.• ..^- f^t"iw •»».••■• ^-^ "te^-^ .^r>v-^ >..-^'-4(/;-.:- '^•k^-i^ '^■- *■ ;,. .. S'->v- -r- ■*-.». .i<^- ■ • .•■•••»## •#' ■i»-----,;i*> * REESE LIBRARY \ J OFTIIK UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. . , ,, A,^R 10 1fi94 I? 31 j 'Accessions, No.^f^^ p — Class A ■""''"'^^^'- « THOUGHTS ON MAN, HIS NATURE, PRODUCTIONS, AND DISCOVERIES. INTERSPERSED WITH SOME PARTICULARS RESPECTING THE AUTHOR. ■BY WILLIAM GODWIN. lood' more stiis To rouse a lion, than to start a hare ! SliAKESrEAK. LONDON: EFFINGHAM WILSON, ROYAL EXCHANGE. 1831. S'S~d ±^ PRINTED BY RICHARD TAYLOR, rnJNTBR TO TUB VNtrSRSITT OF LOKDOff, RED LION COURT, KLEET STREET. PREFACE. AN the ensuing volume I have attempted to give a defined and permanent form to a variety of thoughts, whi(:jh 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 me- dium 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 voca- tion in life, I have scarcely in any instance contri- buted a page to any periodical miscellany. My mind has been constitutionally meditative ; and I should not have felt satisfied, if I had not A 2 n IV PREFACE. set in order for publication these special fruits of my meditations. I had entered upon a certain ca- reer ; 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 unambi- guous terms. It has been my lot to have occasi- onal 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 re- flection, 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 princi- ple in the Enquiry concerning Political Justice. And I had my reward. I had a numerous au- dience of all classes, of every age, and of either sex. The young and the fair did not feel deterred from consulting my pages. PREFACE. V 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 VI PREFACE. perceive in many cases, tliat the believer in mys- teries does little more, than dress up his deity in the choicest of human attributes and qualifica- tions. 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. Page. I. Of Body and Mind. The Prologue 1 II. Of the Distrfbution of Talents 16 ^ III. Of Intellectual Abortion 53 IV. Of the Durability of Human Achievements and Productions 73 V. Of the RebelHoyjpess of Man 93 •* VI. Of Human Innocence 112 VII. Of the Duration of Human Life 127 VIII. Of Human Vegetation 145 IX. Of Leisure 164 X. Of Imitation and Invention 181 XI. Of Self-Love and Benevolence 205 XII. Of the Liberty of Human Actions 226 "^ XIIL Of Belief 243 - XIV. Of Youth and Age 260 XV. Of Love and Friendship 273 XVI. Of Frankness and Reserve 299 XVII. Of Ballot 314 XVIII. Of Diffidence 332 XIX. Of Self- Complacency 343 XX. Of Phrenology 357 XXI. Of Astronomy 376 XXII. Of the Material Universe 436 XXIII. Of Human Virtue. The Epilogue 456 ERRATUM. Page 334, line 13, for "or that were thrown in my way," recui " that were thrown in my way, or." THOUGHTS, Sf< ESSAY I. OF BODY AND MIND. THE PROLOGUE. A HERE is no subject that more frequently occu- pies 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 ingre- dient. 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 ex- B 2 OF BODY AND MIND. [essAY cited, 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 ^." 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 incumber- ed. It is like the marble when it comes out of the hand of the consummate sculptor ; every thing un- necessary is carefully chiseled away ; and the joints, the muscles, the articulations, and the veins come out, clean and finished. It has long ago been ob- served, 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 starling 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 re- spect he casts the whole creation behind him. What a machine is the liuiuan hand ! When we ' Anatomy of Melancholy, p. 1 . 1.] OF BODY AND MIND. 8 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 rival- ship against it. What a sublimity is to be attributed to his upright form ! He is not fashioned, veluti pecora, qucB na- tura prona atque ventri obedientiafinxit. 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 I In his coun- tenance we see expressed at one time sedate con- fidence and awful intrepidity, and at another god- like condescension and the most melting tender- ness. Who can behold the human eye, suddenly suffused with moisture, or gushing with tears unhid, 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 com- plexion ! We are sent into the world naked, that B 2 4 OF BODY AND MIND. [essAY all the variations of the blood might be made visi- ble. However trite, I cannot avoid quoting here the lines of the most deep-thinking and philosophi- cal 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 ! ft is impossible to witness this phenomenon with- out interest and sympathy. It comes at once, un- anticipated by the person in whom we behold it. It comes from the soul, and expresses with equal certainty shame, modesty, and vivid, uncontrolable affect ion. 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 per- haps 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 docs not speak, is an unfledged thinker ; and the man that does not write, is but half an in- vestigator. Not to enter into all the mysteries of articulate I.] OF BODY AND MIND. 5 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 sus- pend all its functions ! How infinite is its melody ! How instantly it subdues the hearer to pity or t^ 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 fa-» culty, who delivers himself in a rude, discordant and unmodulated accent, and is accustomed to confer with liis 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 crea- tion ! From the countenance of man let us proceed to his figure. Every limb is capable of speaking, and 6 OF BODY AND MIND. [ESSAY telling its own tale. What can equal the inagnifi- cence 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 ravish- ed, and with difficulty kept my seat. Pass we to the mazes of the dance, the inimitable charms and pic- turesque beauty that may be given to the figure while still unmoved, and the ravishing grace that dwells in it during its endless changes and evolu- tions. The upright figure of man produces, incidentally as it were, and by the bye, another memorable eflfect. 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 feel- ings in common at a theatrical representation and at a public dinner, that indignation is communi- cated, and patriotism become irrepressible. One man can convey his sentiments in articulate speech to a thousand ; and this is the nursing mother of I.] OF BODY AND MIND. 7 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 hun- dreds of voices uttered in the expression of one common sentiment. But, notwithstanding the infinite beauty, the ma- gazine of excellencies and perfections, that apper- tains 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 pur- pose. Before I proceeded to consider the ascen- dancy of mind, the dominion and loftiness it is accustomed to assert, it appeared but just to re- collect 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 authori- tatively 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. ^Ci LIBRA^^-. B OF BODY AND MIND. [essaY and of no greater account than as a clod of tlie 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 with- out 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 condi- tion of an insensible carcase, till it should be re- vivified 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 pre- sent, when that shall take place. For a man to think, agreeably and with serenity, he must be in some degree of health. The corpus saiium is no less 1.] OF BODY AND MIND. 9 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 instru- mental merely. All these things are negatives, con- ditions 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 iUimitable space, and take up our rest beyond the fixed stars. We proceed without impediment from country to country, and from cen- tury 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 parti- cular 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 con- sider our entire microcosm and frame. The body is apprehended as no more important and of inti- mate connection to a man engaged in a train of re- flections, than the house or apartment in which he 10 OF BODY AND MIND. [ESSAY dwells. The mind may aptly be described mider 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 occasion- ally 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 de- nomination 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, with- out 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, with- out 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. I.] OF BODY AND MIND. 11 however imperfect may be the idea we are enabled to affix to the term spirit. Hence arises the notion, which has been enter- tained 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 suiFerings, 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 ]2 OF BODY AND MIND. [essAY particulars here related, belong not less to the brute creation than to man. If men are imperfectly ac- quainted with their external figure and appearance, this may well be conceived to be still more predi- cable of the inferior animals. It is true that all of them seem to be aware of the part in their struc- ture, 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 inti- mately connected with their preservation and wel- fare ; 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 preme- ditation ; and, without anatomical knowledge, or any distinct acquaintance with their image and like^ ness, they proceed straight to their purpose. Hence, even as men, they are more familiar with the fi- gures 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. 1.] OF BODY AND MIND. IS " Remember, sir, you are a man." A variety of cir- cumstances 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 de- spise 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 " stran- ger at home." Were it not for this, how incompre- hensible 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 beat- ing, 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 tempo- rary oblivion we are enabled to throw over the re- fuse of the body, it is thus we arrive at the majesty 14 OF BODY AND MIND. [essAY of man. That sublimity of conception which ren- ders 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 occa- sionally 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 conside- rations. 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 apart- ment, and visit it from day to day. If we had per- severance enough, and could so far conquer the repugnance and humiliating feeling with which the I.] OF BODY AND MIND. 15 experiment would be attended, we might follow step by step the process of decomposition and pu- trefaction, 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 to- gether. There are two considerations, the force of which made man a religious animal. The first is, his proneness to ascribe hostility or benevolent inten- tion 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 cor- poreal frame, and undestroyed by the wreck of the material universe. 16 OF THE DISTRIBUTION OF TALENTS, [essay ESSAY II. ^i^^^ut^^mnt OF THE DISTRIBUTION OF TALENTS. IIoXv T€ ha 44 OF THE DISTRIBUTION OF TALENTS, [essay 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 pre- dicament from the guardian or instructor, who, having selected at random the pursuit which his fancy dictates, and in the choice of which he is en- couraged 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 philoso- pher; for even blind chance may sometimes hit the mark, as truly as the most perfect skill. But he will probably fail. Sudet multunty frustraque labor et. 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 II.] OF THE DISTRIBUTION OF TALENTS. 45 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 ex- istence, 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 appro- priately 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 educa- tion ! 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 ad- vancement of him that is taught, in the career of knowledge, and the other contemplating the eifect 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 de- scribed, 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 46 OF THE DISTRIBUTION OF TALENTS. [essAY endowed with the gift of working miracles, and, when the experiment falls into their hands, the re- sult of their efforts is a pitiful miscarriage. Know- ledge 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 facul- ties, 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 ma- jority 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 with- held 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 accus- tomed 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 II.] OF THE DISTRIBUTION OF TALENTS. 47 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 eiFects 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 as- sured 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 open- ed 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 per- petually tread " the primrose path of dalliance." Clouds and tempests occasionally clear the atmo- sphere 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 crea- ture should learn, so far as, agreeably to the con- stitution 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 48 OF THE DISTRIBUTION OF TALENTS, [essay 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, quidferre recusent. But, above all, the beginnings of those studies should be en- couraged, 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 RECOMMEND- ED. — CONCLUSION. I KNEW a man of eminent intellectual faculties**, 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 »» Henry Fuseli. II.] OF THE DISTRIBUTION OF TALENTS. 49 difficulties, and that all the obstacles that we can conjure up will but inspire it with the greater earnestness to attain final success. 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 hu- man 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 huz zas ;" but the ambition to fill a respectable place in the theatre of society, to be useful and to be es- teemed, 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 inge- E 50 OF THE DISTRIBUTION OF TALENTS. [essaY nuous youth is so often doomed to sustain from the supercilious pedant, and the rigid decision of his unfeehng 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 pre- sent 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 edu- cation, that, as we should not humble the pupil in his own eyes by disgraceful and humiliating lan- guage, 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 re- monstrance even in the pursuits to which he is best adapted, for the purpose of overcoming the insta- bility and fits of idleness to which all men, and most of all in their early years, are subject : though II.] OF THE DISTRIBUTION OF TALENTS. 51 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 ; admo- nition 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 re- garded 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 requi- site 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 intima- E 2 52 OF THE DISTRIBUTION OF TALENTS, [essay tions 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 phy- sician, 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 de- dicated. 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 re- mains 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 di- vides the man of genius from the man of ordinary mould." I re- member 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 doc- trine I have delivered. III.] OF INTELLECTUAL ABORTION. 53 ESSAY III. OF INTELLECTUAL ABORTION. In the preceding Essay I have endeavoured to estabhsh the proposition, that every human crea- ture, 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 espe- cially 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 impe- rious concurrence of circumstances, in destinations and employments in which they can never appear to advantage : they frequently, without any exter- nal compulsion, select for themselves objects of their industry, glaringly unadapted to their powers, and in which all their efforts must necessarily ter- minate in miscarriage. 54 OF INTELLECTUAL ABORTION. [essAY I remember a young man, who had been bred a hair-dresser, but who experienced, as he beheved, the secret visitations of the Muse, and became in- spired. " 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 w it, or in re- ality could form a guess what it was that the w riter 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, 'tfr*^ A clerk, foredoomed his father's soul to cross, .MJiit 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 re- spect 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 cha- III.] OF INTELLECTUAL ABORTION. 55^ racteristics of the human mind is the love of novehy. Omne tgnotum pro magnijico 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. What- ever we see through a mist, or in the twihght, is apt to be apprehended by us as something admi- rable, for the single reason that it is seen imper- fectly. 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 hia 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 ex- pressed by the apostle : " Forgetting the things that are behind, we press forward to those that re- main." 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 56 OF INTELLECTUAL ABORTION. [esSAY 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 enter- prise ; he will feel that it calls for all his alertness and vigilance. The man of reflection will not be- gin, till he feels his mind sweUing 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 tra- verse. 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 con- tented. If he saw a consummate dancer, he knew III.] OF INTELLECTUAL ABORTION. 57 no reason why he should not do as well, and im- mediately 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, cheap- ening spectacles, and making experiment of them for ever in vain upon the hook before him, was at length asked, " Could you ever read without spec- tacles ?" to which he was obliged to answer, " I do not know ; I never tried." The vanity of Goldsmith w^as infinite ; and his failure in such attempts must necessarily have been ludicrous. The splendour of the thing presented to our ob- servation, awakens the spirit within us. The ap- plause and admiration excited by certain achieve- ments and accomplishments infects us with desire. We are like the youthful Themistocles, who com- plained 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 ap- plause bestowed on others will often generate un- easiness 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 useful- ness 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 58 OF INTELLECTUAL ABORTION. [essAY the man above him. And this is the cause why we see so many individuals, who might have passed their Uves with honour, devote themselves to in- credible efforts, only that they may be made su- premely 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 achieve- ments, 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, uncon- scious 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. III.] OF INTELLECTUAL ABORTION. 59 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 ad- ventures, unattended with the smallest rational hope of success. Opt at 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 ad- mired him, while his youthful competitors unre- luctantly 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 re- quired ; and it depends at least as much upon the nicely maintained balance of these, as upon the copiousness and brilliancy of each, whether the re- sult shall be auspicious. The progress of genius is like the flight of an arrow ; a breath may turn it 60 OF INTELLECTUAL ABORTION. [essAY 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 under- standing 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 trea- sures 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 ade- quately 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 Hghtning. 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. III.] OF INTELLECTUAL ABORTION. 61 To give solidity and permanence to the inspira- tions 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 concep- tions, will not unfrequently want the steadiness of nerve which is required for their adequate trans- mission. 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 infal- libly 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 con- fusion. They will be endless, and never arrive at their proper termination. They will include pa- renthesis 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 tumul- tuous element. He flounders about in pitiable help- lessness, without the chance of extricating himself by all his eiforts. He is lost in uninteUigible em- barrassment. It is a delightful and a ravishing sight, to observe another man come after him, and l- Vis 63 OF INTELLECTUAL ABORTION. [ESSAY 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, with- out, like the bee, gathering sweetness from each, to increase the public stock, and enrich the maga- zine 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 no- thing that possesses all the requisites that should fix their choice, nothing so good that should au- HI.] OF INTELLECTUAL ABORTION. A thorise 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 alto- gether 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 them- selves to posterity, are not unfrequently of larger calibre^ and more gigantic standard of soul, than such as have inscribed their names upon the co- lumns 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 qualifi- cations, 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 64 OF INTELLECTUAL ABORTION. [eSSAY 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 ap- pearances, may safely be pronounced to be a falla- cious 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 facul- ties 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 un- derstood 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 aftbrd him the most enviable amuse- Ill*] OF INTELLECTUAL ABORTION. 65 ment, 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 pro- gress. He knows that the adventurer of timid mind, and that is infirm of purpose, will never make him- self master of those points which it would be most honourable to him to subdue. But he who under- takes to commit to writing the result of his re- searches, 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 our- selves ; they are part and parcel of all our proposi- tions 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 F 6& OF INTELLECTUAL ABORTION. [e$SAY on his task. Wc 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 ])een led to observe the different ways, in which the mind of man may be brought into a position tend- ing 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 cer- tain cases, to which their endowments and original bent had designed them, shew themselves immode- rately 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 shal- lows and in miseries." But our survey of the subject of which I treat will not be complete, unless wc add to what has been said, another striking truth respecting the imperfection of man collectively taken. The ex- amples of which the history of our species consists, not only abound in cases, where, from mistakes in III.] OF INTELLECTUAL ABORTION. Qy the choice of life, or radical and irremediable im- perfection in the adventurer, the most glaring mis- carriages 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 ra- tional 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 under- taking, 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 ex- cellencies, 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 de- sirous to appear to advantage, and you shall find him a very ordinary man. He has " passions, di- mensions, senses, affections, like the rest of his f2 68 OF INTELLECTUAL ABORTION. [esSAY 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 ex- ecute 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 infelLv operis siwimdy 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 III.] OF INTELLECTUAL ABORTION. 69 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 pro- nounce 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 An- thony Wood says% " By the writings of Shakespear and others of his time, the English tongue was ex- ceedingly 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. 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 dishahilley » Athenae Oxonienses, vol. i. p. 592. .70 OF INTELLECTUAL ABORTION. [ei^AY and in its innermost feelings, he could not stistam 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 ridi- culous, in his hands. He appears to have written his Troilus and Cressida partly with a view to de- grade, 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 (Edipus Ty- rannus, 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 111.] OF INTELLECTUAL ABORTION. 71 given to any of his plays a fifth act, worthy of those that preceded ; the interest generally de^ creases after the third. Shakespear is also liable to the charge of obscu- rity. 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 cow^ard. This defect is perhaps partly to be imputed to the nature of dra- matic 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 sel- dom 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 con- temporary, 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 excellen- cies 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 Cla- 72 OF INTELLECTUAL ABORTION. [essAY rissa. 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 en- durance, nothing ever equalled this author. But he could not shape out the image of a perfect gentle- man, 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 re- sponsive sportiveness. We are astonished however that the formal pedant has acquitted himself of his uncongenial task with so great a display of intellec- tual 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 nmch copiousness and power what it was unfit ever to have attempted. IV.] DURABILITY OF HUMAN ACHIEVEMENTS. 73 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 me- mory 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 con- ceptions 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 74 OF THE DURABILITY OF HUMAN [essAY hills, the forests and the rivers, and all the ex- uberance 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 aque- ducts. He " goes down to the sea in ships," and variegates the ocean with his squadroijs 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 gloI)e 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 con- templative 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 huniaii IV.] ACHIEVEMENTS AND PRODUCTIONS. Jh science and literature take their commencement. Here it is that we most distinctly, and with the greatest astonishment, perceive that man is a mi- racle. 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 civi- lised state of society, that make these the sole ob- ject 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 modi- fying 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 f^'- ./r-'^fy 7(1 OF THE DURABILITY OF HUMAN [essAY inclemency of the seasons, and afterwards exchanged that shed for a somewhat more commodious dwell- ing, 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 W3J perhaps the wish to extend the me- mory 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 oc- curred, 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 pre- sents 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 IV.] ACHIEVEMENTS AND PRODUCTIONS. 77 the question to which we will immediately after- wards 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 mor- tal 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 com- prehend how panegyric and honour can " soothe the dull, cold ear of death :" but they can all con- ceive the gratification to be derived from applaud- ing 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 intelHgible disapprobation and censure of his fellows. The good will and kindness of the multitude has a de- vouring 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. 78 OF THE DURABILITY OF HUMAN [esSAY i 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 raptu- rous approbation with which they were received by the crowd on their return from a successful expe- dition, " 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 mul- titude, happens also in the race after posthumous fame. As has already been said, the number of men is exceedingly great in every civiHsed 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 pe- IV.] ACHIEVEMENTS AND PRODUCTIOTVS. 79 riod 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, com- menced 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 ele- venth. 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 in- defatigable men who were dedicated to them, were not even goaded by the love of fame. They were 80 OF THE DURABILITY OF HUMAN [essAY satisfied with the consciousness of their own per- severance 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 de- gree 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 Irre- fragable and the Seraphic doctors, the subtlety of whose distinctions, and the perseverance of whose investigations, are among the most wonderful mo- numents 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 School- men often bewildered themselves in their subtleties, and often delivered dogmas and systems that may astonish the common sense of unsophisticated un- derstandings. But such is man. So great is his persevering labour, his invincible industry, and the resolution with which he sets himself, year after IV.] ACHIEVEMENTS AND PRODUCTIONS. 81 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 corners 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 book- sellers, 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 ^ : " Theories of abstract philosophy, systems of pro- found 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 pre- tended decisions of science. The case is not the same with the beauties of eloquence and poetry. " Essays, Part I, Essay xxiii. G 82 OF THE DURABILITY OF HUMAN [esSAY 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." 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 unpre- cedented, that, from the time that he was twenty-one years of age, he was universally considered as hold- ing 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 fune- ral 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 com- petition who should be so fortunate as to secure his residence in their states. Christina, queen of Swe- den, having obtained the preference, received him with singular reverence and attention ; and, Salma- sius being taken ill at Stockholm, and confined to his bed, the queen persisted with her own hand to IV.] ACHIEVEMENTS AND PRODUCTIONS. 83 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 remem- bered, 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 appH- cation, the student is often obliged to confess his inabihty 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 G 2 84 OF THE DURABILITY OF HUMAN [essay 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 under- stood 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 re- pulsive. 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 hun- dred 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 Bctterton revived, and by his admirable representation gave popularity to, Macbeth, Hamlet and Lear, a popu- larity they have ever since retained. But Macbeth was not revived (with music, and alterations by sir William Davenant) till 1 674 ; and Lear a few years IV.] ACHIEVEMENTS AND PRODUCTIONS. 85 later, with love scenes and a happy catastrophe by Nahum Tate. In the latter part of the reign of Charles the Se- cond, Dryden and Otway and Lee held the undis- puted 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 con- spiracy, 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 S6 OF THE DURABILITY OF HUMAN [essAY from the heart, and analysing the nature of man. The folly of this love can only be exceeded, by the ab- ject 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 preten- sion to manly, or even endurable feeling, or to com- mon 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 ac- tion, 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 per- fect anatomy of the human heart, which render the master-pieces of Shakespear a property for all na- tions and all times. . m* While Shakespear was partly forgotten, it con- tinued to be totally unknown that he had contem- poraries as inexpressibly superior to the dramatic writers that have appeared since, as these contem- poraries 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 IV.] ACHIEVEMENTS AND PRODUCTIONS. 87 buffoonery, were to be allowed for to him on that consideration. v 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 sen- timent 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 col- lection 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 j Forgot his epic, nay, Pindaric art. But still I love the language of his heart. SA OF THE DURABILITY OF HUMAN [essay As Cowley was the great royalist poet after the Restoration, Cleveland stood in the same rank du- ring 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 think- ing uncommonly masculine ; and he compresses his meaning so as to give it every advantage. His ima- gination 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 con- temptible 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 lan- guage. Pradon is now forgotten : and the whole French poetry of the Augustan age of Louis the Fourteenth is threatened with the same fate. Hay- ley for a few years was applauded as the genuine successor of Pope ; and the poem of Sympathy by IV.] ACHIEVEMENTS AND PRODUCTIONS. 89 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 tremen- dous 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 va- lidity than things that never existed. Warriors and poets, the authors of systems and the lights of phi- losophy, 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 produc- tions 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 flou- rishes 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 90 OF THE DURABILITY OF HUMAN [essAY 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 paint- ings 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 opera- tion 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 toge- ther. Buildings for the use or habitation of man do not last for ever. Mighty cities, as well as de- tached edifices, are destined to disappear. Thebes, and Troy, and Persepolis, and Palmyra have vanish- ed from the face of the earth. " Thorns and bram- bles have grown up in their palaces : they are habi- tations for serpents, and a court for the owl." IV.] ACHIEVEMENTS AND PRODUCTIONS. 91 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 succes- sive revolutions. Modes of faith will sometimes be still more permanent. Not to mention the systems of Moses and Christ, which we consider as deliver- ed 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 dura- bility of the sciences. According to Bailly, the ob- servation 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 ani- mals, 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 92 DURABILITY OF HUMAN ACHIEVEMENTS. [eSSAY 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 indivi- dual 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. v.] OF THE REBELLIOUSNESS OF MAN. 93 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 con- clusions. 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 empha- tically the subject of history, of poetry and fiction. It is by this that he is raised above the other inha- bitants of the globe of earth, and that the indivi- duals of our race are made the partners of " gods, and men like gods." 94 OF THE REBELLIOUSNESS OF MAN. [eSSAY 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 as as beings of a superior species ; and, without authority derived to us from any sy- stem of thinking, even without the scheme of gra- tifying 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 per- petual restraint of being wise and sober insupport- able. We long to be something, or to do some- thing, sudden and unexpected, to throw the furni- ture 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 ex- cited, 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 in- sane, or may perhaps be made amenable to the cri- minal 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, West- minster, the especial friend of Sir Isaac Newton, the distinguished editor of the poems of Homer, and v.] OF THE REBELLIOUSNESS OF MAN. 95 author of the Demonstration of the Being and At- tributes 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 re- lation 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 ma- jestic and voluminous structure. Clarke was, as it appears, so much struck with the whimsical nature of this unexpected metamorphosis, and the extra- ordinary solemnity of his kinsman's demeanour, as to have felt impelled, almost immediately upon en- tering the room, to snatch the wig from the alder- man'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 ex- hausting his intellectual faculties by long and in- tense 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 intel- lectual powers. 96 OF THE REBELLIOUSNESS OF MAN. [essay But the deviousness and aberration of our human faculties frequently amount to something consider- ably 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 conside- ration of any documents of religion or otherwise I may have imbibed from my parents and instruc- tors) are matured within us by experience. In proportion as I am rendered familiar with my fel- low-creatures, or with society at large, I come to feel the ties which bind men to each other, and the y,] OF THE REBELLIOUSNESS OF MAN. 97 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 H 98 OF THE REBELLIOUSNESS OF MAN. [esSAY upon Other beings out of ourselves. It is this prin- ciple, which instigates a child to destroy his play- things, 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 disposi- tions. 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 he 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 wh^re it lies. v.] OF THE REBELLIOUSNESS OF MAN. 99 It must be buried. How is all this to be done by me ? By one precipitate act, I have involved my- self in a long train of loathsome and heart-sick- ening 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 repug- nance to the proposition, yet it will perhaps be ad- mitted, 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 com- pletely 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 pre- ference, is immediately realised ; his thought is succeeded by the effect ; and no traces are left be- hind, 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 impa- tience of the degradation to which we are con- demned. 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 h2 100 OF THE REBELLIOUSNESS OF MAN. [essAY 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 absurdi- ties. This is the original sin upon which St. Aus- tin 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 thefomespeccati, 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 *. 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 remark- able 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 em- ployed in the building ; ten years to have been consumed in hewing and conveying the stones, and twenty more in completing the edifice. Of the * Life of Mahomet, by Prideaux. v.] OF THE REBELLIOUSNESS OF MAN. 101 largest the base is a square, and the sides are tri- angles, 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 cal- culated for duration : it cannot perish by accident ; and it would require almost as much labour to de- molish it, as it did to raise it at first. What a light does this fact convey into the in- most 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 irrepres- sible " 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 em- phatical 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 ( v'C 102 OF THE REBELLIOUSNESS OF MAN. [ESSAY cheerful and gay frame of mind. Home is the place where he most easily accomplishes all his de- signs ; 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 satis- fied ; we always feel the want of something we have not ; and this uneasiness is continually push- ing us on to precipitate and abortive resolves. I find in a book, entitled. Illustrations of Phre- nology, 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 v.] OF THE REBELLIOUSNESS OF MAN. 103 feelings of the person it represents, which he may have felt extremely annoying ^" 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. 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 am- bition, 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 imagi- nations 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 pre- viously to our being launched in our present condi- tion, yet we have certain broken and imperfect con- ceptions, 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, ^ The remark thus delivered is applied to the portrait of the author of the present volume. 104 OF THE REBELLIOUSNESS OF MAN. [essAY 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 en- couraged 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 cer- tain, 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 v.] OF THE REBELLIOUSNESS OF MAN. 105 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 con- sented 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 uncontrolable- ness. 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 bis ultimate advantage. 106 OF THE REBELLIOUSNESS OF MAN. [ESSAY The most moderate and auspicious method in which the old may endeavour to guide and con- trol 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 recog- nise. 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 in- cumbent 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 deduc- tion 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 princi- v.] OF THE REBELLIOUSNESS OF MAN. 107 pally incident to us in the period of youth. By degrees the novelties of life wear out, and we be- come sober. We are like soldiers at drill;, and in a review. At first we perform our exercise from ne- cessity, 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 stub- bornness 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 dis- plays the most cogent recommendations. Having done so, I rouse my faculties and direct my energies to the performance of my task. By degrees how- ever my resolution grows less vigorous, and my ex- ertions 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, 108 OF THE REBELLIOUSNESS OF MAN. [esSAY till at length I grow disturbed and uncomfortable if I am withheld from them. They are like my daily bread. If they are not aflPorded 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 na- ture. The judicious parent or instructor essays a thousand methods to accomplish his end. The con- siderate 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 im- pediments. 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 ex- horts, 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 v.] OF THE REBELLIOUSNESS OF MAN. 109 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 in- formation, 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 counter- act 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 tho- roughly aware of all the rocks and quicksands, and 1 10 OF THE REBELLIOUSNESS OF MAN. [ESSAY 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 pro- perty generally in civil society. I have not con- sidered those attributes of man which mav serve indifferently for good or for ill, as he may happen to be or not to be the subject of those fiercer ex- citements, that will oft times corrupt the most in- genuous 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 im- provement 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 irapa- v.] OF THE REBELLIOUSNESS OF MAN. Ill tient, 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 j 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 ordi- nary men, the fiercest excesses of passion extend to no greater distance than can be reached by the sound of their voice. 112 or HUMAN INNOCENCE. [essAY 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 occu- pation, and there are few individuals that feel the propensity to interrupt the pursuits of their neigh- bours 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, feel- ing no disposition to molest the strangers he en- counters, 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 VI.] OF HUMAN INNOCENCE. 113 to imagine that men might subsist very well in clusters and congregated bodies without the coer- cion of law ; and in truth criminal laws were only made to prevent the ill-disposed few from interrupt- ing 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 inerticB, analogous to that quality in material sub- stances, 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 un- advisedly 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 fore- sight of any means by which I am to procure the iiext mfCal that my nature requires. 114 OF HUMAN INNOCENCE. [essAY 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 scru- tinising 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 despe- rate resolve. All this and more must occur to the man of violence, within the pale of a civilised com- munity. Begging is the mildest form in which a man can obtain from the stranger he meets, the means of Isupplying 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 VI.] OF HUMAN INNOCENCE. 115 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 mul- titude 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 con- trary 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, some- times 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 propor- I 2 116 or HUMAN INNOCENCE. [esSAY tion 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 so- ciety. 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 inoiFensiveness 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 con- dition 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 muti- lation 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 VlJ OF HUMAN INNOCENCE. 117 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 ver- min, that were ever suffered to crawl upon the sur- face of the earth." The comprehensive faculties of man therefore, and the refinements and subtlety of his intellect, serve only to render him the more for- midable 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 repre- sentation. 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 118 OF HUMAN INNOCENCE. [essAV 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 liOt just that we should establish our opinion of human nature purely from the records of history. Man is alternately devoted to tranquil- lity and to violence. But the latter only aftbrds the proper materials of narration. When he is wrought upon by some powerful impulse, diit curiosity is most roused to observe him. We remark his emo- tions, his energies, his tempest, ft 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 com- partments, and sec in which violence, and in which tranquillity prevails. Let us look through the va- rious ranks and occupations of human society, and endeavour to arrive at a conclusion of a similar sort. The soldier by occupation, and the officer VI.] OF HUMAN INNOCENCE. 119 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 mul- titude of instances fallen under this description. Conquerors, the firebrands of the earth, have suf- ficiently 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 indispen- sible 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 cul- tivator, come the manufacturer, the artificer, the carpenter, the mason, the joiner, the cabinet-maker, all those numerous classes of persons, who are em- ployed 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 con- veniencies 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 \Vhat has already been produced, or in adding to the 120 OF HUMAN INNOCENCE. [essaY Stock, in science or the liberal arts, in the instructing mankind in religion and their duties, or in the educa- tion of youth. "CiviHty," "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, up- roar 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 unpa- latable 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 lo- vers of strenuous occupation. They build and they plant ; they raise splendid edifices, and lay out plea- sure-grounds of mighty extent. Or they devote their minds to the acquisition of knowledge ; they outwatch the bear. With thrice great Hermes, or unspherc 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 arc constituted of VI.J OF HUMAN INNOCENCE* 121 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, view- ing 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 our- selves 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, ex- ists in a condition somewhat analogous to that of a negro slave, except that he may to a limited extent 122 OF HUMAN INNOCENCE. [esSAY select the occupation to which he shall addict him- self, or may at least starve, in part or in whole, un- controled, 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 occu- pations of other men. I remark the shops that on every side beset my path. It is curious and strik- ing, 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 re- spective places, and are marshaled and disciplined with an exactness scarcely less than that of the in- dividuals of a mighty army. We are therefore little disposed to interrupt the occupations of each other. Wife are intent upon the peculiar employment to VI.] OF HUMAN INNOCENCE. 123 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 com- munity, that a vast majority of the species are innocent, and have no inclination to molest or in- terrupt each other s avocations. But, as this condition of human society pre- serves us in comparative innocence, and renders the social arrangement in the midst of which we exist, to a certain degree a soothing and agreeable spec- tacle, 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 mem- bers of the community in which we live into a bar- ren and ungratifying mediocrity. Hence it should be the aim of those persons, who from their situa- tion have more or less the means of looking through the vast assemblage of their countrymen, of pene- trating " into the seeds " of character, and deter- mining " 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 main- tain himself, and be his own provider : why should we help him ?" The help however that we should aiFord to our fellow-men requires of us great discernmetit/iti its 124 OF HUMAN INNOCENCE. [essAY 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 vigor- ous, in which the possessor of talents "administers to himself," and contends with the different ob- stacles 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 situa- tions, and placed on high, like beacons, to illumi- nate the world. And, independently of all examples, a sound application of the common sense of the hu- man mind would teach us, that the worthies of the earth, though miracles, arc not omnipotent, and VI.] OF HUMAN INNOCENCE. 125 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 prompt- ed 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 ap- propriate 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 com- pelled 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, pro- vided 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 126 OF HUMAN JNNOCENCE. [eSS^Y 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. .-fjoi- VII.] OF THE DURATION OF HUMAN LIFE. 127 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 how- ever 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 hu- man 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 intel- lect? " 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 128 OF THE DURATION OF HUMAN LIFE. [essAY the machine with nourishment, and a time for di- gestion. When all these demands have been sup- plied, how many hours will be left for intellectual occupation ? These remarks, as I have said, are intended prin- cipally to apply to the subject of productive lite- rature. 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 por- tion, 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 ex- pence 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, VII.] OF THE DURATION OF HUMAN LIFE. 129 by those who are qualified to appreciate the merit of a work, who are endowed with a quick sensibi- lity 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 de- sires 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 Quinti- lian, I would say, " Magna dehetur ' hominibus re- verential-.^' 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 in- tellect becomes in any degree clouded, and his vital spirits abate of their elasticity. 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, '' Mankind is to be considered with reverence. 130 OF THE DURATION OF HUMAN LIF£. [ESSAY 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 clear- ness. 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 imagina- tion, but becomes barren and unsatisfactory. Re- pose is necessary, and that the soil should be re- freshed with the dews of another evening, the sleep of a night, and the freshness and revivifying influ- ence 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 opera- tions 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." Wc are " as a sleep ; or as grass : in the morning it VII.] OF THE DURATION OF HUMAN LIFE. 131 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 ho- nours, and fame, and even pain, and privations, and torment, when they are departed, are but like a feather ; we regard them as of no account. Ta- ken 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 k2 132 OF THE DURATION OF HUMAN LIFE. [essAY 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 conside- ration of the nearness or remoteness of the object he contemplates. 'f^^ One sentence, which has grown into a maxim for ever repeated, is remarkable for the grossest fallacy : ^rs longa, vita brevis^, I would fain know, what art, compared with the natural duration of human life from puberty to old age, is long. 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 hu- man 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 •> Art is long j life is short. VII.] OF THE DURATION OF HUMAN LIFE. 133 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 abstruse- ness 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 lat- ter 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 caUing," — 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 capa- ble 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 in- 134 OF THE DURATION OF HUMAN LIFE. [essAY elude 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 de- lighted us was seen accompanied with charms inex- pressible, and, as Dryden expresses it*^, '^the first sprightly running" of the wine of life afforded a zest never after to be hoped for. I return then to the consideration of the alleged shortness of hfe. 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 car- ried on the division so far as it might be carried. It has been calculated that the human mind is ca- pable of being impressed with three hundred and twenty sensations in a second of time*^. " 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, con- tinue the review at intervals, without producing any pause in my discourse ! How many other senaa- * Aurengzebc. ' See Watson on Time, Chapter 11. VII.] OF THE DURATION OF HUMAN LIFE. 135 tions 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 dif- ferent 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 oc- curred in the course of the morning, in the course of yesterday, the most remote from, the most un- connected 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 be- ing in any degree distracted by their multiplicity®." 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 after- wards, 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, * Political Justice, Book IV, Chapter ix. 136 OF THE DURATION OF HUMAN LIJFE. [essay 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 he wise. The erroneousness of this notion however has from time to time been detected by moralists and phi- losophers ; and it has been felt that he who pro- ceeds 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, Fest'ina 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 Ele- ments 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 bis progress. Nothing is more easy than to gabble through a work replete with the profoundest elements of Vll.l OF THE DURATION OF HUMAN LIFE. 137 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 im- portant 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 corpo- real 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 di- rection, " survey it," as Sterne says, " transversely, then foreright, then this way, and then that, in all its possible directions and foreshortenings^;" and ' Tristram Shandy, Vol. IV, Chap. ii. 138 OF THE DURATION OF HUMAN LIFE. [essAY thus only can it be expected that we should ade- quately comprehend it. 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 plea- sure, 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 Vll.] OF THE DURATION OF HUMAN LIFE. 139 time hangs upon our hands, and in how high esti- mation 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 n