They do not overlook their original defects so readily as others overlook their acquired advantages. It is not wonderful, therefore, that opera-singers and dancers refuse or only _condescend_ as it were, to accept lords, though the latter are too often fascinated by them. The fair performer knows (better than her unsuspecting admirer) how little connection there is between the dazzling figure she makes on the stage and that which she may make in private life, and is in no hurry to convert "the drawing-room into a Green-room." The n.o.bleman (supposing him not to be very wise) is astonished at the miraculous powers of art in
"The fair, the chaste, the inexpressive _she_";
and thinks such a paragon must easily conform to the routine of manners and society which every trifling woman of quality of his acquaintance, from sixteen to sixty, goes through without effort. This is a hasty or a wilful conclusion. Things of habit only come by habit, and inspiration here avails nothing. A man of fortune who marries an actress for her fine performance of tragedy, has been well compared to the person who bought Punch. The lady is not unfrequently aware of the inconsequentiality, and unwilling to be put on the shelf, and hid in the nursery of some musty country mansion. Servant girls, of any sense and spirit, treat their masters (who make serious love to them) with suitable contempt. What is it but a proposal to drag an unmeaning trollop at his heels through life, to her own annoyance and the ridicule of all his friends? No woman, I suspect, ever forgave a man who raised her from a low condition in life (it is a perpetual obligation and reproach); though I believe, men often feel the most disinterested regard for women under such circ.u.mstances. Sancho Panza discovered no less folly in his eagerness to enter upon his new government, than wisdom in quitting it as fast as possible. Why will Mr. Cobbett persist in getting into Parliament? He would find himself no longer the same man. What member of Parliament, I should like to know, could write his _Register_? As a popular partisan, he may (for aught I can say) be a match for the whole Honourable House; but, by obtaining a seat in St. Stephen"s Chapel, he would only be equal to a 576th part of it. It was surely a puerile ambition in Mr. Addington to succeed Mr. Pitt as prime minister. The situation was only a foil to his imbecility. Gipsies have a fine faculty of evasion; catch them who can in the same place or story twice! Take them; teach them the comforts of civilisation; confine them in warm rooms, with thick carpets and down beds; and they will fly out of the window--like the bird, described by Chaucer, out of its golden cage. I maintain that there is no common language or medium of understanding between people of education and without it--between those who judge of things from books or from their senses. Ignorance has so far the advantage over learning; for it can make an appeal to you from what you know; but you cannot react upon it through that which it is a perfect stranger to.
Ignorance is, therefore, power. This is what foiled Buonaparte in Spain and Russia. The people can only be gained over by informing them, though they may be enslaved by fraud or force. "What is it, then, he does like?"--"Good victuals and drink!" As if you had these not too; but because he has them not, he thinks of nothing else, and laughs at you and your refinements, supposing you live upon air. To those who are deprived of every other advantage, even nature is a _book sealed_. I have made this capital mistake all my life, in imagining that those objects which lay open to all, and excited an interest merely from the _idea_ of them, spoke a common language to all; and that nature was a kind of universal home, where ages, s.e.xes, cla.s.ses meet. Not so. The vital air, the sky, the woods, the streams--all these go for nothing, except with a favoured few. The poor are taken up with their bodily wants--the rich, with external acquisitions: the one, with the sense of property--the other, of its privation. Both have the same distaste for _sentiment_. The _genteel_ are the slaves of appearances--the vulgar, of necessity; and neither has the smallest regard to worth, refinement, generosity. All savages are irreclaimable. I can understand the Irish character better than the Scotch. I hate the formal crust of circ.u.mstances and the mechanism of society. I have been recommended, indeed, to settle down into some respectable profession for life:
"Ah! why so soon the blossom tear?"
I am "in no haste to be venerable!"
In thinking of those one might wish to have been, many people will exclaim, "Surely, you would like to have been Shakspeare?" Would Garrick have consented to the change? No, nor should he; for the applause which he received, and on which he lived, was more adapted to his genius and taste. If Garrick had agreed to be Shakspeare, he would have made it a previous condition that he was to be a better player.
He would have insisted on taking some higher part than _Polonius_ or the _Gravedigger_. Ben Jonson and his companions at the Mermaid would not have known their old friend Will in his new disguise. The modern Roscius would have scouted the halting player. He would have shrunk from the parts of the inspired poet. If others are unlike us, we feel it as a presumption and an impertinence to usurp their place; if they are like us, it seems a work of supererogation. We are not to be cozened out of our existence for nothing. It has been ingeniously urged, as an objection to having been Milton, that "then we should not have had the pleasure of reading _Paradise Lost_." Perhaps I should incline to draw lots with Pope, but that he was deformed, and did not sufficiently relish Milton and Shakspeare. As it is, we can enjoy his verses and theirs too. Why, having these, need we ever be dissatisfied with ourselves? Goldsmith is a person whom I considerably affect notwithstanding his blunders and his misfortunes. The author of the _Vicar of Wakefield_, and of _Retaliation_, is one whose temper must have had something eminently amiable, delightful, gay, and happy in it.
"A certain tender bloom his fame o"erspreads."
But then I could never make up my mind to his preferring Rowe and Dryden to the worthies of the Elizabethan age; nor could I, in like manner, forgive Sir Joshua--whom I number among those whose existence was marked with a _white stone_, and on whose tomb might be inscribed "Thrice Fortunate!"--his treating Nicholas Poussin with contempt.
Differences in matters of taste and opinion are points of honour--"stuff o" the conscience"--stumbling-blocks not to be got over. Others, we easily grant, may have more wit, learning, imagination, riches, strength, beauty, which we should be glad to borrow of them; but that they have sounder or better views of things, or that we should act wisely in changing in this respect, is what we can by no means persuade ourselves. We may not be the lucky possessors of what is best or most desirable; but our notion of what is best and most desirable we will give up to no man by choice or compulsion; and unless others (the greatest wits or brightest geniuses) can come into our way of thinking, we must humbly beg leave to remain as we are. A Calvinistic preacher would not relinquish a single point of faith to be the Pope of Rome; nor would a strict Unitarian acknowledge the mystery of the Holy Trinity to have painted Raphael"s _a.s.sembly of the Just_. In the range of _ideal_ excellence, we are distracted by variety and repelled by differences: the imagination is fickle and fastidious, and requires a combination of all possible qualifications, which never met. Habit alone is blind and tenacious of the most homely advantages; and after running the tempting round of nature, fame and fortune, we wrap ourselves up in our familiar recollections and humble pretensions--as the lark, after long fluttering on sunny wing, sinks into its lowly bed!
We can have no very importunate craving, nor very great confidence, in wishing to change characters, except with those with whom we are intimately acquainted by their works; and having these by us (which is all we know or covet in them), what would we have more? We can have _no more of a cat than her skin_; nor of an author than his brains. By becoming Shakspeare in reality we cut ourselves out of reading Milton, Pope, Dryden, and a thousand more--all of whom we have in our possession, enjoy, and _are_, by turns, in the best part of them, their thoughts, without any metamorphosis or miracle at all. What a microcosm is ours! What a Proteus is the human mind! All that we know, think of, or can admire, in a manner becomes ourselves. We are not (the meanest of us) a volume, but a whole library! In this calculation of problematical contingencies, the lapse of time makes no difference.
One would as soon have been Raphael as any modern artist. Twenty, thirty, or forty years of elegant enjoyment and lofty feeling were as great a luxury in the fifteenth as in the nineteenth century. But Raphael did not live to see Claude, nor t.i.tian Rembrandt. Those who found arts and sciences are not witnesses of their acc.u.mulated results and benefits; nor, in general, do they reap the meed of praise which is their due. We who come after in some "laggard age" have more enjoyment of their fame than they had. Who would have missed the sight of the Louvre in all its glory to have been one of those whose works enriched it? Would it not have been giving a certain good for an uncertain advantage? No: I am as sure (if it is not presumption to say so) of what pa.s.sed through Raphael"s mind as of what pa.s.ses through my own; and I know the difference between seeing (though even that is a rare privilege) and producing such perfection. At one time I was so devoted to Rembrandt, that I think if the Prince of Darkness had made me the offer in some rash mood, I should have been tempted to close with it, and should have become (in happy hour, and in downright earnest) the great master of light and shade!
I have run myself out of my materials for this Essay, and want a well-turned sentence or two to conclude with; like Benvenuto Cellini, who complains that, with all the bra.s.s, tin, iron, and lead he could muster in the house, his statue of Perseus was left imperfect, with a dent in the heel of it. Once more, then--I believe there is one character that all the world would like to change with--which is that of a favoured rival. Even hatred gives way to envy. We would be anything--a toad in a dungeon--to live upon her smile, which is our all of earthly hope and happiness; nor can we, in our infatuation, conceive that there is any difference of feeling on the subject, or that the pressure of her hand is not in itself divine, making those to whom such bliss is deigned like the Immortal G.o.ds!
1828.
FOOTNOTE:
[7] When Lord Byron was cut by the great, on account of his quarrel with his wife, he stood leaning on a marble slab at the entrance of a room, while troops of d.u.c.h.esses and countesses pa.s.sed out. One little, pert, red-haired girl staid a few paces behind the rest; and, as she pa.s.sed him, said with a nod, "Aye, you should have married me, and then all this wouldn"t have happened to you!"
ESSAY VII
MIND AND MOTIVE
"The web of our lives is of a mingled yarn."
"Anthony Codrus Urceus, a most learned and unfortunate Italian, born 1446, was a striking instance" (says his biographer) "of the miseries men bring upon themselves by setting their affections unreasonably on trifles. This learned man lived at Forli, and had an apartment in the palace. His room was so very dark, that he was forced to use a candle in the day time; and one day, going abroad without putting it out, his library was set on fire, and some papers which he had prepared for the press were burned. The instant he was informed of this ill news, he was affected even to madness. He ran furiously to the palace, and, stopping at the door of his apartment, he cried aloud, "Christ Jesus!
what mighty crime have I committed? whom of your followers have I ever injured, that you thus rage with inexpiable hatred against me?" Then turning himself to an image of the Virgin Mary near at hand, "Virgin"
(says he) "hear what I have to say, for I speak in earnest, and with a composed spirit. If I shall happen to address you in my dying moments, I humbly entreat you not to hear me, nor receive me into heaven, for I am determined to spend all eternity in h.e.l.l." Those who heard these blasphemous expressions endeavoured to comfort him, but all to no purpose; for the society of mankind being no longer supportable to him, he left the city, and retired, like a savage, to the deep solitude of a wood. Some say that he was murdered there by ruffians; others that he died at Bologna, in 1500, after much contrition and penitence."
Almost every one may here read the history of his own life. There is scarcely a moment in which we are not in some degree guilty of the same kind of absurdity, which was here carried to such a singular excess. We waste our regrets on what cannot be recalled, or fix our desires on what we know cannot be attained. Every hour is the slave of the last; and we are seldom masters either of our thoughts or of our actions. We are the creatures of imagination, pa.s.sion, and self-will, more than of reason or self-interest. Rousseau, in his _Emilius_, proposed to educate a perfectly reasonable man, who was to have pa.s.sions and affections like other men, but with an absolute control over them. He was to love and to be wise. This is a contradiction in terms. Even in the common transactions and daily intercourse of life, we are governed by whim, caprice, prejudice, or accident. The falling of a tea-cup puts us out of temper for the day; and a quarrel that commenced about the pattern of a gown may end only with our lives.
"Friends now fast sworn, On a dissension of a doit, break out To bitterest enmity. So fellest foes, Whose pa.s.sions and whose plots have broke their sleep, To take the one the other, by some chance, Some trick not worth an egg, shall grow dear friends, And interjoin their issues."
We are little better than humoured children to the last, and play a mischievous game at cross purposes with our own happiness and that of others.
We have given the above story as a striking contradiction to the prevailing doctrine of modern systems of morals and metaphysics, that man is purely a sensual and selfish animal, governed solely by a regard either to his immediate gratification or future interest. This doctrine we mean to oppose with all our might, whenever we meet with it. We are, however, less disposed to quarrel with it, as it is opposed to reason and philosophy, than as it interferes with common sense and observation. If the absurdity in question had been confined to the schools, we should not have gone out of our way to meddle with it: but it has gone abroad in the world, has crept into ladies"
boudoirs, is entered in the commonplace book of beaux, is in the mouth of the learned and ignorant, and forms a part of popular opinion. It is perpetually applied as a false measure to the characters and conduct of men in the common affairs of the world, and it is therefore our business to rectify it, if we can. In fact, whoever sets out on the idea of reducing all our motives and actions to a simple principle, must either take a very narrow and superficial view of human nature, or make a very perverse use of his understanding in reasoning on what he sees. The frame of our minds, like that of his body, is exceedingly complicated. Besides mere sensibility to pleasure and pain, there are other original independent principles, necessarily interwoven with the nature of man as an active and intelligent being, and which, blended together in different proportions, give their form and colour to our lives. Without some other essential faculties, such as will, imagination, etc., to give effect and direction to our physical sensibility, this faculty could be of no possible use or influence; and with those other faculties joined to it, this pretended instinct of self-love will be subject to be everlastingly modified and controlled by those faculties, both in what regards our own good and that of others; that is, must itself become in a great measure dependent on the very instruments it uses. The two most predominant principles in the mind, besides sensibility and self-interest, are imagination and self-will, or (in general) the love of strong excitement, both in thought and action. To these sources may be traced the various pa.s.sions, pursuits, habits, affections, follies and caprices, virtues and vices of mankind. We shall confine ourselves, in the present article, to give some account of the influence exercised by the imagination over the feelings. To an intellectual being, it cannot be altogether arbitrary what ideas it shall have, whether pleasurable or painful. Our ideas do not originate in our love of pleasure, and they cannot, therefore, depend absolutely upon it.
They have another principle. If the imagination were "the servile slave" of our self-love, if our ideas were emanations of our sensitive nature, encouraged if agreeable, and excluded the instant they became otherwise, or encroached on the former principle, then there might be a tolerable pretence for the epicurean philosophy which is here spoken of. But for any such entire and mechanical subserviency of the operations of the one principle to the dictates of the other, there is not the slightest foundation in reality. The attention which the mind gives to its ideas is not always owing to the gratification derived from them, but to the strength and truth of the impressions themselves, _i.e._ to their involuntary power over the mind. This observation will account for a very general principle in the mind, which cannot, we conceive, be satisfactorily explained in any other way, we mean _the power of fascination_. Every one has heard the story of the girl who, being left alone by her companions, in order to frighten her, in a room with a dead body, at first attempted to get out, and shrieked violently for a.s.sistance, but finding herself shut in, ran and embraced the corpse, and was found senseless in its arms.
It is said that in such cases there is a desperate effort made to get rid of the dread by converting it into the reality. There may be some truth in this account, but we do not think it contains the whole truth. The event produced in the present instance does not bear out the conclusion. The progress of the pa.s.sion does not seem to have been that of diminishing or removing the terror by coming in contact with the object, but of carrying this terror to its height from an intense and irresistible impulse overcoming every other feeling.
It is a well-known fact that few persons can stand safely on the edge of a precipice, or walk along the parapet wall of a house, without being in danger of throwing themselves down; not, we presume, from a principle of self-preservation; but in consequence of a strong idea having taken possession of the mind from which it cannot well escape, which absorbs every other consideration, and confounds and overrules all self-regards. The impulse cannot in this case be resolved into a desire to remove the uneasiness of fear, for the only danger arises from the fear. We have been told by a person not at all given to exaggeration, that he once felt a strong propensity to throw himself into a cauldron of boiling lead, into which he was looking. These are what Shakspeare calls "the toys of desperation." People sometimes marry, and even fall in love on this principle--that is, through mere apprehension, or what is called a fatality. In like manner, we find instances of persons who are, as it were, naturally delighted with whatever is disagreeable--who catch all sorts of unbecoming tones and gestures--who always say what they should not, and what they do not mean to say--in whom intemperance of imagination and incontinence of tongue are a disease, and who are governed by an almost infallible instinct of absurdity.
The love of imitation has the same general source. We dispute for ever about Hogarth, and the question can never be decided according to the common ideas on the subject of taste. His pictures appeal to the love of truth, not to the sense of beauty: but the one is as much an essential principle of our nature as the other. They fill up the void of the mind; they present an everlasting succession and variety of ideas. There is a fine observation somewhere made by Aristotle, that the mind has a natural appet.i.te of curiosity or desire to know; and most of that knowledge which comes in by the eye, for this presents us with the greatest variety of differences. Hogarth is relished only by persons of a certain strength of mind and penetration into character; for the subjects in themselves are not pleasing, and this objection is only redeemed by the exercise and activity which they give to the understanding. The great difference between what is meant by a severe and an effeminate taste or style, depends on the distinction here made.
Our teasing ourselves to recollect the names of places or persons we have forgotten, the love of riddles and of abstruse philosophy, are all ill.u.s.trations of the same general principle of curiosity, or the love of intellectual excitement. Again, our impatience to be delivered of a secret that we know; the necessity which lovers have for confidants, auricular confession, and the declarations so commonly made by criminals of their guilt, are effects of the involuntary power exerted by the imagination over the feelings. Nothing can be more untrue, than that the whole course of our ideas, pa.s.sions, and pursuits, is regulated by a regard to self-interest. Our attachment to certain objects is much oftener in proportion to the strength of the impression they make on us, to their power of riveting and fixing the attention, than to the gratification we derive from them. We are, perhaps, more apt to dwell upon circ.u.mstances that excite disgust and shock our feelings, than on those of an agreeable nature. This, at least, is the case where this disposition is particularly strong, as in people of nervous feelings and morbid habits of thinking. Thus the mind is often haunted with painful images and recollections, from the hold they have taken of the imagination. We cannot shake them off, though we strive to do it: nay, we even court their company; we will not part with them out of our presence; we strain our aching sight after them; we anxiously recall every feature, and contemplate them in all their aggravated colours. There are a thousand pa.s.sions and fancies that thwart our purposes, and disturb our repose. Grief and fear are almost as welcome inmates of the breast as hope or joy, and more obstinately cherished. We return to the objects which have excited them, we brood over them, they become almost inseparable from the mind, necessary to it; they a.s.similate all objects to the gloom of our own thoughts, and make the will a party against itself. This is one chief source of most of the pa.s.sions that prey like vultures on the heart, and embitter human life. We hear moralists and divines perpetually exclaiming, with mingled indignation and surprise, at the folly of mankind in obstinately persisting in these tormenting and violent pa.s.sions, such as envy, revenge, sullenness, despair, etc.
This is to them a mystery; and it will always remain an inexplicable one, while the love of happiness is considered as the only spring of human conduct and desires.[8]
The love of power or action is another independent principle of the human mind, in the different degrees in which it exists, and which are not by any means in exact proportion to its physical sensibility. It seems evidently absurd to suppose that sensibility to pleasure or pain is the only principle of action. It is almost too obvious to remark, that sensibility alone, without an active principle in the mind, could never produce action. The soul might lie dissolved in pleasure, or be agonised with woe; but the impulses of feeling, in order to excite pa.s.sion, desire, or will, must be first communicated to some other faculty. There must be a principle, a fund of activity somewhere, by and through which our sensibility operates; and that this active principle owes all its force, its precise degree of direction, to the sensitive faculty, is neither self-evident nor true. Strength of will is not always nor generally in proportion to strength of feeling.
There are different degrees of activity, as of sensibility, in the mind; and our pa.s.sions, characters, and pursuits, often depend no less upon the one than on the other. We continually make a distinction in common discourse between sensibility and irritability, between pa.s.sion and feeling, between the nerves and muscles; and we find that the most voluptuous people are in general the most indolent. Every one who has looked closely into human nature must have observed persons who are naturally and habitually restless in the extreme, but without any extraordinary susceptibility to pleasure or pain, always making or finding excuses to do something--whose actions constantly outrun the occasion, and who are eager in the pursuit of the greatest trifles--whose impatience of the smallest repose keeps them always employed about nothing--and whose whole lives are a continued work of supererogation. There are others, again, who seem born to act from a spirit of contradiction only, that is, who are ready to act not only without a reason, but against it--who are ever at cross-purposes with themselves and others--who are not satisfied unless they are doing two opposite things at a time--who contradict what you say, and if you a.s.sent to them, contradict what they have said--who regularly leave the pursuit in which they are successful to engage in some other in which they have no chance of success--who make a point of encountering difficulties and aiming at impossibilities, that there may be no end of their exhaustless task: while there is a third cla.s.s whose _vis inertiae_ scarcely any motives can overcome--who are devoured by their feelings, and the slaves of their pa.s.sions, but who can take no pains and use no means to gratify them--who, if roused to action by any unforeseen accident, require a continued stimulus to urge them on--who fluctuate between desire and want of resolution--whose brightest projects burst like a bubble as soon as formed--who yield to every obstacle--who almost sink under the weight of the atmosphere--who cannot brush aside a cobweb in their path, and are stopped by an insect"s wing. Indolence is want of will--the absence or defect of the active principle--a repugnance to motion; and whoever has been much tormented with this pa.s.sion, must, we are sure, have felt that the inclination to indulge it is something very distinct from the love of pleasure or actual enjoyment. Ambition is the reverse of indolence, and is the love of power or action in great things. Avarice, also, as it relates to the acquisition of riches, is, in a great measure, an active and enterprising feeling; nor does the h.o.a.rding of wealth, after it is acquired, seem to have much connection with the love of pleasure. What is called n.i.g.g.ardliness, very often, we are convinced from particular instances that we have known, arises less from a selfish principle than from a love of contrivance--from the study of economy as an art, for want of a better--from a pride in making the most of a little, and in not exceeding a certain expense previously determined upon; all which is wilfulness, and is perfectly consistent, as it is frequently found united, with the utmost lavish expenditure and the utmost disregard for money on other occasions. A miser may, in general, be looked upon as a particular species of _virtuoso_. The constant desire in the rich to leave wealth in large ma.s.ses, by aggrandising some branch of their families, or sometimes in such a manner as to acc.u.mulate for centuries, shows that the imagination has a considerable share in this pa.s.sion. Intemperance, debauchery, gluttony, and other vices of that kind, may be attributed to an excess of sensuality or gross sensibility; though, even here, we think it evident that habits of intoxication are produced quite as much by the strength as by the agreeableness of the excitement; and with respect to some other vicious habits, curiosity makes many more votaries than inclination. The love of truth, when it predominates, produces inquisitive characters, the whole tribe of gossips, tale-bearers, harmless busybodies, your blunt honest creatures, who never conceal what they think, and who are the more sure to tell it you the less you want to hear it--and now and then a philosopher.
Our pa.s.sions in general are to be traced more immediately to the active part of our nature, to the love of power, or to strength of will. Such are all those which arise out of the difficulty of accomplishment, which become more intense from the efforts made to attain the object, and which derive their strength from opposition.
Mr. Hobbes says well on this subject:
"But for an utmost end, in which the ancient philosophers placed felicity, and disputed much concerning the way thereto, there is no such thing in this world, nor way to it, more than to Utopia; for while we live, we have desires, and desire presupposeth a further end.
Seeing all delight is appet.i.te, and desire of something further, there can be no contentment but in proceeding, and therefore we are not to marvel, when we see that as men attain to more riches, honour, or other power, so their appet.i.te continually groweth more and more; and when they are come to the utmost degree of some kind of power they pursue some other, as long as in any kind they think themselves behind any other. Of those, therefore, that have attained the highest degree of honour and riches, some have affected mastery, in some art, as Nero in music and poetry, Commodus in the art of a gladiator; and such as affect not some such thing, must find diversion and recreation of their thoughts in the contention either of play or business, and men justly complain as of a great grief that they know not what to do.
Felicity, therefore, by which we mean continual delight, consists not in having prospered, but in prospering."
This account of human nature, true as it is, would be a mere romance, if physical sensibility were the only faculty essential to man, that is, if we were the slaves of voluptuous indolence. But our desires are kindled by their own heat, the will is urged on by a restless impulse, and without action, enjoyment becomes insipid. The pa.s.sions of men are not in proportion only to their sensibility, or to the desirableness of the object, but to the violence and irritability of their tempers, and the obstacles to their success. Thus an object to which we were almost indifferent while we thought it in our power, often excites the most ardent pursuit or the most painful regret, as soon as it is placed out of our reach. How eloquently is the contradiction between our desires and our success described in _Don Quixote_, where it is said of the lover, that "he courted a statue, hunted the wind, cried aloud to the desert!"
The necessity of action to the mind, and the keen edge it gives to our desires, is shown in the different value we set on past and future objects. It is commonly, and we might almost say universally, supposed, that there is an essential difference in the two cases. In this instance, however, the strength of our pa.s.sions has converted an evident absurdity into one of the most inveterate prejudices of the human mind. That the future is really or in itself of more consequence than the past, is what we can neither a.s.sent to nor even conceive. It is true, the past has ceased to be, and is no longer anything, except to the mind; but the future is still to come, and has an existence in the mind only. The one is at an end, the other has not even had a beginning; both are purely ideal: so that this argument would prove that the present only is of any real value, and that both past and future objects are equally indifferent, alike nothing. Indeed, the future is, if possible, more imaginary than the past; for the past may in some sense be said to exist in its consequences; it acts still; it is present to us in its effects; the mouldering ruins and broken fragments still remain; but of the future there is no trace. What a blank does the history of the world for the next six thousand years present to the mind, compared with that of the last? All that strikes the imagination, or excites any interest in the mighty scene is _what has been_. Neither in reality, then, nor as a subject of general contemplation, has the future any advantage over the past; but with respect to our own pa.s.sions and pursuits it has. We regret the pleasures we have enjoyed, and eagerly antic.i.p.ate those which are to come; we dwell with satisfaction on the evils from which we have escaped, and dread future pain. The good that is past is like money that is spent, which is of no use, and about which we give no further concern. The good we expect is like a store yet untouched, in the enjoyment of which we promise ourselves infinite gratification. What has happened to us we think of no consequence--what is to happen to us, of the greatest. Why so? Because the one is in our power, and the other not; because the efforts of the will to bring an object to pa.s.s or to avert it, strengthen our attachment to or our aversion from that object; because the habitual pursuit of any purpose redoubles the ardour of our pursuit, and converts the speculative and indolent interest we should otherwise take in it into real pa.s.sion. Our regrets, anxiety, and wishes, are thrown away upon the past, but we encourage our disposition to exaggerate the importance of the future, as of the utmost use in aiding our resolutions and stimulating our exertions.
It in some measure confirms this theory, that men attach more or less importance to past and future events, according as they are more or else engaged in action and the busy scenes of life. Those who have a fortune to make, or are in pursuit of rank and power, are regardless of the past, for it does not contribute to their views: those who have nothing to do but to think, take nearly the same interest in the past as in the future. The contemplation of the one is as delightful and real as of the other. The season of hope comes to an end, but the remembrance of it is left. The past still lives in the memory of those who have leisure to look back upon the way that they have trod, and can from it "catch glimpses that may make them less forlorn." The turbulence of action and uneasiness of desire _must_ dwell upon the future; it is only amidst the innocence of shepherds, in the simplicity of the pastoral ages, that a tomb was found with this inscription--"I ALSO WAS AN ARCADIAN!"
We feel that some apology is necessary for having thus plunged our readers all at once into the middle of metaphysics. If it should be asked what use such studies are of, we might answer with Hume, _perhaps of none, except that there are certain persons who find more entertainment in them than in any other_. An account of this matter, with which we were amused ourselves, and which may therefore amuse others, we met with some time ago in a metaphysical allegory, which begins in this manner:
"In the depth of a forest, in the kingdom of Indostan, lived a monkey, who, before his last step of transmigration, had occupied a human tenement. He had been a Bramin, skilful in theology, and in all abstruse learning. He was wont to hold in admiration the ways of nature, and delighted to penetrate the mysteries in which she was enrobed; but in pursuing the footsteps of philosophy, he wandered too far from the abode of the social Virtues. In order to pursue his studies, he had retired to a cave on the banks of the Jumna. There he forgot society, and neglected ablution; and therefore his soul was degraded to a condition below humanity. So inveterate were the habits which he had contracted in his human state, that his spirit was still influenced by his pa.s.sion for abstruse study. He sojourned in this wood from youth to age, regardless of everything, _save cocoa-nuts and metaphysics_." For our own part, we should be content to pa.s.s our time much in the same manner as this learned savage, if we could only find a subst.i.tute for his cocoa-nuts! We do not, however, wish to recommend the same pursuit to others, nor to dissuade them from it. It has its pleasures and its pains--its successes and its disappointments. It is neither quite so sublime nor quite so uninteresting as it is sometimes represented. The worst is, that much thought on difficult subjects tends, after a certain time, to destroy the natural gaiety and dancing of the spirits; it deadens the elastic force of the mind, weighs upon the heart, and makes us insensible to the common enjoyments and pursuits of life.
"Sithence no fairy lights, no quick"ning ray, Nor stir of pulse, nor objects to entice Abroad the spirits; but the cloyster"d heart Sits squat at home, like paG.o.d in a niche Obscure."
Metaphysical reasoning is also one branch of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The study of man, however, does, perhaps, less harm than a knowledge of the world, though it must be owned that the practical knowledge of vice and misery makes a stronger impression on the mind, when it has imbibed a habit of abstract reasoning. Evil thus becomes embodied in a general principle, and shows its harpy form in all things. It is a fatal, inevitable necessity hanging over us. It follows us wherever we go: if we fly into the uttermost parts of the earth, it is there: whether we turn to the right or the left, we cannot escape from it. This, it is true, is the disease of philosophy; but it is one to which it is liable in minds of a certain cast, after the first ardour of expectation has been disabused by experience, and the finer feelings have received an irrecoverable shock from the jarring of the world.
Happy are they who live in the dream of their own existence, and see all things in the light of their own minds; who walk by faith and hope; to whom the guiding star of their youth still shines from afar, and into whom the spirit of the world has not entered! They have not been "hurt by the archers," nor has the iron entered their souls. They live in the midst of arrows and of death, unconscious of harm. The evil things come not nigh them. The shafts of ridicule pa.s.s unheeded by, and malice loses its sting. The example of vice does not rankle in their b.r.e.a.s.t.s, like the poisoned shirt of Nessus. Evil impressions fall off from them like drops of water. The yoke of life is to them light and supportable. The world has no hold on them. They are in it, not of it; and a dream and a glory is ever around them!
1815.
FOOTNOTE:
[8] As a contrast to the story at the beginning of this article, it will be not amiss to mention that of Sir Isaac Newton, on a somewhat similar occasion. He had prepared some papers for the press with great care and study, but happening to leave a lighted candle on the table with them, his dog Diamond overturned the candle, and the labour of several years was destroyed. This great man, on seeing what was done, only shook his head, and said with a smile, "Ah, Diamond, you don"t know what mischief you have done!"
ESSAY VIII