It is wonderfully exciting to read the adventures of a shipwrecked
mariner; to find him cast away on a desert island, destitute of
everything that before seemed necessary to his very existence; to see
him settling himself down in a strange and untried form of life,
substituting one thing for another, doing altogether without some
other thing, turning constantly from expedient to expedient, bending
to his will the circumstances that seemed his fate, and at length
naturalising himself to the place, and living bravely on, truly and
literally the Monarch of all he surveys. The avidity with which we
drink in such details, seems to depend upon some principle in our
nature; for a feeling of the same kind is excited by all other
narrations of vicissitude. The picture of calamity would be merely
tiresome, were it not for the rebound we expect: we want to see what
the unfortunate whose story we follow will _do_; by what steps he will
try to reascend, or by what expedients he will make for himself a new
world in the depths to which he has fallen. This principle is known to
the skilful novelist, and he is the most successful who knows it best.
It is to the complete gratification afforded to the mystical sympathy
referred to--the sympathy, not with calamity, but with struggle--that
Robinson Crusoe owes its distinction as the most universally popular
of all works of fiction; for although the facts of the narrative had
probably never any actual existence, they are so rendered as to be
instinctively received as the component parts of a thing eternally
true in nature.
But in actual life the Robinson Crusoes are few, and the shipwrecked
mariners many. The mass of castaways, when they find themselves
separated from their kind, their comforts, their necessaries, yield,
after a few feeble efforts, or without effort at all, to what is
called their fate, and die of cold, or hunger, or despair. These
multitudes we take no note of. They pass away from the earth like
shadows; or, if our eye follows them for a moment till the view is
lost in the crowding incidents of life, we look upon them as the
victims of unavoidable and irresistible circumstances, and so turn
calmly away. But it would be well to examine this notion; to contrast
the victims with the vanquishers; to inquire whether the train of
circumstances really differed in their several cases; and so to
ascertain the share individual character may have had in the result.
Let us, by all means, continue to pity the victims, whether we find
their bones bleaching in the desert, or stirred on the shore by the
tide; but it may be suspected that we ought to pity them less for the
hardness of their fate than for the weakness which could not withstand
it. A French writer has finely said, that history is the struggle of
the human race with destiny. Even so, we think, is the history of
individuals.
Look abroad into ordinary life, and examine the condition of its
castaways. One finds himself alone in the crowd of mankind, with wind
and tide against him, surrounded by influences like evil spirits, the
earth dry and famished under his foot, and the heavens black with
thunder above his head. He has no experience, little physical
strength, only ordinary talent; but he has nerve and will: he can plod
when necessary; he can stoop or climb as the time demands; he can cut
a new path when he loses the old one; and so, step by step, he goes
on--this gallant Crusoe--till he has conquered circumstances and
reached a secure shelter. Another man: but here we must speak of
crowds and classes, for imbecility affects whole regions of society at
once. A certain branch of industry, we shall say--agriculture,
handloom weaving, anything--is struck with decay, and its followers
thrown out of employment. What course do the unfortunates take? They
sit down and curse their day; they appeal to the sympathies of their
more successful brethren; they lean idly wherever they can find
support; and failing this, they starve in a body, or drift into the
workhouses. In such circumstances, men seldom think even of the
obvious expedient of changing their locality, far less of changing
their employment. They are rooted to the soil like a plant; when the
work they have been accustomed to is no longer wanted, they cross
their hands; and so they remain, and wither, and despair, and die.
Thus when the kelp business was at an end, the Scotch Highlanders sat
down in their helpless hunger, till they were swept as with a besom
out of the land they cumbered. Yet what Mechi has done for his Tiptree
bog on a large scale, with expensive machinery, and hired labour,
might have been done by each of them on a small scale, without
expense, and with his own labour. A wholesome living might be wrested
by determined men from the wildest nook in Scotland, and the sea alone
would support a large population. What the people did, however, was
merely to pick up such shell-fish as the waves chanced to throw at
their feet, and hold out their lean hands for national charity.
As we ascend in society, a similar spectacle presents itself. All
trades and professions, without exception, are crowded with once
well-doing individuals, who now serve only to cumber the ground, and
obstruct the progress of others. Whatever be his reverses, a man seems
to think it necessary to abide by his employment and his station, even
if he starves in the one, and excites pity or ridicule in the other.
He will not see that he has suffered shipwreck; that he has been
thrown into entirely new circumstances; that he must disengage himself
from old habits and prejudices, and construct anew his scheme of life.
He is one of a tribe, and must stand or fall by his profession and his
order. He has lost all perception of his own individuality, and is
afraid to take a single step that is not prescribed by custom and
example. But, independently of the Robinson Crusoes of the class, many
such slaves of conventionalism achieve their freedom while intending
only to better their condition. They emigrate to a new country, and
find themselves actually in a desert island--an oasis in the
wilderness--where it is necessary to work at whatever employment
offers the means of subsistence--to resort to all sorts of shifts and
expedients, and to submit cheerfully to the deprivation of things they
had in former times reckoned necessaries of life. The change is found
to be conducive to vigour both of mind and body. The indolent become
active, the delicate, strong. Neither the physical nor moral
constitution is easily injured, except by the influences of artificial
life. A man who dares not sit by an open window for fear of the
draught of air, if thrown upon a rock in the sea--exposed for days and
nights to all the winds that blow, wet, cold, and starving--sustains
no injury. Persons in this situation, or similar ones, have remarked
over and over again with astonishment, that they were never in better
health in their lives!
The beneficial effect of emigration on the character and habits of the
lazzaroni of Ireland, is sufficient to indicate the cause of many of
the great evils of social life at home. People will not recognise the
fact, that they are castaways of fortune, and require to scramble as
well as they can for a subsistence. They like to read of the struggles
of the Robinson Crusoes, but never think of imitating them. They have
not imagination enough to see the analogy between such positions and
their own; and it is not till they actually find themselves in some
far-away desert, that the slumbering energies of their character are
awakened. Then they have nothing to lean upon but their
industry--nothing to look to but their ingenuity. Expedients must take
the place of habits; necessity must be their law instead of
prescription; the chains of conventionality--as strong among the
lowest as among the highest--drop from their limbs, and the man rises
up from the ruins of the slave and beggar. This consummation, however,
is not the invariable result. Even emigration only increases, although
to a large extent, the number of Crusoes; and there is still a portion
of the people who drift to and fro as helplessly as sea-weed. But at
home, the _bulk_ of the people are in this condition; they have no
capacity for expedients, which are the stepping-stones of progress. A
resolute tradesman, when one thing fails, tries another; when one
process is found tedious or expensive, he has recourse to another; and
in the same way the whole of society is on the move onward and upward.
But the movers are not the mass; they are the stirring spirits of the
time, at whose ceaseless work the multitude gaze unreflectingly,
grumbling when their own occupation grows scanty, and looking for
relief, not to themselves, but to their neighbours, their superiors,
their rulers.
Some time ago, a correspondent of ours, struck apparently with
the true cause of the evil--the tyranny of conventional
feeling--deprecated the emigration of those classes supposed to be the
most slavishly subjected to it, without having previously made a trial
of their energies. He proposed that every 'genteel' family, before
setting their lives and fortune upon the cast, should establish
themselves for a time in some solitary district of their own country,
remote from the comforts and conveniences of life, and try whether
their industry and ingenuity were of an available kind. He seemed to
be of opinion that in most cases the experiment would fail, and that
thus many an unfortunate expedition into the wildernesses beyond seas
would be prevented. We are of the same opinion, only we do not think
either the experiment fair or the result desirable. The very
atmosphere of our country is pervaded by a conventionalism which, as
is proved by what passes every day before our eyes, cannot be
counteracted by mere external circumstances. The family in question
would feel themselves to be only amateur Crusoes; they would be
haunted by the idea, that they were surrounded, at a distance of only
a day or two's travel, by the 'genteel' society of which they had
formed a part; and, above all, they would have the consciousness
perpetually before them, of being able to withdraw from the adventure
as soon as they lost heart. This last consideration of itself would be
fatal. Nothing rouses energy and strengthens determination so
effectually as the knowledge that we are irretrievably committed: the
climber of some desperate but possible steep is never safe till the
rope is cut beneath him; the crosser of a difficult ford is never sure
of completing the feat till he has
Stept in so far that, should he wade no more,
Returning were as tedious as go o'er.
The family, therefore, might fail in their experiment, and yet be
fully adequate to the struggles of actual emigration.
The humanitarians of the day, though full of a fine Crusoe spirit
themselves, seem not to recognise its necessity as a general
principle. They draw a distinction that has no existence in nature
between the classes they design to benefit and themselves, legislating
for their protégés in the fashion of a permanent providence. They know
that a very large part of the population must labour with their hands
for hire--that this is an indispensable condition of all civilised
society. They know likewise that the labour-market is necessarily full
of vicissitude, that work of particular kinds is constantly shifting
its place, now from one street to another, now from one town to
another, now from one province to another. It would seem, therefore,
to be their cue, to fit the labourer for the changes that are liable
to beset the way of life he has chosen, or into which he has been
thrown; to imbue him with the noble Crusoe spirit of adventure and
expedient; and to leave his hands free to embrace his fortune wherever
it may offer. But no such thing. Their grand effort at present appears
to be, to chain him to the spot on which he happens to stand, by
making him the possessor of some small house, or some small plot of
ground. If the labour-market were permanent in its demand, exactly
proportioned to the existing numbers, and yet elastic enough to meet
the movement of population, this would be an excellent plan; but as it
is, it may be doubted whether there is not in a system which restricts
the locomotion of the workman, the germ of a great evil, both to the
class to which he belongs and to the cause of general progress. It
seems to us that this plan, which is now making such rapid strides
over the whole kingdom, is in antagonism with the other great
influences that are occupied in developing the character of the age.
While railway transit and steam navigation are labouring to break the
chains that bound the workman to the locality in which he grew, the
various land-investment societies are doing everything in their power
to rivet them anew. But this hint must be understood as applied to the
system in its general, not special application. There can be no doubt
of its admirable effect in multitudes of individual cases: what we
disapprove of, is the manner in which it addresses itself to the
working-class as a body.
That no external circumstances at home, however terrible or desperate,
can struggle successfully, except in a small minority of cases, with
the spirit of conventionalism and the inert force of habit, is proved
by what is passing around us in society. But it may at least be hoped,
that reason is able to exercise a power which appears not to reside in
the mechanical pressure of events. The misfortune is, that the
calamities of life do not find our minds in a state of preparation to
meet them. We have formed no _à priori_ theory. We are able to sink,
and to suffer--some of us bravely; we are able, when necessary, to
'die like the wolf in silence;' but of manly struggle we are
incapable. Now, we have a plan of our own to propose, in which, we
think, resides the grand arcanum of social regeneration. Have you
guessed it, intelligent reader? It is simply this: _read Robinson
Crusoe_. But not as formerly. Do not regard it as a romance. Look upon
it as a mirror of human life, in which the fortunes of men--in which
your own possible fortunes are figured with photographic truth; and
learn from it how to meet, how to resist, how to subdue them. Forget
not, when overtaken by heavy misfortunes, that you have suffered
shipwreck; and do not fancy that your desert island is a land flowing
with milk and honey. Look at things as they are. Listen to the wind as
it moans along the water, and to the sea as it breaks on that dread
lee-shore. Remember that your safety depends upon your own courage,
your own energy, your own ingenuity. Do not dream that you hear amid
the din the voices of friends and comrades, for that is proved by
everyday experience to be a delusion: and, above all things, if you be
of the station in which conventionalism is strongest, do not fancy
that the eyes of genteel people are staring at you through the gloom!