----Magnis tamen excidit ausis. OVID. Met. Lib. ii. 328.
But in the glorious enterprise he died. ADDISON.
IT has always been the practice of mankind, to
judge of actions by the event. The same attempts,
conducted in the same manner, but terminated by
different success, produce different judgments: they
who attain their wishes, never want celebrators of
their wisdom and their virtue; and they that
miscarry, are quickly discovered to have been defective
not only in mental but in moral qualities. The world
will never be long without some good reason to hate
the unhappy; their real faults are immediately
detected; and if those are not sufficient to sink them
into infamy, an additional weight of calumny will be
superadded: he that fails in his endeavours after
wealth or power, will not long retain either honesty
or courage.
This species of injustice has so long prevailed in
universal practice, that it seems likewise to have
infected speculation: so few minds are able to separate
the ideas of greatness and prosperity, that even Sir
William Temple has determined, "that he who can
deserve the name of a hero, must not only be virtuous
but fortunate."
By this unreasonable distribution of praise and
blame, none have suffered oftener than projectors,
whose rapidity of imagination and vastness of design
raise such envy in their fellow mortals, that every
eye watches for their fall, and every heart exults at
their distresses: yet even a projector may gain favour
by success; and the tongue that was prepared to
hiss, then endeavours to excel others in loudness of
applause.
When Coriolanus, in Shakespeare, deserted to
Aufidius, the Volscian servants at first insulted him,
even while he stood under the protection of the
household gods: but when they saw that the project
took effect, and the stranger was seated at the head
of the table, one of them very judiciously observes,
"that he always thought there was more in him
than he could think."
Machiavel has justly animadverted on the
different notice taken by all succeeding times, of the two
great projectors, Cataline and Caesar. Both formed
the same project, and intended to raise themselves
to power, by subverting the commonwealth: they
pursued their design, perhaps, with equal abilities,
and with equal virtue; but Cataline perished in the
field, and Caesar returned from Pharsalia with
unlimited authority: and from that time, every
monarch of the earth has thought himself honoured by
a comparison with Caesar; and Cataline has been
never mentioned, but that his name might be
applied to traitors and incendiaries.
In an age more remote, Xerxes projected the
conquest of Greece, and brought down the power
of Asia against it: but after the world had been
filled with expectation and terrour, his army was
beaten, his fleet was destroyed, and Xerxes has been
never mentioned without contempt.
A few years afterwards, Greece likewise had her
turn of giving birth to a projector; who invading
Asia with a small army, went forward in search of
adventures, and by his escape from one danger,
gained only more rashness to rush into another: he
stormed city after city, over-ran kingdom after
kingdom, fought battles only for barren victory,
and invaded nations only that he might make his
way through them to new invasions: but having
been fortunate in the execution of his projects, he
died with the name of Alexander the Great.
These are, indeed, events of ancient times; but
human nature is always the same, and every age
will afford us instances of publick censures influenced
by events. The great business of the middle
centuries, was the holy war; which undoubtedly
was a noble project, and was for a long time
prosecuted with a spirit equal to that with which it had
been contrived; but the ardour of the European
heroes only hurried them to destruction; for a long
time they could not gain the territories for which
they fought, and, when at last gained, they could
not keep them: their expeditions, therefore, have
been the scoff of idleness and ignorance, their
understanding and their virtue have been equally
vilified, their conduct has been ridiculed, and their cause
has been defamed.
When Columbus had engaged king Ferdinand in
the discovery of the other hemisphere, the sailors,
with whom he embarked in the expedition, had so
little confidence in their commander, that after having
been long at sea looking for coasts which they
expected never to find, they raised a general mutiny,
and demanded to return. He found means to sooth
them into a permission to continue the same course
three days longer, and on the evening of the third
day descried land. Had the impatience of his crew
denied him a few hours of the time requested, what
had been his fate but to have come back with the
infamy of a vain projector, who had betrayed the
king's credulity to useless expenses, and risked his
life in seeking countries that had no existence? how
would those that had rejected his proposals have
triumphed in their acuteness! and when would his
name have been mentioned, but with the makers of
potable gold and malleable glass?
The last royal projectors with whom the world
has been troubled, were Charles of Sweden and the
Czar of Muscovy. Charles, if any judgment may be
formed of his designs by his measures and his
inquiries, had purposed first to dethrone the Czar,
then to lead his army through pathless deserts into
China, thence to make his way by the sword through
the whole circuit of Asia, and by the conquest of
Turkey to unite Sweden with his new dominions:
but this mighty project was crushed at Pultowa;
and Charles has since been considered as a madman
by those powers, who sent their ambassadors to
solicit his friendship, and their generals "to learn
under him the art of war."
The Czar found employment sufficient in his own
dominions, and amused himself in digging canals,
and building cities: murdering his subjects with
insufferable fatigues, and transplanting nations from
one corner of his dominions to another, without
regretting the thousands that perished on the
way: but he attained his end, he made his people
formidable, and is numbered by fame among the
demigods.
I am far from intending to vindicate the sanguinary
projects of heroes and conquerors, and would
wish rather to diminish the reputation of their
success, than the infamy of their miscarriages: for I
cannot conceive, why he that has burned cities, wasted
nations, and filled the world with horrour and
desolation, should be more kindly regarded by mankind,
than he that died in the rudiments of wickedness;
why he that accomplished mischief should be glorious,
and he that only endeavoured it should be criminal.
I would wish Caesar and Catiline, Xerxes and
Alexander, Charles and Peter, huddled together in
obscurity or detestation.
But there is another species of projectors, to whom
I would willingly conciliate mankind; whose ends
are generally laudable, and whose labours are
innocent; who are searching out new powers of nature,
or contriving new works of art; but who are yet
persecuted with incessant obloquy, and whom the
universal contempt with which they are treated,
often debars from that success which their industry
would obtain, if it were permitted to act without
opposition.
They who find themselves inclined to censure
new undertakings, only because they are new, should
consider, that the folly of projection is very seldom
the folly of a fool; it is commonly the ebullition
of a capacious mind, crowded with variety of
knowledge, and heated with intenseness of thought;
it proceeds often from the consciousness of uncommon
powers, from the confidence of those, who having
already done much, are easily persuaded that they
can do more. When Rowley had completed the orrery,
he attempted the perpetual motion; when Boyle
had exhausted the secrets of vulgar chymistry, he
turned his thoughts to the work of transmutation[l].
[l] Sir Richard Steele was infatuated with notions of
Alchemy, and wasted money in its visionary projects. He had a
laboratory at Poplar. Addisoniana, vol. i. p. 10.
The readers of Washington Irving's Brace-Bridge Hall will
recollect a pleasing and popular exposition of the alternately
splendid and benevolent, and always passionate reveries of the
Alchemist, in the affecting story of the Student of Salamanca.
A projector generally unites those qualities which
have the fairest claim to veneration, extent of
knowledge and greatness of design: it was said of Catiline,
"immoderata, incredibilia, nimis alta semper cupiebat."
Projectors of all kinds agree in their intellects,
though they differ in their morals; they all fail by
attempting things beyond their power, by despising
vulgar attainments, and aspiring to performances to
which, perhaps, nature has not proportioned the
force of man: when they fail, therefore, they fail not
by idleness or timidity, but by rash adventure and
fruitless diligence.
That the attempts of such men will often
miscarry, we may reasonably expect; yet from such
men, and such only, are we to hope for the cultivation
of those parts of nature which lie yet waste, and
the invention of those arts which are yet wanting
to the felicity of life. If they are, therefore,
universally discouraged, art and discovery can make no
advances. Whatever is attempted without previous
certainty of success, may be considered as a project,
and amongst narrow minds may, therefore, expose
its author to censure and contempt; and if the liberty
of laughing be once indulged, every man will laugh
at what he does not understand, every project will be
considered as madness, and every great or new
design will be censured as a project. Men unaccustomed
to reason and researches, think every enterprise
impracticable, which is extended beyond
common effects, or comprises many intermediate
operations. Many that presume to laugh at
projectors, would consider a flight through the air in a
winged chariot, and the movement of a mighty
engine by the steam of water as equally the dreams of
mechanick lunacy; and would hear, with equal
negligence, of the union of the Thames and Severn by
a canal, and the scheme of Albuquerque, the
viceroy of the Indies, who in the rage of hostility had
contrived to make Egypt a barren desert, by turning
the Nile into the Red Sea.
Those who have attempted much, have seldom
failed to perform more than those who never deviate
from the common roads of action: many valuable
preparations of chymistry are supposed to have risen
from unsuccessful inquiries after the grand elixir: it
is, therefore, just to encourage those who endeavour
to enlarge the power of art, since they often succeed
beyond expectation; and when they fail, may sometimes
benefit the world even by their miscarriages.