourse of
his fellows, that his powers may be strengthened, and he may be kept
free from that torpor and indolence of soul, which, without external
excitement, are ever apt to take possession of us.
The man, who lives in solitude, and seldom communicates with minds of
the same class as his own, works out his opinions with patient scrutiny,
returns to the investigation again and again, imagines that he had
examined the question on all sides, and at length arrives at what is to
him a satisfactory conclusion. He resumes the view of this conclusion
day after day; he finds in it an unalterable validity; he says in his
heart, "Thus much I have gained; this is a real advance in the search
after truth; I have added in a defined and palpable degree to what I
knew before." And yet it has sometimes happened, that this person, after
having been shut up for weeks, or for a longer period, in his sanctuary,
living, so far as related to an exchange of oral disquisitions with his
fellow-men, like Robinson Crusoe in the desolate island, shall come into
the presence of one, equally clear-sighted, curious and indefatigable
with himself, and shall hear from him an obvious and palpable statement,
which in a moment shivers his sightly and glittering fabric into atoms.
The statement was palpable and near at hand; it was a thin, an almost
imperceptible partition that hid it from him; he wonders in his heart
that it never occurred to his meditations. And yet so it is: it was hid
from him for weeks, or perhaps for a longer period: it might have been
hid from him for twenty years, if it had not been for the accident that
supplied it. And he no sooner sees it, than he instantly perceives that
the discovery upon which he plumed himself, was an absurdity, of which
even a schoolboy might be ashamed.
A circumstance not less curious, among the phenomena which belong to
this subject of belief, is the repugnance incident to the most ingenuous
minds, which we harbour against the suddenly discarding an opinion
we have previously entertained, and the adopting one which comes
recommended to us with almost the force of demonstration. Nothing can
be better founded than this repugnance. The mind of man is of a peculiar
nature. It has been disputed whether we can entertain more than one idea
at a time. But certain it is, that the views of the mind at any one time
are considerably narrowed. The mind is like the slate of a schoolboy,
which can contain only a certain number of characters of a given size,
or like a moveable panorama, which places a given scene or landscape
before me, and the space assigned, and which comes within the limits
marked out to my perception, is full. Many things are therefore almost
inevitably shut out, which, had it not been so, might have essentially
changed the view of the case, and have taught me that it was a very
different conclusion at which I ought to have arrived.
At first sight nothing can appear more unreasonable, than that I should
hesitate to admit the seemingly irresistible force of the argument
presented to me. An ingenuous disposition would appear to require that,
the moment the truth, or what seems to be the truth, is set before me,
I should pay to it the allegiance to which truth is entitled. If I do
otherwise, it would appear to argue a pusillanimous disposition, a
mind not prompt and disengaged to receive the impression of evidence,
a temper that loves something else better than the lustre which all
men are bound to recognise, and that has a reserve in favour of ancient
prejudice, and of an opinion no longer supported by reason.
In fact however I shall act most wisely, and in the way most honourable
to my character, if I resolve to adjourn the debate. No matter how
complete the view may seem which is now presented to my consideration,
or how irresistible the arguments: truth is too majestic a divinity,
and it is of too much importance that I should not follow a delusive
semblance that may shew like truth, not to make it in the highest degree
proper that I should examine again and again, before I come to the
conclusion to which I mean to affix my seal, and annex my sanction,
"This is the truth." The ancient Goths of Germany, we are told, had a
custom of debating every thing of importance to their state twice, once
in the high animation of a convivial meeting, and once in the serene
stillness of a morning consultation. Philip of Macedon having decided a
cause precipitately, the party condemned by him immediately declared his
resolution to appeal from the sentence. And to whom, said the king, wilt
thou appeal? To Philip, was the answer, in the entire possession of his
understanding.
Such is the nature of the human mind--at least, such I find to be the
nature of my own--that many trains of thinking, many chains of evidence,
the result of accumulated facts, will often not present themselves, at
the time when their presence would be of the highest importance.
The view which now comes before me is of a substance so close and
well-woven, and of colours so brilliant and dazzling, that other matters
in a certain degree remote, though of no less intrinsic importance, and
equally entitled to influence my judgment in the question in hand, shall
be entirely shut out, shall be killed, and fail to offer themselves to
my perceptions.
It is a curious circumstance which Pope, a man of eminent logical power
and acuteness, relates, that, having at his command in his youth a
collection of all the tracts that had been written on both sides in the
reign of James the Second, he applied himself with great assiduity
to their perusal, and the consequence was, that he was a Papist and
Protestant by turns, according to the last book he read(31).
(31) Correspondence with Atterbury, Letter IV.
This circumstance in the structure of the human understanding is well
known, and is the foundation of many provisions that occur in the
constitution of political society. How each man shall form his creed,
and arrange those opinions by which his conduct shall be regulated, is
of course a matter exclusively subjected to his own discretion. But,
when he is called upon to act in the name of a community, and to decide
upon a question in which the public is interested, he of necessity feels
himself called upon to proceed with the utmost caution. A judge on the
bench, a chancellor, is not contented with that sudden ray of mental
illumination to which an ingenuous individual is often disposed to yield
in an affair of abstract speculation. He feels that he is obliged to
wait for evidence, the nature of which he does not yet anticipate, and
to adjourn his decision. A deliberative council or assembly is aware of
the necessity of examining a question again and again. It is upon this
principle that the two houses of the English parliament are required to
give a first, a second and a third reading, together with various other
forms and technicalities, to the provision that is brought before them,
previously to its passing into a law. And there is many a fundamental
dogma and corner-stone of the sentiments that I shall emphatically call
my own, that is of more genuine importance to the individual, than to a
nation is a number of those regulations, which by courtesy we call acts
of parliament.
Nothing can have a more glaring tendency to subvert the authority of my
opinion among my fellow-men, than instability. "What went ye out into
the wilderness to see" said Jesus Christ: "a reed shaken with the wind?"
We ought at all times to be open to conviction. We ought to be ever
ready to listen to evidence. But, conscious of our human frailty, it
is seldom that we ought immediately to subscribe to the propositions,
however specious, that are now for the first time presented to us. It
is our duty to lay up in our memory the suggestions offered upon any
momentous question, and not to suffer them to lose their inherent weight
and impressiveness; but it is only through the medium of consideration
and reconsideration, that they can become entitled to our full and
unreserved assent.
The nature of belief, or opinion, has been well illustrated by Lord
Shaftesbury(32). There are many notions or judgments floating in the
mind of every man, which are mutually destructive of each other. In this
sense men's opinions are governed by high and low spirits, by the state
of the solids and fluids of the human body, and by the state of the
weather. But in a paramount sense that only can be said to be a man's
opinion which he entertains in his clearest moments, and from which,
when he is most himself, he is least subject to vary. In this emphatical
sense, I should say, a man does not always know what is his real
opinion. We cannot strictly be said to believe any thing, in cases
where we afterwards change our opinion without the introduction of some
evidence that was unknown to us before. But how many are the instances
in which we can be affirmed to be in the adequate recollection of all
the evidences and reasonings which have at some time occurred to us, and
of the opinions, together with the grounds on which they rested, which
we conceived we had justly and rationally entertained?
The considerations here stated however should by no means be allowed to
inspire us with indifference in matters of opinion. It is the glory and
lustre of our nature, that we are capable of receiving evidence, and
weighing the reasons for and against any important proposition in the
balance of an impartial and enlightened understanding. The only effect
that should be produced in us, by the reflection that we can at last by
no means be secure that we have attained to a perfect result, should be
to teach us a wholsome diffidence and humility, and induce us to confess
that, when we have done all, we are ignorant, dim-sighted and fallible,
that our best reasonings may betray, and our wisest conclusions deceive
us.
(32) Enquiry concerning Virtue, Book 1, Part 1, Section ii.
ESSAY XIV. OF YOUTH AND AGE.
Magna debetur pueris reverentia.
Quintilian.
I am more doubtful in writing the following Essay than in any of those
which precede, how far I am treating of human nature generally, or to a
certain degree merely recording my own feelings as an individual. I
am guided however in composing it, by the principle laid down in my
Preface, that the purpose of my book in each instance should be to
expand some new and interesting truth, or some old truth viewed under a
new aspect, which had never by any preceding writer been laid before the
public.
Education, in the conception of those whose office it is to direct it,
has various engines by means of which it is to be made effective, and
among these are reprehension and chastisement.
The philosophy of the wisest man that ever existed, is mainly derived
from the act of introspection. We look into our own bosoms, observe
attentively every thing that passes there, anatomise our motives,
trace step by step the operations of thought, and diligently remark
the effects of external impulses upon our feelings and conduct.
Philosophers, ever since the time in which Socrates flourished, to carry
back our recollections no further, have found that the minds of men in
the most essential particulars are framed so far upon the same model,
that the analysis of the individual may stand in general consideration
for the analysis of the species. Where this principle fails, it is not
easy to suggest a proceeding that shall supply the deficiency. I look
into my own breast; I observe steadily and with diligence what passes
there; and with all the parade of the philosophy of the human mind I can
do little more than this.
In treating therefore of education in the point of view in which it has
just been proposed, I turn my observation upon myself, and I proceed
thus.--If I do not stand as a competent representative for the whole of
my species, I suppose I may at least assume to be the representative of
no inconsiderable number of them.
I find then in myself, for as long a time as I can trace backward
the records of memory, a prominent vein of docility. Whatever it
was proposed to teach me, that was in any degree accordant with my
constitution and capacity, I was willing to learn. And this limit is
sufficient for the topic I am proposing to treat. I do not intend to
consider education of any other sort, than that which has something
in it of a liberal and ingenuous nature. I am not here discussing the
education of a peasant, an artisan, or a slave.
In addition to this vein of docility, which easily prompted me to learn
whatever was proposed for my instruction and improvement, I felt in
myself a sentiment of ambition, a desire to possess the qualifications
which I found to be productive of esteem, and that should enable me to
excel among my contemporaries. I was ambitious to be a leader, and to be
regarded by others with feelings of complacency. I had no wish to rule
by brute force and compulsion; but I was desirous to govern by love, and
honour, and "the cords of a man."
I do not imagine that, when I aver thus much of myself, I am bringing
forward any thing unprecedented, or that multitudes of my fellow-men do
not largely participate with me.
The question therefore I am considering is, through what agency, and
with what engines, a youth thus disposed, and with these qualifications,
is to be initiated in all liberal arts.
I will go back no further than to the commencement of the learning of
Latin. All before was so easy to me, as never to have presented the idea
of a task. I was immediately put into the accidence. No explanation was
attempted to be given why Latin was to be of use to me, or why it was
necessary to commit to memory the cases of nouns and the tenses of
verbs. I know not whether this was owing to the unwillingness of my
instructor to give himself the trouble, or to my supposed incapacity to
apprehend the explanation. The last of these I do not admit. My
docility however came to my aid, and I did not for a moment harbour
any repugnance to the doing what was required of me. At first, and
unassisted in the enquiry, I felt a difficulty in supposing that the
English language, all the books in my father's library, did not contain
every thing that it would be necessary for me to know. In no long
time however I came to experience a pleasure in turning the thoughts
expressed in an unknown tongue into my own; and I speedily understood
that I could never be on a level with those eminent scholars whom it was
my ambition to rival, without the study of the classics.
What then were the obstacles, that should in any degree counteract my
smooth and rapid progress in the studies suggested to me? I can conceive
only two.
First, the versatility and fickleness which in a greater or less degree
beset all human minds, particularly in the season of early youth.
However docile we may be, and willing to learn, there will be periods,
when either some other object powerfully solicits us, or satiety creeps
in, and makes us wish to occupy our attention with any thing else rather
than with the task prescribed us. But this is no powerful obstacle.
The authority of the instructor, a grave look, and the exercise of a
moderate degree of patience will easily remove it in such a probationer
as we are here considering.
Another obstacle is presumption. The scholar is willing to conceive
well of his own capacity. He has a vanity in accomplishing the task
prescribed him in the shortest practicable time. He is impatient to go
away from the business imposed upon him, to things of his own election,
and occupations which his partialities and his temper prompt him to
pursue. He has a pride in saying to himself, "This, which was a business
given to occupy me for several hours, I can accomplish in less than
one." But the presumption arising out of these views is easily subdued.
If the pupil is wrong in his calculation, the actual experiment will
speedily convince him of his error. He is humbled by and ashamed of his
mistake. The merely being sent back to study his lesson afresh, is on
the face of the thing punishment enough.
It follows from this view of the matter, that an ingenuous youth,
endowed with sufficient capacity for the business prescribed him, may
be led on in the path of intellectual acquisition and improvement with a
silken cord. It will demand a certain degree of patience on the part
of the instructor. But Heaven knows, that this patience is sufficiently
called into requisition when the instructor shall be the greatest
disciplinarian that ever existed. Kind tones and encouragement will
animate the learner amidst many a difficult pass. A grave remark may
perhaps sometimes be called for. And, if the preceptor and the pupil
have gone on like friends, a grave remark, a look expressive of rebuke,
will be found a very powerful engine. The instructor should smooth the
business of instruction to his pupil, by appealing to his understanding,
developing his taste, and assisting him to remark the beauties of the
composition on which he is occupied.
I come now then to the consideration of the two engines mentioned in the
commencement of this Essay, reprehension and chastisement.
And here, as in what went before, I am reduced to the referring to my
own experience, and looking back into the history of my own mind.
I say then, that reprehension and reprimand can scarcely ever be
necessary. The pupil should undoubtedly be informed when he is wrong.
He should be told what it is that he ought to have omitted, and that
he ought to have done. There should be no reserve in this. It will be
worthy of the highest censure, if on these points the instructor should
be mealy-mouthed, or hesitate to tell the pupil in the plainest terms,
of his faults, his bad habits, and the dangers that beset his onward and
honourable path.
But this may be best, and most beneficially done, and in a way most
suitable to the exigence, and to the party to be corrected, in a few
words. The rest is all an unwholsome tumour, the disease of speech, and
not the sound and healthful substance through which its circulation and
life are conveyed.
There is always danger of this excrescence of speech, where the speaker
is the umpire, and feels himself at liberty, unreproved, to say what he
pleases. He is charmed with the sound of his own voice. The periods flow
numerous from his tongue, and he gets on at his ease. There is in
all this an image of empire; and the human mind is ever prone to be
delighted in the exercise of unrestricted authority. The pupil in this
case stands before his instructor in an attitude humble, submissive, and
bowing to the admonition that is communicated to him. The speaker says
more than it was in his purpose to say; and he knows not how to arrest
himself in his triumphant career. He believes that he is in no danger of
excess, and recollects the old proverb that "words break no bones."
But a syllable more than is necessary and justly measured, is materially
of evil operation to ingenuous youth. The mind of such a youth is tender
and flexible, and easily swayed one way or the other. He believes almost
every thing that he is bid to believe; and the admonition that is given
him with all the symptoms of friendliness and sincerity he is prompt
to subscribe to. If this is wantonly aggravated to him, he feels the
oppression, and is galled with the injustice. He knows himself guiltless
of premeditated wrong. He has not yet learned that his condition is that
of a slave; and he feels a certain impatience at his being considered as
such, though he probably does not venture to express it. He shuts up the
sense of this despotism in his own bosom; and it is his first lesson of
independence and rebellion and original sin.
It is one of the grossest mistakes of which we can be guilty, if we
confound different offences and offenders together. The great and
the small alike appear before us in the many-coloured scene of human
society, and, if we reprehend bitterly and rate a juvenile sinner
for the fault, which he scarcely understood, and assuredly had not
premeditated, we break down at once a thousand salutary boundaries,
and reduce the ideas of right and wrong in his mind to a portentous and
terrible chaos. The communicator of liberal knowledge assuredly
ought not to confound his office with that of a magistrate at
a quarter-sessions, who though he does not sit in judgment upon
transgressions of the deepest and most atrocious character, yet has
brought before him in many cases defaulters of a somewhat hardened
disposition, whose lot has been cast among the loose and the profligate,
and who have been carefully trained to a certain audacity of temper,
taught to look upon the paraphernalia of justice with scorn, and
to place a sort of honour in sustaining hard words and the lesser
visitations of punishment with unflinching nerve.
If this is the judgment we ought to pass upon the bitter and galling
and humiliating terms of reprehension apt to be made use of by the
instructor to his pupil, it is unnecessary to say a word on the subject
of chastisement. If such an expedient is ever to be had recourse to,
it can only be in cases of contumaciousness and rebellion; and then the
instructor cannot too unreservedly say to himself, "This is matter of
deep humiliation to me: I ought to have succeeded by an appeal to the
understanding and ingenuous feelings of youth; but I am reduced to a
confession of my impotence."
But the topic which, most of all, I was desirous to bring forward in
this Essay, is that of the language so customarily employed by the
impatient and irritated preceptor, "Hereafter, in a state of mature
and ripened judgment, you will thank me for the severity I now exercise
towards you."
No; it may safely be answered: that time will never arrive.
As, in one of my earlier Essays(33), I undertook to shew that there is
not so much difference between the talents of one man and another as has
often been apprehended, so we are guilty of a gross error in the way
in which we divide the child from the man, and consider him as if he
belonged to a distinct species of beings.
(33) Essay II.
I go back to the recollections of my youth, and can scarcely find where
to draw the line between ineptness and maturity. The thoughts that
occurred to me, as far back as I can recollect them, were often shrewd;
the suggestions ingenious; the judgments not seldom acute. I feel myself
the same individual all through.
Sometimes I was unreasonably presumptuous, and sometimes unnecessarily
distrustful. Experience has taught me in various instances a sober
confidence in my decisions; but that is all the difference. So to
express it, I had then the same tools to work with as now; but the
magazine of materials upon which I had to operate was scantily supplied.
Like the apothecary in Romeo and Juliet, the faculty, such as it was,
was within me; but my shelves contained but a small amount of furniture:
A beggarly account of empty boxes,
Remnants of packthread, and old cakes of roses,
Which, thinly scattered, served to make a shew.
In speaking thus of the intellectual powers of my youth, I am however
conceding too much. It is true, "Practice maketh perfect." But it is
surprising, in apt and towardly youth, how much there is to commend in
the first essays. The novice, who has his faculties lively and on the
alert, will strike with his hammer almost exactly where the blow ought
to be placed, and give nearly the precisely right force to the act. He
will seize the thread it was fitting to seize; and, though he fail again
and again, will shew an adroitness upon the whole that we scarcely know
how to account for. The man whose career shall ultimately be crowned
with success, will demonstrate in the beginning that he was destined to
succeed.
There is therefore no radical difference between the child and the man.
His flesh becomes more firm and sinewy; his bones grow more solid
and powerful; his joints are more completely strung. But he is still
essentially the same being that he was. When a genuine philosopher holds
a new-born child in his arms, and carefully examines it, he perceives
in it various indications of temper and seeds of character. It was all
there, though folded up and confused, and not obtruding itself upon the
remark of every careless spectator. It continues with the child through
life, grows with his growth, and never leaves him till he is at last
consigned to the tomb. How absurd then by artful rules and positive
institutions to undertake to separate what can never be divided! The
child is occasionally grave and reflecting, and deduces well-founded
inferences; he draws on the past, and plunges into the wide ocean of
the future. In proportion as the child advances into the youth, his
intervals of gravity increase, and he builds up theories and judgments,
some of which no future time shall suffice to overturn. It is idle to
suppose that the first activity of our faculties, when every thing is
new and produces an unbated impression, when the mind is uncumbered, and
every interest and every feeling bid us be observing and awake, should
pass for nothing. We lay up stores then, which shall never be exhausted.
Our minds are the reverse of worn and obtuse. We bring faculties into
the world with us fresh from the hands of the all-bounteous giver; they
are not yet moulded to a senseless routine; they are not yet corrupted
by the ill lessons of effrontery, impudence and vice. Childhood is
beautiful; youth is ingenuous; and it can be nothing but a principle
which is hostile to all that most adorns this sublunary scene, that
would with violence and despotic rule mar the fairest flower that
creation has to boast.
It happens therefore almost unavoidably that, when the man mature
looks back upon the little incidents of his youth, he sees them to a
surprising degree in the same light, and forms the same conclusions
respecting them, as he did when they were actually passing. "The
forgeries of opinion," says Cicero, "speedily pass away; but the rules
and decisions of nature are strengthened." Bitter reproaches and acts of
violence are the offspring of perturbation engendered upon imbecility,
and therefore can never be approved upon a sober and impartial revision.
And, if they are to be impeached in the judgment of an equal and
indifferent observer, we may be sure they will be emphatically condemned
by the grave and enlightened censor who looks back upon the years of
his own nonage, and recollects that he was himself the victim of
the intemperance to be pronounced upon. The interest that he must
necessarily take in the scenes in which he once had an engrossing
concern, will supply peculiar luminousness to his views. He taxes
himself to be just. The transaction is over now, and is passed to the
events that preceded the universal deluge. He holds the balance with
a steadiness, which sets at defiance all attempts to give it a false
direction one way or the other. But the judgment he made on the case
at the time, and immediately after the humiliation he suffered, remains
with him. It was the sentiment of his ripening youth; it was the opinion
of his opening manhood; and it still attends him, when he is already
fast yielding to the incroachments and irresistible assaults of
declining years.
ESSAY XV. OF LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP.
Who is it that says, "There is no love but among equals?" Be it who it
may, it is a saying universally known, and that is in every one's mouth.
The contrary is precisely the truth, and is the great secret of every
thing that is admirable in our moral nature.
By love it is my intention here to understand, not a calm, tranquil,
and, as it were, half-pronounced feeling, but a passion of the mind. We
may doubtless entertain an approbation of other men, without adverting
to the question how they stand in relation to ourselves, as equals or
otherwise. But the sentiment I am here considering, is that where the
person in whom it resides most strongly sympathises with the joys and
sorrows of another, desires his gratification, hopes for his welfare,
and shrinks from the anticipation of his being injured; in a word, is
the sentiment which has most the spirit of sacrifice in it, and prepares
the person in whom it dwells, to postpone his own advantage to the
advantage of him who is the object of it.
Having placed love among the passions, which is no vehement assumption,
I then say, there can be no passion, and by consequence no love, where
there is not imagination. In cases where every thing is understood, and
measured, and reduced to rule, love is out of the question. Whenever
this sentiment prevails, I must have my attention fixed more on the
absent than the present, more upon what I do not see than on what I do
see. My thoughts will be taken up with the future or the past, with
what is to come or what has been. Of the present there is necessarily
no image. Sentiment is nothing, till you have arrived at a mystery and
a veil, something that is seen obscurely, that is just hinted at in the
distance, that has neither certain outline nor colour, but that is left
for the mind to fill up according to its pleasure and in the best manner
it is able.
The great model of the affection of love in human beings, is the
sentiment which subsists between parents and children.
Let not this appear a paradox. There is another relation in human
society to which this epithet has more emphatically been given: but,
if we analyse the matter strictly, we shall find that all that is most
sacred and beautiful in the passion between the sexes, has relation to
offspring. What Milton calls, "The rites mysterious of connubial love,"
would have little charm in them in reflection, to a mind one degree
above the brutes, were it not for the mystery they include, of their
tendency to give existence to a new human creature like ourselves. Were
it not for this circumstance, a man and a woman would hardly ever have
learned to live together; there scarcely could have been such a thing
as domestic society; but every intercourse of this sort would have been
"casual, joyless, unendeared;" and the propensity would have brought
along with it nothing more of beauty, lustre and grace, than the
pure animal appetites of hunger and thirst. Bearing in mind these
considerations, I do not therefore hesitate to say, that the great
model of the affection of love in human beings, is the sentiment which
subsists between parents and children.
The original feature in this sentiment is the conscious feeling of
the protector and the protected. Our passions cannot subsist in lazy
indolence; passion and action must operate on each other; passion must
produce action, and action give strength to the tide of passion. We do
not vehemently desire, where we can do nothing. It is in a very faint
way that I entertain a wish to possess the faculty of flying; and an
ordinary man can scarcely be said to desire to be a king or an emperor.
None but a madman, of plebeian rank, falls in love with a princess. But
shew me a good thing within my reach; convince me that it is in my power
to attain it; demonstrate to me that it is fit for me, and I am fit for
it; then begins the career of passion. In the same manner, I cannot love
a person vehemently, and strongly interest myself in his miscarriages or
success, till I feel that I can be something to him. Love cannot dwell
in a state of impotence. To affect and be affected, this is the common
nature I require; this is the being that is like unto myself; all other
likeness resides in the logic and the definition, but has nothing to do
with feeling or with practice.
What can be more clear and sound in explanation, than the love of a
parent to his child? The affection he bears and its counterpart are the
ornaments of the world, and the spring of every thing that makes life
worth having. Whatever besides has a tendency to illustrate and honour
our nature, descends from these, or is copied from these, grows out of
them as the branches of a tree from the trunk, or is formed upon them as
a model, and derives from them its shape, its character, and its soul.
Yet there are men so industrious and expert to strip the world we live
in of all that adorns it, that they can see nothing glorious in these
affections, but find the one to be all selfishness, and the other all
prejudice and superstition.
The love of the parent to his child is nursed and fostered by two plain
considerations; first, that the subject is capable of receiving much,
and secondly, that my power concerning it is great and extensive.
When an infant is presented to my observation, what a wide field of
sentiment and reflection is opened to me! Few minds are industrious and
ductile enough completely to compass this field, if the infant is only
accidentally brought under their view. But, if it is an infant with
which I begin to be acquainted to-day, and my acquaintance with which
shall not end perhaps till one of us ceases to exist, how is it possible
that the view of its little figure should not lead me to the meditation
of its future history, the successive stages of human life, and the
various scenes and mutations and vicissitudes and fortunes through
which it is destined to pass? The Book of Fate lies open before me. This
infant, powerless and almost impassive now, is reserved for many sorrows
and many joys, and will one day possess a power, formidable and fearful
to afflict those within its reach, or calculated to diffuse blessings,
wisdom, virtue, happiness, to all around. I conceive all the various
destinations of which man is susceptible; my fancy at least is free to
select that which pleases me best; I unfold and pursue it in all its
directions, observe the thorns and difficulties with which it is
beset, and conjure up to my thoughts all that it can boast of inviting,
delightful and honourable.
But if the infant that is near to me lays hold of my imagination and
affections at the moment in which he falls under my observation, how
much more do I become interested in him, as he advances from year to
year! At first, I have the blessing of the gospel upon me, in that,
"having not seen, yet I believe." But, as his powers expand, I
understand him better. His little eye begins to sparkle with meaning;
his tongue tells a tale that may be understood; his very tones, and
gestures, and attitudes, all inform me concerning what he shall be. I am
like a florist, who has received a strange plant from a distant country.
At first he sees only the stalk, and the leaves, and the bud having yet
no other colour than that of the leaves. But as he watches his plant
from day to day, and from hour to hour, the case which contains the
flower divides, and betrays first one colour and then another, till the
shell gradually subsides more and more towards the stalk, and the figure
of the flower begins now to be seen, and its radiance and its pride to
expand itself to the ravished observer.--Every lesson that the child
leans, every comment that he makes upon it, every sport that he pursues,
every choice that he exerts, the demeanour that he adopts to his
playfellows, the modifications and character of his little fits of
authority or submission, all make him more and more an individual to
me, and open a wider field for my sagacity or my prophecy, as to what he
promises to be, and what he may be made.
But what gives, as has already been observed, the point and the finish
to all the interest I take respecting him, lies in the vast power I
possess to influence and direct his character and his fortune. At first
it is abstract power, but, when it has already been exerted (as the
writers on politics as a science have observed of property), the sweat
of my brow becomes mingled with the apple I have gathered, and my
interest is greater. No one understands my views and projects entirely
but myself, and the scheme I have conceived will suffer, if I do not
complete it as I began.
And there are men that say, that all this mystery, the most beautiful
attitude of human nature, and the crown of its glory, is pure
selfishness!
Let us now turn from the view of the parental, to that of the filial
affection.
The great mistake that has been made on this subject, arises from
the taking it nakedly and as a mere abstraction. It has been sagely
remarked, that when my father did that which occasioned me to come into
existence, he intended me no benefit, and therefore I owe him no thanks.
And the inference which has been made from this wise position is, that
the duty of children to parents is a mere imposture, a trick, employed
by the old to defraud the young out of their services.
I grant most readily, that the mere material ligament that binds
together the father and the child, by itself is worthless, and that he
who owes nothing more than this to his father, owes him nothing. The
natural, unanimated relationship is like the grain of mustard-seed in
the discourses of Jesus Christ, "which indeed is the least of all seeds;
but, when it is unfolded and grows up, it becomes a mighty tree, so that
the birds of the air may come and lodge in its branches."
The hard and insensible man may know little of the debt he owes to his
father; but he that is capable of calling up the past, and beholding the
things that are not as if they now were, will see the matter in a very
different light. Incalculable are the privations (in a great majority
of instances), the toils, the pains, the anxieties, that every child
imposes on his father from the first hour of his existence. If he could
know the ceaseless cares, the tender and ardent feelings, the almost
incredible efforts and exertions, that have accompanied him in his
father's breast through the whole period of his growth, instead of
thinking that he owed his parent nothing, he would stand still and
wonder that one human creature could do so much for another.
I grant that all this may be done for a child by a stranger, and that
then in one sense the obligation would be greater. It is however barely
possible that all this should be done. The stranger wants the first
exciting cause, the consideration, "This creature by the great scheme of
nature belongs to me, and is cast upon my care." And, as the tie in the
case of the stranger was not complete in the beginning, so neither can
it be made so in the sequel. The little straggler is like the duckling
hatched in the nest of a hen; there is danger every day, that as the
nursling begins to be acquainted with its own qualities, it may plunge
itself into another element, and swim away from its benefactor.
Even if we put all these considerations out of the question, still the
affection of the child to its parent of adoption, wants the kernel, and,
if I may so speak, the soul, of the connection which has been formed
and modelled by the great hand of nature. If the mere circumstance of
filiation and descent creates no debt, it however is the principle of a
very close connection. One of the most memorable mysteries of nature,
is how, out of the slightest of all connections (for such, literally
speaking, is that between father and child), so many coincidences should
arise. The child resembles his parent in feature, in temperament, in
turn of mind, and in class of disposition, while at the same time in
many particulars, in these same respects, he is a new and individual
creature. In one view therefore the child is merely the father
multiplied and repeated. Now one of the indefeasible principles of
affection is the partaking of a common nature; and as man is a species
by himself, so to a certain degree is every nation and every family; and
this consideration, when added to the moral and spiritual ties already
treated of, undoubtedly has a tendency to give them their zest and
perfection.
But even this is not the most agreeable point of view in which we may
consider the filial affection. I come back to my first position,
that where there is no imagination, there can be no passion, and by
consequence no love. No parent ever understood his child, and no child
ever understood his parent. We have seen that the affectionate parent
considers his child like a flower in the bud, as a mine of power that
is to be unfolded, as a creature that is to act and to pass through he
knows not what, as a canvas that "gives ample room and verge enough,"
for his prophetic soul to hang over in endless visions, and his
intellectual pencil to fill up with various scenes and fortunes. And, if
the parent does not understand his child, certainly as little does the
child understand his parent. Wherever this relation subsists in
its fairest form, the parent is as a God, a being qualified with
supernatural powers, to his offspring. The child consults his father
as an oracle; to him he proposes all his little questions; from him he
learns his natural philosophy, his morals, his rules of conduct, his
religion, and his creed. The boy is uninformed on every point; and the
father is a vast Encyclopedia, not merely of sciences, but of feelings,
of sagacity, of practical wisdom, and of justice, which the son consults
on all occasions, and never consults in vain. Senseless and inexpert is
that parent, who endeavours to govern the mind by authority, and to lay
down rugged and peremptory dogmas to his child; the child is fully and
unavoidably prepared to receive every thing with unbounded deference,
and to place total reliance in the oracle which nature has assigned him.
Habits, how beautiful! Inestimable benefit of nature, that has given
me a prop against which to sustain my unripened strength, and has not
turned me loose to wander with tottering steps amidst the vast desert of
society!
But it is not merely for contemplative wisdom that the child honours
his parent; he sees in him a vast fund of love, attachment and sympathy.
That he cannot mistake; and it is all a mystery to him. He says, What
am I, that I should be the object of this? and whence comes it? He sees
neither the fountain from which it springs, nor the banks that confine
it. To him it is an ocean, unfathomable, and without a shore.
To the bounty of its operations he trusts implicitly. The stores of
judgment and knowledge he finds in his father, prompt him to trust it.
In many instances where it appeared at first obscure and enigmatical,
the event has taught him to acknowledge its soundness. The mutinousness
of passion will sometimes excite a child to question the decrees of his
parent; it is very long before his understanding, as such, comes to set
up a separate system, and teaches him to controvert the decisions of his
father.
Perhaps I ought earlier to have stated, that the filial connection we
have here to consider, does not include those melancholy instances where
some woful defect or utter worthlessness in the parent counteracts the
natural course of the affections, but refers only to cases, where the
character of father is on the whole sustained with honour, and the
principle of the connection is left to its true operation. In such cases
the child not only observes for himself the manifestations of wisdom and
goodness in his parent, but is also accustomed to hear well of him
from all around. There is a generous conspiracy in human nature, not to
counteract the honour borne by the offspring to him from whom he sprung,
and the wholsome principle of superiority and dependence which is almost
indispensible between persons of different ages dwelling under the same
roof. And, exclusively of this consideration, the men who are chiefly
seen by the son are his father's friends and associates; and it is the
very bent, and, as it were, law of our nature, that we do not associate
much, but with persons whom we favour, and who are prepared to mention
us with kindness and honour.
Thus every way the child is deeply imbued with veneration for his
parent, and forms the habit of regarding him as his book of wisdom, his
philosopher and guide. He is accustomed to hear him spoken of as a true
friend, an active ally, and a pattern of justice and honour; and he
finds him so. Now these are the true objects of affection,--wisdom and
beneficence; and the human heart loves this beneficence better when it
is exercised towards him who loves, first, because inevitably in
almost all instances we are best pleased with the good that is done to
ourselves, and secondly, because it can scarcely happen but that we in
that case understand it best, both in its operation and its effects.
The active principles of religion are all moulded upon this familiar and
sensible relation of father and child: and to understand whet the human
heart is capable to conceive on this subject, we have only to refer to
the many eloquent and glowing treatises that have been written upon the
love of God to his creatures, and the love that the creature in return
owes to his God. I am not now considering religion in a speculative
point of view, or enquiring among the different sects and systems of
religion what it is that is true; but merely producing religion as
an example of what have been the conceptions of the human mind in
successive ages of the world on the subject of love.
This All that we behold, the immensity of the universe, the admirable
harmony and subtlety of its structure, as they appear in the vastest and
the minutest bodies, is considered by religion, as the emanation of pure
love, a mighty impulse and ardour in its great author to realise the
idea existing in his mind, and to produce happiness. The Providence
that watches over us, so that not a sparrow dies unmarked, and that "the
great Sensorium of the world vibrates, if a hair of our head but
falls to the ground in the remotest desert of his creation," is
still unremitted, never-satiated love. And, to go from this to the
peculiarities of the Christian doctrine, "Greater love hath no man than
this, that a man lay down his life for his friends: God so loved the
world, that he gave his only-begotten Son to suffer, to be treated
contumeliously, and to die with ignominy, that we might live."
If on the other hand we consider the love which the creature must
naturally pay to his creator, we shall find that the affection we can
suppose the most ingenuous child to bear to the worthiest parent, is
a very faint image of the passion which may be expected to grow out of
this relation. In God, as he is represented to us in the books of the
worthiest divines, is every thing that can command love; wisdom to
conceive, power to execute, and beneficence actually to carry
into effect, whatever is excellent and admirable. We are lost in
contemplating the depth and immensity of his perfections. "Every good
and every perfect gift is from the universal Father, with whom is
no variableness, neither shadow of turning." The most soothing and
gratifying of all sentiments, is that of entire confidence in the divine
goodness, a reliance which no adversity can shake, and which supports
him that entertains it under every calamity, that sees the finger of God
in every thing that comes to pass, that says, "It is good for me to be
afflicted," believes, that "all things work together for blessings"
to the pious and the just, and is intimately persuaded that "our light
affliction, which is but for a moment, is the means and the earnest of a
far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory."
If we descend from these great archetypes, the love between parent and
child, and between the creator and his creature, we shall still find the
same inequality the inseparable attendant upon the most perfect ties
of affection. The ancients seem to have conceived the truest and most
exalted ideas on the subject of friendship. Among the most celebrated
instances are the friendship of Achilles and Patroclus, Orestes
and Pylades, Aeneas and Achates, Cyrus and Araspes, Alexander and
Hephaestion, Scipio and Laelius. In each of these the parties are, the
true hero, the man of lofty ambition, the magnificent personage in whom
is concentred every thing that the historian or the poet was able to
realise of excellence, and the modest and unpretending individual in
whom his confidence was reposed. The grand secret of the connection is
unfolded in the saying of the Macedonian conqueror, "Craterus loves the
king, but Hephaestion loves Alexander." Friendship is to the loftier
mind the repose, the unbending of the soul. The great man (whatever may
be the department in which his excellence consists) has enough of his
greatness, when he stands before the world, and receives the homage that
is paid to his merits. Ever and anon he is anxious to throw aside this
incumbrance, and be as a man merely to a man. He wishes to forget the
"pride, pomp, and circumstance" of greatness, and to be that only which
he is himself. He desires at length to be sure, that he receives
no adulation, that he is accosted with no insincerity, and that the
individual to whose society he has thought proper to withdraw, has no
by-ends, no sinister purposes in all his thoughts. What he seeks for, is
a true friend, a being who sincerely loves, one who is attached to
him, not for the accidents that attend him, but for what most strictly
belongs to him, and of which he cannot be divested. In this friend there
is neither interested intention nor rivalry.
Such are the characteristic features of the superior party in these
exemplars of friendship among the ancients. Of the unpretending,
unassuming party Homer, the great master of the affections and emotions
in remoter ages, has given us the fullest portrait in the character of
Patroclus. The distinguishing feature of his disposition is a melting
and affectionate spirit, the concentred essence of tenderness and
humanity. When Patroclus comes from witnessing the disasters of the
Greeks, to collect a report of which he had been sent by Achilles, he
is "overwhelmed with floods of tears, like a spring which pours down
its waters from the steep edge of a precipice." It is thus that Jupiter
characterises him when he lies dead in the field of battle:
Thou (addressing himself in his thoughts to Hector) hast slain the
friend of Achilles, not less memorable for the blandness of his temper,
than the bravery of his deeds.
It is thus that Menelaus undertakes to excite the Grecian chiefs to
rescue his body:
Let each man recollect the sweetness of his disposition for, as long as
he lived, he was unremitted in kindness to all. When Achilles proposes
the games at the funeral, he says, "On any other occasion my horses
should have started for the prize, but now it cannot be. They have lost
their incomparable groom, who was accustomed to refresh their limbs
with water, and anoint their flowing manes; and they are inconsolable."
Briseis also makes her appearance among the mourners, avowing that,
"when her husband had been slain in battle, and her native city laid in
ashes, this generous man prevented her tears, averring to her, that she
should be the wife of her conqueror, and that he would himself spread
the nuptial banquet for her in the hero's native kingdom of Phthia."
The reciprocity which belongs to a friendship between unequals may
well be expected to give a higher zest to their union. Each party is
necessary to the other. The superior considers him towards whom he pours
out his affection, as a part of himself.
The head is not more native to the heart,
The hand more instrumental to the mouth.
He cannot separate himself from him, but at the cost of a fearful maim.
When the world is shut out by him, when he retires into solitude, and
falls back upon himself, then his unpretending friend is most of all
necessary to him. He is his consolation and his pleasure, the safe
coffer in which he reposits all his anxieties and sorrows. If the
principal, instead of being a public man, is a man of science, this kind
of unbending becomes certainly not the less welcome to him. He wishes
occasionally to forget the severity of his investigations, neither
to have his mind any longer wound up and stretched to the height of
meditation, nor to feel that he needs to be any way on his guard, or not
completely to give the rein to all his sallies and the sportiveness of
his soul. Having been for a considerable time shut up in sequestered
reflection, he wishes, it may be, to have the world, the busy
impassioned world, brought to his ears, without his being obliged to
enter into its formalities and mummeries. If he desires to speak of the
topics which had so deeply engaged him, he can keep as near the edge
as he pleases, and drop or resume them as his fancy may prompt. And it
seems useless to say, how much his modest and unassuming friend will be
gratified in being instrumental to relieve the labours of his principal,
in feeling that he is necessary to him, and in meditating on the delight
he receives in being made the chosen companion and confident of him
whom he so ardently admires. It was precisely in this spirit, that Fulke
Greville, two hundred years ago, directed that it should be inscribed on
his tomb, "Here lies the friend of Sir Philip Sidney." Tenderness on the
one part, and a deep feeling of honour and respect on the other, give a
completeness to the union which it must otherwise for ever want. "There
is no limit, none," to the fervour with which the stronger goes forward
to protect the weak; while in return the less powerful would encounter
a thousand deaths rather than injury should befall the being to whom in
generosity and affection he owes so much.
In the mean time, though inequality is necessary to give this
completeness to friendship, the inequality must not be too great.
The inferior party must be able to understand and appreciate the
sense and the merits of him to whom he is thus bound. There must be
no impediment to hinder the communications of the principal from being
fully comprehended, and his sentiments entirely participated. There must
be a boundless confidence, without apprehension that the power of
the stronger party can by the remotest possibility be put forth
ungenerously. "Perfect love casteth out fear." The evangelist applies
this aphorism even to the love of the creature to his creator. "The Lord
spake unto Moses, face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend."
In the union of which I am treating the demonstrative and ordinary
appearance will be that of entire equality, which is heightened by the
inner, and for the greater part unexplained and undeveloped, impression
of a contrary nature. There is in either party a perfect reliance, an
idea of inequality with the most entire assurance that it can never
operate unworthily in the stronger party, or produce insincerity or
servility in the weaker. There will in reality always be some reserve,
some shadow of fear between equals, which in the friendship of unequals,
if happily assorted, can find no place. There is a pouring out of the
heart on the one side, and a cordial acceptance on the other, which
words are inadequate to describe.
To proceed. If from friendship we go forward to that which in all
languages is emphatically called love, we shall still find ourselves
dogged and attended by inequality. Nothing can be more certain, however
we may seek to modify and abate it, than the inequality of the sexes.
Let us attend to it as it stands in Milton:
For contemplation he and velour formed
For softness she and sweet attractive grace;
He for God only, she for God in him.
Thus it is painted to us as having been in Paradise; and with similar
inequality have the sexes subsisted in all ages and nations since. If
it were possible to take from the fair sex its softness and attractive
grace, and endow it instead with audacious, masculine and military
qualities, there is scarcely any one that does not perceive, with
whatever advantages it might be attended in other respects, that it
would be far from tending to cherish and increase the passion of love.
It is in reality obvious, that man and woman, as they come from the
hands of nature, are so much upon a par with each other, as not to
afford the best subjects between whom to graft a habit of entire,
unalterable affection. In the scenes of vulgar and ordinary society,
a permanent connection between persons of opposite sexes is too apt to
degenerate into a scene of warfare, where each party is for ever engaged
in a struggle for superiority, and neither will give way. A penetrating
observer, with whom in former days I used intimately to converse, was
accustomed to say, that there was generally more jarring and ill blood
between the two parties in the first year of their marriage, than during
all the remainder of their lives. It is at length found necessary, as
between equally matched belligerents on the theatre of history, that
they should come to terms, make a treaty of peace, or at least settle
certain laws of warfare, that they may not waste their strength in idle
hostilities.
The nations of antiquity had a way of settling this question in a very
summary mode. As certain Oriental tribes have determined that women have
no souls, and that nothing can be more proper than to shut them up,
like singing birds in cages, so the Greeks and Romans for the most
part excluded their females from the society of the more martial sex.
Marriage with them was a convenience merely; and the husband and wife
were in reality nothing more than the master and the slave. This point
once settled as a matter of national law, there was certainly in most
cases little danger of any vexatious rivalship and struggle for power.
But there is nothing in which the superiority of modern times over the
ancient has been more conspicuous, than in our sentiments and practices
on this subject. This superiority, as well as several other of our most
valuable acquisitions, took its rise in what we call the dark ages.
Chivalry was for the most part the invention of the eleventh century.
Its principle was built upon a theory of the sexes, giving to each a
relative importance, and assigning to both functions full of honour and
grace. The knights (and every gentleman during that period in due time
became a knight) were taught, as the main features of their vocation,
the "love of God and the ladies." The ladies in return were regarded as
the genuine censors of the deeds of knighthood. From these principles
arose a thousand lessons of humanity. The ladies regarded it as their
glory to assist their champions to arm and to disarm, to perform for
them even menial services, to attend them in sickness, and to dress
their wounds. They bestowed on them their colours, and sent them forth
to the field hallowed with their benedictions. The knights on the other
hand considered any slight towards the fair sex as an indelible stain to
their order; they contemplated the graceful patronesses of their valour
with a feeling that partook of religious homage and veneration, and
esteemed it as perhaps the first duty of their profession, to relieve
the wrongs, and avenge the injuries of the less powerful sex.
This simple outline as to the relative position of the one sex and the
other, gave a new face to the whole scheme and arrangements of civil
society. It is like those admirable principles in the order of the
material universe, or those grand discoveries brought to light from time
to time by superior genius, so obvious and simple, that we wonder the
most common understanding could have missed them, yet so pregnant with
results, that they seem at once to put a new life and inspire a new
character into every part of a mighty and all-comprehensive mass.
The passion between the sexes, in its grosser sense, is a momentary
impulse merely; and there was danger that, when the fit and violence
of the passion was over, the whole would subside into inconstancy and
a roving disposition, or at least into indifference and almost brutal
neglect. But the institutions of chivalry immediately gave a new face to
this. Either sex conceived a deep and permanent interest in the other.
In the unsettled state of society which characterised the period when
these institutions arose, the defenceless were liable to assaults of
multiplied kinds, and the fair perpetually stood in need of a protector
and a champion. The knights on the other hand were taught to derive
their fame and their honour from the suffrages of the ladies. Each sex
stood in need of the other; and the basis of their union was mutual
esteem.
The effect of this was to give a hue of imagination to all their
intercourse. A man was no longer merely a man, nor a woman merely
a woman. They were taught mutual deference. The woman regarded her
protector as something illustrious and admirable; and the man considered
the smiles and approbation of beauty as the adequate reward of his toils
and his dangers. These modes of thinking introduced a nameless grace
into all the commerce of society. It was the poetry of life. Hence
originated the delightful narratives and fictions of romance; and human
existence was no longer the bare, naked train of vulgar incidents,
which for so many ages of the world it had been accustomed to be. It
was clothed in resplendent hues, and wore all the tints of the rainbow.
Equality fled and was no more; and love, almighty, perdurable love, came
to supply its place.
By means of this state of things the vulgar impulse of the sexes towards
each other, which alone was known to the former ages of the world, was
transformed into somewhat of a totally different nature. It became
a kind of worship. The fair sex looked upon their protectors, their
fathers, their husbands, and the whole train of their chivalry, as
something more than human. There was a grace in their motions, a
gallantry in their bearing, and a generosity in their spirit of
enterprise, that the softness of the female heart found irresistible.
Nor less on the other hand did the knights regard the sex to whose
service and defence they were sworn, as the objects of their perpetual
deference. They approached them with a sort of gallant timidity,
listened to their behests with submission, and thought the longest
courtship and devotion nobly recompensed by the final acceptance of the
fair.
The romance and exaggeration characteristic of these modes of thinking
have gradually worn away in modern times; but much of what was most
valuable in them has remained. Love has in later ages never been
divested of the tenderness and consideration, which were thus rendered
some of its most estimable features. A certain desire in each party
to exalt the other, and regard it as worthy of admiration, became
inextricably interwoven with the simple passion. A sense of the honour
that was borne by the one to the other, had the happiest effect in
qualifying the familiarity and unreserve in the communion of feelings
and sentiments, without which the attachment of the sexes cannot
subsist. It is something like what the mystic divines describe of the
beatific vision, where entire wonder and adoration are not judged to be
incompatible with the most ardent affection, and all meaner and selfish
regards are annihilated.
From what has been thus drawn together and recapitulated it seems
clearly to follow, as was stated in the beginning, that love cannot
exist in its purest form and with a genuine ardour, where the parties
are, and are felt by each other to be, on an equality; but that in all
cases it is requisite there should be a mutual deference and submission,
agreeably to the apostolic precept, "Likewise all of you be subject one
to the other." There must be room for the imagination to exercise its
powers; we must conceive and apprehend a thousand things which we do
not actually witness; each party must feel that it stands in need of
the other, and without the other cannot be complete; each party must be
alike conscious of the power of receiving and conferring benefit; and
there must be the anticipation of a distant future, that may every day
enhance the good to be imparted and enjoyed, and cause the individuals
thus united perpetually to become more sensible of the fortunate
event which gave them to each other, and has thus entailed upon each a
thousand advantages in which they could otherwise never have shared.
ESSAY XVI. OF FRANKNESS AND RESERVE.
Animals are divided into the solitary and the are gregarious: the former
being only occasionally associated with its mate, and perhaps engaged in
the care of its offspring; the latter spending their lives in herds and
communities. Man is of this last class or division.
Where the animals of any particular species live much in society, it
seems requisite that in some degree they should be able to understand
each other's purposes, and to act with a certain portion of concert.
All other animals are exceedingly limited in their powers of
communication. But speech renders that being whom we justly entitle the
lord of the creation, capable of a boundless interchange of ideas and
intentions. Not only can we communicate to each other substantively our
elections and preferences: we can also exhort and persuade, and employ
reasons and arguments to convince our fellows, that the choice we have
made is also worthy of their adoption. We can express our thoughts, and
the various lights and shades, the bleedings, of our thoughts. Language
is an instrument capable of being perpetually advanced in copiousness,
perspicuity and power.
No principle of morality can be more just, than that which teaches us
to regard every faculty we possess as a power intrusted to us for the
benefit of others as well as of ourselves, and which therefore we are
bound to employ in the way which shall best conduce to the general
advantage.
"Speech was given us, that by it we might express our thoughts(34);" in
other words, our impressions, ideas and conceptions. We then therefore
best fulfil the scope of our nature, when we sincerely and unreservedly
communicate to each other our feelings and apprehensions. Speech should
be to man in the nature of a fair complexion, the transparent medium
through which the workings of the mind should be made legible.
(34) Moliere.
I think I have somewhere read of Socrates, that certain of his friends
expostulated with him, that the windows of his house were so constructed
that every one who went by could discover all that passed within. "And
wherefore not?" said the sage. "I do nothing that I would wish to have
concealed from any human eye. If I knew that all the world observed
every thing I did, I should feel no inducement to change my conduct in
the minutest particular."
It is not however practicable that frankness should be carried to the
extent above mentioned. It has been calculated that the human mind is
capable of being impressed with three hundred and twenty sensations in
a second of time. At all events we well know that, even "while I am
speaking, a variety of sensations are experienced by me, without so much
as interrupting, that is, without materially diverting, the train of
my ideas. My eye successively remarks a thousand objects that present
themselves, and my mind wanders to the different parts of my body,
without occasioning the minutest obstacle to my discourse, or my being
in any degree distracted by the multiplicity of these objects(35)."
It is therefore beyond the reach of the faculty of speech, for me to
communicate all the sensations I experience; and I am of necessity
reduced to a selection.
(35) See above, Essay 7.
Nor is this the whole. We do not communicate all that we feel, and all
that we think; for this would be impertinent. We owe a certain deference
and consideration to our fellow-men; we owe it in reality to ourselves.
We do not communicate indiscriminately all that passes within us. The
time would fail us; and "the world would not contain the books that
might be written." We do not speak merely for the sake of speaking;
otherwise the communication of man with his fellow would be but one
eternal babble. Speech is to be employed for some useful purpose; nor
ought we to give utterance to any thing that shall not promise to be in
some way productive of benefit or amusement.
Frankness has its limits, beyond which it would cease to be either
advantageous or virtuous. We are not to tell every thing: but we are not
to conceal any thing, that it would be useful or becoming in us to
utter. Our first duty regarding the faculty of speech is, not to keep
back what it would be beneficial to our neighbour to know. But this is a
negative sincerity only. If we would acquire a character for frankness,
we must be careful that our conversation is such, as to excite in him
the idea that we are open, ingenuous and fearless. We must appear
forward to speak all that will give him pleasure, and contribute to
maintain in him an agreeable state of being. It must be obvious that we
are not artificial and on our guard.--After all, it is difficult to lay
down rules on this subject: the spring of whatever is desirable
respecting it, must be in the temper of the man with whom others have
intercourse. He must be benevolent, sympathetic and affectionate. His
heart must overflow with good-will; and he must be anxious to relieve
every little pain, and to contribute to the enjoyment and complacent
feelings, of those with whom he is permanently or accidentally
connected. "Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh."
There are two considerations by which we ought to be directed in the
exercise of the faculty of speech.
The first is, that we should tell our neighbour all that it would be
useful to him to know. We must have no sinister or bye ends. "No man
liveth to himself." We are all of us members of the great congregation
of mankind. The same blood should circulate through every limb and every
muscle. Our pulses should beat time to each other; and we should have
one common sensorium, vibrating throughout, upon every material accident
that occurs, and when any object is at stake essentially affecting the
welfare of our fellow-beings. We should forget ourselves in the interest
that we feel for the happiness of others; and, if this were universal,
each man would be a gainer, inasmuch as he lost himself, and was cared
and watched for by many.
In all these respects we must have no reserve. We should only consider
what it is that it would be beneficial to have declared.
We must not look back to ourselves, and consult the dictates of a narrow
and self-interested prudence. The whole essence of communication is
adulterated, if, instead of attending to the direct effects of what
suggests itself to our tongue, we are to consider how by a circuitous
route it may react upon our own pleasures and advantage.
Nor only are we bound to communicate to our neighbour all that it will
be useful to him to know. We have many neighbours, beside those to whom
we immediately address ourselves. To these our absent fellow-beings,
we owe a thousand duties. We are bound to defend those whom we hear
aspersed, and who are spoken unworthily of by the persons whom we
incidentally encounter. We should be the forward and spontaneous
advocates of merit in every shape and in every individual in whom we
know it to exist. What a character would that man make for himself, of
whom it was notorious that he consecrated his faculty of speech to the
refuting unjust imputations against whomsoever they were directed, to
the contradicting all false and malicious reports, and to the bringing
forth obscure and unrecognised worth from the shades in which it lay
hid! What a world should we live in, if all men were thus prompt and
fearless to do justice to all the worth they knew or apprehended to
exist! Justice, simple justice, if it extended no farther than barely
to the faculty of speech, would in no long time put down all
misrepresentation and calumny, bring all that is good and meritorious
into honour, and, so to speak, set every man in his true and rightful
position. But whoever would attempt this, must do it in all honour,
without parade, and with no ever-and-anon looking back upon his
achievement, and saying, See to how much credit I am entitled!--as if
he laid more stress upon himself, the doer of this justice, than upon
justice in its intrinsic nature and claims.
But we not only owe something to the advantage and interest of our
neighbours, but something also to the sacred divinity of Truth. I am not
only to tell my neighbour whatever I know that may be beneficial to him,
respecting his position in society, his faults, what other men appear to
contemplate that may conduce to his advantage or injury, and to advise
him how the one may best be forwarded, or the other defeated and brought
to nothing: I am bound also to consider in what way it may be in my
power so to act on his mind, as shall most enlarge his views, confirm
and animate his good resolutions, and meliorate his dispositions and
temper. We are all members of one great community: and we shall never
sufficiently discharge our duty in that respect, till, like the ancient
Spartans, the love of the whole becomes our predominant passion, and we
cease to imagine that we belong to ourselves, so much as to the entire
body of which we are a part. There are certain views in morality, in
politics, and various other important subjects, the general prevalence
of which will be of the highest benefit to the society of which we are
members; and it becomes us in this respect, with proper temperance and
moderation, to conform ourselves to the zealous and fervent precept of
the apostle, to "promulgate the truth and be instant, in season and out
of season," that we may by all means leave some monument of our good
intentions behind us, and feel that we have not lived in vain.
There is a maxim extremely in vogue in the ordinary intercourses of
society, which deserves to be noticed here, for the purpose of exposing
it to merited condemnation. It is very common between friends, or
persons calling themselves such, to say, "Do not ask my advice in a
certain crisis of your life; I will not give it; hereafter, if the
thing turns out wrong, you will reflect on me, and say that it was at
my suggestion that you were involved in calamity." This is a dastardly
excuse, and shews a pitiful selfishness in the man that urges it.
It is true, that we ought ever to be on the alert, that we may not
induce our friend into evil. We should be upon our guard, that we may
not from overweening arrogance and self-conceit dictate to another,
overpower his more sober judgment, and assume a rashness for him, in
which perhaps we would not dare to indulge for ourselves. We should
be modest in our suggestions, and rather supply him with materials for
decision, than with a decision absolutely made. There may however be
cases where an opposite proceeding is necessary. We must arrest our
friend, nay, even him who is merely our fellow-creature, with a strong
arm, when we see him hovering on the brink of a precipice, or the danger
is so obvious, that nothing but absolute blindness could conceal it from
an impartial bystander.
But in all cases our best judgment should always be at the service of
our brethren of mankind. "Give to him that asketh thee; and from him
that would borrow of thee turn not thou away."
This may not always be practicable or just, when applied to the goods of
fortune: but the case of advice, information, and laws of conduct, comes
within that of Ennius, to suffer our neighbour to light his candle at
our lamp. To do so will enrich him, without making us a jot the poorer.
We should indeed respect the right of private judgment, and scarcely
in any case allow our will to supersede his will in his own proper
province. But we should on no account suffer any cowardly fears for
ourselves, to induce us to withhold from him any assistance that our
wider information or our sounder judgment might supply to him.
The next consideration by which we should be directed in the exercise
of the faculty of speech, is that we should employ it so as should best
conduce to the pleasure of our neighbour. Man is a different creature in
the savage and the civilised state. It has been affirmed, and it may be
true, that the savage man is a stranger to that disagreeable frame of
mind, known by the name of ennui. He can pore upon the babbling stream,
or stretch himself upon a sunny bank, from the rising to the setting of
the sun, and be satisfied. He is scarcely roused from this torpid state
but by the cravings of nature. If they can be supplied without effort,
he immediately relapses into his former supineness; and, if it requires
search, industry and exertion to procure their gratification, he still
more eagerly embraces the repose, which previous fatigue renders doubly
welcome.
But, when the mind has once been wakened up from its original lethargy,
when we have overstepped the boundary which divides the man from the
beast, and are made desirous of improvement, while at the same
moment the tumultuous passions that draw us in infinitely diversified
directions are called into act, the case becomes exceedingly different.
It might be difficult at first to rouse man from his original lethargy:
it is next to impossible that he should ever again be restored to it.
The appetite of the mind being once thoroughly awakened in society, the
human species are found to be perpetually craving after new intellectual
food. We read, we write, we discourse, we ford rivers, and scale
mountains, and engage in various pursuits, for the pure pleasure that
the activity and earnestness of the pursuit afford us. The day of the
savage and the civilised man are still called by the same name. They may
be measured by a pendulum, and will be found to be of the same duration.
But in all other points of view they are inexpressibly different.
Hence therefore arises another duty that is incumbent upon us as to the
exercise of the faculty of speech. This duty will be more or less urgent
according to the situation in which we are placed.
If I sit down in a numerous assembly, if I become one of a convivial
party of ten or twelve persons, I may unblamed be for the greater part,
or entirely silent, if I please. I must appear to enter into their
sentiments and pleasures, or, if I do not, I shall be an unwelcome
guest; but it may scarcely be required for me to clothe my feelings with
articulate speech.
But, when my society shall be that of a few friends only, and still more
if the question is of spending hours or days in the society of a single
friend, my duty becomes altered, and a greater degree of activity will
be required from me. There are cases, where the minor morals of the
species will be of more importance than those which in their own nature
are cardinal. Duties of the highest magnitude will perhaps only
be brought into requisition upon extraordinary occasions; but the
opportunities we have of lessening the inconveniences of our neighbour,
or of adding to his accommodations and the amount of his agreeable
feelings, are innumerable. An acceptable and welcome member of society
therefore will not talk, only when he has something important to
communicate. He will also study how he may amuse his friend with
agreeable narratives, lively remarks, sallies of wit, or any of those
thousand nothings, which' set off with a wish to please and a benevolent
temper, will often entertain more and win the entire good will of the
person to whom they are addressed, than the wisest discourse, or the
vein of conversation which may exhibit the powers and genius of the
speaker to the greatest advantage.
Men of a dull and saturnine complexion will soon get to an end of all
they felt it incumbent on them to say to their comrades. But the same
thing will probably happen, though at a much later period, between
friends of an active mind, of the largest stores of information,
and whose powers have been exercised upon the greatest variety of
sentiments, principles, and original veins of thinking. When two
such men first fall into society, each will feel as if he had found
a treasure. Their communications are without end; their garrulity is
excited, and converts into a perennial spring. The topics upon which
they are prompted to converse are so numerous, that one seems to jostle
out the other.
It may proceed thus from day to day, from month to month, and perhaps
from year to year. But, according to the old proverb, "It is a long
lane that has no turning." The persons here described will have a vast
variety of topics upon which they are incited to compare their opinions,
and will lay down these topics and take them up again times without
number. Upon some, one of the parties will feel himself entirely at home
while the other is comparatively a novice, and, in others, the advantage
will be with the other; so that the gain of both, in this free and
unrestrained opening of the soul, will be incalculable. But the time
will come, like as in perusing an author of the most extraordinary
genius and the most versatile powers, that the reading of each other's
minds will be exhausted. They know so much of each other's tone of
thinking, that all that can be said will be anticipated. The living
voice, the sparkling eye, and the beaming countenance will do much to
put off the evil day, when we shall say, I have had enough. But the time
will come in which we shall feel that this after all is but little, and
we shall become sluggish, ourselves to communicate, or to excite the
dormant faculties of our friend, when the spring, the waters of which so
long afforded us the most exquisite delight, is at length drawn dry.
I remember in my childish years being greatly struck with that passage
in the Bible, where it is written, "But I say unto you, that, for every
idle word that men shall speak, they shall give an account in the day
of judgment:" and, as I was very desirous of conforming myself to the
directions of the sacred volume, I was upon the point of forming a
sort of resolution, that I would on no account open my mouth to speak,
without having a weighty reason for uttering the thing I felt myself
prompted to say.
But practical directions of this sort are almost in all cases of
ambiguous interpretation. From the context of this passage it is clear,
that by "idle words" we are to understand vicious words, words tending
to instil into the mind unauthorised impulses, that shew in the man who
speaks "a will most rank, foul disproportion, thoughts unnatural," and
are calculated to render him by whom they are listened to, light and
frivolous of temper, and unstrung for the graver duties of human life.
But idle words, in the sense of innocent amusement, are not vicious.
"There is a time for all things." Amusement must not encroach upon
or thrust aside the real business, the important engagements, and
the animated pursuits of man. But it is entitled to take its turn
unreproved. Human life is so various, and the disposition and temper of
the mind of so different tones and capacity, that a wise man will "frame
his face to all occasions." Playfulness, if not carried to too great an
extreme, is an additional perfection in human nature. We become relieved
from our more serious cares, and better fitted to enter on them again
after an interval. To fill up the days of our lives with various
engagements, to make one occupation succeed to another, so as to
liberate us from the pains of ennui, and the dangers of what may in an
emphatical sense be called idleness, is no small desideratum. That king
may in this sense be admitted to have formed no superficial estimate
of our common nature, who is said to have proclaimed a reward to the
individual that should invent a new amusement.
And, to consider the question as it stands in relation to the subject of
the present Essay, a perpetual gravity and a vigilant watch to be placed
on the door of our lips, would be eminently hostile to that frankness
which is to be regarded as one of the greatest ornaments of our
nature. "It is meet, that we should make merry and be glad." A formal
countenance, a demure, careful and unaltered cast of features, is one
of the most disadvantageous aspects under which human nature can exhibit
itself. The temper must be enterprising and fearless, the manner firm
and assured, and the correspondence between the heart and the tongue
prompt and instantaneous, if we desire to have that view of man that
shall do him the most credit, and induce us to form the most honourable
opinion respecting him. On our front should sit fearless confidence and
unsubdued hilarity. Our limbs should be free and unfettered, a state of
the animal which imparts a grace infinitely more winning than that of
the most skilful dancer. The very sound of our voice should be full,
firm, mellow, and fraught with life and sensibility; of that nature, at
the hearing of which every bosom rises, and every eye is lighted up. It
is thus that men come to understand and confide in each other. This is
the only frame that can perfectly conduce to our moral improvement,
the awakening of our faculties, the diffusion of science, and the
establishment of the purest notions and principles of civil and
political liberty.
ESSAY XVII. OF BALLOT.
The subject of the preceding Essay leads by an obvious transition to
the examination of a topic, which at present occupies to a considerable
extent the attention of those who are anxious for the progress of public
improvement, and the placing the liberties of mankind on the securest
basis: I mean, the topic of the vote by ballot.
It is admitted that the most beneficial scheme for the government of
nations, is a government by representation: that is, that there shall
be in every nation, or large collection of men, a paramount legislative
assembly, composed of deputies chosen by the people in their respective
counties, cities, towns, or departments. In what manner then shall these
deputies be elected?
The argument in favour of the election by ballot is obvious.
In nearly all civilised countries there exists more or less an
inequality of rank and property: we will confine our attention
principally to the latter.
Property necessarily involves influence. Mankind are but too prone
to pay a superior deference to those who wear better clothes, live in
larger houses, and command superior accommodations to those which fall
to the lot of the majority.
One of the main sources of wealth in civilised nations is the possession
of land. Those who have a considerable allotment of land in property,
for the most part let it out in farms on lease or otherwise to persons
of an inferior rank, by whom it is cultivated. In this case a reciprocal
relation is created between the landlord and the tenant: and, if the
landlord conducts himself towards his tenant agreeably to the principles
of honour and liberality, it is impossible that the tenant should not
feel disposed to gratify his landlord, so far as shall be compatible
with his own notions of moral rectitude, or the paramount interests of
the society of which he is a member.
If the proprietor of any extensive allotment of land does not let it out
in farms, but retains it under his own direction, he must employ a great
number of husbandmen and labourers; and over them he must be expected
to exercise the same sort of influence, as under the former statement we
supposed him to exercise over his tenants.
The same principle will still operate wherever any one man in society is
engaged in the expenditure of a considerable capital. The manufacturer
will possess the same influence over his workmen, as the landed
proprietor over his tenants or labourers. Even the person who possesses
considerable opulence, and has no intention to engage in the pursuits of
profit or accumulation, will have an ample retinue, and will be
enabled to use the same species of influence over his retainers and
trades-people, as the landlord exercises over his tenants and labourers,
and the manufacturer over his workmen.
A certain degree of this species of influence in society, is perhaps not
to be excepted against. The possessor of opulence in whatever form, may
be expected to have received a superior education, and, being placed at
a certain distance from the minuter details and the lesser wheels in the
machine of society, to have larger and more expansive views as to
the interests of the whole. It is good that men in different ranks of
society should be brought into intercourse with each other; it will
subtract something from the prejudices of both, and enable each to
obtain some of the advantages of the other. The division of rank is too
much calculated to split society into parties having a certain hostility
to each other. In a free state we are all citizens: it is desirable that
we should all be friends.
But this species of influence may be carried too far. To a certain
extent it is good. Inasmuch as it implies the enlightening one human
understanding by the sparks struck out from another, or even the
communication of feelings between man and man, this is not to be
deprecated. Some degree of courteous compliance and deference of the
ignorant to the better informed, is inseparable from the existence of
political society as we behold it; such a deference as we may conceive
the candid and conscientious layman to pay to the suggestions of his
honest and disinterested pastor.
Every thing however that is more than this, is evil. There should be no
peremptory mandates, and no threat or apprehension of retaliation and
mischief to follow, if the man of inferior station or opulence should
finally differ in opinion from his wealthier neighbour. We may admit
of a moral influence; but there must be nothing, that should in the
smallest degree border on compulsion.
But it is unfortunately in the very nature of weak, erring and fallible
mortals, to make an ill use of the powers that are confided to their
discretion. The rich man in the wantonness of his authority will not
stop at moral influence, but, if he is disappointed of his expectation
by what he will call my wilfulness and obstinacy, will speedily
find himself impelled to vindicate his prerogative, and to punish my
resistance. In every such disappointment he will discern a dangerous
precedent, and will apprehend that, if I escape with impunity, the
whole of that ascendancy, which he has regarded as one of the valuable
privileges contingent to his station, will be undermined.
Opulence has two ways of this grosser sort, by which it may enable its
possessor to command the man below him,--punishment and reward. As the
holder, for example, of a large landed estate, or the administrator of
an ample income, may punish the man who shews himself refractory to
his will, so he may also reward the individual who yields to his
suggestions. This, in whatever form it presents itself, may be classed
under the general head of bribery.
The remedy for all this therefore, real or potential, mischief, is said
to lie in the vote by ballot, a contrivance, by means of which every man
shall be enabled to give his vote in favour of or against any candidate
that shall be nominated, in absolute secrecy, without it being possible
for any one to discover on which side the elector decided,--nay, a
contrivance, by which the elector is invited to practise mystery and
concealment, inasmuch as it would seem an impertinence in him to speak
out, when the law is expressly constructed to bid him act and be silent.
If he speaks, he is guilty of a sort of libel on his brother-electors,
who are hereby implicitly reproached by him for their impenetrableness
and cowardice.
We are told that the institution of the ballot is indispensible to the
existence of a free state, in a country where the goods of fortune are
unequally distributed. In England, as the right of sending members
to parliament is apportioned at the time I am writing, the power of
electing is bestowed with such glaring inequality, and the number of
electors in many cases is so insignificant, as inevitably to give to the
noble and the rich the means of appointing almost any representatives
they think fit, so that the house of commons may more justly be styled
the nominees of the upper house, than the deputies of the nation. And
it is further said, Remedy this inequality as much as you please, and
reform the state of the representation to whatever degree, still, so
long as the votes at elections are required to be given openly, the
reform will be unavailing, and the essential part of the mischief will
remain. The right of giving our votes in secrecy, is the only remedy
that can cut off the ascendancy of the more opulent members of the
community over the rest, and give us the substance of liberty, instead
of cheating us with the shadow.
On the other side I would beg the reader to consider, that the vote by
ballot, in its obvious construction, is not the symbol of liberty, but
of slavery. What is it, that presents to every eye the image of liberty,
and compels every heart to confess, This is the temple where she
resides? An open front, a steady and assured look, an habitual and
uninterrupted commerce between the heart and the tongue. The free man
communicates with his neighbour, not in corners and concealed places,
but in market-places and scenes of public resort; and it is thus that
the sacred spark is caught from man to man, till all are inspired with a
common flame. Communication and publicity are of the essence of liberty;
it is the air they breathe; and without it they die.
If on the contrary I would characterise a despotism, I should say, It
implied a certain circumference of soil, through whose divisions and
districts every man suspected his neighbour, where every man was
haunted with the terror that "walls have ears," and only whispered his
discontent, his hopes and his fears, to the trees of the forest and
the silent streams. If the dwellers on this soil consulted together, it
would be in secret cabals and with closed doors; engaging in the sacred
cause of public welfare and happiness, as if it were a thing of guilt,
which the conspirator scarcely ventured to confess to his own heart.
A shrewd person of my acquaintance the other day, to whom I unadvisedly
proposed a question as to what he thought of some public transaction,
instantly replied with symptoms of alarm, "I beg to say that I never
disclose my opinions upon matters either of religion or politics to any
one." What did this answer imply as to the political government of the
country where it was given?
Is it characteristic of a free state or a tyranny?
One of the first and highest duties that falls to the lot of a human
creature, is that which he owes to the aggregate of reasonable beings
inhabiting what he calls his country. Our duties are then most solemn
and elevating, when they are calculated to affect the well being of the
greatest number of men; and of consequence what a patriot owes to his
native soil is the noblest theatre for his moral faculties. And shall we
teach men to discharge this debt in the dark? Surely every man ought
to be able to "render a reason of the hope that is in him," and give
a modest, but an assured, account of his political conduct. When he
approaches the hustings at the period of a public election, this is his
altar, where he sacrifices in the face of men to that deity, which is
most worth his adoration of all the powers whose single province is our
sublunary state.
But the principle of the institution of ballot is to teach men to
perform their best actions under the cloke of concealment. When I return
from giving my vote in the choice of a legislative representative,
I ought, if my mode of proceeding were regulated by the undebauched
feelings of our nature, to feel somewhat proud that I had discharged
this duty, uninfluenced, uncorrupted, in the sincere frame of a
conscientious spirit. But the institution of ballot instigates me
carefully to conceal what I have done. If I am questioned respecting it,
the proper reply which is as it were put into my mouth is, "You have
no right to ask me; and I shall not tell." But, as every man does not
recollect the proper reply at the moment it is wanted, and most men feel
abashed, when a direct question is put to them to which they know they
are not to return a direct answer, many will stammer and feel confused,
will perhaps insinuate a falshood, while at the same time their manner
to a discerning eye will, in spite of all their precautions, disclose
the very truth.
The institution of ballot not only teaches us that our best actions are
those which we ought most steadily to disavow, but carries distrust
and suspicion into all our most familiar relations. The man I want to
deceive, and throw out in the keenness of his hunting, is my landlord.
But how shall I most effectually conceal the truth from him? May I be
allowed to tell it to my wife or my child? I had better not. It is a
known maxim of worldly prudence, that the truth which may be a source of
serious injury to me, is safest, when it is shut up in my own bosom. If
I once let it out, there is no saying where the communication may
stop. "Day unto day uttereth speech; and night unto night sheweth forth
knowledge."
And is this the proud attitude of liberty, to which we are so eager to
aspire? After all, there will be some ingenuous men in the community,
who will not know how for ever to suppress what is dearest to their
hearts. But at any rate this institution holds out a prize to him that
shall be most secret and untraceable in his proceedings, that shall
"shoe his horses with felt," and proceed in all his courses with silence
and suspicion.
The first principle of morality to social man is, that we act under the
eye of our fellows. The truly virtuous man would do as he ought, though
no eye observed him. Persons, it is true, who deport themselves merely
as "men-pleasers," for ever considering how the by-standers will
pronounce of their conduct, are entitled to small commendation. The good
man, it is certain, will see
To do what virtue would, though sun and moon
Were in the flat sea sunk.
But, imperfect creatures as we mortals usually are, these things act
and react upon each other. A man of honourable intentions will demean
himself justly, from the love of right. But he is confirmed in his just
dealing by the approbation of his fellows; and, if he were tempted to
step awry, he would be checked by the anticipation of their censure.
Such is the nature of our moral education. It is with virtue, as it is
with literary fame. If I write well, I can scarcely feel secure that I
do so, till I obtain the suffrage of some competent judges, confirming
the verdict which I was before tempted to pronounce in my own favour.
This acting as in a theatre, where men and Gods are judges of my
conduct, is the true destination of man; and we cannot violate the
universal law under which we were born, without having reason to fear
the most injurious effects.
And is this mysterious and concealed way of proceeding one of the forms
through which we are to pass in the school of liberty? The great end of
all liberal institutions is, to make a man fearless, frank as the day,
acting from a lively and earnest impulse, which will not be restrained,
disdains all half-measures, and prompts us, as it were, to carry our
hearts in our hands, for all men to challenge, and all men to comment
on. It is true, that the devisers of liberal institutions will have
foremost in their thoughts, how men shall be secure in their personal
liberty, unrestrained in the execution of what their thoughts prompt
them to do, and uncontrolled in the administration of the fruits of
their industry. But the moral end of all is, that a man shall be worthy
of the name, erect, independent of mind, spontaneous of decision,
intrepid, overflowing with all good feelings, and open in the expression
of the sentiments they inspire. If man is double in his weightiest
purposes, full of ambiguity and concealment, and not daring to give
words to the impulses of his soul, what matters it that he is free? We
may pronounce of this man, that he is unworthy of the blessing that
has fallen to his lot, and will never produce the fruits that should be
engendered in the lap of liberty.
There is however, it should seem, a short answer to all this. It is
in vain to expatiate to us upon the mischiefs of lying, hypocrisy and
concealment, since it is only through them, as the way by which we are
to march, that nations can be made free.
This certainly is a fearful judgment awarded upon our species: but is it
true?
We are to begin, it seems, with concealing from our landlord, or our
opulent neighbour, our political determinations; and so his corrupt
influence will be broken, and the humblest individual will be safe in
doing that which his honest and unbiased feelings may prompt him to do.
No: this is not the way in which the enemy of the souls of men is to be
defeated. We must not begin with the confession of our faint-heartedness
and our cowardice. A quiet, sober, unaltered frame of judgment, that
insults no one, that has in it nothing violent, brutal and defying, is
the frame that becomes us. If I would teach another man, my superior
in rank, how he ought to construe and decide upon the conduct I hold, I
must begin by making that conduct explicit.
It is not in morals, as it is in war. There stratagem is allowable, and
to take the enemy by surprise. "Who enquires of an enemy, whether it is
by fraud or heroic enterprise that he has gained the day?" But it is not
so that the cause of liberty is to be vindicated in the civil career of
life.
The question is of reducing the higher ranks of society to admit the
just immunities of their inferiors. I will not allow that they shall be
cheated into it. No: no man was ever yet recovered to his senses in a
question of morals, but by plain, honest, soul-commanding speech. Truth
is omnipotent, if we do not violate its majesty by surrendering its
outworks, and giving up that vantage-ground, of which if we deprive it,
it ceases to be truth. It finds a responsive chord in every human bosom.
Whoever hears its voice, at the same time recognises its power. However
corrupt he may be, however steeped in the habits of vice, and hardened
in the practices of tyranny, if it be mildly, distinctly, emphatically
enunciated, the colour will forsake his cheek, his speech will alter and
be broken, and he will feel himself unable to turn it off lightly, as a
thing of no impression and validity. In this way the erroneous man,
the man nursed in the house of luxury, a stranger to the genuine,
unvarnished state of things, stands a fair chance of being corrected.
But, if an opposite, and a truer way of thinking than that to which he
is accustomed, is only brought to his observation by the reserve of him
who entertains it, and who, while he entertains it, is reluctant to
hold communion with his wealthier neighbour, who regards him as his
adversary, and hardly admits him to be of the same common nature, there
will be no general improvement. Under this discipline the two ranks of
society will be perpetually more estranged, view each other with
eye askance, and will be as two separate and hostile states, though
inhabiting the same territory. Is this the picture we desire to see of
genuine liberty, philanthropic, desirous of good to all, and overflowing
with all generous emotions?
I hate where vice can bolt her arguments,
And virtue has no tongue to check her pride.
The man who interests himself for his country and its cause, who acts
bravely and independently, and knows that he runs some risk in doing
so, must have a strange opinion of the sacredness of truth, if the very
consciousness of having done nobly does not supply him with courage,
and give him that simple, unostentatious firmness, which shall carry
immediate conviction to the heart. It is a bitter lesson that the
institution of ballot teaches, while it says, "You have done well;
therefore be silent; whisper it not to the winds; disclose it not to
those who are most nearly allied to you; adopt the same conduct which
would suggest itself to you, if you had perpetrated an atrocious crime."
In no long time after the commencement of the war of the allies against
France, certain acts were introduced into the English parliament,
declaring it penal by word or writing to utter any thing that should
tend to bring the government into contempt; and these acts, by the mass
of the adversaries of despotic power, were in way of contempt called the
Gagging Acts. Little did I and my contemporaries of 1795 imagine, when
we protested against these acts in the triumphant reign of William Pitt,
that the soi-disant friends of liberty and radical reformers, when their
turn of triumph came, would propose their Gagging Acts, recommending to
the people to vote agreeably to their consciences, but forbidding them
to give publicity to the honourable conduct they had been prevailed on
to adopt!
But all this reasoning is founded in an erroneous, and groundlessly
degrading, opinion of human nature. The improvement of the general
institutions of society, the correction of the gross inequalities of our
representation, will operate towards the improvement of all the members
of the community. While ninety-nine in an hundred of the inhabitants
of England are carried forward in the scale of intellect and virtue,
it would be absurd to suppose that the hundredth man will stand still,
merely because he is rich. Patriotism is a liberal and a social impulse;
its influence is irresistible; it is contagious, and is propagated
by the touch; it is infectious, and mixes itself with the air that we
breathe.
Men are governed in their conduct in a surprising degree by the opinion
of others. It was all very well, when noblemen were each of them
satisfied of the equity and irresistible principle of their ascendancy,
when the vulgar population felt convinced that passive obedience was
entailed on them from their birth, when we were in a manner but just
emancipated (illusorily emancipated!) from the state of serfs and
villains. But a memorable melioration of the state of man will carry
some degree of conviction to the hearts of all. The most corrupt will
be made doubtful: many who had not gone so far in ill, will desert the
banners of oppression.
We see this already. What a shock was propagated through the island,
when, the other day, a large proprietor, turning a considerable cluster
of his tenants out of the houses and lands they occupied, because they
refused to vote for a representative in parliament implicitly as he bade
them, urged in his own justification, "Shall I not do what I will with
my own?" This was all sound morals and divinity perhaps at the period
of his birth. Nobody disputed it; or, if any one did, he was set down
by the oracles of the vicinage as a crackbrained visionary. This man, so
confident in his own prerogatives, had slept for the last twenty years,
and awoke totally unconscious of what had been going on in almost every
corner of Europe in the interval. A few more such examples; and so broad
and sweeping an assumption will no more be heard of, and it will remain
in the records of history, as a thing for the reality of which we have
sufficient evidence, but which common sense repudiates, and which seems
to demand from us a certain degree of credulity to induce us to admit
that it had ever been.
The manners of society are by no means so unchanged and unalterable
as many men suppose. It is here, as in the case of excessive drinking,
which I had lately occasion to mention(36). In rude and barbarous
times men of the highest circles piqued themselves upon their power of
swallowing excessive potations, and found pleasure in it. It is in this
as in so many other vices, we follow implicitly where our elders lead
the way. But the rage of drinking is now gone by; and you will with
difficulty find a company of persons of respectable appearance, who
assemble round a table for the purpose of making beasts of themselves.
Formerly it was their glory; now, if any man unhappily retains the
weakness, he hides it from his equals, as he would a loathsome disease.
The same thing will happen as to parliamentary corruption, and the
absolute authority that was exercised by landlords over the consciences
of their tenants. He that shall attempt to put into act what is then
universally condemned, will be a marked man, and will be generally
shunned by his fellows. The eye of the world will be upon him, as the
murderer fancies himself followed by the eye of omnipotence; and he will
obey the general voice of the community, that he may be at peace with
himself.
(36) See above, Essay 9.
Let us not then disgrace a period of memorable improvement, by combining
it with an institution that should mark that we, the great body of the
people, regard the more opulent members of the community as our foes.
Let us hold out to them the right hand of fellowship; and they will meet
us. They will be influenced, partly by ingenuous shame for the unworthy
conduct which they and their fathers had so long pursued, and partly by
sympathy for the genuine joy and expansion of heart that is spreading
itself through the land. Scarcely any one can restrain himself from
participating in the happiness of the great body of his countrymen;
and, if they see that we treat them with generous confidence, and are
unwilling to recur to the memory of former grievances, and that a spirit
of philanthropy and unlimited good-will is the sentiment of the day, it
can scarcely happen but that their conversion will be complete, and the
harmony be made entire(37).
(37) The subject of this Essay is resumed in the close of the following.
ESSAY XVIII. OF DIFFIDENCE.
The following Essay will be to a considerable degree in the nature of
confession, like the Confessions of St. Augustine or of Jean Jacques
Rousseau. It may therefore at first sight appear of small intrinsic
value, and scarcely worthy of a place in the present series. But, as I
have had occasion more than once to remark, we are all of us framed in a
great measure on the same model, and the analysis of the individual
may often stand for the analysis of a species. While I describe
myself therefore, I shall probably at the same time be describing no
inconsiderable number of my fellow-beings.
It is true, that the duty of man under the head of Frankness, is of a
very comprehensive nature. We ought all of us to tell to our neighbour
whatever it may be of advantage to him to know, we ought to be the
sincere and zealous advocates of absent merit and worth, and we are
bound by every means in our power to contribute to the improvement of
others, and to the diffusion of salutary truths through the world.
From the universality of these precepts many readers might be apt to
infer, that I am in my own person the bold and unsparing preacher of
truth, resolutely giving to every man his due, and, agreeably to
the apostle's direction, "instant in season, and out of season."
The individual who answers to this description will often be deemed
troublesome, often annoying; he will produce a considerable sensation
in the circle of those who know him; and it will depend upon various
collateral circumstances, whether he shall ultimately be judged a rash
and intemperate disturber of the contemplations of his neighbours, or
a disinterested and heroic suggester of new veins of thinking, by which
his contemporaries and their posterity shall be essentially the gainers.
I have no desire to pass myself upon those who may have any curiosity
respecting me for better than I am; and I will therefore here put down
a few particulars, which may tend to enable them to form an equitable
judgment.
One of the earliest passions of my mind was the love of truth and
sound opinion. "Why should I," such was the language of my solitary
meditations, "because I was born in a certain degree of latitude, in a
certain century, in a country where certain institutions prevail, and of
parents professing a certain faith, take it for granted that all this is
right?--This is matter of accident. 'Time and chance happeneth to all:'
and I, the thinking principle within me, might, if such had been the
order of events, have been born under circumstances the very reverse
of those under which I was born. I will not, if I can help it, be
the creature of accident; I will not, like a shuttle-cock, be at the
disposal of every impulse that is given me." I felt a certain disdain
for the being thus directed; I could not endure the idea of being made
a fool of, and of taking every ignis fatuus for a guide, and every stray
notion, the meteor of the day, for everlasting truth. I am the person,
spoken of in a preceding Essay(38), who early said to Truth, "Go on:
whithersoever thou leadest, I am prepared to follow."
(38) See above, Essay XIII.
During my college-life therefore, I read all sorts of books, on every
side of any important question, that were thrown in my way, or that I
could hear of. But the very passion that determined me to this mode of
proceeding, made me wary and circumspect in coming to a conclusion. I
knew that it would, if any thing, be a more censurable and contemptible
act, to yield to every seducing novelty, than to adhere obstinately to
a prejudice because it had been instilled into me in youth. I was
therefore slow of conviction, and by no means "given to change." I never
willingly parted with a suggestion that was unexpectedly furnished to
me; but I examined it again and again, before I consented that it should
enter into the set of my principles.
In proportion however as I became acquainted with truth, or what
appeared to me to be truth, I was like what I have read of Melancthon,
who, when he was first converted to the tenets of Luther, became eager
to go into all companies, that he might make them partakers of the same
inestimable treasures, and set before them evidence that was to him
irresistible. It is needless to say, that he often encountered the most
mortifying disappointment.
Young and eager as I was in my mission, I received in this way many a
bitter lesson. But the peculiarity of my temper rendered this doubly
impressive to me. I could not pass over a hint, let it come from
what quarter it would, without taking it into some consideration, and
endeavouring to ascertain the precise weight that was to be attributed
to it. It would however often happen, particularly in the question of
the claims of a given individual to honour and respect, that I could see
nothing but the most glaring injustice in the opposition I experienced.
In canvassing the character of an individual, it is not for the most
part general, abstract or moral, principles that are called into
question: I am left in possession of the premises which taught me to
admire the man whose character is contested; and conformably to those
premises I see that his claim to the honour I have paid him is fully
made out.
In my communications with others, in the endeavour to impart what I
deemed to be truth, I began with boldness: but I often found that the
evidence that was to me irresistible, was made small account of by
others; and it not seldom happened, as candour was my principle, and a
determination to receive what could be strewn to be truth, let it come
from what quarter it would, that suggestions were presented to me,
materially calculated to stagger the confidence with which I had set
out. If I had been divinely inspired, if I had been secured by an
omniscient spirit against the danger of error, my case would have been
different. But I was not inspired. I often encountered an opposition
I had not anticipated, and was often presented with objections, or had
pointed out to me flaws and deficiencies in my reasonings, which,
till they were so pointed out, I had not apprehended. I had not lungs
enabling me to drown all contradiction; and, which was still more
material, I had not a frame of mind, which should determine me to regard
whatever could be urged against me as of no value. I therefore became
cautious. As a human creature, I did not relish the being held up to
others' or to myself, as rash, inconsiderate and headlong, unaware
of difficulties the most obvious, embracing propositions the most
untenable, and "against hope believing in hope." And, as an apostle of
truth, I distinctly perceived that a reputation for perspicacity and
sound judgment was essential to my mission. I therefore often became
less a speaker, than a listener, and by no means made it a law with
myself to defend principles and characters I honoured, on every occasion
on which I might hear them attacked.
A new epoch occurred in my character, when I published, and at the time
I was writing, my Enquiry concerning Political Justice. My mind was
wrought up to a certain elevation of tone; the speculations in which I
was engaged, tending to embrace all that was most important to man in
society, and the frame to which I had assiduously bent myself, of
giving quarter to nothing because it was old, and shrinking from
nothing because it was startling and astounding, gave a new bias to my
character. The habit which I thus formed put me more on the alert even
in the scenes of ordinary life, and gave me a boldness and an eloquence
more than was natural to me. I then reverted to the principle which I
stated in the beginning, of being ready to tell my neighbour whatever
it might be of advantage to him to know, to shew myself the sincere and
zealous advocate of absent merit and worth, and to contribute by every
means in my power to the improvement of others and to the diffusion of
salutary truth through the world. I desired that every hour that I lived
should be turned to the best account, and was bent each day to examine
whether I had conformed myself to this rule. I held on this course with
tolerable constancy for five or six years: and, even when that constancy
abated, it failed not to leave a beneficial effect on my subsequent
conduct.
But, in pursuing this scheme of practice, I was acting a part somewhat
foreign to my constitution. I was by nature more of a speculative than
an active character, more inclined to reason within myself upon what
I heard and saw, than to declaim concerning it. I loved to sit by
unobserved, and to meditate upon the panorama before me. At first I
associated chiefly with those who were more or less admirers of my work;
and, as I had risen (to speak in the slang phrase) like "a star" upon
my contemporaries without being expected, I was treated generally with
a certain degree of deference, or, where not with deference and
submission, yet as a person whose opinions and view of things were to be
taken into the account. The individuals who most strenuously opposed me,
acted with a consciousness that, if they affected to despise me, they
must not expect that all the bystanders would participate in that
feeling.
But this was to a considerable degree the effect of novelty. My lungs,
as I have already said, were not of iron; my manner was not overbearing
and despotic; there was nothing in it to deter him who differed from me
from entering the field in turn, and telling the tale of his views and
judgments in contradiction to mine. I descended into the arena, and
stood on a level with the rest. Beyond this, it occasionally happened
that, if I had not the stentorian lungs, and the petty artifices of
rhetoric and conciliation, that should carry a cause independently of
its merits, my antagonists were not deficient in these respects. I
had nothing in my favour to balance this, but a sort of constitutional
equanimity and imperturbableness of temper, which, if I was at any
time silenced, made me not look like a captive to be dragged at the
chariot-wheels of my adversary.
All this however had a tendency to subtract from my vocation as a
missionary. I was no longer a knight-errant, prepared on all occasions
by dint of arms to vindicate the cause of every principle that was
unjustly handled, and every character that was wrongfully assailed.
Meanwhile I returned to the field, occasionally and uncertainly. It
required some provocation and incitement to call me out: but there was
the lion, or whatever combative animal may more justly prefigure me,
sleeping, and that might be awakened.
There is another feature necessary to be mentioned, in order to make
this a faithful representation. There are persons, it should seem, of
whom it may be predicated, that they are semper parati. This has by no
means been my case. My genius often deserted me. I was far from having
the thought, the argument, or the illustration at all times ready, when
it was required. I resembled to a certain degree the persons we read
of, who are said to be struck as if with a divine judgment. I was for
a moment changed into one of the mere herd, de grege porcus. My powers
therefore were precarious, and I could not always be the intrepid and
qualified advocate of truth, if I vehemently desired it. I have often, a
few minutes afterwards, or on my return to my chambers, recollected
the train of thinking, which world have strewn me off to advantage,
and memorably done me honour, if I could have had it at my command the
moment it was wanted.
And so much for confession. I am by no means vindicating myself.
I honour much more the man who is at all times ready to tell his
neighbour whatever it may be of advantage to him to know, to shew
himself the sincere and untemporising advocate of absent merit and
worth, and to contribute by every means in his power to the improvement
of others, and to the diffusion of salutary truths through the world.
This is what every man ought to be, and what the best devised scheme of
republican institutions would have a tendency to make us all.
But, though the man here described is to a certain degree a deserter
of his true place in society, and cannot be admitted to have played his
part in all things well, we are by no means to pronounce upon him a
more unfavourable judgment than he merits. Diffidence, though, where
it disqualifies us in any way from doing justice to truth, either as it
respects general principle or individual character, a defect, yet is on
no account to be confounded in demerit with that suppression of truth,
or misrepresentation, which grows out of actual craft and design.
The diffident man, in some cases seldomer, and in some oftener and in
a more glaring manner, deserts the cause of truth, and by that means
is the cause of misrepresentation, and indirectly the propagator of
falshood. But he is constant and sincere as far as he goes; he never
lends his voice to falshood, or intentionally to sophistry; he never for
an instant goes over to the enemy's standard, or disgraces his honest
front by strewing it in the ranks of tyranny or imposture. He may
undoubtedly be accused, to a certain degree, of dissimulation, or
throwing into shade the thing that is, but never of simulation, or the
pretending the thing to be that is not. He is plain and uniform in
every thing that he professes, or to which he gives utterance; but, from
timidity or irresolution, he keeps back in part the offering which he
owes at the shrine where it is most honourable and glorious for man to
worship.
And this brings me back again to the subject of the immediately
preceding Essay, the propriety of voting by ballot.
The very essence of this scheme is silence. And this silence is not
merely like that which is prompted by a diffident temper, which by fits
is practiced by the modest and irresolute man, and by fits disappears
before the sun of truth and through the energies of a temporary
fortitude. It is uniform. It is not brought into act only, when the
individual unhappily does not find in himself the firmness to play
the adventurer. It becomes matter of system, and is felt as being
recommended to us for a duty.
Nor does the evil stop there. In the course of my ordinary
communications with my fellow-men, I speak when I please, and I am
silent when I please, and there is nothing specially to be remarked
either way. If I speak, I am perhaps listened to; and, if I am silent,
it is likely enough concluded that it is because I have nothing of
importance to say. But in the question of ballot the case is far
otherwise. There it is known that the voter has his secret. When I am
silent upon a matter occurring in the usual intercourses of life where I
might speak, nay, where we will suppose I ought to speak, I am at
least guilty of dissimulation only. But the voter by ballot is strongly
impelled to the practice of the more enormous sin of simulation. It
is known, as I have said, that he has his secret. And he will often be
driven to have recourse to various stratagems, that he may elude
the enquirer, or that he may set at fault the sagacity of the silent
observer. He has something that he might tell if he would, and he
distorts himself in a thousand ways, that he may not betray the hoard
which he is known to have in his custody. The institution of ballot
is the fruitful parent of ambiguities, equivocations and lies without
number.
ESSAY XIX. OF SELF-COMPLACENCY.
The subject of this Essay is intimately connected with those of Essays
XI and XII, perhaps the most important of the series.
It has been established in the latter, that human creatures are
constantly accompanied in their voluntary actions with the delusive
sense of liberty, and that our character, our energies, and our
conscience of moral right and wrong, are mainly dependent upon this
feature in our constitution.
The subject of my present disquisition relates to the feeling of
self-approbation or self-complacency, which will be found inseparable
from the most honourable efforts and exertions in which mortal men can
be engaged.
One of the most striking of the precepts contained in what are called
the Golden Verses of Pythagoras, is couched in the words, "Reverence
thyself."
The duties which are incumbent on man are of two sorts, negative and
positive. We are bound to set right our mistakes, and to correct
the evil habits to which we are prone; and we are bound also to be
generously ambitious, to aspire after excellence, and to undertake such
things as may reflect honour on ourselves, and be useful to others.
To the practice of the former of these classes of duties we may be
instigated by prohibitions, menaces and fear, the fear of mischiefs
that may fall upon us conformably to the known series of antecedents
and consequents in the course of nature, or of mischiefs that may be
inflicted on us by the laws of the country in which we live, or
as results of the ill will and disapprobation felt towards us
by individuals. There is nothing that is necessarily generous or
invigorating in the practice of our negative duties. They amount merely
to a scheme for keeping us within bounds, and restraining us from those
sallies and escapes, which human nature, undisciplined and left to
itself, might betray us into. But positive enterprise, and great actual
improvement cannot be expected by us in this way. All this is what the
apostle refers to, when he speaks of "the law as a schoolmaster to bring
us to liberty," after which he advises us "not to be again entangled
with the yoke of bondage."
On the other hand, if we would enter ourselves in the race of positive
improvement, if we would become familiar with generous sentiments, and
the train of conduct which such sentiments inspire, we must provide
ourselves with the soil in which such things grow, and engage in the
species of husbandry by which they are matured; in other words, we must
be no strangers to self-esteem and self-complacency.
The truth of this statement may perhaps be most strikingly illustrated,
if we take for our example the progress of schoolboys under a preceptor.
A considerable proportion of these are apt, diligent, and desirous
to perform the tasks in which they are engaged, so as to satisfy the
demands of their masters and parents, and to advance honourably in the
path that is recommended to them. And a considerable proportion put
themselves on the defensive, and propose to their own minds to perform
exactly as much as shall exempt them from censure and punishment, and no
more.
Now I say of the former, that they cannot accomplish the purpose they
have conceived, unless so far as they are aided by a sentiment of
self-reverence.
The difference of the two parties is, that the latter proceed, so far
as their studies are concerned, as feeling themselves under the law of
necessity, and as if they were machines merely, and the former as if
they were under what the apostle calls "the law of liberty."
We cannot perform our tasks to the best of our power, unless we think
well of our own capacity.
But this is the smallest part of what is necessary. We must also be in
good humour with ourselves. We must say, I can do that which I shall
have just occasion to look back upon with satisfaction. It is the
anticipation of this result, that stimulates our efforts, and carries
us forward. Perseverance is an active principle, and cannot continue
to operate but under the influence of desire. It is incompatible with
languor and neutrality. It implies the love of glory, perhaps of that
glory which shall be attributed to us by others, or perhaps only of that
glory which shall be reaped by us in the silent chambers of the mind.
The diligent scholar is he that loves himself, and desires to have
reason to applaud and love himself. He sits down to his task with
resolution, he approves of what he does in each step of the process, and
in each enquires, Is this the thing I purposed to effect?
And, as it is with the unfledged schoolboy, after the same manner it is
with the man mature. He must have to a certain extent a good opinion
of himself, he must feel a kind of internal harmony, giving to the
circulations of his frame animation and cheerfulness, or he can never
undertake and execute considerable things.
The execution of any thing considerable implies in the first place
previous persevering meditation. He that undertakes any great
achievement will, according to the vulgar phrase, "think twice," before
he buckles up his resolution, and plunges into the ocean, which he has
already surveyed with anxious glance while he remained on shore. Let our
illustration be the case of Columbus, who, from the figure of the earth,
inferred that there must be a way of arriving at the Indies by a voyage
directly west, in distinction from the very complicated way hitherto
practiced, by sailing up the Mediterranean, crossing the isthmus of
Suez, and so falling down the Red Sea into the Indian Ocean. He weighed
all the circumstances attendant on such an undertaking in his mind.
He enquired into his own powers and resources, imaged to himself
the various obstacles that might thwart his undertaking, and finally
resolved to engage in it. If Columbus had not entertained a very good
opinion of himself, it is impossible that he should have announced such
a project, or should have achieved it.
Again. Let our illustration be, of Homer undertaking to compose the
Iliad. If he had not believed himself to be a man of very superior
powers to the majority of the persons around him, he would most
assuredly never have attempted it. What an enterprise! To describe in
twenty-four books, and sixteen thousand verses, the perpetual warfare
and contention of two great nations, all Greece being armed for the
attack, and all the western division of Asia Minor for the defence: the
war carried on by two vast confederacies, under numerous chiefs, all
sovereign and essentially independent of each other. To conceive the
various characters of the different leaders, and their mutual rivalship.
To engage all heaven, such as it was then understood, as well as what
was most respectable on earth, in the struggle. To form the idea,
through twenty-four books, of varying the incidents perpetually, and
keeping alive the attention of the reader or hearer without satiety or
weariness. For this purpose, and to answer to his conception of a great
poem, Homer appears to have thought it necessary that the action should
be one; and he therefore took the incidental quarrel of Achilles and
the commander in chief, the resentment of Achilles, and his consequent
defection from the cause, till, by the death of Patroclus, and then
of Hector, all traces of the misunderstanding first, and then of its
consequences, should be fully obliterated.
There is further an essential difference between the undertaking of
Columbus and that of Homer. Once fairly engaged, there was for Columbus
no drawing back. Being already at sea on the great Atlantic Ocean, he
could not retrace his steps. Even when he had presented his project to
the sovereigns of Spain, and they had accepted it, and still more when
the ships were engaged, and the crews mustered, he must go forward, or
submit to indelible disgrace.
It is not so in writing a poem. The author of the latter may stop
whenever he pleases. Of consequence, during every day of its execution,
he requires a fresh stimulus. He must look back on the past, and forward
on what is to come, and feel that he has considerable reason to
be satisfied. The great naval discoverer may have his intervals of
misgiving and discouragement, and may, as Pope expresses it, "wish
that any one would hang him." He goes forward; for he has no longer the
liberty to choose. But the author of a mighty poem is not in the same
manner entangled, and therefore to a great degree returns to his work
each day, "screwing his courage to the sticking-place." He must feel the
same fortitude and elasticity, and be as entirely the same man of heroic
energy, as when he first arrived at the resolution to engage. How much
then of self-complacency and self-confidence do his undertaking and
performance imply!
I have taken two of the most memorable examples in the catalogue of
human achievements: the discovery of a New World, and the production of
the Iliad. But all those voluntary actions, or rather series and chains
of actions, which comprise energy in the first determination, and honour
in the execution, each in its degree rests upon self-complacency as the
pillar upon which its weight is sustained, and without which it must
sink into nothing.
Self-complacency then being the indispensible condition of all that is
honourable in human achievements, hence we may derive a multitude
of duties, and those of the most delicate nature, incumbent on the
preceptor, as well as a peculiar discipline to be observed by the
candidate, both while he is "under a schoolmaster," and afterwards when
he is emancipated, and his plan of conduct is to be regulated by his own
discretion.
The first duty of the preceptor is encouragement.
Not that his face is to be for ever dressed in smiles, and that his
tone is to be at all times that of invitation and courtship. The great
theatre of the world is of a mingled constitution, made up of advantages
and sufferings; and it is perhaps best that so should be the different
scenes of the drama as they pass. The young adventurer is not to expect
to have every difficulty smoothed for him by the hand of another. This
were to teach him a lesson of effeminacy and cowardice. On the contrary
it is necessary that he should learn that human life is a state of
hardship, that the adversary we have to encounter does not always
present himself with his fangs sheathed in the woolly softness which
occasionally renders them harmless, and that nothing great or eminently
honourable was ever achieved but through the dint of resolution, energy
and struggle. It is good that the winds of heaven should blow upon him,
that he should encounter the tempest of the elements, and occasionally
sustain the inclemency of the summer's heat and winter's cold, both
literally and metaphorically.
But the preceptor, however he conducts himself in other respects, ought
never to allow his pupil to despise himself, or to hold himself as of no
account. Self-contempt can never be a discipline favourable to energy or
to virtue. The pupil ought at all times to judge himself in some
degree worthy, worthy and competent now to attempt, and hereafter to
accomplish, things deserving of commendation. The preceptor must never
degrade his pupil in his own eyes, but on the contrary must teach him
that nothing but resolution and perseverance are necessary, to enable
him to effect all that the judicious director can expect from him. He
should be encouraged through every step of his progress, and specially
encouraged when he has gained a certain point, and arrived at an
important resting-place. It is thus we are taught the whole circle of
what are called accomplishments, dancing, music, fencing, and the rest;
and it is surely a strange anomaly, if those things which are
most essential in raising the mind to its true standard, cannot be
communicated with equal suavity and kindness, be surrounded with
allurements, and regarded as sources of pleasure and genuine hilarity.
In the mean time it is to be admitted that every human creature,
especially in the season of youth, and not being the victim of some
depressing disease either of body or mind, has in him a good obstinate
sort of self-complacency, which cannot without much difficulty be
eradicated. "Though he falleth seven times, yet will he rise again."
And, when we have encountered various mortifications, and have been many
times rebuked and inveighed against, we nevertheless recover our own
good opinion, and are ready to enter into a fresh contention for the
prize, if not in one kind, then in another.
It is in allusion to this feature in the human character, that we have
an expressive phrase in the English language,--"to break the spirit."
The preceptor may occasionally perhaps prescribe to the pupil a severe
task; and the young adventurer may say, Can I be expected to accomplish
this? But all must be done in kindness. The generous attempter must be
reminded of the powers he has within him, perhaps yet unexercised; with
cheering sounds his progress must be encouraged; and, above all,
the director of the course must take care not to tax him beyond his
strength. And, be it observed, that the strength of a human creature is
to be ascertained by two things; first, the abstract capacity, that
the thing required is not beyond the power of a being so constituted
to perform; and, secondly, we must take into the account his past
achievements, the things he has already accomplished, and not expect
that he is at once to overleap a thousand obstacles.
For there is such a thing as a broken spirit. I remember a boy who was
my schoolfellow, that, having been treated with uncalled for severity,
never appeared afterwards in the scene of instruction, but with a
neglected appearance, and the articles of his dress scarcely half put
on. I was very young at the time, and viewed only the outside of
things. I cannot tell whether he had any true ambition previously to his
disgrace, but I am sure he never had afterwards.
How melancholy an object is the man, who, "for the privilege to breathe,
bears up and down the city
A discontented and repining spirit
Burthensome to itself,"
incapable of enterprise, listless, with no courage to undertake, and
no anticipation of the practicability of success and honour! And this
spectacle is still more affecting, when the subject shall be a human
creature in the dawn of youth, when nature opens to him a vista of
beauty and fruition on every side, and all is encouraging, redolent of
energy and enterprise!
To break the spirit of a man, bears a considerable resemblance to the
breaking the main spring, or principal movement, of a complicated and
ingeniously constructed machine. We cannot tell when it is to happen;
and it comes at last perhaps at the time that it is least expected. A
judicious superintendent therefore will be far from trying consequences
in his office, and will, like a man walking on a cliff whose extremes
are ever and anon crumbling away and falling into the ocean, keep much
within the edge, and at a safe distance from the line of danger.
But this consideration has led me much beyond the true subject of this
Essay. The instructor of youth, as I have already said, is called
upon to use all his skill, to animate the courage, and maintain the
cheerfulness and self-complacency of his pupil. And, as such is the
discipline to be observed to the candidate, while he is "under a
schoolmaster," so, when he is emancipated, and his plan of conduct is to
be regulated by his own discretion, it is necessary that he should
carry forward the same scheme, and cultivate that tone of feeling, which
should best reconcile him to himself, and, by teaching him to esteem
himself and bear in mind his own value, enable him to achieve things
honourable to his character, and memorably useful to others. Melancholy,
and a disposition anticipating evil are carefully to be guarded against,
by him who is desirous to perform his part well on the theatre of
society. He should habitually meditate all cheerful things, and sing the
song of battle which has a thousand times spurred on his predecessors
to victory. He should contemplate the crown that awaits him, and say to
himself, I also will do my part, and endeavour to enrol myself in the
select number of those champions, of whom it has been predicated that
they were men, of whom, compared with the herd of ordinary mortals, "the
world," the species among whom they were rated, "was not worthy."
Another consideration is to be recollected here. Without
self-complacency in the agent no generous enterprise is to be expected,
and no train of voluntary actions, such as may purchase honour to the
person engaged in them.
But, beside this, there is no true and substantial happiness but for
the self-complacent. "The good man," as Solomon says, "is satisfied from
himself." The reflex act is inseparable from the constitution of the
human mind. How can any one have genuine happiness, unless in proportion
as he looks round, and, "behold! every thing is very good?" This is the
sunshine of the soul, the true joy, that gives cheerfulness to all our
circulations, and makes us feel ourselves entire and complete. What
indeed is life, unless so far as it is enjoyed? It does not merit the
name. If I go into a school, and look round on a number of young faces,
the scene is destitute of its true charm, unless so far as I see inward
peace and contentment on all sides. And, if we require this eminently in
the young, neither can it be less essential, when in growing manhood we
have the real cares of the world to contend with, or when in declining
age we need every auxiliary to enable us to sustain our infirmities.
But, before I conclude my remarks on this subject, it is necessary that
I should carefully distinguish between the thesis, that self-complacency
is the indispensible condition of all that is honourable in human
achievements, and the proposition contended against in Essay XI, that
"self-love is the source of all our actions." Self-complacency is indeed
the feeling without which we cannot proceed in an honourable course; but
is far from being the motive that impels us to act. The motive is in the
real nature and absolute properties of the good thing that is proposed
to our choice: we seek the happiness of another, because his happiness
is the object of our desire. Self-complacency may be likened to the
bottle-holder in one of those contentions for bodily prowess, so
characteristic of our old English manners. The bottle-holder is
necessary to supply the combatant with refreshment, and to encourage him
to persist; but it would be most unnatural to regard him as the cause
of the contest. No: the parties have found reason for competition, they
apprehend a misunderstanding or a rivalry impossible to be settled
but by open contention, and the putting forth of mental and corporeal
energy; and the bottle-holder is an auxiliary called in afterwards, his
interference implying that the parties have already a motive to act, and
have thrown down the gauntlet in token of the earnest good-will which
animates them to engage.
ESSAY XX. OF PHRENOLOGY.
The following remarks can pretend to be nothing more than a few loose
and undigested thoughts upon a subject, which has recently occupied the
attention of many men, and obtained an extraordinary vogue in the world.
It were to be wished, that the task had fallen into the hands of a
writer whose studies were more familiar with all the sciences which bear
more or less on the topic I propose to consider: but, if abler and more
competent men pass it by, I feel disposed to plant myself in the breach,
and to offer suggestions which may have the fortune to lead
others, better fitted for the office than myself, to engage in the
investigation. One advantage I may claim, growing out of my partial
deficiency. It is known not to be uncommon for a man to stand too near
to the subject of his survey, to allow him to obtain a large view of it
in all its bearings. I am no anatomist: I simply take my stand upon the
broad ground of the general philosophy of man.
It is a very usual thing for fanciful theories to have their turn amidst
the eccentricities of the human mind, and then to be heard of no more.
But it is perhaps no ill occupation, now and then, for an impartial
observer, to analyse these theories, and attempt to blow away the dust
which will occasionally settle on the surface of science. If phrenology,
as taught by Gall and Spurzheim, be a truth, I shall probably render a
service to that truth, by endeavouring to shew where the edifice stands
in need of more solid supports than have yet been assigned to it. If it
be a falshood, the sooner it is swept away to the gulph of oblivion the
better. Let the inquisitive and the studious fix their minds on more
substantial topics, instead of being led away by gaudy and deceitful
appearances. The human head, that crowning capital of the column of man,
is too interesting a subject, to be the proper theme of every dabbler.
And it is obvious, that the professors of this so called discovery, if
they be rash and groundless in their assertions, will be in danger of
producing momentous errors, of exciting false hopes never destined to
be realised, and of visiting with pernicious blasts the opening buds
of excellence, at the time when they are most exposed to the chance of
destruction.
I shall set out with acknowledging, that there is, as I apprehend,
a science in relation to the human head, something like what Plato
predicates of the statue hid in a block of marble. It is really
contained in the block; but it is only the most consummate sculptor,
that can bring it to the eyes of men, and free it from all the
incumbrances, which, till he makes application of his art to it,
surround the statue, and load it with obscurities and disfigurement. The
man, who, without long study and premeditation, rushes in at once, and
expects to withdraw the curtain, will only find himself disgraced by the
attempt.
There is a passage in an acute writer(39), whose talents singularly
fitted him, even when he appeared totally immerged in mummery and
trifles, to illustrate the most important truths, that is applicable to
the point I am considering.
(39) Sterne, Tristram Shandy, Vol. 1.
"Pray, what was that man's name,--for I write in such a hurry, I have no
time to recollect or look for it,--who first made the observation, 'That
there was great inconstancy in our air and climate?' Whoever he was, it
was a just and good observation in him. But the corollary drawn from it,
namely, 'That it is this which has furnished us with such a variety of
odd and whimsical characters;'--that was not his;--it was found out by
another man, at least a century and a half after him. Then again, that
this copious storehouse of original materials is the true and natural
cause that our comedies are so much better than those of France, or any
others that have or can be wrote upon the continent;--that discovery was
not fully made till about the middle of king William's reign, when the
great Dryden, in writing one of his long prefaces (if I mistake not),
most fortunately hit upon it. Then, fourthly and lastly, that
this strange irregularity in our climate, producing so strange an
irregularity in our characters, cloth thereby in some sort make us
amends, by giving us somewhat to make us merry with, when the weather
will not suffer us to go out of doors,--that observation is my own; and
was struck out by me this very rainy day, March 26, 1759, and betwixt
the hour of nine and ten in the morning.
"Thus--thus, my fellow-labourers and associates in this great harvest of
our learning, now ripening before our eyes; thus it is, by slow steps
of casual increase, that our knowledge physical, metaphysical,
physiological, polemical, nautical, mathematical, aenigmatical,
technical, biographical, romantical, chemical, and obstetrical, with
fifty other branches of it, (most of them ending, as these do, in ical,)
has, for these two last centuries and more, gradually been creeping
upwards towards that acme of their perfections, from which, if we may
form a conjecture from the advantages of these last seven years, we
cannot possibly be far off."
Nothing can be more true, than the proposition ludicrously illustrated
in this passage, that real science is in most instances of slow growth,
and that the discoveries which are brought to perfection at once, are
greatly exposed to the suspicion of quackery. Like the ephemeron fly,
they are born suddenly, and may be expected to die as soon.
Lavater, the well known author of Essays on Physiognomy, appears to
have been born seventeen years before the birth of Gall. He attempted to
reduce into a system the indications of human character that are to be
found in the countenance. Physiognomy, as a subject of ingenious and
probable conjecture, was well known to the ancients. But the test, how
far any observations that have been made on the subject are worthy the
name of a science, will lie in its application by the professor to
a person respecting whom he has had no opportunity of previous
information. Nothing is more easy, when a great warrior, statesman,
poet, philosopher or philanthropist is explicitly placed before us, than
for the credulous inspector or fond visionary to examine the lines of
his countenance, and to point at the marks which should plainly shew us
that he ought to have been the very thing that he is. This is the very
trick of gipsies and fortune-tellers. But who ever pointed to an utter
stranger in the street, and said, I perceive by that man's countenance
that he is one of the great luminaries of the world? Newton, or Bacon,
or Shakespear would probably have passed along unheeded. Instances of a
similar nature occur every day. Hence it plainly appears that, whatever
may hereafter be known on the subject, we can scarcely to the present
time be said to have overstepped the threshold. And yet nothing can be
more certain than that there is a science of physiognomy, though to
make use of an illustration already cited, it has not to this day
been extricated out of the block of marble in which it is hid. Human
passions, feelings and modes of thinking leave their traces on the
countenance: but we have not, thus far, left the dame's school in this
affair, and are not qualified to enter ourselves in the free-school for
more liberal enquiries.
The writings of Lavater on the subject of physiognomy are couched in
a sort of poetic prose, overflowing with incoherent and vague
exclamations, and bearing small resemblance to a treatise in which
the elements of science are to be developed. Their success however was
extraordinary; and it was probably that success, which prompted Gall
first to turn his attention from the indications of character that are
to be found in the face of man, to the study of the head generally, as
connected with the intellectual and moral qualities of the individual.
It was about four years before the commencement of the present century,
that Gall appears to have begun to deliver lectures on the structure and
external appearances of the human head. He tells us, that his attention
was first called to the subject in the ninth year of his age (that
is, in the year 1767), and that he spent thirty years in the private
meditation of his system, before he began to promulgate it. Be that as
it will, its most striking characteristic is that of marking out the
scull into compartments, in the same manner as a country delineated on
a map is divided into districts, and assigning a different faculty or
organ to each. In the earliest of these diagrams that has fallen
under my observation, the human scull is divided into twenty-seven
compartments.
I would say of craniology, as I have already said of physiognomy, that
there is such a science attainable probably by man, but that we have yet
made scarcely any progress in the acquiring it. As certain lines in
the countenance are indicative of the dispositions of the man, so it
is reasonable to believe that a certain structure of the head is in
correspondence with the faculties and propensities of the individual.
Thus far we may probably advance without violating a due degree of
caution. But there is a wide distance between this general statement,
and the conduct of the man who at once splits the human head into
twenty-seven compartments.
The exterior appearance of the scull is affirmed to correspond with the
structure of the brain beneath. And nothing can be more analogous to
what the deepest thinkers have already confessed of man, than to suppose
that there is one structure of the brain better adapted for intellectual
purposes than another. There is probably one structure better adapted
than another, for calculation, for poetry, for courage, for cowardice,
for presumption, for diffidence, for roughness, for tenderness, for
self-control and the want of it. Even as some have inherently a faculty
adapted for music or the contrary(40).
(40) See above, Essay II.
But it is not reasonable to believe that we think of calculation with
one portion of the brain, and of poetry with another.
It is very little that we know of the nature of matter; and we are
equally ignorant as to the substance, whatever it is, in which the
thinking principle in man resides. But, without adventuring in any
way to dogmatise on the subject, we find so many analogies between the
thinking principle, and the structure of what we call the brain, that
we cannot but regard the latter as in some way the instrument of the
former.
Now nothing can be more certain respecting the thinking principle, than
its individuality. It has been said, that the mind can entertain but one
thought at one time; and certain it is, from the nature of attention,
and from the association of ideas, that unity is one of the principal
characteristics of mind. It is this which constitutes personal identity;
an attribute that, however unsatisfactory may be the explanations which
have been given respecting it, we all of us feel, and that lies at the
foundation of all our voluntary actions, and all our morality.
Analogous to this unity of thought and mind, is the arrangement of the
nerves and the brain in the human body. The nerves all lead up to the
brain; and there is a centrical point in the brain itself, in which the
reports of the senses terminate, and at which the action of the will may
be conceived to begin. This, in the language of our fathers, was called
the "seat of the soul."
We may therefore, without departing from the limits of a due caution
and modesty, consider this as the throne before which the mind holds its
court. Hither the senses bring in their reports, and hence the sovereign
will issues his commands. The whole system appears to be conducted
through the instrumentality of the nerves, along whose subtle texture
the feelings and impressions are propagated. Between the reports of
the senses and the commands of the will, intervenes that which is
emphatically the office of the mind, comprising meditation, reflection,
inference and judgment. How these functions are performed we know not;
but it is reasonable to believe that the substance of the brain or of
some part of the brain is implicated in them.
Still however we must not lose sight of what has been already said,
that in the action of the mind unity is an indispensible condition. Our
thoughts can only hold their council and form their decrees in a very
limited region. This is their retreat and strong hold; and the special
use and functions of the remoter parts of the brain we are unable to
determine; so utterly obscure and undefined is our present knowledge
of the great ligament which binds together the body and the thinking
principle.
Enough however results from this imperfect view of the ligament, to
demonstrate the incongruity and untenableness of a doctrine which
should assign the indications of different functions, exercises and
propensities of the mind to the exterior surface of the scull or the
brain. This is quackery, and is to be classed with chiromancy, augury,
astrology, and the rest of those schemes for discovering the future
and unknown, which the restlessness and anxiety of the human mind have
invented, built upon arbitrary principles, blundered upon in the dark,
and having no resemblance to the march of genuine science. I find in
sir Thomas Browne the following axioms of chiromancy: "that spots in
the tops of the nails do signifie things past; in the middle, things
present; and at the bottom, events to come: that white specks presage
our felicity; blue ones our misfortunes: that those in the nails of the
thumb have significations of honour, in the forefinger, of riches, and
so respectively in the rest."
Science, to be of a high and satisfactory character, ought to consist of
a deduction of causes and effects, shewing us not merely that a thing is
so, but why it is as it is, and cannot be otherwise. The rest is merely
empirical; and, though the narrowness of human wit may often drive us
to this; yet it is essentially of a lower order and description. As it
depends for its authority upon an example, or a number of examples, so
examples of a contrary nature may continually come in, to weaken its
force, or utterly to subvert it. And the affair is made still worse,
when we see, as in the case of craniology, that all the reasons that
can be deduced (as here from the nature of mind) would persuade us
to believe, that there can be no connection between the supposed
indications, and the things pretended to be indicated.
Craniology, or phrenology, proceeds exactly in the same train, as
chiromancy, or any of those pretended sciences which are built merely
on assumption or conjecture. The first delineations presented to the
public, marked out, as I have said, the scull into compartments, in the
same manner as a country delineated on a map is divided into districts.
Geography is a real science, and accordingly, like other sciences, has
been slow and gradual in its progress. At an early stage travellers
knew little more than the shores and islands of the Mediterranean.
Afterwards, they passed the straits of Hercules, and entered into the
Atlantic. At length the habitable world was distributed into three
parts, Europe, Asia, and Africa. More recently, by many centuries, came
the discovery of America. It is but the other day comparatively, that
we found the extensive island of New Holland in the Southern Ocean. The
ancient geographers placed an elephant or some marine monster in the
vacant parts of their maps, to signify that of these parts they knew
nothing. Not so Dr. Gall. Every part of his globe of the human Scull, at
least with small exceptions, is fully tenanted; and he, with his single
arm, has conquered a world.
The majority of the judgments that have been divulged by the professors
of this science, have had for their subjects the sculls of men, whose
habits and history have been already known. And yet with this advantage
the errors and contradictions into which their authors have fallen are
considerably numerous. Thus I find, in the account of the doctor's visit
to the House of Correction and the Hospital of Torgau in July 1805, the
following examples.
"Every person was desirous to know what Dr. Gall would say about T--,
who was known in the house as a thief full of cunning, and who,
having several times made his escape, wore an additional iron. It was
surprising, that he saw in him far less of the organ of cunning, than in
many of the other prisoners. However it was proved, that examples, and
conversation with other thieves in the house, had suggested to him the
plan for his escape, and that the stupidity which he possesses was the
cause of his being retaken."
"We were much surprised to be told, that M., in whom Dr. Gall had
not discovered the organ of representation, possessed extraordinary
abilities in imitating the voice of animals; but we were convinced after
enquiries, that his talent was not a natural one, but acquired by study.
He related to us that, when he was a Prussian soldier garrisoned at
Berlin, he used to deceive the waiting women in the Foundling Hospital
by imitating the voice of exposed infants, and sometimes counterfeited
the cry of a wild drake, when the officers were shooting ducks."
"Of another Dr. Gall said, His head is a pattern of inconstancy and
confinement, and there appears not the least mark of the organ of
courage. This rogue had been able to gain a great authority among his
fellow-convicts. How is this to be reconciled with the want of constancy
which his organisation plainly indicates? Dr. Gall answered, He gained
his ascendancy not by courage, but by cunning."
It is well known, that in Thurtel, who was executed for one of the most
cold-blooded and remorseless murders ever heard of, the phrenologists
found the organ of benevolence uncommonly large.
In Spurzheim's delineation of the human head I find six divisions of
organs marked out in the little hemisphere over the eye, indicating six
different dispositions. Must there not be in this subtle distribution
much of what is arbitrary and sciolistic?
It is to be regretted, that no person skilful in metaphysics, or the
history of the human mind, has taken a share in this investigation. Many
errors and much absurdity would have been removed from the statements
of these theorists, if a proper division had been made between those
attributes and propensities, which by possibility a human creature may
bring into the world with him, and those which, being the pure growth
of the arbitrary institutions of society, must be indebted to those
institutions for their origin. I have endeavoured in a former Essay(41)
to explain this distinction, and to shew how, though a human being
cannot be born with an express propensity towards any one of the
infinite pursuits and occupations which may be found in civilised
society, yet that he may be fitted by his external or internal structure
to excel in some one of those pursuits rather than another. But all this
is overlooked by the phrenologists. They remark the various habits and
dispositions, the virtues and the vices, that display themselves in
society as now constituted, and at once and without consideration trace
them to the structure that we bring into the world with us.
(41) See above, Essay II.
Certainly many of Gall's organs are a libel upon our common nature. And,
though a scrupulous and exact philosopher will perhaps confess that he
has little distinct knowledge as to the design with which "the earth and
all that is therein" were made, yet he finds in it so much of beauty
and beneficent tendency, as will make him extremely reluctant to believe
that some men are born with a decided propensity to rob, and others
to murder. Nor can any thing be more ludicrous than this author's
distinction of the different organs of memory--of things, of places, of
names, of language, and of numbers: organs, which must be conceived to
be given in the first instance long before names or language or
numbers had an existence. The followers of Gall have in a few instances
corrected this: but what their denominations have gained in avoiding
the grossest absurdities of their master, they have certainly lost in
explicitness and perspicuity.
There is a distinction, not unworthy to be attended to, that is here
to be made between Lavater's system of physiognomy, and Gall's of
craniology, which is much in favour of the former. The lines and
characteristic expressions of the face which may so frequently be
observed, are for the most part the creatures of the mind. This is in
the first place a mode of observation more agreeable to the pride and
conscious elevation of man, and is in the next place more suitable
to morality, and the vindication of all that is most admirable in the
system of the universe. It is just, that what is most frequently passing
in the mind, and is entertained there with the greatest favour, should
leave its traces upon the countenance. It is thus that the high and
exalted philosopher, the poet, and the man of benevolence and humanity
are sometimes seen to be such by the bystander and the stranger. While
the malevolent, the trickish, and the grossly sensual, give notice
of what they are by the cast of their features, and put their
fellow-creatures upon their guard, that they may not be made the prey of
these vices.
But the march of craniology or phrenology, by whatever name it is
called, is directly the reverse of this. It assigns to us organs, as far
as the thing is explained by the professors either to the public or to
their own minds, which are entailed upon us from our birth, and which
are altogether independent, or nearly so, of any discipline or volition
that can be exercised by or upon the individual who drags their
intolerable chain. Thus I am told of one individual that he wants the
organ of colour; and all the culture in the world can never supply that
defect, and enable him to see colour at all, or to see it as it is seen
by the rest of mankind. Another wants the organ of benevolence; and his
case is equally hopeless. I shrink from considering the condition of the
wretch, to whom nature has supplied the organs of theft and murder in
full and ample proportions. The case is like that of astrology
(Their stars are more in fault than they),
with this aggravation, that our stars, so far as the faculty of
prediction had been supposed to be attained, swayed in few things; but
craniology climbs at once to universal empire; and in her map, as I
have said, there are no vacant places, no unexplored regions and happy
wide-extended deserts.
It is all a system of fatalism. Independently of ourselves, and
far beyond our control, we are reserved for good or for evil by the
predestinating spirit that reigns over all things. Unhappy is the
individual who enters himself in this school. He has no consolation,
except the gratified wish to know distressing truths, unless we add to
this the pride of science, that he has by his own skill and application
purchased for himself the discernment which places him in so painful a
preeminence. The great triumph of man is in the power of education, to
improve his intellect, to sharpen his perceptions, and to regulate
and modify his moral qualities. But craniology reduces this to almost
nothing, and exhibits us for the most part as the helpless victims of a
blind and remorseless destiny.
In the mean time it is happy for us, that, as this system is perhaps the
most rigorous and degrading that was ever devised, so it is in
almost all instances founded upon arbitrary assumptions and confident
assertion, totally in opposition to the true spirit of patient and
laborious investigation and sound philosophy.
It is in reality very little that we know of the genuine characters
of men. Every human creature is a mystery to his fellow. Every
human character is made up of incongruities. Of nearly all the great
personages in history it is difficult to say what was decidedly the
motive in which their actions and system of conduct originated. We study
what they did, and what they said; but in vain. We never arrive at a
full and demonstrative conclusion. In reality no man can be certainly
said to know himself. "The heart of man is deceitful above all things."
But these dogmatists overlook all those difficulties, which would
persuade a wise man to suspend his judgment, and induce a jury
of philosophers to hesitate for ever as to the verdict they would
pronounce. They look only at the external character of the act by which
a man honours or disgraces himself. They decide presumptuously and in a
lump, This man is a murderer, a hero, a coward, the slave of avarice, or
the votary of philanthropy; and then, surveying the outside of his head,
undertake to find in him the configuration that should indicate these
dispositions, and must be found in all persons of a similar character,
or rather whose acts bear the same outward form, and seem analogous to
his.
Till we have discovered the clue that should enable us to unravel the
labyrinth of the human mind, it is with small hopes of success that we
should expect to settle the external indications, and decide that this
sort of form and appearance, and that class of character, will always be
found together.
But it is not to be wondered at, that these disorderly fragments of a
shapeless science should become the special favourites of the idle and
the arrogant. Every man (and every woman), however destitute of real
instruction, and unfitted for the investigation of the deep or the
sublime mysteries of our nature, can use his eyes and his hands. The
whole boundless congregation of mankind, with its everlasting varieties,
is thus at once subjected to the sentence of every pretender:
And fools rush in, where angels fear to tread.
Nothing is more delightful to the headlong and presumptuous, than thus
to sit in judgment on their betters, and pronounce ex cathedra on those,
"whose shoe-latchet they are not worthy to stoop down and unloose." I
remember, after lord George Gordon's riots, eleven persons accused were
set down in one indictment for their lives, and given in charge to one
jury. But this is a mere shadow, a nothing, compared with the wholesale
and indiscriminating judgment of the vulgar phrenologist.
ESSAY XXI. OF ASTRONOMY.
SECTION I.
It can scarcely be imputed to me as profane, if I venture to put down
a few sceptical doubts on the science of astronomy. All branches of
knowledge are to be considered as fair subjects of enquiry: and he that
has never doubted, may be said, in the highest and strictest sense of
the word, never to have believed.
The first volume that furnished to me the groundwork of the following
doubts, was the book commonly known by the name of Guthrie's
Geographical Grammar, many parts and passages of which engaged my
attention in my own study, in the house of a rural schoolmaster, in the
year 1772. I cannot therefore proceed more fairly than by giving here
an extract of certain passages in that book, which have relation to
the present subject. I know not how far they have been altered in the
edition of Guthrie which now lies before me, from the language of
the book then in my possession; but I feel confident that in the main
particulars they continue the same(42).
(42) The article Astronomy, in this book, appears to have been written
by the well known James Ferguson.
"In passing rapidly over the heavens with his new telescope, the
universe increased under the eye of Herschel; 44,000 stars, seen in the
space of a few degrees, seemed to indicate that there were seventy-five
millions in the heavens. But what are all these, when compared with
those that fill the whole expanse, the boundless field of aether?
"The immense distance of the fixed stars from our earth, and from each
other, is of all considerations the most proper for raising our ideas of
the works of God. Modern discoveries make it probable that each of these
stars is a sun, having planets and comets revolving round it, as our sun
has the earth and other planets revolving round him.--A ray of light,
though its motion is so quick as to be commonly thought instantaneous,
takes up more time in travelling from the stars to us, than we do in
making a West-India voyage. A sound, which, next to light, is considered
as the quickest body we are acquainted with, would not arrive to us from
thence in 50,000 years. And a cannon-ball, flying at the rate of 480
miles an hour, would not reach us in 700,000 years.
"From what we know of our own system, it may be reasonably concluded,
that all the rest are with equal wisdom contrived, situated, and
provided with accommodations for rational inhabitants.
"What a sublime idea does this suggest to the human imagination, limited
as are its powers, of the works of the Creator! Thousands and thousands
of suns, multiplied without end, and ranged all around us, at immense
distances from each other, attended by ten thousand times ten thousand
worlds, all in rapid motion, yet calm, regular and harmonious,
invariably keeping the paths prescribed them: and these worlds peopled
with myriads of intelligent beings, formed for endless progression in
perfection and felicity!"
The thought that would immediately occur to a dispassionate man in
listening to this statement, would be, What a vast deal am I here called
on to believe!
Now the first rule of sound and sober judgment, in encountering any
story, is that, in proportion to the magnitude and seemingly incredible
nature of the propositions tendered to our belief, should be the
strength and impregnable nature of the evidence by which those
propositions are supported.
It is not here, as in matters of religion, that we are called upon by
authority from on high to believe in mysteries, in things above our
reason, or, as it may be, contrary to our reason. No man pretends to
a revelation from heaven of the truths of astronomy. They have been
brought to light by the faculties of the human mind, exercised upon such
facts and circumstances as our industry has set before us.
To persons not initiated in the rudiments of astronomical science, they
rest upon the great and high-sounding names of Galileo, Kepler, Halley
and Newton. But, though these men are eminently entitled to honour and
gratitude from their fellow-mortals, they do not stand altogether on
the same footing as Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, by whose pens has been
recorded "every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God."
The modest enquirer therefore, without pretending to put himself on an
equality with these illustrious men, may be forgiven, when he permits
himself to suggest a few doubts, and presumes to examine the grounds
upon which he is called upon to believe all that is contained in the
above passages.
Now the foundations upon which astronomy, as here delivered, is built,
are, first, the evidence of our senses, secondly, the calculations of
the mathematician, and, in the third place, moral considerations. These
have been denominated respectively, practical astronomy, scientific, and
theoretical.
As to the first of these, it is impossible for us on this occasion
not to recollect what has so often occurred as to have grown into an
every-day observation, of the fallibility of our senses.
It may be doubted however whether this is a just statement. We are not
deceived by our senses, but deceived in the inference we make from our
sensations. Our sensations respecting what we call the external
world, are chiefly those of length, breadth and solidity, hardness and
softness, heat and cold, colour, smell, sound and taste. The inference
which the generality of mankind make in relation to these sensations
is, that there is something out of ourselves corresponding to the
impressions we receive; in other words, that the causes of our
sensations are like to the sensations themselves. But this is, strictly
speaking, an inference; and, if the cause of a sensation is not like the
sensation, it cannot precisely be affirmed that our senses deceive us.
We know what passes in the theatre of the mind; but we cannot be said
absolutely to know any thing, more.
Modern philosophy has taught us, in certain cases, to controvert the
position, that the causes of our sensations are like to the sensations
themselves. Locke in particular has called the attention of the
reasoning part of mankind to the consideration, that heat and cold,
sweet and bitter, and odour offensive or otherwise, are perceptions,
which imply a percipient being, and cannot exist in inanimate
substances. We might with equal propriety ascribe pain to the whip that
beats us, or pleasure to the slight alternation of contact in the person
or thing that tickles us, as suppose that heat and cold, or taste, or
smell are any thing but sensations.
The same philosophers who have called our attention to these remarks,
have proceeded to shew that the causes of our sensations of sound and
colour have no precise correspondence, do not tally with the sensations
we receive. Sound is the result of a percussion of the air. Colour
is produced by the reflection of the rays of light; so that the same
object, placed in a position, different as to the spectator, but in
itself remaining unaltered, will produce in him a sensation of different
colours, or shades of colour, now blue, now green, now brown, now black,
and so on. This is the doctrine of Newton, as well as of Locke.
It follows that, if there were no percipient being to receive these
sensations, there would be no heat or cold, no taste, no smell, no
sound, and no colour.
Aware of this difference between our sensations in certain cases and
the causes of these sensations, Locke has divided the qualities of
substances in the material universe into primary and secondary, the
sensations we receive of the primary representing the actual qualities
of material substances, but the sensations we receive of what he calls
the secondary having no proper resemblance to the causes that produce
them.
Now, if we proceed in the spirit of severe analysis to examine the
primary qualities of matter, we shall not perhaps find so marked a
distinction between those and the secondary, as the statement of Locke
would have led us to imagine.
The Optics of Newton were published fourteen years later than Locke's
Essay concerning Human Understanding.
In endeavouring to account for the uninterrupted transmission of rays of
light through transparent substances, however hard they may be found to
be, Newton has these observations.
"Bodies are much more rare and porous, than is commonly believed.
Water is nineteen times lighter, and by consequence nineteen times
rarer, than gold; and gold is so rare, as very readily, and without the
least opposition, to transmit the magnetic effluvia, and easily to admit
quicksilver into its pores, and to let water pass through it. From all
which we may conclude, that gold has more pores than solid parts, and by
consequence that water has above forty times more pores than parts. And
he that shall find out an hypothesis, by which water may be so rare,
and yet not capable of compression by force, may doubtless, by the same
hypothesis, make gold, and water, and all other bodies, as much rarer as
he pleases, so that light may find a ready passage through transparent
substances(43)."
(43) Newton, Optics, Book II, Part III, Prop. viii.
Again: "The colours of bodies arise from the magnitude of the particles
that reflect them. Now, if we conceive these particles of bodies to
be so disposed among themselves, that the intervals, or empty spaces
between them, may be equal in magnitude to them all; and that these
particles may be composed of other particles much smaller, which have
as much empty space between them as equals all the magnitudes of these
smaller particles; and that in like manner these smaller particles are
again composed of others much smaller, all which together are equal to
all the pores, or empty spaces, between them; and so on perpetually
till you come to solid particles, such as have no pores, or empty spaces
within them: and if in any gross body there be, for instance, three such
degrees of particles, the least of which are solid; this body will
have seven times more pores than solid parts. But if there be four such
degrees of particles, the least of which are solid, the body will have
fifteen times more pores than solid parts. If there be five degrees, the
body will have one and thirty times more pores than solid parts. If six
degrees, the body will have sixty and three times more pores than solid
parts. And so on perpetually(44)."
(44) Ibid.
In the Queries annexed to the Optics, Newton further suggests an
opinion, that the rays of light are repelled by bodies without immediate
contact. He observes that:
"Where attraction ceases, there a repulsive virtue ought to succeed.
And that there is such a virtue, seems to follow from the reflexions and
inflexions of the rays of light. For the rays are repelled by bodies,
in both these cases, without the immediate contact of the reflecting or
inflecting body. It seems also to follow from the emission of light; the
ray, so soon as it is shaken off from a shining body by the vibrating
motion of the parts of the body, and gets beyond the reach of
attraction, being driven away with exceeding great velocity. For
that force, which is sufficient to turn it back in reflexion, may be
sufficient to emit it. It seems also to follow from the production of
air and vapour: the particles, when they are shaken off from bodies
by heat or fermentation, so soon as they are beyond the reach of the
attraction of the body, receding from it and also from one another, with
great strength; and keeping at a distance, so as sometimes to take up a
million of times more space than they did before, in the form of a dense
body."
Newton was of opinion that matter was made up, in the last resort, of
exceedingly small solid particles, having no pores, or empty spaces
within them. Priestley, in his Disquisitions relating to Matter and
Spirit, carries the theory one step farther; and, as Newton surrounds
his exceedingly small particles with spheres of attraction and
repulsion, precluding in all cases their actual contact, Priestley is
disposed to regard the centre of these spheres as mathematical points
only. If there is no actual contact, then by the very terms no two
particles of matter were ever so near to each other, but that they
might be brought nearer, if a sufficient force could be applied for that
purpose. You had only another sphere of repulsion to conquer; and, as
there never is actual contact, the whole world is made up of one sphere
of repulsion after another, without the possibility of ever arriving at
an end.
"The principles of the Newtonian philosophy," says our author, "were no
sooner known, than it was seen how few in comparison, of the phenomena
of nature, were owing to solid matter, and how much to powers, which
were only supposed to accompany and surround the solid parts of matter.
It has been asserted, and the assertion has never been disproved, that
for any thing we know to the contrary, all the solid matter in the solar
system might be contained within a nutshell(45)."
(45) Priestley, Disquisitions, Section II. I know not by whom this
illustration was first employed. Among other authors, I find, in
Fielding (Joseph Andrews, Book II, Chap. II), a sect of philosophers
spoken of, who "can reduce all the matter of the world into a nutshell."
It is then with senses, from the impressions upon which we are impelled
to draw such false conclusions, and that present us with images
altogether unlike any thing that exists out of ourselves, that we
come to observe the phenomena of what we call the universe. The first
observation that it is here incumbent on us to make, and which we ought
to keep ever at hand, to be applied as occasion may offer, is the
well known aphorism of Socrates, that "we know only this, that we know
nothing." We have no compass to guide us through the pathless waters of
science; we have no revelation, at least on the subject of astronomy,
and of the unnumbered inhabitable worlds that float in the ocean of
ether; and we are bound therefore to sail, as the mariners of ancient
times sailed, always within sight of land. One of the earliest maxims of
ordinary prudence, is that we ought ever to correct the reports of one
sense by the assistance of another sense. The things we here speak of
are not matters of faith; and in them therefore it is but reason, that
we should imitate the conduct of Didymus the apostle, who said, "Except
I put my fingers into the prints of the nails, and thrust my hand into
his side, I will not believe." My eyes report to me an object, as having
a certain magnitude, texture, and roughness or smoothness; but I require
that my hands should confirm to me the evidence of my eyes. I see
something that appears to be an island at an uncertain distance from
the shore; but, if I am actuated by a laudable curiosity, and wish to
possess a real knowledge, I take a boat, and proceed to ascertain by
nearer inspection, whether that which I imagined to be an island is an
island or no.
There are indeed many objects with which we are conversant, that are
in so various ways similar to each other, that, after having carefully
examined a few, we are satisfied upon slighter investigation to admit
the dimensions and character of others. Thus, having measured with a
quadrant the height of a tower, and found on the narrowest search and
comparison that the report of my instrument was right, I yield credit to
this process in another instance, without being at the trouble to verify
its results in any more elaborate method.
The reason why we admit the inference flowing from our examination
in the second instance, and so onward, with less scrupulosity and
scepticism than in the first, is that there is a strict resemblance and
analogy in the two cases. Experience is the basis of our conclusions and
our conduct. I strike against a given object, a nail for example, with
a certain degree of force, because I have remarked in myself and others
the effect of such a stroke. I take food and masticate it, because I
have found that this process contributes to the sound condition of my
body and mind. I scatter certain seeds in my field, and discharge the
other functions of an agriculturist, because I have observed that in due
time the result of this industry is a crop. All the propriety of these
proceedings depends upon the exact analogy between the old case and the
new one. The state of the affair is still the same, when my business
is merely that of an observer and a traveller. I know water from earth,
land from sea, and mountains from vallies, because I have had experience
of these objects, and confidently infer that, when certain appearances
present themselves to my organs of sight, I shall find the same results
to all my other senses, as I found when such appearances occurred to me
before.
But the interval that divides the objects which occur upon and under
the earth, and are accessible in all ways to our examination, on the one
hand, and the lights which are suspended over our heads in the heavens
on the other, is of the broadest and most memorable nature. Human
beings, in the infancy of the world, were contented reverently to behold
these in their calmness and beauty, perhaps to worship them, and to
remark the effects that they produced, or seemed to produce, upon man
and the subjects of his industry. But they did not aspire to measure
their dimensions, to enquire into their internal frame, or to explain
the uses, far removed from our sphere of existence, which they might be
intended to serve.
It is however one of the effects of the improvement of our intellect, to
enlarge our curiosity. The daringness of human enterprise is one of
the prime glories of our nature. It is our boast that we undertake
to "measure earth, weigh air, and state the tides." And, when success
crowns the boldness of our aspirations after what vulgar and timorous
prudence had pronounced impossible, it is then chiefly that we are seen
to participate of an essence divine.
What has not man effected by the boldness of his conceptions and the
adventurousness of his spirit? The achievements of human genius have
appeared so incredible, till they were thoroughly examined, and slowly
established their right to general acceptance, that the great heroes of
intellect were universally regarded by their contemporaries as dealers
in magic, and implements of the devil. The inventor of the art of
printing, that glorious instrument for advancing the march of human
improvement, and the discoverer of the more questionable art of making
gunpowder, alike suffered under this imputation. We have rendered the
seas and the winds instruments of our pleasure, "exhausted the old
world, and then discovered a new one," have drawn down lightning from
heaven, and exhibited equal rights and independence to mankind. Still
however it is incumbent on us to be no less wary and suspicious than
we are bold, and not to imagine, because we have done much, that we are
therefore able to effect every thing.
As was stated in the commencement of this Essay, we know our own
sensations, and we know little more. Matter, whether in its primary
or secondary qualities, is certainly not the sort of thing the vulgar
imagine it to be. The illustrious Berkeley has taught many to doubt of
its existence altogether; and later theorists have gone farther than
this, and endeavoured to shew, that each man, himself while he speaks on
the subject, and you and I while we hear, have no conclusive evidence to
convince us, that we may not, each of us, for aught we know, be the only
thing that exists, an entire universe to ourselves.
We will not however follow these ingenious persons to the startling
extreme to which their speculations would lead us. But, without doing
so, it will not misbecome us to be cautious, and to reflect what we do,
before we take a leap into illimitable space.
SECTION II.
"The sun," we are told, "is a solid body, ninety-five millions of miles
distant from the earth we inhabit, one million times larger in cubic
measurement, and to such a degree impregnated with heat, that a comet,
approaching to it within a certain distance, was by that approximation
raised to a heat two thousand times greater than that of red-hot iron."
It will be acknowledged, that there is in this statement much to
believe; and we shall not be exposed to reasonable blame, if we refuse
to subscribe to it, till we have received irresistible evidence of its
truth.
It has already been observed, that, for the greater part of what we
imagine we know on the surface or in the bowels of the earth, we have,
or may have if we please, the evidence of more than one of our senses,
combining to lead to the same conclusion. For the propositions of
astronomy we have no sensible evidence, but that of sight, and an
imperfect analogy, leading from those visible impressions which we can
verify, to a reliance upon those which we cannot.
The first cardinal particular we meet with in the above statement
concerning the sun, is the term, distance. Now, all that, strictly
speaking, we can affirm respecting the sun and other heavenly bodies,
is that we have the same series of impressions respecting them, that we
have respecting terrestrial objects near or remote, and that there is an
imperfect analogy between the one case and the other.
Before we affirm any thing, as of our own knowledge and competence,
respecting heavenly bodies which are said to be millions of millions
of miles removed from us, it would not perhaps be amiss that we should
possess ourselves of a certain degree of incontestible information, as
to the things which exist on the earth we inhabit. Among these, one of
the subjects attended with a great degree of doubt and obscurity, is the
height of the mountains with which the surface of the globe we inhabit
is diversified. It is affirmed in the received books of elementary
geography, that the Andes are the highest mountains in the world. Morse,
in his American Gazetteer, third edition, printed at Boston in 1810(46),
says, "The height of Chimborazzo, the most elevated point of the vast
chain of the Andes, is 20,280 feet above the level of the sea, which
is 7102 feet higher than any other mountain in the known world:" thus
making the elevation of the mountains of Thibet, or whatever other
rising ground the compiler had in his thought, precisely 13,178 feet
above the level of the sea, and no more. This decision however has
lately been contradicted. Mr. Hugh Murray, in an Account of Discoveries
and Travels in Asia, published in 1820, has collated the reports of
various recent travellers in central Asia; and he states the height
of Chumularee, which he speaks of as the most elevated point of the
mountains of Thibet, as nearly 30,000 feet above the level of the sea.
(46) Article, Andes.
The elevation of mountains, till lately, was in no way attempted to
be ascertained but by the use of the quadrant, and their height was
so generally exaggerated, that Riccioli, one of the most eminent
astronomers of the seventeenth century, gives it as his opinion that
mountains, like the Caucasus, may have a perpendicular elevation of
fifty Italian miles(47). Later observers have undertaken to correct the
inaccuracy of these results through the application of the barometer,
and thus, by informing themselves of the weight of the air at a certain
elevation, proceeding to infer the height of the situation.
(47) Rees, Encyclopedia; article, Mountains.
There are many circumstances, which are calculated to induce a
circumspect enquirer to regard the affirmative positions of astronomy,
as they are delivered by the most approved modern writers, with
considerable diffidence.
They are founded, as has already been said, next to the evidence of our
senses, upon the deductions of mathematical knowledge.
Mathematics are either pure or mixed.
Pure mathematics are concerned only with abstract propositions, and have
nothing to do with the realities of nature. There is no such thing in
actual existence as a mathematical point, line or surface. There is no
such thing as a circle or square. But that is of no consequence. We can
define them in words, and reason about them. We can draw a diagram, and
suppose that line to be straight which is not really straight, and that
figure to be a circle which is not strictly a circle. It is conceived
therefore by the generality of observers, that mathematics is the
science of certainty.
But this is not strictly the case. Mathematics are like those abstract
and imaginary existences about which they are conversant. They may
constitute in themselves, and in the apprehension of an infallible
being, a science of certainty. But they come to us mixed and
incorporated with our imperfections. Our faculties are limited; and we
may be easily deceived, as to what it is that we see with transparent
and unerring clearness, and what it is that comes to us through a
crooked medium, refracting and distorting the rays of primitive truth.
We often seem clear, when in reality the twilight of undistinguishing
night has crept fast and far upon us. In a train of deductions, as
in the steps of an arithmetical process, an error may have insinuated
itself imperceptibly at a very early stage, rendering all the subsequent
steps a wandering farther and farther from the unadulterated truth.
Human mathematics, so to speak, like the length of life, are subject to
the doctrine of chances. Mathematics may be the science of certainty to
celestial natures, but not to man.
But, if in the case of pure mathematics, we are exposed to the chances
of error and delusion, it is much worse with mixed mathematics.
The moment we step out of the high region of abstraction, and apply
ourselves to what we call external nature, we have forfeited that sacred
character and immunity, which we seemed entitled to boast, so long as
we remained inclosed in the sanctuary of unmingled truth. As has already
been said, we know what passes in the theatre of the mind; but we cannot
be said absolutely to know any thing more. In our speculations upon
actual existences we are not only subject to the disadvantages which
arise from the limited nature of our faculties, and the errors which may
insensibly creep upon us in the process. We are further exposed to the
operation of the unevennesses and irregularities that perpetually
occur in external nature, the imperfection of our senses, and of the
instruments we construct to assist our observations, and the discrepancy
which we frequently detect between the actual nature of the things about
us and our impressions respecting them.
This is obvious, whenever we undertake to apply the processes of
arithmetic to the realities of life. Arithmetic, unsubjected to the
impulses of passion and the accidents of created nature, holds on its
course; but, in the phenomena of the actual world, "time and chance
happeneth to them all."
Thus it is, for example, in the arithmetical and geometrical ratios, set
up in political economy by the celebrated Mr. Malthus. His numbers will
go on smoothly enough, 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, as representing the principle
of population among mankind, and 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, the means of
subsistence; but restiff and uncomplying nature refuses to conform
herself to his dicta.
Dr. Price has calculated the produce of one penny, put out at the
commencement of the Christian era to five per cent. compound interest,
and finds that in the year 1791 it would have increased to a greater sum
than would be contained in three hundred millions of earths, all solid
gold. But what has this to do with the world in which we live? Did
ever any one put out his penny to interest in this fashion for eighteen
hundred years? And, if he did, where was the gold to be found, to
satisfy his demand?
Morse, in his American Gazetteer, proceeding on the principles of
Malthus, tells us that, if the city of New York goes on increasing for
a century in a certain ratio, it will by that time contain 5,257,493
inhabitants. But does any one, for himself or his posterity, expect to
see this realised?
Blackstone, in his Commentaries on the Laws of England, has observed
that, as every man has two ancestors in the first ascending degree,
and four in the second, so in the twentieth degree he has more than a
million, and in the fortieth the square of that number, or upwards of a
million millions. This statement therefore would have a greater tendency
to prove that mankind in remote ages were numerous, almost beyond the
power of figures to represent, than the opposite doctrine of Malthus,
that they have a perpetual tendency to such increase as would infallibly
bring down the most tremendous calamities on our posterity.
Berkeley, whom I have already referred to on another subject, and who
is admitted to be one of our profoundest philosophers, has written
a treatise(48) to prove, that the mathematicians, who object to the
mysteries supposed to exist in revealed religion, "admit much greater
mysteries, and even falshoods in science, of which he alleges the
doctrine of fluxions as an eminent example(49)." He observes, that their
conclusions are established by virtue of a twofold error, and that these
errors, being in contrary directions, are supposed to compensate each
other, the expounders of the doctrine thus arriving at what they call
truth, without being able to shew how, or by what means they have
arrived at it.
(48) The Analyst.
(49) Life of Berkeley, prefixed to his Works.
It is a memorable and a curious speculation to reflect, upon how slight
grounds the doctrine of "thousands and thousands of suns, multiplied
without end, and ranged all around us, at immense distances from
each other, and attended by ten thousand times ten thousand worlds,"
mentioned in the beginning of this Essay, is built. It may be all true.
But, true or false, it cannot be without its use to us, carefully
to survey the road upon which we are advancing, the pier which human
enterprise has dared to throw out into the vast ocean of Cimmerian
darkness. We have constructed a pyramid, which throws into unspeakable
contempt the vestiges of ancient Egyptian industry: but it stands upon
its apex; it trembles with every breeze; and momentarily threatens to
overwhelm in its ruins the fearless undertakers that have set it up.
It gives us a mighty and sublime idea of the nature of man, to think
with what composure and confidence a succession of persons of the
greatest genius have launched themselves in illimitable space, with
what invincible industry they have proceeded, wasting the midnight oil,
racking their faculties, and almost wearing their organs to dust, in
measuring the distance of Sirius and the other fixed stars, the velocity
of light, and "the myriads of intelligent beings formed for endless
progression in perfection and felicity," that people the numberless
worlds of which they discourse. The illustrious names of Copernicus,
Galileo, Gassendi, Kepler, Halley and Newton impress us with awe; and,
if the astronomy they have opened before us is a romance, it is at least
a romance more seriously and perseveringly handled than any other in the
annals of literature.
A vulgar and a plain man would unavoidably ask the astronomers, How came
you so familiarly acquainted with the magnitude and qualities of the
heavenly bodies, a great portion of which, by your own account, are
millions of millions of miles removed from us? But, I believe, it is not
the fashion of the present day to start so rude a question. I have just
turned over an article on Astronomy in the Encyclopaedia Londinensis,
consisting of one hundred and thirty-three very closely printed quarto
pages, and in no corner of this article is any evidence so much as
hinted at. Is it not enough? Newton and his compeers have said it.
The whole doctrine of astronomy rests upon trigonometry, a branch of the
science of mathematics which teaches us, having two sides and one angle,
or two angles and one side, of a triangle given us, to construct the
whole. To apply this principle therefore to the heavenly bodies, it is
necessary for us to take two stations, the more remote from each other
the better, from which our observations should be made. For the sake
of illustration we will suppose them to be taken at the extremes of the
earth's diameter, in other words, nearly eight thousand miles apart from
each other, the thing itself having never been realised to that
extent. From each of these stations we will imagine a line to be drawn,
terminating in the sun. Now it seems easy, by means of a quadrant, to
find the arch of a circle (in other words, the angle) included between
these lines terminating in the sun, and the base formed by a right line
drawn from one of these stations to the other, which in this case is
the length of the earth's diameter. I have therefore now the three
particulars required to enable me to construct my triangle. And,
according to the most approved astronomical observations hitherto made,
I have an isosceles triangle, eight thousand miles broad at its base,
and ninety-five millions of miles in the length of each of the sides
reaching from the base to the apex.
It is however obvious to the most indifferent observer, that the more
any triangle, or other mathematical diagram, falls within the limits
which our senses can conveniently embrace, the more securely, when our
business is practical, and our purpose to apply the result to external
objects, can we rely on the accuracy of our results. In a case therefore
like the present, where the base of our isosceles triangle is to the
other two sides as eight units to twelve thousand, it is impossible
not to perceive that it behoves us to be singularly diffident as to the
conclusion at which we have arrived, or rather it behoves us to take for
granted that we are not unlikely to fall into the most important error.
We have satisfied ourselves that the sides of the triangle including
the apex, do not form an angle, till they have arrived at the extent of
ninety-five millions of miles. How are we sure that they do then? May
not lines which have reached to so amazing a length without meeting, be
in reality parallel lines? If an angle is never formed, there can be no
result. The whole question seems to be incommensurate to our faculties.
It being obvious that this was a very unsatisfactory scheme for arriving
at the knowledge desired, the celebrated Halley suggested another
method, in the year 1716, by an observation to be taken at the time of
the transit of Venus over the sun(50).
(50) Philosophical Transactions, Vol. XXIX, p. 454.
It was supposed that we were already pretty accurately acquainted with
the distance of the moon from the earth, it being so much nearer to us,
by observing its parallax, or the difference of its place in the heavens
as seen from the surface of the earth, from that in which it would
appear if seen from its centre(51). But the parallax of the sun is so
exceedingly small, as scarcely to afford the basis of a mathematical
calculation(52). The parallax of Venus is however almost four times as
great as that of the sun; and there must therefore be a very sensible
difference between the times in which Venus may be seen passing over
the sun from different parts of the earth. It was on this account
apprehended, that the parallax of the sun, by means of observations
taken from different places at the time of the transit of Venus in 1761
and 1769, might be ascertained with a great degree of precision(53).
(51) Bonnycastle, Astronomy, 7th edition, p. 262, et seq.
(52) Ibid, p. 268.
(53) Phil. Transactions, Vol. XXIX, p. 457.
But the imperfectness of our instruments and means of observation
have no small tendency to baffle the ambition of man in these curious
investigations.
"The true quantity of the moon's parallax," says Bonnycastle, "cannot be
accurately determined by the methods ordinarily resorted to, on account
of the varying declination of the moon, and the inconstancy of the
horizontal refractions, which are perpetually changing according to the
state the atmosphere is in at the time. For the moon continues but for
a short time in the equinoctial, and the refraction at a mean rate
elevates her apparent place near the horizon, half as much as her
parallax depresses it(54)."
(54) Astronomy, p. 265.
"It is well known that the parallax of the sun can never exceed nine
seconds, or the four-hundredth part of a degree(55)." "Observations,"
says Halley, "made upon the vibrations of a pendulum, to determine these
exceedingly small angles, are not sufficiently accurate to be depended
upon; for by this method of ascertaining the parallax, it will sometimes
come out to be nothing, or even negative; that is, the distance will
either be infinite, or greater than infinite, which is absurd. And, to
confess the truth, it is hardly possible for a person to distinguish
seconds with certainty by any instruments, however skilfully they may
be made; and therefore it is not to be wondered at, that the excessive
nicety of this matter should have eluded the many ingenious endeavours
of the most able opetators."(56).
(55) Ibid, p. 268.
(56) Phil. Transactions, Vol. XXIX, p. 456.
Such are the difficulties that beset the subject on every side. It is
for the impartial and dispassionate observers who have mastered all the
subtleties of the science, if such can be found, to determine
whether the remedies that have been resorted to to obviate the above
inaccuracies and their causes, have fulfilled their end, and are not
exposed to similar errors. But it would be vain to expect the persons,
who have "scorned delights, and lived laborious days" to possess
themselves of the mysteries of astronomy, should be impartial and
dispassionate, or be disposed to confess, even to their own minds, that
their researches were useless, and their labours ended in nothing.
It is further worthy of our attention, that the instruments with which
we measure the distance of the earth from the sun and the planets, are
the very instruments which have been pronounced upon as incompetent in
measuring the heights of mountains(57). In the latter case therefore we
have substituted a different mode for arriving at the truth, which
is supposed to be attended with greater precision: but we have no
substitute to which we can resort, to correct the mistakes into which we
may fall respecting the heavenly bodies.
(57) See above, Essay XXI.
The result of the uncertainty which adheres to all astronomical
observations is such as might have been expected. Common readers
are only informed of the latest adjustment of the question, and are
therefore unavoidably led to believe that the distance of the sun
from the earth, ever since astronomy became entitled to the name of
a science, has by universal consent been recognised as ninety-five
millions of miles, or, as near as may be, twenty-four thousand
semi-diameters of the earth. But how does the case really stand?
Copernicus and Tycho Brahe held the distance to be twelve hundred
semi-diameters; Kepler, who is received to have been perhaps the
greatest astronomer that any age has produced, puts it down as three
thousand five hundred semi-diameters; since his time, Riccioli as seven
thousand; Hevelius as five thousand two hundred and fifty(58); some
later astronomers, mentioned by Halley, as fourteen thousand; and Halley
himself as sixteen thousand five hundred(59).
(58) They were about thirty and forty years younger than Kepler
respectively.
(59) Halley, apud Philosophical Transactions, Vol. XXIX, p. 455.
The doctrine of fluxions is likewise called in by the astronomers in
their attempts to ascertain the distance and magnitude of the different
celestial bodies which compose the solar system; and in this way their
conclusions become subject to all the difficulties which Berkeley has
alleged against that doctrine.
Kepler has also supplied us with another mode of arriving at the
distance and size of the sun and the planets: he has hazarded a
conjecture, that the squares of the times of the revolution of the earth
and the other planets are in proportion to the cubes of their distances
from the sun, their common centre; and, as by observation we can
arrive with tolerable certainty at a knowledge of the times of their
revolutions, we may from hence proceed to the other matters we are
desirous to ascertain. And that which Kepler seemed, as by a divine
inspiration, to hazard in the way of conjecture, Newton professes to
have demonstratively established. But the demonstration of Newton has
not been considered as satisfactory by all men of science since his
time.
Thus far however we proceed as we may, respecting our propositions on
the subject of the solar system. But, beyond this, all science, real or
pretended, deserts us. We have no method for measuring angles, which can
be applied to the fixed stars; and we know nothing of any revolutions
they perform. All here therefore seems gratuitous: we reason from
certain alleged analogies; and we can do no more.
Huygens endeavoured to ascertain something on the subject, by making the
aperture of a telescope so small, that the sun should appear through it
no larger than Sirius, which he found to be only in the proportion of 1
to 27,664 times his diameter, as seen by the naked eye. Hence, supposing
Sirius to be a globe of the same magnitude as the sun, it must be 27,664
times as distant from us as the sun, in other words, at a distance so
considerable as to equal 345 million diameters of the earth(60). Every
one must feel on how slender a thread this conclusion is suspended.
(60) Encyclopaedia Londinensis, Vol. 11, p. 407.
And yet, from this small postulate, the astronomers proceed to deduce
the most astounding conclusions. They tell us, that the distance of the
nearest fixed star from the earth is at least 7,600,000,000,000 miles,
and of another they name, not less than 38 millions of millions of
miles. A cannon-ball therefore, proceeding at the rate of about twenty
miles in a minute would be 760,000 years in passing from us to the
nearest fixed star, and 3,800,000 in passing to the second star of which
we speak. Huygens accordingly concluded, that it was not impossible,
that there might be stars at such inconceivable distances from us, that
their light has not yet reached the earth since its creation(61).
(61) Ibid, p. 408.
The received system of the universe, founded upon these so called
discoveries, is that each of the stars is a sun, having planets and
comets revolving round it, as our sun has the earth and other
planets revolving round him. It has been found also by the successive
observations of astronomers, that a star now and then is totally lost,
and that a new star makes its appearance which had never been remarked
before: and this they explain into the creation of a new system from
time to time by the Almighty author of the universe, and the destruction
of an old system worn out with age(62). We must also remember the power
of attraction every where diffused through infinite space, by means
of which, as Herschel assures us, in great length of time a nebula,
or cluster of stars, may be formed, while the projectile force they
received in the beginning may prevent them from all coming together, at
least for millions of ages. Some of these nebulae, he adds, cannot well
be supposed to be at a less distance from us than six or eight thousand
times the distance of Sirius(63). Kepler however denies that each star,
of those which distinctly present themselves to our sight, can have its
system of planets as our sun has, and considers them as all fixed in the
same surface or sphere; since, if one of them were twice or thrice
as remote as another, it would, supposing their real magnitudes to be
equal, appear to be twice or thrice as small, whereas there is not in
their apparent magnitudes the slightest difference(64).
(62) Encycl. Lond. Vol. II, p. 411.
(63) Ibid, p. 348.
(64) Ibid, p. 411.
Certainly the astronomers are a very fortunate and privileged race of
men, who talk to us in this oracular way of "the unseen things of God
from the creation of the world," hanging up their conclusions upon
invisible hooks, while the rest of mankind sit listening gravely to
their responses, and unreservedly "acknowledging that their science is
the most sublime, the most interesting, and the most useful of all the
sciences cultivated by man(65)."
(65) Ferguson, Astronomy, Section 1.
We have a sensation, which we call the sensation of distance. It comes
to us from our sight and our other senses. It does not come immediately
by the organ of sight. It has been proved, that the objects we see,
previously to the comparison and correction of the reports of the organ
of sight with those of the other senses, do not suggest to us the idea
of distance, but that on the contrary whatever we see seems to touch the
eye, even as the objects of the sense of feeling touch the skin.
But, in proportion as we compare the impressions made upon our organs of
sight with the impressions made on the other senses, we come gradually
to connect with the objects we see the idea of distance. I put out
my hand, and find at first that an object of my sense of sight is not
within the reach of my hand. I put out my hand farther, or by walking
advance my body in the direction of the object, and I am enabled to
reach it. From smaller experiments I proceed to greater. I walk towards
a tree or a building, the figure of which presents itself to my eye,
but which I find upon trial to have been far from me. I travel towards
a place that I cannot see, but which I am told lies in a certain
direction. I arrive at the place. It is thus, that by repeated
experiments I acquire the idea of remote distances.
To confine ourselves however to the question of objects, which without
change of place I can discover by the sense of sight. I can see a town,
a tower, a mountain at a considerable distance. Let us suppose that the
limit of my sight, so far as relates to objects on the earth, is one
hundred miles. I can travel towards such an object, and thus ascertain
by means of my other senses what is its real distance. I can also employ
certain instruments, invented by man, to measure heights, suppose of
a tower, and, by experiments made in ways independent of these
instruments, verify or otherwise the report of these instruments.
The height of the Monument of London is something more than two hundred
feet. Other elevations, the produce of human labour, are considerably
higher. It is in the nature of the mind, that we conclude from the
observation that we have verified, to the accuracy of another, bearing
a striking analogy to the former, that we have not verified. But analogy
has its limits. Is it of irresistible certainty, or is it in fact to
be considered as approaching to certainty, because we have verified
an observation extending to several hundred feet, that an observation
extending to ninety-five millions of miles, or to the incredible
distances of which Herschel so familiarly talks, is to be treated as
a fact, or laid down as a principle in science? Is it reasonable to
consider two propositions as analogous, when the thing affirmed in the
one is in dimension many million times as great as the thing affirmed
in the other? The experience we have had as to the truth of the smaller,
does it authorise us to consider the larger as unquestionable? That
which I see with a bay of the sea or a wide river between, though it
may appear very like something with which I am familiar at home, do I
immediately affirm it to be of the same species and nature, or do I not
regard it with a certain degree of scepticism, especially if, along with
the resemblance in some points, it differs essentially, as for example
in magnitude, in other points? We have a sensation, and we enquire into
its cause. This is always a question of some uncertainty. Is its cause
something of absolute and substantive existence without me, or is it
not? Is its cause something of the very same nature, as the thing that
gave me a similar sensation in a matter of comparatively a pigmy and
diminutive extension?
All these questions an untrained and inquisitive mind will ask itself
in the propositions of astronomy. We must believe or not, as we think
proper or reasonable. We have no way of verifying the propositions by
the trial of our senses. There they lie, to be received by us in
the construction that first suggests itself to us, or not. They
are something like an agreeable imagination or fiction: and a sober
observer, in cold blood, will be disposed deliberately to weigh both
sides of the question, and to judge whether the probability lies in
favour of the actual affirmation of the millions of millions of miles,
and the other incredible propositions of the travelling of light, and
the rest, which even the most cautious and sceptical of the retainers of
modern astronomy, find themselves compelled to receive.
But I shall be told, that the results of our observations of the
distances of the heavenly bodies are unvaried. We have measured the
distances and other phenomena of the sun, the moon, Mercury, Venus,
Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and their satellites, and they all fall into a
grand system, so as to convey to every unprejudiced mind the conviction
that this system is the truth itself. If we look at them day after day,
and year after year, we see them for ever the same, and performing
the same divine harmony. Successive astronomers in different ages and
countries have observed the celestial orbs, and swept the heavens, and
for ever bring us back the same story of the number, the dimensions,
the distances, and the arrangement of the heavenly bodies which form the
subject of astronomical science.
This we have seen indeed not to be exactly the case. But, if it were, it
would go a very little way towards proving the point it was brought to
prove. It would shew that, the sensations and results being similar, the
causes of those results must be similar to each other, but it would not
shew that the causes were similar to the sensations produced. Thus, in
the sensations which belong to taste, smell, sound, colour, and to those
of heat and cold, there is all the uniformity which would arise,
when the real external causes bore the most exact similitude to the
perceptions they generate; and yet it is now universally confessed that
tastes, scents, sounds, colours, and heat and cold do not exist out
of ourselves. All that we are entitled therefore to conclude as to the
magnitudes and distances of the heavenly bodies, is, that the causes of
our sensations and perceptions, whatever they are, are not less uniform
than the sensations and perceptions themselves.
It is further alleged, that we calculate eclipses, and register the
various phenomena of the heavenly bodies. Thales predicted an eclipse of
the sun, which took place nearly six hundred years before the Christian
era. The Babylonians, the Persians, the Hindoos, and the Chinese early
turned their attention to astronomy. Many of their observations were
accurately recorded; and their tables extend to a period of three
thousand years before the birth of Christ. Does not all this strongly
argue the solidity of the science to which they belong? Who, after
this, will have the presumption to question, that the men who profess
astronomy proceed on real grounds, and have a profound knowledge of
these things, which at first sight might appear to be set at a distance
so far removed from our ken?
The answer to this is easy. I believe in all the astronomy that was
believed by Thales. I do not question the statements relative to the
heavenly bodies that were delivered by the wise men of the East. But the
supposed discoveries that were made in the eighteenth, and even in the
latter part of the seventeenth century, purporting to ascertain the
precise distance of the sun, the planets, and even of the fixed stars,
are matters entirely distinct from this.
Among the earliest astronomers of Greece were Thales, Anaximander,
Anaximenes and Anaxagoras. Thales, we are told, held that the earth is
a sphere or globe, Anaximenes that it is like a round, flat table;
Anaximander that the sun is like a chariot-wheel, and is twenty-eight
times larger than the earth. Anaxagoras was put in prison for affirming
that the sun was by many degrees larger than the whole Peloponnesus(66).
Kepler is of opinion that all the stars are at an equal distance from
us, and are fixed in the same surface or sphere.
(66) Plutarch, De Placitis Philosophorum. Diogenes Laertius.
In reality the observations and the facts of astronomy do not depend
either upon the magnitudes or the distances of the heavenly bodies. They
proceed in the first place upon what may lie seen with the naked eye.
They require an accurate and persevering attention. They may be assisted
by telescopes. But they relate only to the sun and the planets. We are
bound to ascertain, as nearly as possible, the orbits described by the
different bodies in the solar system: but this has still nothing to do,
strictly speaking, with their magnitudes or distances. It is required
that we should know them in their relations to each other; but it is no
preliminary of just, of practical, it might almost be said, of liberal
science, that we should know any thing of them absolutely.
The unlimited ambition of the nature of man has discovered itself in
nothing more than this, the amazing superstructure which the votaries
of contemplation within the last two hundred years have built upon the
simple astronomy of the ancients. Having begun to compute the distances
of miles by millions, it appears clearly that nothing can arrest the
more than eagle-flight of the human mind. The distance of the
nearest fixed star from the earth, we are informed, is at least
7,000,000,000,000 miles, and of another which the astronomers name, not
less than 38 millions of millions of miles. The particles of light are
said to travel 193,940 miles in every second, which is above a million
times swifter than the progress of a cannon-ball(67). And Herschel
has concluded, that the light issuing from the faintest nebulae he
has discovered, must have been at this rate two millions of years in
reaching the Barth(68).
(67) Ferguson, Section 216. "Light moves," says Brewster, Optics, p. 2,
"from one pole of the earth to the other in the 24th part of a second: a
velocity which surpasses all comprehension."
(68) Brinkley, Astronomy, p. 130.
SECTION III.
The next process of the modern astronomer is to affirm the innumerable
orbs around us, discovered with the naked eye, or with which we are made
acquainted by the aid of telescopes, to be all stocked with rational
inhabitants. The argument for this is, that an all-wise and omnipotent
creator could never have produced such immense bodies, dispersed through
infinite space, for any meaner purpose, than that of peopling them with
"intelligent beings, formed for endless progression in perfection and
felicity(69)."
(69) See above, Essay XXI.
Now it appears to me, that, in these assertions, the modern astronomers
are taking upon themselves somewhat too boldly, to expound the counsels
of that mysterious power, to which the universe is indebted for its
arrangement and order.
We know nothing of God but from his works. Certain speculative men have
adventured to reason upon the source of all the system and the wonders
that we behold, a priori, and, having found that the creator is all
powerful, all wise, and of infinite goodness, according to their ideas
of power, wisdom and goodness, have from thence proceeded to draw their
inferences, and to shew us in what manner the works of his hands are
arranged and conducted by him. This no doubt they have done with the
purest intentions in the world; but it is not certain, that their
discretion has equalled the boldness of their undertaking.
The world that we inhabit, this little globe of earth, is to us an
infinite mystery. Human imagination is unable to conceive any thing more
consummate than the great outline of things below. The trees and the
skies, the mountains and the seas, the rivers and the springs, appear as
if the design had been to realise the idea of paradise. The freshness of
the air, the silvery light of day, the magnificence of the clouds,
the gorgeous and soothing colouring of the world, the profusion and
exquisiteness of the fruits and flowers of the earth, are as if nothing
but joy and delicious sensations had been intended for us. When we
ascend to the animal creation, the scene is still more admirable and
transporting. The birds and the beasts, the insects that skim the air,
and the fishes that live in the great deep, are a magazine of wonders,
that we may study for ever, without fear of arriving at the end of their
excellence. Last of all, comes the crown of the creation, man, formed
with looks erect, to commerce with the skies. What a masterpiece of
workmanship is his form, while the beauty and intelligence of Gods seems
to manifest itself in his countenance! Look at that most consummate of
all implements, the human hand; think of his understanding, how composed
and penetrating; of the wealth of his imagination; of the resplendent
virtues he is qualified to display! "How wonderful are thy works, Oh
God; in wisdom hast thou created them all!"
But there are other parts of the system in which we live, which do not
seem to correspond with those already enumerated. Before we proceed to
people infinite space, it would be as well, if we surveyed the surface
of the earth we inhabit. What vast deserts do we find in it; what
immense tracks of burning sands! One half of the globe is perhaps
irreclaimable to the use of man. Then let us think of earthquakes and
tempests, of wasting hurricanes, and the number of vessels, freighted
with human beings, that are yearly buried in the caverns of the ocean.
Let us call to mind in man, the prime ornament of the creation, all the
diseases to which his frame is subject,
Convulsions, epilepsies, fierce catarrhs,
Intestine stone and ulcer, colic pangs,
Demoniac frenzy, moping melancholy,
And moon-struck madness, pining atrophy,
Marasmus, and wide-wasting pestilence,
Dropsies, and asthmas, and joint-racking rheums.
The very idea of our killing, and subsisting upon the flesh of animals,
surely somewhat jars with our conceptions of infinite benevolence.
But, when we look at the political history of man, the case is
infinitely worse. This too often seems one tissue of misery and vice.
War, conquest, oppression, tyranny, slavery, insurrections, massacres,
cruel punishments, degrading corporal infliction, and the extinction of
life under the forms of law, are to be found in almost every page. It is
as if an evil demon were let loose upon us, and whole nations, from one
decad of years to another, were struck with the most pernicious madness.
Certain reasoners tell us that this is owing to the freedom of will,
without which man could not exist. But here we are presented with an
alternative, from which it is impossible for human understanding to
escape. Either God, according to our ideas of benevolence, would remove
evil out of the world, and cannot; or he can, and will not. If he has
the will and not the power, this argues weakness; if he has the power
and not the will, this seems to be malevolence.
Let us descend from the great stage of the nations, and look into the
obscurities of private misery. Which of us is happy? What bitter springs
of misery overflow the human heart, and are borne by us in silence! What
cruel disappointments beset us! To what struggles are we doomed, while
we struggle often in vain! The human heart seems framed, as if to be the
capacious receptacle of all imaginable sorrows. The human frame seems
constructed, as if all its fibres were prepared to sustain varieties
of torment. "In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread, till thou
return to the earth." But how often does that sweat prove ineffective!
There are men of whom sorrow seems to be the destiny, from which they
can never escape. There are hearts, into which by their constitution
it appears as if serenity and content could never enter, but which
are given up to all the furious passions, or are for ever the prey of
repining and depression.
Ah, little think the gay, licentious proud,
Whom pleasure, power and affluence surround,
How many pine in want! How many shrink
Into the sordid hut, how many drink
The cup of grief, and eat the bitter bread
Of misery!
And, which aggravates the evil, almost all the worst vices, the most
unprincipled acts, and the darkest passions of the human mind, are bred
out of poverty and distress. Satan, in the Book of Job, says to the
Almighty, "Thou hast blessed the work of thy servant, and his substance
is increased in the land. But put forth thy hand now, and take away all
that he hath; and he will curse thee to thy face." The prayer of Agar
runs, "Feed me with food convenient for me; lest I be poor, and steal,
and take the name of my God in vain."
It is with a deep knowledge of the scenes of life, that the prophet
pronounces, "My thoughts are not your thoughts; neither are your ways my
ways, saith the Lord."
All reflecting persons, who have surveyed the state of the world in
which we live, have been struck with the contrarieties of sublunary
things; and many hypotheses have been invented to solve the enigma. Some
have maintained the doctrine of two principles, Oromasdes and Arimanius,
the genius of good and of evil, who are perpetually contending with each
other which shall have the greatest sway in the fortunes of the world,
and each alternately acquiring the upper hand. Others have inculcated
the theory of the fall of man, that God at first made all things
beautiful and good, but that man has incurred his displeasure, and been
turned out of the paradise for which he was destined. Hence, they say,
has arisen the corruption of our nature. "There is none that cloth good,
no, not one. That every mouth may be stopped, and all the world become
guilty before God." But the solution that has been most generally
adopted, particularly in later days, is that of a future state of
retribution, in which all the inequalities of our present condition
shall be removed, the tears of the unfortunate and the sufferer shall be
wiped from their eyes, and their agonies and miseries compensated. This,
in other words, independently of the light of revelation, is to infer
infinite wisdom and benevolence from what we see, and then, finding
the actual phenomena not to correspond with our theories, to invent
something of which we have no knowledge, to supply the deficiency.
The astronomer however proceeds from what we see of the globe of earth,
to fashion other worlds of which we have no direct knowledge. Finding
that there is no part of the soil of the earth into which our wanderings
can penetrate, that is not turned to the account of rational and happy
beings, creatures capable of knowing and adoring their creator, that
nature does nothing in vain, and that the world is full of the evidences
of his unmingled beneficence, according to our narrow and imperfect
ideas of beneficence, (for such ought to be our premises) we proceed to
construct millions of worlds upon the plan we have imagined. The earth
is a globe, the planets are globes, and several of them larger than our
earth: the earth has a moon; several of the planets have satellites: the
globe we dwell in moves in an orbit round the sun; so do the planets:
upon these premises, and no more, we hold ourselves authorised to affirm
that they contain "myriads of intelligent beings, formed for endless
progression in perfection and felicity." Having gone thus far, we next
find that the fixed stars bear a certain resemblance to the sun; and, as
the sun has a number of planets attendant on him, so, we say, has each
of the fixed stars, composing all together "ten thousand times ten
thousand" habitable worlds.
All this is well, so long as we view it as a bold and ingenious
conjecture. On any other subject it would be so regarded; and we
should consider it as reserved for the amusement and gratification of
a fanciful visionary in the hour, when he gives up the reins to his
imagination. But, backed as it is by a complexity of geometrical right
lines and curves, and handed forth to us in large quartos, stuffed with
calculations, it experiences a very different fortune. We are told that,
"by the knowledge we derive from astronomy, our faculties are enlarged,
our minds exalted, and our understandings clearly convinced, and
affected with the conviction, of the existence, wisdom, power, goodness,
immutability and superintendency of the supreme being; so that, without
an hyperbole, 'an undevout astronomer is mad(e)(70).'"
(70) Ferguson, Astronomy, Section I.
It is singular, how deeply I was impressed with this representation,
while I was a schoolboy, and was so led to propose a difficulty to the
wife of the master. I said, "I find that we have millions of worlds
round us peopled with rational creatures. I know not that we have any
decisive reason for supposing these creatures more exalted, than the
wonderful species of which we are individuals. We are imperfect; they
are imperfect. We fell; it is reasonable to suppose that they have
fallen also. It became necessary for the second person in the trinity to
take upon him our nature, and by suffering for our sins to appease
the wrath of his father. I am unwilling to believe that he has less
commiseration for the inhabitants of other planets. But in that case it
may be supposed that since the creation he has been making a circuit of
the planets, and dying on the cross for the sins of rational creatures
in uninterrupted succession." The lady was wiser than I, admonished me
of the danger of being over-inquisitive, and said we should act more
discreetly in leaving those questions to the judgment of the Almighty.
But thus far we have reasoned only on one side of the question. Our
pious sentiments have led us to magnify the Lord in all his works, and,
however imperfect the analogy, and however obscure the conception we
can form of the myriads of rational creatures, all of them no doubt
infinitely varied in their nature, their structure and faculties, yet to
view the whole scheme with an undoubting persuasion of its truth. It is
however somewhat in opposition to the ideas of piety formed by our less
adventurous ancestors, that we should usurp the throne of God,
Snatch from his hand the balance and the rod,
and, by means of our telescopes and our calculations, penetrate into
mysteries not originally intended for us. According to the received
Mosaic chronology we are now in the five thousand eight hundred and
thirty-fifth year from the creation: the Samaritan version adds to
this date. It is therefore scarcely in the spirit of a Christian, that
Herschel talks to us of a light, which must have been two millions of
years in reaching the earth.
Moses describes the operations of the Almighty, in one of the six
days devoted to the work of creation, as being to place "lights in the
firmament of heaven, to divide the day from the night, to be for signs
and for seasons, and for days and years, and to give light upon the
earth; two great lights, the greater to rule the day, and the lesser the
night; and the stars also." And Christ, prophesying what is to happen
in the latter days, says, "The sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall
not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven." Whatever
therefore be the piety of the persons, who talk to us of "ten thousand
times ten thousand worlds, all peopled with rational creatures," it
certainly is not a piety in precise accordance with the Christian
scriptures.
SECTION IV. It is also no more than just, that we should bear in mind
the apparent fitness or otherwise, of these bodies, so far as we are
acquainted with them, for the dwelling-place of rational creatures. Not
to mention the probable extreme coldness of Jupiter and Saturn, the heat
of the sunbeams in the planet Mercury is understood to be such as
that water would unavoidably boil and be carried away(71), and we can
scarcely imagine any living substance that would not be dissolved and
dispersed in such an atmosphere. The moon, of which, as being so much
nearer to us, we may naturally be supposed to know most, we are told
by the astronomers has no water and no atmosphere, or, if any, such an
atmosphere as would not sustain clouds and ascending vapour. To our eye,
as seen through the telescope, it appears like a metallic substance,
which has been burned by fire, and so reduced into the ruined and ragged
condition in which we seem to behold it. The sun appears to be still
less an appropriate habitation for rational, or for living creatures,
than any of the planets. The comets, which describe an orbit so
exceedingly eccentric, and are subject to all the excessive vicissitudes
of heat and cold, are, we are told, admirably adapted for a scene
of eternal, or of lengthened punishment for those who have acquitted
themselves ill in a previous state of probation. Buffon is of opinion,
that all the planets in the solar system were once so many portions of
our great luminary, struck off from the sun by the blow of a comet, and
so having received a projectile impulse calculated to carry them
forward in a right line, at the same time that the power of attraction
counteracts this impulse, and gives them that compound principle of
motion which retains them in an orbicular course. In this sense it may
be said that all the planets were suns; while on the contrary Herschel
pronounces, that the sun itself is a planet, an opake body, richly
stored with inhabitants(72).
(71) Encyclopaedia Londinensis, Vol. II, p. 355.
(72) Philosophical Transactions for 1795, p. 68.
The modern astronomers go on to account to us for the total
disappearance of a star in certain cases, which, they say, may be in
reality the destruction of a system, such as that of our sun and its
attendant planets, while the appearance of a new star may, in like
manner, be the occasional creation of a new system of planets. "We ought
perhaps," says Herschel, "to look upon certain clusters of stars, and
the destruction of a star now and then in some thousands of ages, as the
very means by which the whole is preserved and renewed. These clusters
may be the laboratories of the universe, wherein the most salutary
remedies for the decay of the whole are prepared(73)."
(73) Philosophical Transactions for 1785, p. 217.
All this must appear to a sober mind, unbitten by the rage which grows
out of the heat of these new discoverers, to be nothing less than
astronomy run mad. This occasional creation of new systems and worlds,
is in little accordance with the Christian scriptures, or, I believe,
with any sober speculation upon the attributes of the creator. The
astronomer seizes upon some hint so fine as scarcely by any ingenuity to
be arrested, immediately launches forth into infinite space, and in an
instant returns, and presents us with millions of worlds, each of them
peopled with ten thousand times ten thousand inhabitants.
We spoke a while since of the apparent unfitness of many of the heavenly
bodies for the reception of living inhabitants. But for all this these
discoverers have a remedy. They remind us how unlike these inhabitants
may be to ourselves, having other organs than ours, and being able to
live in a very different temperature. "The great heat in the planet
Mercury is no argument against its being inhabited; since the Almighty
could as easily suit the bodies and constitutions of its inhabitants to
the heat of their dwelling, as he has done ours to the temperature of
our earth. And it is very probable that the people there have such an
opinion of us, as we have of the inhabitants of Jupiter and Saturn;
namely, that we must be intolerably cold, and have very little light at
so great a distance from the sun."
These are the remarks of Ferguson(74). One of our latest astronomers
expresses himself to the same purpose.
(74) Astronomy, Section 22.
"We have no argument against the planets being inhabited by rational
beings, and consequently by witnesses of the creator's power,
magnificence and benevolence, unless it be said that some are much
nearer the sun than the earth is, and therefore must be uninhabitable
from heat, and those more distant from cold. Whatever objection this may
be against their being inhabited by rational beings, of an organisation
similar to those on the earth, it can have little force, when urged with
respect to rational beings in general.
"But we may examine without indulging too much in conjecture, whether
it be not possible that the planets may be possessed by rational beings,
and contain animals and vegetables, even little different from those
with which we are familiar.
"Is the sun the principal cause of the temperature of the earth? We have
reason to suppose that it is not. The mean temperature of the earth, at
a small depth from the surface, seems constant in summer and in winter,
and is probably coeval with its first formation.
"At the planet Mercury, the direct heat of the sun, or its power of
causing heat, is six times greater than with us. If we suppose the mean
temperature of Mercury to be the same as of the earth, and the planet
to be surrounded with an atmosphere, denser than that of the earth,
less capable of transmitting heat, or rather the influence of the sun to
extricate heat, and at the same time more readily conducting it to keep
up an evenness of temperature, may we not suppose the planet Mercury fit
for the habitation of men, and the production of vegetables similar to
our own?
"At the Georgium Sidus, the direct influence of the sun is 360 times
less than at the earth, and the sun is there seen at an angle not much
greater than that under which we behold Venus, when nearest. Yet may not
the mean temperature of the Georgium Sidus be nearly the same as that of
the earth? May not its atmosphere more easily transmit the influence of
the sun, and may not the matter of heat be more copiously combined, and
more readily extricated, than with us? Whence changes of season similar
to our own may take place. Even in the comets we may suppose no great
change of temperature takes place, as we know of no cause which will
deprive them of their mean temperature, and particularly if we suppose,
that on their approach towards the sun, there is a provision for
their atmosphere becoming denser. The tails they exhibit, when in the
neighbourhood of the sun, seem in some measure to countenance this idea.
"We can hardly suppose the sun, a body three hundred times larger than
all the planets together, was created only to preserve the periodic
motions, and give light and heat to the planets. Many astronomers have
thought that its atmosphere only is luminous, and its body opake, and
probably of the same constitution as the planets. Allowing therefore
that its luminous atmosphere only extricates heat, we see no reason why
the sun itself should not be inhabited(75)."
(75) Brinkley, Elements of Astronomy, Chap. IX.
There is certainly no end to the suppositions that may be made by an
ingenious astronomer. May we not suppose that we might do nearly as well
altogether without the sun, which it appears is at present of little use
to us as to warmth and heat? As to light, the great creator might, for
aught we know, find a substitute; feelers, for example, endued with
a certain acuteness of sense: or, at all events, the least imaginable
degree of light might answer every purpose to organs adapted to this
kind of twilight. In that way the inhabitants of the Georgium Sidus are
already sufficiently provided for; they appear to have as little benefit
of the light as of the heat of the sun. How the satellites of the
distant planets are supplied with light is a mystery, since their
principals have scarcely any. Unless indeed, like the sun, they have a
luminous atmosphere, competent to enlighten a whole system, themselves
being opake. But in truth light in a greater or less degree seems
scarcely worthy of a thought, since the inhabitants of the planet
Mercury have not their eyes put out by a light, scarcely inferior in
radiance to that which is reflected by those plates of burning brass,
with which tyrants in some ages were accustomed to extinguish the
sense of vision in their unfortunate victims. The comets also must be
a delectable residence; that of 1680 completing its orbit in 576 years,
and being at its greatest distance about eleven thousand two hundred
millions of miles from the sun, and at its least within less than a
third part of the sun's semi-diameter from its surface(76). They must
therefore have delightful vicissitudes of light and the contrary;
for, as to heat, that is already provided for. Archdeacon Brinkley's
postulate is, that these bodies are "possessed by rational beings, and
contain animals and vegetables, little different from those with which
we are familiar."
(76) Ferguson, Section 93.
Now the only reason we have to believe in these extraordinary
propositions, is the knowledge we possess of the divine attributes. From
the force of this consideration it is argued that God will not leave any
sensible area of matter unoccupied, and therefore that it is impossible
that such vast orbs as we believe surround us even to the extent of
infinite space, should not be "richly stored with rational beings,
the capable witnesses of his power, magnificence and benevolence." All
difficulties arising from the considerations of light, and heat, and a
thousand other obstacles, are to give way to the perfect insight we
have as to how the deity will conduct himself in every case that can be
proposed. I am not persuaded that this is agreeable to religion; and
I am still less convinced that it is compatible with the sobriety and
sedateness of common sense.
It is with some degree of satisfaction that I perceive lord Brougham,
the reputed author of the Preliminary Discourse to the Library of Useful
Knowledge, at the same time that he states the dimensions and distances
of the heavenly bodies in the usual way, says not a word of their
inhabitants.
It is somewhat remarkable that, since the commencement of the present
century, four new planets have been added to those formerly contained in
the enumeration of the solar system. They lie between the planets Mars
and Jupiter, and have been named Vesta, Juno, Ceres and Pallas. Brinkley
speaks of them in this manner. "The very small magnitudes of the new
planets Ceres and Pallas, and their nearly equal distances from the sun,
induced Dr. Olbers, who discovered Pallas in 1802, nearly in the same
place where he had observed Ceres a few months before, to conjecture
that they were fragments of a larger planet, which had by some unknown
cause been broken to pieces. It follows from the law of gravity, by
which the planets are retained in their orbits, that each fragment would
again, after every revolution about the sun, pass nearly through the
place in which the planet was when the catastrophe happened, and besides
the orbit of each fragment would intersect the continuation of the line
joining this place and the sun. Thence it was easy to ascertain the
two particular regions of the heavens through which all these fragments
would pass. Also, by carefully noting the small stars thereabout, and
examining them from time to time, it might be expected that more of the
fragments would be discovered.--M. Harding discovered the planet Juno
in one of these regions; and Dr. Olbers himself also, by carefully
examining them (the small stars) from time to time, discovered Vesta."
These additions certainly afford us a new epoch in the annals of the
solar system, and of astronomy itself. It is somewhat remarkable, that
Herschel, who in the course of his observations traced certain nebulae,
the light from which must have been two millions of years in reaching
the earth, should never have remarked these planets, which, so to
speak, lay at his feet. It reminds one of Esop's astrologer, who, to the
amusement of his ignorant countrymen, while he was wholly occupied in
surveying the heavens, suddenly found himself plunged in a pit. These
new planets also we are told are fragments of a larger planet: how came
this larger planet never to have been discovered?
Till Herschel's time we were content with six planets and the sun,
making up the cabalistical number seven. He added another. But these
four new ones entirely derange the scheme. The astronomers have not yet
had opportunity to digest them into their places, and form new worlds of
them. This is all unpleasant. They are, it seems, "fragments of a larger
planet, which had by some unknown cause been broken to pieces." They
therefore are probably not inhabited. How does this correspond with the
goodness of God, which will suffer no mass of matter in his creation
to remain unoccupied? Herschel talks at his ease of whole systems, suns
with all their attendant planets, being consigned to destruction. But
here we have a catastrophe happening before our eyes, and cannot avoid
being shocked by it. "God does nothing in vain." For which of his lofty
purposes has this planet been broken to pieces, and its fragments left
to deform the system of which we are inhabitants; at least to humble
the pride of man, and laugh to scorn his presumption? Still they perform
their revolutions, and obey the projectile and gravitating forces, which
have induced us to people ten thousand times ten thousand worlds. It is
time, that we should learn modesty, to revere in silence the great cause
to which the universe is indebted for its magnificence, its beauty and
harmony, and to acknowledge that we do not possess the key that should
unlock the mysteries of creation.
One of the most important lessons that can be impressed on the human
mind, is that of self-knowledge and a just apprehension of what it is
that we are competent to achieve. We can do much. We are capable of much
knowledge and much virtue. We have patience, perseverance and subtlety.
We can put forth considerable energies, and nerve ourselves to resist
great obstacles and much suffering. Our ingenuity is various and
considerable. We can form machines, and erect mighty structures. The
invention of man for the ease of human life, and for procuring it a
multitude of pleasures and accommodations, is truly astonishing. We can
dissect the human frame, and anatomise the mind. We can study the scene
of our social existence, and make extraordinary improvements in the
administration of justice, and in securing to ourselves that germ of
all our noblest virtues, civil and political liberty. We can study the
earth, its strata, its soil, its animals, and its productions, "from the
cedar that is in Lebanon, to the hyssop that springeth out of the wall."
But man is not omnipotent. If he aspires to be worthy of honour, it is
necessary that he should compute his powers, and what it is they are
competent to achieve. The globe of earth, with "all that is therein," is
our estate and our empire. Let us be content with that which we have. It
were a pitiful thing to see so noble a creature struggling in a field,
where it is impossible for him to distinguish himself, or to effect
any thing real. There is no situation in which any one can appear more
little and ludicrous, than when he engages in vain essays, and seeks
to accomplish that, which a moment's sober thought would teach him was
utterly hopeless.
Even astronomy is to a certain degree our own. We can measure the course
of the sun, and the orbits of the planets. We can calculate eclipses.
We can number the stars, assign to them their places, and form them into
what we call constellations. But, when we pretend to measure millions
of miles in the heavens, and to make ourselves acquainted with
the inhabitants of ten thousand times ten thousand worlds and the
accommodations which the creator has provided for their comfort and
felicity, we probably engage in something more fruitless and idle, than
the pigmy who should undertake to bend the bow of Ulysses, or strut and
perform the office of a warrior clad in the armour of Achilles.
How beautiful is the "firmament; this majestical roof fretted with
golden fire!" Let us beware how we mar the magnificent scene with our
interpolations and commentaries! Simplicity is of the essence of the
truly great. Let us look at the operations of that mighty power from
which we ourselves derive our existence, with humility and reverential
awe! It may well become us. Let us not "presume into the heaven of
heavens," unbidden, unauthorised guests! Let us adopt the counsel of
the apostle, and allow no man to "spoil us through vain philosophy." The
business of human life is serious; the useful investigations in which
we may engage are multiplied. It is excellent to see a rational being
conscious of his genuine province, and not idly wasting powers adapted
for the noblest uses in unmeasured essays and ill-concocted attempts.
ESSAY XXII. OF THE MATERIAL UNIVERSE.
In the preceding Essay I have referred to the theory of Berkeley, whose
opinion is that there is no such thing as matter in the sense in which
it is understood by the writers on natural philosophy, and that the
whole of our experience in that respect is the result of a system of
accidents without an intelligible subject, by means of which antecedents
and consequents flow on for ever in a train, the past succession
of which man is able to record, and the future in many cases he is
qualified to predict and to act upon.
An argument more palpable and popular than that of Berkeley in favour of
the same hypothesis, might be deduced from the points recapitulated
in that Essay as delivered by Locke and Newton. If what are vulgarly
denominated the secondary qualities of matter are in reality nothing but
sensations existing in the human mind, then at any rate matter is a very
different thing from what it is ordinarily apprehended to be. To which
I add, in the second place, that, if matter, as is stated by Newton,
consists in so much greater a degree of pores than solid parts, that
the absolute particles contained in the solar system might, for aught we
know, he contained in a nutshell(77), and that no two ever touched each
other, or approached so near that they might not be brought nearer,
provided a sufficient force could be applied for that purpose,--and if,
as Priestley teaches, all that we observe is the result of successive
spheres of attraction and repulsion, the centre of which is a
mathematical point only, we then certainly come very near to a
conclusion, which should banish matter out of the theatre of real
existences(78).
(77) See above, Essay XXI.
(78) See above, Essay XXI.
But the extreme subtleties of human intellect are perhaps of little
further use, than to afford an amusement to persons of curious
speculation, and whose condition in human society procures them leisure
for such enquiries. The same thing happens here, as in the subject of
my Twelfth Essay, on the Liberty of Human Actions. The speculator in his
closet is one man: the same person, when he comes out of his retirement,
and mixes in intercourse with his fellow-creatures, is another man.
The necessarian, when he reasons on the everlasting concatenation
of antecedents and consequents, proves to his own apprehension
irrefragably, that he is a passive instrument, acted upon, and acting
upon other things, in turn, and that he can never disengage himself
from the operation of the omnipotent laws of physical nature, and the
impulses of other men with whom he is united in the ties of society. But
no sooner does this acute and ingenious reasoner come into active
life and the intercourse of his fellowmen, than all these fine-drawn
speculations vanish from his recollection. He regards himself and other
men as beings endowed with a liberty of action, as possessed of a proper
initiative power, and free to do a thing or not to do it, without being
subject to the absolute and irresistible constraint of motives. It is
from this internal and indefeasible sense of liberty, that we draw
all our moral energies and enthusiasm, that we persevere heroically in
defiance of obstacles and discouragements, that we praise or blame the
actions of others, and admire the elevated virtues of the best of
our contemporaries, and of those whose achievements adorn the page of
history.
It is in a manner of precisely the same sort as that which prevails
in the philosophical doctrines of liberty and necessity, that we find
ourselves impelled to feel on the question of the existence of the
material universe. Berkeley, and as many persons as are persuaded by his
or similar reasonings, feel satisfied in speculation that there is
no such thing as matter in the sense in which it is understood by the
writers on natural philosophy, and that all our notions of the external
and actual existence of the table, the chair, and the other material
substances with which we conceive ourselves to be surrounded, of
woods, and mountains, and rivers, and seas, are mere prejudice and
misconception. All this is very well in the closet, and as long as we
are involved in meditation, and remain abstracted from action, business,
and the exertion of our limbs and corporal faculties. But it is too
fine for the realities of life. Berkeley, and the most strenuous and
spiritualised of his followers, no sooner descend from the high tower of
their speculations, submit to the necessities of their nature, and mix
in the business of the world, than they become impelled, as strongly
as the necessarian in the question of the liberty of human actions, not
only to act like other men, but even to feel just in the same manner as
if they had never been acquainted with these abstractions. A table then
becomes absolutely a table, and a chair a chair: they are "fed with the
same food, hurt by the same weapons, and warmed and cooled by the same
summer and winter," as other men: and they make use of the refreshments
which nature requires, with as true an orthodoxy, and as credulous a
temper, as he who was never assailed with such refinements. Nature is
too strong, to be prevailed on to retire, and give way to the authority
of definitions and syllogistical deduction.
But, when we have granted all this, it is however a mistake to say, that
these "subtleties of human intellect are of little further use, than
to afford an amusement to persons of curious speculation(79)." We have
seen, in the case of the doctrine of philosophical necessity(80), that,
though it can never form a rule for the intercourse between man and man,
it may nevertheless be turned to no mean advantage. It is calculated
to inspire us with temperance and toleration. It tends impressively to
evince to us, that this scene of things is but like the shadows which
pass before us in a magic lanthorn, and that, after all, men are but
the tools, not the masters, of their fate. It corrects the illusions of
life, much after the same manner as the spectator of a puppet-shew is
enlightened, who should be taken within the curtain, and shewn how the
wires are pulled by the master, which produce all the turmoil and strife
that before riveted our attention. It is good for him who would arrive
at all the improvement of which our nature is capable, at one time to
take his place among the literal beholders of the drama, and at another
to go behind the scenes, and remark the deceptions in their original
elements, and the actors in their proper and natural costume.
(79) See above, Essay XXII.
(80) See above, Essay XII.
And, as in the question of the liberty of human actions, so in that
of the reality of the material universe, it is a privilege not to be
despised, that we are so formed as to be able to dissect the subject
that is submitted to our examination, and to strip the elements of which
this sublunary scene is composed, of the disguise in which they present
themselves to the vulgar spectator. It is little, after all, that we
are capable to know; and the man of heroic mind and generous enterprise,
will not refuse the discoveries that are placed within his reach. The
subtleties of grammar are as the porch, which leads from the knowledge
of words to the knowledge of things. The subtleties of mathematics
defecate the grossness of our apprehension, and supply the elements of
a sounder and severer logic. And in the same manner the faculty which
removes the illusions of external appearance, and enables us to "look
into the seeds of time," is one which we are bound to estimate at its
genuine value. The more we refine our faculties, other things equal,
the wiser we grow: we are the more raised above the thickness of the
atmosphere that envelops our fellow-mortals, and are made partakers of a
nature superhuman and divine.
There is a curious question that has risen out of this proposition of
Berkeley, of the supposed illusion we suffer in our conceptions of the
material universe. It has been said, "Well then, I am satisfied that
the chairs, the tables, and the other material substances with which I
conceive myself to be surrounded, are not what they appear to be, but
are merely an eternal chain of antecedents and consequents, going on
according to what Leibnitz calls a 'preestablished harmony,' and thus
furnishing the ground of the speculations which mortals cherish, and the
motives of their proceeding. But, if thus, in the ordinary process of
human affairs, we believe in matter, when in reality there is no such
thing as matter, how shall we pronounce of mind, and the things which
happen to us in our seeming intercourse with our fellow-men, and in
the complexities of love and hatred, of kindred and friendship, of
benevolence and misanthropy, of robbery and murder, and of the wholesale
massacre of thousands of human beings which are recorded in the page of
history? We absolutely know nothing of the lives and actions of others
but through the medium of material impulse. And, if you take away
matter, the bodies of our fellow-men, does it not follow by irresistible
consequence that all knowledge of their minds is taken away also? Am not
I therefore (the person engaged in reading the present Essay) the only
being in existence, an entire universe to myself?"
Certainly this is a very different conclusion from any that Berkeley
ever contemplated. In the very title of the Treatise in which his
notions on this subject are unfolded, he professes his purpose to be to
remove "the grounds of scepticism, atheism and irreligion." Berkeley was
a sincere Christian, and a man of the most ingenuous dispositions. Pope,
in the Epilogue to his Satires, does not hesitate to ascribe to him
"every virtue under heaven." He was for twenty years a prelate of the
Protestant church. And, though his personal sentiments were in the
highest degree philanthropical and amiable, yet, in his most diffusive
production, entitled The Minute Philosopher, he treats "those who
are called Free Thinkers" with a scorn and disdain, scarcely to be
reconciled with the spirit of Christian meekness.
There are examples however, especially in the fields of controversy,
where an adventurous speculatist has been known to lay down premises and
principles, from which inferences might be fairly deduced, incompatible
with the opinions entertained by him who delivered them. It may
therefore be no unprofitable research to enquire how far the creed of
the non-existence of matter is to be regarded as in truth and reality
countenancing the inference which has just been recited.
The persons then, who refine with Berkeley upon the system of things so
far, as to deny that there is any such thing as matter in the sense in
which it is understood by the writers on natural philosophy, proceed
on the ground of affirming that we have no reason to believe that the
causes of our sensations have an express resemblance to the sensations
themselves(81). That which gives us a sensation of colour is not itself
coloured: and the same may be affirmed of the sensations of hot and
cold, of sweet and bitter, and of odours offensive or otherwise. The
immaterialist proceeds to say, that what we call matter has been strewn
to be so exceedingly porous, that, for any thing we know, all the solid
particles in the universe might be contained in a nutshell, that there
is no such thing in the external world as actual contact, and that no
two particles of matter were ever so near to each other, but that they
might be brought nearer, if a sufficient force could be applied for
that purpose. From these premises it seems to follow with sufficient
evidence, that the causes of our sensations, so far as the material
universe is concerned, bear no express resemblance to the sensations
themselves.
(81) See above, Essay XXI.
How then does the question stand with relation to mind? Are those
persons who deny the existence of matter, reduced, if they would be
consistent in their reasonings, to deny, each man for himself, that he
has any proper evidence of the existence of other minds than his own?
He denies, while he has the sensation of colour, that there exists
colour out of himself, unless in thinking and percipient beings
constituted in a manner similar to that in which he is constituted. And
the same of the sensations of hot and cold, sweet and bitter, and
odours offensive or otherwise. He affirms, while he has the sensation of
length, breadth and thickness, that there is no continuous substance out
of himself, possessing the attributes of length, breadth and thickness
in any way similar to the sensation of which he is conscious.
He professes therefore that he has no evidence, arising from his
observation of what we call matter, of the actual existence of a
material world. He looks into himself, and all he finds is sensation;
but sensation cannot be a property of inert matter. There is therefore
no assignable analogy between the causes of his sensations, whatever
they may be, and the sensations themselves; and the material world, such
as we apprehend it, is the mere creature of his own mind.
Let us next consider how this question stands as to the conceptions he
entertains respecting the minds of other men. That which gives him the
sensation of colour, is not any thing coloured out of himself; and that
which gives him the sensation of length, breadth and thickness, is
not any thing long, broad and thick in a manner corresponding with the
impression he receives. There is nothing in the nature of a parallel, a
type and its archetype, between that which is without him and that which
is within, the impresser and the impression. This is the point supposed
to be established by Locke and Newton, and by those who have followed
the reasonings of these philosophers into their remotest consequences.
But the case is far otherwise in the impressions we receive respecting
the minds of other men. In colour it has been proved by these authors
that there is no express correspondence and analogy between the cause of
the sensation and the sensation. They are not part and counterpart.
But in mind there is a precise resemblance and analogy between the
conceptions we are led to entertain respecting other men, and what
we know of ourselves. I and my associate, or fellow-man, are like two
instruments of music constructed upon the same model. We have each of
us, so to speak, the three great divisions of sound, base, tenor and
treble. We have each the same number of keys, capable of being struck,
consecutively or with alternations, at the will of the master. We can
utter the same sound or series of sounds, or sounds of a different
character, but which respond to each other. My neighbour therefore being
of the same nature as myself, what passes within me may be regarded as
amounting to a commanding evidence that he is a real being, having a
proper and independent existence.
There is further something still more impressive and irresistible in the
notices I receive respecting the minds of other men. The sceptics whose
reasonings I am here taking into consideration, admit, each man for
himself, the reality of his own existence. There is such a thing
therefore as human nature; for he is a specimen of it. Now the idea of
human nature, or of man, is a very complex thing. He is in the first
place the subject of sensible impressions, however these impressions are
communicated to him. He has the faculties of thinking and feeling. He is
subject to the law of the association of ideas, or, in other words, any
one idea existing in his mind has a tendency to call up the ideas of
other things which have been connected with it in his first experience.
He has, be it delusive or otherwise, the sense of liberty of action.
But we will go still further into detail as to the nature of man.
Our lives are carried forward by the intervention of what we call meat,
drink and sleep. We are liable to the accidents of health and sickness.
We are alternately the recipients of joy and sorrow, of cheerfulness and
melancholy. Our passions are excited by similar means, whether of love
or hatred, complacency or indignation, sympathy or resentment. I could
fill many pages with a description of the properties or accidents, which
belong to man as such, or to which he is liable.
Now with all these each man is acquainted in the sphere of his inward
experience, whether he is a single being standing by himself, or is an
individual belonging to a numerous species.
Observe then the difference between my acquaintance with the phenomena
of the material universe, and with the individuals of my own species.
The former say nothing to me; they are a series of events and no more;
I cannot penetrate into their causes; that which gives rise to my
sensations, may or may not be similar to the sensations themselves. The
follower of Berkeley or Newton has satisfied himself in the negative.
But the case is very different in my intercourse with my fellow-men.
Agreeably to the statement already made I know the reality of human
nature; for I feel the particulars that constitute it within myself.
The impressions I receive from that intercourse say something to me;
for they talk to me of beings like myself. My own existence becomes
multiplied in infinitum. Of the possibility of matter I know nothing;
but with the possibility of mind I am acquainted; for I am myself an
example. I am amazed at the consistency and systematic succession of the
phenomena of the material universe; though I cannot penetrate the veil
which presents itself to my grosser sense, nor see effects in their
causes. But I can see, in other words, I have the most cogent reasons
to believe in, the causes of the phenomena that occur in my apparent
intercourse with my fellow-men. What solution so natural, as that
they are produced by beings like myself, the duplicates, with certain
variations, of what I feel within me?
The belief in the reality of matter explains nothing. Supposing it to
exist, if Newton is right, no particle of extraneous matter ever touched
the matter of my body; and therefore it is not just to regard it as
the cause of my sensations. It would amount to no more than two systems
going on at the same time by a preestablished harmony, but totally
independent of and disjointed from each other.
But the belief in the existence of our fellow-men explains much. It
makes level before us the wonder of the method of their proceedings, and
affords an obvious reason why they should be in so many respects like
our own. If I dismiss from my creed the existence of inert matter, I
lose nothing. The phenomena, the train of antecedents and consequents,
remain as before; and this is all that I am truly concerned with. But
take away the existence of my fellow-men; and you reduce all that is,
and all that I experience, to a senseless mummery. "You take my life,
taking the thing whereon I live."
Human nature, and the nature of mind, are to us a theme of endless
investigation. "The proper study of mankind is man." All the subtlety
of metaphysics, or (if there be men captious and prejudiced enough
to dislike that term) the science of ourselves, depends upon it. The
science of morals hangs upon the actions of men, and the effects they
produce upon our brother-men, in a narrower or a wider circle. The
endless, and inexpressibly interesting, roll of history relies for its
meaning and its spirit upon the reality and substance of the subjects of
which it treats. Poetry, and all the wonders and endless varieties that
imagination creates, have this for their solution and their soul.
Sympathy is the only reality of which we are susceptible; it is our
heart of hearts: and, if the world had been "one entire and perfect
chrysolite," without this it would have been no more than one heap of
rubbish.
Observe the difference between what we know of the material world, and
what of the intellectual. The material goes on for ever according to
certain laws that admit of no discrimination. They proceed upon a first
principle, an impulse given them from the beginning of things. Their
effects are regulated by something that we call their nature: fire
burns; water suffocates; the substances around us that we call solid,
depend for their effects, when put in motion, upon momentum and gravity.
The principle that regulates the dead universe, "acts by general, not by
partial laws."
When the loose mountain trembles from on high,
Shall gravitation cease, if you go by?
No: the chain of antecedents and consequents proceeds in this respect
for ever the same. The laws of what we call the material world continue
unvaried. And, when the vast system of things was first set in motion,
every thing, so far as depends on inert matter, was determined to the
minutest particle, even to the end of time.
The material world, or that train of antecedents and consequents which
we understand by that term, goes on for ever in a train agreeably to the
impulse previously given. It is deaf and inexorable. It is unmoved by
the consideration of any accidents and miseries that may result, and
unalterable. But man is a source of events of a very different nature.
He looks to results, and is governed by views growing out of the
contemplation of them. He acts in a way diametrically opposite to the
action of inert matter, and "turns, and turns, and turns again," at the
impulse of the thought that strikes him, the appetite that prompts, the
passions that move, and the effects that he anticipates. It is therefore
in a high degree unreasonable, to make that train of inferences which
may satisfy us on the subject of material phenomena, a standard of what
we ought to think respecting the phenomena of mind.
It is further worthy of our notice to recollect, that the same
reasonings which apply to our brethren of mankind, apply also to the
brute creation. They, like ourselves, act from motives; that is,
the elections they form are adopted by them for the sake of certain
consequences they expect to see result from them. Whatever becomes
therefore of the phenomena of what we call dead matter, we are here
presented with tribes of being, susceptible of pleasure and pain, of
hope and fear, of regard and resentment.
How beautifully does this conviction vary the scene of things! What
a source to us is the animal creation, of amusement, of curious
observations upon the impulses of inferior intellect, of the exhaustless
varieties of what we call instinct, of the care we can exercise for
their accommodation and welfare, and of the attachment and affection we
win from them in return! If I travel alone through pathless deserts, if
I journey from the rising to the setting sun, with no object around
me but nature's desolation, or the sublime, the magnificent and the
exuberant scenery she occasionally presents, still I have that noble
animal, the horse, and my faithful dog, the companions of my toil, and
with whom, when my solitude would otherwise become insufferable, I can
hold communion, and engage in dumb dialogues of sentiment and affection.
I have heard of a man, who, talking to his friend on the subject of
these speculations, said, "What then, are you so poor and pusillanimous
a creature, that you could not preserve your serenity, be perfectly
composed and content, and hold on your way unvaried, though you were
convinced that you were the only real being in existence, and all the
rest were mere phantasies and shadows?"
If I had been the person to whom this speech was addressed, I should
have frankly acknowledged, "I am the poor and pusillanimous creature you
are disposed to regard with so much scorn."
To adopt the sententious language of the Bible, "It is not good for man
to be alone." All our faculties and attributes bear relation to, and
talk to us of, other beings like ourselves. We might indeed eat, drink
and sleep, that is, submit to those necessities which we so denominate,
without thinking of any thing beyond ourselves; for these are the
demands of our nature, and we know that we cannot subsist without them.
We might make use of the alternate conditions of exercise and repose.
But the life of our lives would be gone. As far as we bore in mind the
creed we had adopted, of our single existence, we could neither love nor
hate. Sympathy would be a solemn mockery. We could not communicate; for
the being to whom our communication was addressed we were satisfied was
a non-entity. We could not anticipate the pleasure or pain, the joy or
sorrow, of another; for that other had no existence. We should be in
a worse condition than Robinson Crusoe in the desolate island; for he
believed in the existence of other men, and hoped and trusted that he
should one day again enter into human society. We should be in a worse
condition than Robinson Crusoe; for he at least was unannoyed in his
solitude; while we are perpetually and per force intruded on, like a
delirious man, by visions which we know to be unreal, but which we are
denied the power to deliver ourselves from. We have no motive to any of
the great and cardinal functions of human life; for there is no one in
being, that we can benefit, or that we can affect. Study is nothing to
us; for we have no use for it. Even science is unsatisfactory; unless we
can communicate it by word or writing, can converse upon it, and compare
notes with our neighbour. History is nothing; for there were no Greeks
and no Romans; no freemen and no slaves; no kings and no subjects; no
despots, nor victims of their tyranny; no republics, nor states immerged
in brutal and ignominious servitude. Life must be inevitably a burthen
to us, a dreary, unvaried, motiveless existence; and death must be
welcomed, as the most desirable blessing that can visit us. It
is impossible indeed that we should always recollect this our, by
supposition, real situation; but, as often as we did, it would come over
us like a blight, withering all the prospects of our industry, or like
a scirocco, unbracing the nerves of our frame, and consigning us to the
most pitiable depression.
Thus far I have allowed myself to follow the refinements of those
who profess to deny the existence of the material universe. But it is
satisfactory to come back to that persuasion, which, from whatever cause
it is derived, is incorporated with our very existence, and can never be
shaken off by us. Our senses are too powerful in their operation, for it
to be possible for us to discard them, and to take as their substitute,
in active life, and in the earnestness of pursuit, the deductions of
our logical faculty, however well knit and irresistible we may apprehend
them to be. Speculation and common sense are at war on this point; and
however we may "think with the learned," and follow the abstrusenesses
of the philosopher, in the sequestered hour of our meditation, we must
always act, and even feel, "with the vulgar," when we come abroad into
the world.
It is however no small gratification to the man of sober mind, that,
from what has here been alleged, it seems to follow, that untutored
mind, and the severest deductions of philosophy, agree in that most
interesting of our concerns, our intercourse with our fellow-creatures.
The inexorable reasoner, refining on the reports of sense, may dispose,
as he pleases, of the chair, the table, and the so called material
substances around him. He may include the whole solid matter of the
universe in a nutshell, or less than a nutshell. But he cannot deprive
me of that greatest of all consolations, the sustaining pillar of
my existence, "the cordial drop Heaven in our cup has thrown,"--the
intercourse of my fellow-creatures. When we read history, the subjects
of which we read are realities; they do not "come like shadows,
so depart;" they loved and acted in sober earnest; they sometimes
perpetrated crimes; but they sometimes also achieved illustrious deeds,
which angels might look down from their exalted abodes and admire. We
are not deluded with mockeries. The woman I love, and the man to whom I
swear eternal friendship, are as much realities as myself. If I relieve
the poor, and assist the progress of genius and virtuous designs
struggling with fearful discouragements, I do something upon the success
of which I may safely congratulate myself. If I devote my energies to
enlighten my fellow-creatures, to detect the weak places in our social
institutions, to plead the cause of liberty, and to invite others
to engage in noble actions and unite in effecting the most solid and
unquestionable improvements, I erect to my name an eternal monument; or
I do something better than this,--secure inestimable advantage to the
latest posterity, the benefit of which they shall enjoy, long after the
very name of the author shall, with a thousand other things great and
small, have been swallowed up in the gulph of insatiable oblivion.
ESSAY XXIII. OF HUMAN VIRTUE. THE EPILOGUE.
The life of man is divided into many stages; and we shall not form a
just estimate of our common nature, if we do not to a certain
degree pass its successive periods in review, and observe it in its
commencement, its progress, and its maturity.
It has been attempted to be established in an early part of the present
volume(82), that all men, idiots and extraordinary cases being put out
of the question, are endowed with talents, which, if rightly directed,
would shew them to be apt, adroit, intelligent and acute, in the walk
for which their organisation especially fitted them. We are bound
therefore, particularly in the morning of life, to consider every
thing that presents itself to us in the human form, with deference and
attention.
(82) See above, Essay III.
"God," saith the Preacher, "made man upright; but he hath sought out
many inventions." There is something loose and difficult of exposition
in this statement; but we shall find an important truth hid beneath its
obscurity.
Junius Brutus, in the play, says to his son,
I like thy frame: the fingers of the Gods
I see have left their mastery upon thee;
And the majestic prints distinct appear.
Such is the true description of every well-formed and healthful infant
that is born into the world.
He is placed on the threshold of existence; and an eventful journey is
open before him. For the first four or five years of life indeed he has
little apprehension of the scenes that await him. But a child of quick
apprehension early begins to have day-dreams, and to form imaginations
of the various chances that may occur to him, and the things he shall
have to do, when, according to the language of the story-books, he "goes
out to seek his fortune."
"God made man upright." Every child that is born, has within him a
concealed magazine of excellence. His heart beats for every thing that
is lovely and good; and whatever is set before him of that sort in
honest colours, rouses his emulation. By how many tokens does he prove
himself worthy of our approbation and love--the unaffected and
ingenuous sobriety with which he listens to what addresses itself to his
attention, the sweetness of his smile, his hearty laugh, the clear, bell
tones of his voice, his sudden and assured impulses, and his bounding
step!
To his own heart he promises well of himself. Like Lear in the play, he
says, "I will do such things!--What they are, yet I know not." But he is
assured, frank and light-spirited. He thinks of no disguise. He "wears
his heart upon his sleeve." He looks in the face of his seniors with
the glistening eye of confidence, and expects to encounter sympathy and
encouragement in return. Such is man, as he comes from the hands of his
maker.
Thus prepared, he is turned into the great field of society. Here he
meets with much that he had not anticipated, and with many rebuffs. He
is taught that he must accommodate his temper and proceedings to the
expectations and prejudices of those around him. He must be careful to
give no offence. With how many lessons, not always the most salutary and
ingenuous, is this maxim pregnant! It calls on the neophyte to bear
a wary eye, and to watch the first indications of disapprobation and
displeasure in those among whom his lot is cast. It teaches him to
suppress the genuine emotions of his soul. It informs him that he is not
always to yield to his own impulses, but that he must "stretch forth his
hands to another, and be carried whither he would not."
It recommends to him falseness, and to be the thing in outward
appearance that he is not in his heart.
Still however he goes on. He shuts up his thoughts in his bosom; but
they are not exterminated. On the contrary he broods over them with
genial warmth; and the less they are exposed to the eye of day, the
more perseveringly are they cherished. Perhaps he chooses some youthful
confident of his imaginings: and the effect of this is, that he pours
out his soul with uncontrolable copiousness, and with the fervour of a
new and unchecked conceiving. It is received with answering warmth; or,
if there is any deficiency in the sympathy of his companion, his mind is
so earnest and full, that he does not perceive it. By and by, it may be,
he finds that the discovery he had made of a friend, a brother of
his soul, is, like so many of the visions of this world, hollow and
fallacious. He grasped, as he thought, a jewel of the first water; and
it turns out to be a vulgar pebble. No matter: he has gained something
by the communication. He has heard from his own lips the imaginings
of his mind shaped into articulate air; they grew more definite and
distinct as he uttered them; they came by the very act to have more of
reality, to be more tangible. He shakes off the ill-assorted companion
that only encumbered him, and springs away in his race, more light of
heart, and with a step more assured, than ever.
By and by he becomes a young man. And, whatever checks he may have
received before, it usually happens that all his hopes and projects
return to him now with recruited strength. He has no longer a master. He
no longer crouches to the yoke of subjection, and is directed this way
and that at the judgment of another. Liberty is at all times dear to the
free-soured and ingenuous; but never so much so, as when we wear it in
its full gloss and newness. He never felt before, that he was sui juris,
that he might go whithersoever he would, without asking leave, without
consulting any other director than the law of his own mind. It is nearly
at the same season that he arrives at the period of puberty, at the
stature, and in a certain degree at the strength, which he is destined
to attain. He is by general consent admitted to be at years of
discretion.
Though I have put all these things together, they do not, in the course
of nature, all come at the same time. It is a memorable period, when the
ingenuous youth is transferred from the trammels of the schoolmaster
to the residence of a college. It was at the age of seventeen that,
according to the custom of Rome, the youthful citizen put on the manly
gown, and was introduced into the forum. Even in college-life, there is
a difference in the privileges of the mere freshman, and of the
youth who has already completed the first half of his period in the
university.
The season of what may be denominated the independence of the
individual, is certainly in no small degree critical. A human being,
suddenly emancipated from a state of subjection, if we may not call it
slavery, and transported into a state of freedom, must be expected to be
guilty of some extravagancies and follies.
But upon the whole, with a small number of exceptions, it is creditable
to human nature, that we take this period of our new powers and
immunities with so much sobriety as we do.
The young man then, calls to mind all that he imagined at an earlier
season, and that he promised himself. He adds to this the new lights
that he has since obtained, and the nearer and more distinct view that
he has reached, of the realities of life.
He recollects the long noviciate that he served to reach this period,
the twenty years that he passed in ardent and palpitating expectation;
and he resolves to do something worthy of all he had vowed and had
imagined. He takes a full survey of his stores and endowments; and to
the latter, from his enthusiasm and his self-love, he is morally sure
to do justice. He says to himself, "What I purpose to do will not be
achieved to-day. No; it shall be copious, and worthy of men's suffrage
and approbation. But I will meditate it; I will sketch a grand outline;
I will essay my powers in secret, and ascertain what I may be able
to effect." The youth, whose morning of life is not utterly abortive,
palpitates with the desire to promote the happiness of others, and with
the desire of glory.
We have an apt specimen of this in the first period of the reign of
Nero. The historians, Tacitus in particular, have treated this with too
much incredulity. It was the passion of that eminent man to indulge in
subtleties, and to find hidden meanings in cases where in reality every
thing is plain. We must not regard the panegyric of Seneca, and
the devotion of Lucan to the imperial stripling, as unworthy of
our attention. He was declared emperor before he had completed
the eighteenth year of his age. No occasion for the exhibition of
liberality, clemency, courtesy or kindness escaped him. He called every
one by his name, and saluted all orders of men. When the senate shewed
a disposition to confer on him peculiar honours, he interposed, he said,
"Let them be bestowed when I have deserved them(83)." Seneca affirms,
that in the first part of his reign, and to the time in which the
philosopher dedicated to him his treatise of Clemency, he had "shed no
drop of blood(84)." He adds, "If the Gods were this day to call thee
to a hearing, thou couldst account to them for every man that had been
intrusted to thy rule. Not an individual has been lost from the number,
either by secret practices, or by open violence. This could scarcely
have been, if thy good dispositions had not been natural, but assumed.
No one can long personate a character. A pretended goodness will
speedily give place to the real temper; while a sincere mind, and
acts prompted by the heart, will not fail to go on from one stage of
excellence to another(85)."
(83) Suetonius, Nero, cap. 10.
(84) De Clementia, Lib. I, cap. II.
(85) De Clementia, cap. I.
The philosopher expresses himself in raptures on that celebrated phrase
of Nero, WOULD I HAD NEVER LEARNED TO WRITE! "An exclamation," he says,
"not studied, not uttered for the purpose of courting popularity, but
bursting insuppressibly from thy lips, and indicating the vehemence of
the struggle between the kindness of thy disposition and the duties of
thy office(86)."
(86) Ibid., Lib. II, cap. I.
How many generous purposes, what bright and heart-thrilling visions of
beneficence and honour, does the young man, just starting in the race
of life, conceive! There is no one in that period of existence, who has
received a reasonable education, and has not in his very nonage been
trod down in the mire of poverty and oppression, that does not say
to himself, "Now is the time; and I will do something worthy to be
remembered by myself and by others." Youth is the season of generosity.
He calls over the catalogue of his endowments, his attainments, and
his powers, and exclaims, "To that which I am, my contemporaries are
welcome; it shall all be expended for their service and advantage."
With what disdain he looks at the temptations of selfishness, effeminate
indulgence, and sordid gain! He feels within himself that he was born
for better things. His elders, and those who have already been tamed
down and emasculated by the corrupt commerce of the world, tell him,
"All this is the rhapsody of youth, fostered by inexperience; you will
soon learn to know better; in no long time you will see these things
in the same light in which we see them." But he despises the sinister
prognostic that is held out to him, and feels proudly conscious that the
sentiments that now live in his bosom, will continue to animate him to
his latest breath.
Youth is necessarily ingenuous in its thoughts, and sanguine in its
anticipations of the future. But the predictions of the seniors I have
quoted, are unfortunately in too many cases fulfilled. The outline of
the scheme of civil society is in a high degree hostile to the growth
and maturity of human virtue. Its unavoidable operation, except in those
rare cases where positive institutions have arrested its tendency, has
been to divide a great portion of its members, especially in large and
powerful states, into those who are plentifully supplied with the means
of luxury and indulgence, and those who are condemned to suffer the
rigours of indigence.
The young man who is born to the prospect of hereditary wealth, will
not unfrequently feel as generous emotions, and as much of the spirit of
self-denial, as the bosom of man is capable of conceiving. He will say,
What am I, that I should have a monopoly of those things, which, if
"well dispensed, in unsuperfluous, even proportion," would supply the
wants of all? He is ready, agreeably to the advice of Christ to the
young man in the Gospel, to "sell all that he has, and give to the
poor," if he could be shewn how so generous a resolution on his part
could be encountered with an extensive conspiracy of the well-disposed,
and rendered available to the real melioration of the state of man in
society. Who is there so ignorant, or that has lived in so barren and
unconceiving a tract of the soil of earth, that has not his tale to
tell of the sublime emotions and the generous purposes he has witnessed,
which so often mark this beautiful era of our sublunary existence?
But this is in the dawn of life, and the first innocence of the human
heart. When once the young man of "great possessions" has entered the
gardens of Alcina, when he has drunk of the cup of her enchantments, and
seen all the delusive honour and consideration that, in the corruptness
of modern times, are the lot of him who is the owner of considerable
wealth, the dreams of sublime virtue are too apt to fade away. He was
willing before, to be nourished with the simplest diet, and clad with
the plainest attire. He knew that he was but a man like the rest of
his species, and was in equity entitled to no more than they. But he
presently learns a very different lesson. He believes that he cannot
live without splendour and luxury; he regards a noble mansion, elegant
vesture, horses, equipage, and an ample establishment, as things without
which he must be hopelessly miserable. That income, which he once
thought, if divided, would have secured the happiness and independence
of many, he now finds scarcely sufficient to supply his increased and
artificial cravings.
But, if the rich are seduced and led away from the inspirations of
virtue, it may easily be conceived how much more injurious, and beyond
the power of control, are the effects on the poor. The mysterious source
from which the talents of men are derived, cannot be supposed in their
distribution to be regulated by the artificial laws of society, and
to have one measure for those which are bestowed upon the opulent, and
another for the destitute. It will therefore not seldom happen that
powers susceptible of the noblest uses may be cast, like "seed sown upon
stony places," where they have scarcely any chance to be unfolded and
matured. In a few instances they may attract the attention of
persons both able and willing to contribute to their being brought to
perfection. In a few instances the principle may be so vigorous, and
the tendency to excel so decisive, as to bid defiance to and to conquer
every obstacle. But in a vast majority the promise will be made vain,
and the hopes that might have been entertained will prove frustrate.
What can be expected from the buds of the most auspicious infancy, if
encountered in their earliest stage with the rigorous blasts of a polar
climate?
And not only will the germs of excellence be likely to be extinguished
in the members of the lower class of the community, but the temptations
to irregular acts and incroachments upon the laws for the security of
property will often be so great, as to be in a manner irresistible. The
man who perceives that, with all his industry, he cannot provide for
the bare subsistence of himself and those dependent upon him, while
his neighbour revels in boundless profusion, cannot but sometimes feel
himself goaded to an attempt to correct this crying evil. What must
be expected to become of that general good-will which is the natural
inheritance of a well-constituted mind, when urged by so bitter
oppression and such unendurable sufferings? The whole temper of the
human heart must be spoiled, and the wine of life acquire a quality
acrimonious and malignant.
But it is not only in the extreme classes of society that the glaring
inequality with which property is shared produces its injurious effects.
All those who are born in the intermediate ranks are urged with a
distempered ambition, unfavourable to independence of temper, and
to true philanthropy. Each man aspires to the improvement of his
circumstances, and the mounting, by one step and another, higher in
the scale of the community. The contemplations of the mind are turned
towards selfishness. In opulent communities we are presented with the
genuine theatre for courts and kings. And, wherever there are courts,
duplicity, lying, hypocrisy and cringing dwell as in their proper field.
Next come trades and professions, with all the ignoble contemplations,
the resolved smoothness, servility and falshood, by which they are
enabled to gain a prosperous and triumphant career.
It is by such means, that man, whom "God made upright," is led away
into a thousand devious paths, and, long before the closing scene of his
life, is rendered something the very reverse of what in the dawning of
existence he promised to be. He is like Hazael in the Jewish history,
who, when the prophet set before him the crying enormities he should
hereafter perpetrate, exclaimed, "Is thy servant a dog," that he should
degrade himself so vilely? He feels the purity of his purposes; but is
goaded by one excitement and exasperation after another, till he becomes
debased, worthless and criminal. This is strikingly illustrated in
the story of Dr. Johnson and the celebrated Windham, who, when he was
setting out as secretary to the lord lieutenant of Ireland, expressed to
his aged monitor, some doubts whether he could ever reconcile himself
to certain indirect proceedings which he was afraid would be expected
of him: to which the veteran replied, "Oh, sir, be under no alarm; in a
short time, depend upon it, you will make a very pretty rascal(87)."
(87) The phrase here used by Johnson is marked with the licentiousness
we sometimes indulge in familiar conversation. Translate it into a
general maxim; and it contains much melancholy truth. It is true also,
that there are few individuals, who, in the urgent realities of
life, have not occasionally descended from the heights of theoretical
excellence. It is but just however to observe in the case of Windham,
that, though he was a man of many errors, he was not the less
characterised by high honour and eminent virtue.
Such are the "inventions of man," or rather such is the operation of
those institutions which ordinarily prevail in society. Still, however,
much honour ought to be rendered to our common nature, since all of us
are not led away by the potent spells of the enchantress. If the vulgar
crew of the vessel of Ulysses were by Circe changed into brutes, so was
not their commander. The human species is divided into two classes, the
successfully tempted, and the tempted in vain. And, though the latter
must be admitted to be a small minority, yet they ought to be regarded
as the "salt of the earth," which preserves the entire mass from
putridity and dishonour. They are like the remnant, which, if they had
been to be found in the cities of the Asphaltic lake, the God of Abraham
pronounced as worthy to redeem the whole community. They are like the
two witnesses amidst the general apostasy, spoken of in the book of
Revelations, who were the harbingers and forerunners of the millenium,
the reign of universal virtue and peace. Their excellence only appears
with the greater lustre amidst the general defection.
Nothing can be more unjust than the spirit of general levelling and
satire, which so customarily prevails. History records, if you will, the
vices and follies of mankind. But does it record nothing else? Are
the virtues of the best men, the noblest philosophers, and the most
disinterested patriots of antiquity, nothing? It is impossible for two
things to be more unlike than the general profligacy of the reigns of
Charles the Second and Louis the Fifteenth on the one hand, and the
austere virtues and the extinction of all private considerations in the
general happiness and honour, which constitute the spirit of the best
pages of ancient history, and which exalt and transfix the spirit of
every ingenuous and high-souled reader, on the other.
Let us then pay to human virtue the honour that is so justly its due!
Imagination is indeed a marvellous power; but imagination never equalled
history, the achievements which man has actually performed. It is in
vain that the man of contemplation sits down in his closet; it is in
vain that the poet yields the reins to enthusiasm and fancy: there is
something in the realities of life, that excites the mind infinitely
more, than is in the power of the most exalted reverie. The true hero
cannot, like the poet, or the delineator of fictitious adventures, put
off what he has to do till to-morrow. The occasion calls, and he must
obey. He sees the obstacles, and the adversary he has to encounter,
before him. He sees the individuals, for whose dear sake he resolves to
expose himself to every hazard and every evil. The very circumstance,
that he is called on to act in the face of the public, animates him.
It is thus that resolution is produced, that martyrdom is voluntarily
encountered, and that the deeds of genuine, pure and undeniable heroism
are performed.
Let then no man, in the supercilious spirit of a fancied disdain, allow
himself to detract from our common nature. We are ourselves the models
of all the excellence that the human mind can conceive. There have been
men, whose virtues may well redeem all the contempt with which satire
and detraction have sought to overwhelm our species. There have been
memorable periods in the history of man, when the best, the most
generous and exalted sentiments have swallowed up and obliterated all
that was of an opposite character. And it is but just, that those by
whom these things are fairly considered, should anticipate the progress
of our nature, and believe that human understanding and human virtue
will hereafter accomplish such things as the heart of man has never yet
been daring enough to conceive.
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