the species can never secure the objects of their ambition, is it
ill-judged in one who treats upon the science of happiness, to
write for the million instead of the few favorites of fortune?
The principles of a philosophic investigation ought not to be
narrowed down to meet the wishes of the few. The question is,
whether, taking into view ambition and all the associated feelings,
the toil of pursuit, and the difficulty and unfrequency of the
attainment of its objects, it is, on the whole, favorable to
happiness to cherish the passion, or not? I am clear, that even
the successful aspirants, if their rivalry were more generous and
philanthropic, and their indulgence of the cankering and corroding
of ill-concealed envy, derision, hate and scorn, were regulated,
would be not the less rapid in reaching the goal, or happy in the
fruition of their attainment. I have little doubt, if an exact
balance of enjoyment and suffering could be struck, at the last
hour between two persons, whose circumstances in other respects
had been similar, one of whom had been distinguished in place
and power, in consequence of cultivating ambition; and the other
obscure in peaceful privacy, in consequence of having chosen that
condition, that the scale of happiness would decidedly incline
in favor of the latter. In a word, it is the index of sound
calculation, to prepare for the fate of the million, rather than
that of the few. Repress ambition, as much as we may, there will
always remain enough to render the world an aceldama, and the human
heart a place of concentrated torment.
It is clear, therefore, to me, that in making up the debt and
credit account of life, in relation to happiness, most of the
sentiments associated with ambition, and its prolific family of
self-tormenting passions, may be set down as gratuitous items
of misery, superinduced by our own voluntary discipline. I shall
be asked, what is to stimulate to exertion, to study, toil and
sacrifice, to great and noble actions, and what shall lead to fame
and renown, if this incentive be taken away? I answer, that, what
is ordinarily dignified with the appellation of ambition, is a vile
mixture of the worst feelings of our nature. There is in all minds,
truly noble, a sufficient impulse towards great actions, apart from
these movements, which are generally the excitements of little and
mean spirits. Take the whole nature of man into the calculation,
and there can never be a want of sufficient impulse towards
distinction, without a particle of those contemptible motives,
which are generally put to the account of praiseworthy incitement.
Truly great men have been remarkable for their exemption from
envy, the inseparable concomitant of conscious deficiency; and
for a certain calm and tranquil spirit, indicating moderation and
comparative indifference in the struggle of emulation. They are
able to say, in regard to the highest boon of ambition,
‘I neither spurn, nor for the favor call,
It comes unasked-for, if it comes at all.’
Why, then, in a world, and in an order of society, where ambition,
with its associated passions, brings in an enormous amount to
the mass of human self-inflicted torment, should he be censured,
who advises, that in the philosophic and calculating pursuit of
happiness, this element of misery should be, as much as possible,
repressed? The question may be more strongly urged, when we take
into the account, the consideration, that the far greater portion
of the species must calculate on the bitterness of disappointment,
in addition to the miseries which are inseparable from the
indulgence of this passion. All the inordinate thirst for power
and fame of the countless aspirants, who desire to be Alexanders,
Cæsars and Napoleons, not only is so much subtracted from their
enjoyment, and added to their misery, but has little tendency to
aid them to attainments, which, after all, are as frequently the
award of contingency, as of calculation.
Let the evils of retirement and obscurity, be fairly balanced
with those of gratified ambition, and let the aspirant feel, that
they are absolutely incompatible, the one with the other.--Let
him then make his election, in view of the consequences, and not
foolishly expect that he can unite incompatible advantages. If he
chooses the dust and scramble of the arena, and the intoxicating
pleasures at the goal, let him not repine, that he cannot unite
with them those of repose, retirement and a tranquil mind. If, on
the contrary, he prefers to hold on the noiseless tenor of his
way, in peace and privacy, let not the serpents of envy sting him,
when he sees the car of the fortunate aspirant drawn forward by
the applauding million. Let not murmurs arise in his heart, when
he hears, or reads of the rewards, honors and immortality of those
whom he may believe to be endowed no higher than himself with
talents or virtues. Let him say, ‘no one can show me the mind, or
paint me the consciousness of that man. Fortune and my own choice
have assigned me the shade. Let me not embitter its coolness and
its satisfactions, by idle desires to unite advantages, that are,
in their nature, incongruous. Let me remember, that mine is the
condition of the million. My Creator cannot have doomed so vast
a proportion of his creatures to a state, which is necessarily
miserable. All that remains to me, is to make the best of the
common lot.’
Note 9, page 50.
Severe strictures have, also, been passed upon this maxim. I well
know, that the common rules proposed to the young, in commencing
their serious and more advanced studies, lead them to look forward
to happiness, as a garland suspended from the goal, an object only
in remote expectation, the fruition of which should be hoped for
only at a period of life, when few are capable of enjoyment, even
if the means were in their power. To calculate on comfort and
repose, early in life, has been considered as a sort of effeminate
weakness.
These unphilosophic views of education have, more than almost any
other, thrown over the whole course of preparatory discipline for
life, a repulsive gloom, tending to fill the mind of the pupil
with dismay and disgust in view of his studies.--The young should
be early imbued with the sentiment, that God sent them here to be
happy, not in indolence, intoxication, voluptuousness or insanity;
but in earnest and vigorous discipline for coming duties. And at
this bright epoch, when nature spreads a charm over existence, a
philosophic teacher may easily train them to invest their studies,
labors, and pursuits, and perhaps even their privations and
severer toils, with a coloring of cheerfulness and gayety, when
contemplated as the only means of discipline by which they may hope
to reach a desired end. They should be trained to meet events, and
brave the shock of adversity with a firm and searching purpose,
to find either a way to mitigate the pressure, or to increase
self-respect by the noble pride of manifesting to themselves, with
how much calmness and patient endurance they can overcome the
inevitable ills of their condition. In other words, they should
make enjoyment a means, as well as an end, that they may carry
onward, from their first days, an accumulating stock of happiness,
with which courage and cheerfulness may paint future anticipations
in the mellow lustre of past remembrances. In this way the bow of
promise may be made to bend its brilliant arch over every period of
this transient existence, connecting what has been, and what will
be, in the same radiant span.
Entertaining such views of the direction which might be given to
the juvenile mind, I mourn over those weak parents, who are nursing
their children with effeminate fondness, not allowing the _winds
to visit them too roughly_, pampering their wishes, instead of
teaching them to repress them: and rather striving to ward from
them all pains and privations, than teaching them that they must
encounter innumerable sorrows and disappointments, and disciplining
them to breast the ills of life with a conquering fortitude.
Opulence generally gives birth to this injudicious plan of parental
education. Penury, as little directed by sound views, but impelled
by the stern teaching of necessity, imparts to the children of the
poor, a much more salutary discipline, and they ordinarily come
forward with a more robust spirit, with more vigor, power and
elasticity; and it is in this way, that providence adjusts the
balance of advantages between these different conditions.
We have all admired the practical philosophy of the man, who, when
sick of a painful disease, thanked God that he was not subject to a
still more painful one; and when under the pressure of the latter,
found cause for cheerfulness, that he was not visited with both
diseases at the same time. Akin to this was the noble fortitude of
the mariner, who, when a limb was carried away by a cannon-ball,
congratulated himself that it was not his head. I do not say
that any one can find cheerfulness in contemplating such Spartan
spirits, but that a philosophy of this sort would disarm the common
ills of life of much of their power, and would even enable the
sufferer to find enjoyment in the midst of them.
It would be no disadvantage even to the ambitious and aspiring
to abstract, from the toils of their pursuit, the bitter and
corroding spirit of rivalry and envy, and in its stead to cultivate
sentiments of kindness, complacency and moderation. Let their ends
be so noble, as to give an air of dignity to the means that they
employ, and they will throw a splendor of self-respect over their
course. Let the aspirant say, ‘I struggle not for myself, but
to procure competence for aged parents, to gild their declining
years with the view of my success. It is for dependent relatives,
orphans, the poor and friendless, whom Providence has given
particular claims on me, that I struggle. It is to benefit and
gladden those who are dearer to me than life, and not for my own
sordid vanity and ambition, that I strive to toil up the ascent of
fame.
In fine, the author, while he inculcates the maxim that we should,
from the beginning, study to number happy days, would not teach,
as he has been charged with teaching, that we may give labor and
study and the toil of preparation to the winds, and consult only
the indolent leading of our passions; for he knows, as do we all,
that this course results in anything but ‘happy days.’ He would
send us, on the contrary, in pursuit of happiness, to the teaching
of wisdom and experience, that never bestow impracticable lessons.
He would only inculcate, that while others have taught us to seek
ultimate happiness through means of pain, we should make the means
themselves immediate sources of enjoyment. It is a fact out of
question, that we may train ourselves to find enjoyment in those
toils and privations, which are to others, sources of disgust
and sorrow. Who has not thrilled, as he read of the author, who,
oppressed with cares, infirmities and years, took leave of a
book, the result of the most laborious and protracted study, that
was to be published only after his death, with a pleasant ode of
thankfulness to it, as having furnished him agreeable occupation,
and beguiled years of sorrow and pain? On this subject, I too can
speak experimentally. I have often experienced an inward conscious
satisfaction in realizing the pleasure and enjoyment, which I
found in the same pursuits and labors, which were the most painful
drudgery to others, equally qualified to pursue them with myself.
The bee extracts honey from the same flower which to the spider
yields only poison.
Nothing but experience can teach us to what extent force of
character, and a capacity without cowardly shrinking, to face
danger, pain and death, may be acquired.--Compare, for example, a
militia-man torn from the repose of his retreat, and forced into
immediate battles, with the same person in the same predicament,
when he shall have become a trained veteran. Compare the only child
of weak, fond and opulent parents, as he is seen in the hour of
apprehended shipwreck, or of fierce conflict with the enemy, with
the sailor-boy, born in the same vicinity, but compelled by the
rough discipline of poverty, to encounter the elements, and the
aspect of danger and death from boyhood.
I shall take occasion hereafter, to remark on the stubborn and
invincible apathy of the red men of our forests, in the endurance
of slow fire, and all the forms of torture, which the ingenuity
of Indian revenge can devise. I no longer trace this apparent
insensibility to pain and fear, as I formerly did, to a more
callous frame, and nerves of obtuser feeling. I see in it the
astonishing result of their institutions, and the influence of
public opinion upon them. In the same connexion, I shall remark
upon the testimony which the conduct of martyrs bears to the same
point. Place a sufficient motive before the sufferer, and the
proper witnesses around him, and he may be disciplined to endure
anything without showing a subdued spirit. The most timid woman
will not shrink from a surgical operation, when those she loves
and respects, surround her and applaud her courage. Leave her
alone with the surgeon, and the very sight of his instrument will
produce shrieks and faintings. The mad personage who leaped the
Genesee falls, fell a victim, to the influence which encouraged
vanity and ambition exert upon their subject to spur him on to
any degree of daring. If the right application of a motive, so
little worthy as the mere gratification of a moment’s vanity, can
harden the spirit for such attempts, what might not be effected by
a discipline, wisely guided by a simple purpose to impart force,
energy and unshrinking courage, to meet and vanquish the inevitable
evils of life? To me there is nothing incredible in the story of
the Spartan boy, who had stolen the fox, and allowed the animal,
while concealed under his mantle, to tear his entrails, rather
than, by uttering a groan, to commit his character for hardihood
and capability of adroit thieving. Parents, your children will
be compelled to encounter fatigue, privation and pain, under any
circumstances in which they can be placed. You can easily pamper
them to an effeminacy that will shrink from any effort, and, if I
may so quote, ‘to die of a rose in aromatic pain;’ to be feeble,
timid, repining, and yet voluptuous. You can as easily teach them
to find pleasure in labor, and in the sentiment of that force of
mind, with which they can firmly meet pain, privation, danger and
death. Train them for the world in which they are destined to live.
Teach them to _quit themselves like men, and be strong_.
Note 10, page 51.
It is impossible to present a better summary of the essentials of
happiness. As the author remarks, they are difficult to unite. Yet,
whoever lacks either, must be peculiarly unfortunate, or indulgent
to himself, if he cannot trace the want to some aberration or
neglect of his own. Health, perhaps, is the least within our
power; for, by the fault of our ancestors, we may have inherited a
constitution and temperament essentially vitiated and unhealthy. We
may lose health by casualty or by the influence of causes utterly
beyond our knowledge or our control. But for one person thus
afflicted with want of health, it is notorious that a hundred are
so from causes which they may trace to their own mismanagement.
Tranquillity of mind, is certainly a frame, on which we have a
controlling influence. Whoever, in our country, has not competence,
must assuredly seek the cause, if he have health, in his own want
of industry or management. Most of the complaints of the caprice,
infidelity and unworthiness of friends would have a more equitable
application to our own want of temper, truth and disinterestedness.
These things, indispensable to happiness, are far more subject to
our command, than our self-flattery will allow us to imagine. The
greater portion of those about us might unite all these advantages.
Yet, if all misery, other than that which arises from want of
being able to unite all these numerous and difficult requisites to
happiness, were abstracted from human nature, I am confident that
a moiety of the sorrows of earth would be removed; in other words,
that a philosophic pursuit of happiness, would at once deliver us
from more than half of our suffering here below.
Note 11, page 59.
The memory of almost every person who has been present at a
funeral, attended by a protestant minister of a certain class, will
furnish him with recollections of these preposterous harangues
of attempted consolation. The mourners are instructed that it is
sinful to grieve; that grief implies want of faith in the great
truths of the gospel; that Christianity forbids it; and, more than
all, that it argues doubt of the happiness of the deceased; or a
murmuring want of submission to the Divine will. Such doctrines,
in the minds of weak and superstitious mourners who feel that it
is not in their power to repress grief, inspire painful distrust
and self-reproach; and, in men more disciplined in the ways
of the world, and more acquainted with human nature, contempt
for the ignorant folly or gross hypocrisy of the declaimer. The
unchanging constitution of human nature revolts at such maxims.
Whoever affects to be insensible to the loss of a child, relative,
or friend, is either a stranger to his own perceptions, practises
deceit, or has no heart to be grieved. Christianity is preëminently
the religion of tenderness, and forbids the indulgence of no
inherent emotion of our nature within its proper limits. It is most
absurd of all, to suppose that God has forbidden, or interprets
as murmurs, the sorrows that we feel from his stroke. There are
few persons so disinterested, even if they were assured beyond a
doubt, that the person they mourn is happy, as not to grieve at the
final earthly severance which cuts off the accustomed communion of
heart; and interdicts the mourner from the sight and participation
of that happiness. The cause of Christianity has suffered beyond
calculation, from the exaggeration of its requirements by weak
enthusiasts, or designing bigots. Distorted views and impracticable
requisitions have disgusted more persons with the system of the
gospel than Hume’s argument against miracles, or all the sophistry
of unbelief. The gospel takes into view the whole nature of man,
and all its precepts announce, _nolumus leges naturæ mutari_--_we
will that the laws of nature should not be changed_.
Note 12, page 61.
It is not necessary to recur to the history of great revolutions
to furnish the most impressive examples of human vicissitude and
instability. The Latin poet had reason for his maxim, who said,
‘Si fortuna juvat caveto tolli;
Si fortuna tonat caveto mergi.’
Life in every country and in all time has been full of affecting
instances of the young, beautiful, endowed and opulent struck
down in the brightest presage of their dawn. That is the true
philosophy which draws, from continual exposure to these blows, a
motive, to make the most, in the way of innocent enjoyment, of the
period that is in our power.
Note 13, page 62.
This beautiful painting furnishes an impressive emblem of the
capability of the human constitution, corporeal and mental, to
assimilate itself to any change; and of becoming insensible, by
habit, to any degree of uniform endurance. Those fanatics in the
early ages of the church, preposterously called saints, and others
like them, professing all forms of religion, that may still be
found in the oriental countries, who sit for years on a pillar
under the open sky, or curve themselves into a half circle and
remain in that position until their forms grow to it, shortly cease
to feel much uneasiness in a posture which becomes habitual. To
restore them to their original forms, after nature has affixed her
seal of consent to the distortion, would, probably, cause as much
pain as was requisite to acquire the habit. We have all read the
affecting tale of the prisoner released from the Bastille after
a confinement of more than a quarter of a century. He found the
ordinary pursuits and intercourse of life insupportable, and begged
to be restored to his dungeon. This is a most important aspect
of the nature of man which parents and instructers have as yet
scarcely taken into view in their efforts to mould the youthful
character. Children can as easily be formed to be Spartans as
Sybarites; and, in the former case, they not only acquire the noble
attributes of courage and force of character, but contract habits
of patient and manly endurance, furnishing a better shield against
the ills of life than any in the command of opulence or foresight.
Note 14, page 65.
‘Fate leads the willing, drags the unwilling on,’ and the single
question is, by which of these processes would we choose to meet
our lot? No doctrine of the true philosophy lies so obviously on
the surface as the wisdom of resignation; the disposition, in the
exercise of which, more than in any order, a wise man differs from
the million of murmuring and repining beings about him, who are
madly struggling with the inexorable powers of nature, and doubting
their evils by this useless and painful resistance. When we can
no longer either evade or resist fortune, we can, at least, half
disarm her by a calm and manly resignation.
Note 15, page 69.
The instinctive sentiment of the love of country and home is
beautifully described in these paragraphs. In health and good
fortune, the amusements and distractions of life, may keep this
sentiment out of sight. But ‘_dulces moriens reminiscitur Argos_’
is the feeling with which most strangers die in a foreign land.
In every heart, rightly constituted, the moment the absence of
adventitious pleasures forces the mind back upon itself, the
instinctive feeling resumes its original force. It seems to me
always an unfavorable trait in the character of an immigrant from
abroad, that he is disposed to speak unfavorably of his native
country, or does not seem to prefer it to all others. God has
wrought into the mind of every good man a filial feeling towards
his native country.
Note 15a, page 69.
None of the sentiments and maxims of M. Droz have been more
severely censured than those of the succeeding paragraphs. I am as
little disposed to inculcate an indolent philosophy, as any other
person. These views seem peculiarly unfitted for the genius of our
country, where everything respires, as it ought, energy, industry,
a fixed purpose and a keen pursuit. That such are the requirements
of our institutions is a truth too strongly forced upon us by
the order of everything in our country, to require any other
proof. I would be the last person to feel disposed to recommend
a philosophy, which would tend to quench that busy and daring
spirit which is the most striking characteristic of our nation.
No elevation or opulence among us can dispense with a definite
pursuit. So forcibly is every citizen reminded of this, by all he
sees about him, that without a pursuit, no one among us can sustain
his own self-respect. He, who courts seclusion and retirement, on
the principles of the author is obliged, even in his retirement,
to keep himself engaged. He must devote himself to agriculture,
manufactures, or some other absorbing pursuit.
It is hardly necessary to add that no American is in danger
of subscribing to his disqualifying views of the law, or any
other profession. A freeman ought to hold, that he can confer
respectability upon whatever pursuit circumstances may impel him
to follow. Happily, no harm would result, in our country, from the
dislike of the author to the law. By what seems to me an unhappy
general consent among us, the law is absorbing in the temptations
that it offers to our young men. It is the prescribed avenue to all
honor and place. All our functionaries must have passed into the
temple of power and fame through this portico. Hence it is, and
probably long will be thronged by a great corps of supernumeraries.
I would certainly be the last, not to think respectfully of the
profession; but still I dislike to see so many of our aspiring
young men crowding into it, to meet inevitable disappointment.
But critics will moderate their strictures upon the author, when
they call to mind, that although there is no such class, as people
of leisure in our country, it constitutes a great and powerful one
in France; perhaps greater in proportion, than any other country.
The chief application of these paragraphs must be to men of that
condition, of whom the better class make literature at once
their amusement and pursuit. For such, these are, probably, the
wisest and best precepts that could be given. The whole of that
part of this chapter, which inculcates an inactive retirement,
is altogether calculated for another meridian, than that of our
country. I have entirely omitted some of the passages, as not
only of erroneous general tendency, but altogether inapplicable
to any order of things among us. But admitting this, and a few
other trifling exceptions, I have been astonished at the charges
which have been brought against the moral tendency of the general
opinions of M. Droz.
Note 16, page 73.