_The influence of solitude on the imagination._
The powers of imagination are great; and the effects produced by them,
under certain circumstances, upon the minds of men of warm and sensible
tempers, extraordinary and surprising. Multitudes have been induced by
perturbed imaginations, to abandon the gay and cheerful haunts of men,
and to seek, in dreary desolation, comfort and repose. To such extremes
has this faculty, when distorted, hurried its unhappy subjects, that they
have endured the severest mortification, denied themselves the common
benefits of nature, exposed themselves to the keenest edge of winter’s
cold, and the most scorching rays of summer’s heat, and indulged their
distempered fancies in the wildest chimeras. These dreadful effects
appear, on a first view, to be owing to some supernatural cause, and they
agitate our senses, and confuse the understanding, as phenomena beyond
the comprehension of reason; but the wonder vanishes when the cause is
coolly and carefully explored; and the extravagances are traced up to
their real source, and natural organization of man. The wild ideas of
the hermit Anthony, who, in his gloomy retreat, fancied that Beelzebub
appeared to him in the form of a beautiful female to torture his
senses, and disturb his repose, originated in his natural character and
disposition. His distempered fancy conjured up a fiend, which, in fact,
existed in his unsubdued passions and incontinent desires.
… From the enchanting cup
Which fancy holds to all, the unwary thirst
Of youth oft swallows a Circæan draught,
That sheds a baleful tincture o’er the eye
Of reason, till no longer he discerns,
And only lives to err: then revel forth
A furious band, that spurn him from the throne,
And all is uproar. Hence the fevered heart
Pants with delirious hope for tinsel charms.
Solitude excites and strengthens the powers of the imagination to an
uncommon degree, and thereby enfeebles the effect of the controlling
powers of reason. The office of the latter faculty of the mind is, to
examine with nice discernment and scrupulous attention, to compare the
several properties of thoughts and things with each other, and to
acquire, by cool and deliberate investigation, correct ideas of their
combinations and effects. The exercise of their power suspends the
vehemence of action, and abates the ardor of desire; but fancy performs
her airy excursions upon light and vagrant wings, and flying around
her objects without examination, embraces every pleasing image with
increasing delight. Judgment separates and associates the ideas the
mind has gained by sensation and reflection, and by determining their
agreement or disagreement, searches after truth through the medium of
probability; but the imagination employs itself in raising unsubstantial
images, and portraying the form of things unknown in nature, and foreign
to truth. It has, indeed, like memory, the power of reviving in the mind
the ideas which, after having been imprinted there, have disappeared; but
it differs from that faculty by altering, enlarging, diversifying, and
frequently distorting, the subjects of its power.
It bodies forth the form of things unknown,
And gives to airy nothings
A local habitation and a name.
But the irregular and wild desires which seize upon the mind through
the avenues of an untamed fancy and disordered imagination, are not
exclusively the produce of solitude. The choice of wisdom or folly is
offered to us in all places, and under every circumstance; but the
mind of man is unhappily prone to that which is least worthy of it. I
shall therefore endeavor to show, by some general observations, in what
instances solitude is most likely to create those flights of imagination
which mislead the mind, and corrupt the heart.
Imagination is said to be the simple apprehension of corporeal objects
when they are absent; which absence of the object it contemplates,
distinguishes this faculty from _sensation_, and has occasioned some
metaphysicians to call it _recorded sensation_. Upon the due regulation,
and proper management, of this great and extraordinary power of the mind,
depends, in a great measure, the happiness or misery of life. It ought
to consist of a happy combination of those ideas we receive through the
organs of bodily sense, and those which we derive from the faculties
of moral perception; but it too frequently consists of a capricious
and ill-formed mixture of heterogeneous images, which though true in
themselves, are false in the way they are applied. Thus a person, the
circulation of whose blood in any particular member is suddenly stopped,
_imagines_ that needles are pricking the disordered part. The sensation
in this case is real, but the conclusion from it is fallacious. So in
every mental illusion, imagination, when she first begins to exercise
her powers, seizes on some fact, of the real nature of which the mind
has but an obscure idea, and, for want of tracing it through all its
connexions and dependences, misleads reason into the darkest paths of
error. The wild conjectures, and extravagant opinions which have issued
from this source are innumerable. The imagination receives every impulse
with eagerness, while the passions crowd around her splendid throne,
obedient to her dictates. They act, indeed, reciprocally on each other.
The imagination pours a concourse of contrary ideas into the mind, and
easily disregards, or reconciles their incongruities. The voice of the
calm inquirer, reason, is incapable of being heard amidst the tumult; and
the favorite image is animated and enlarged by the glowing fire of the
passions. No power remains to control or regulate, much less to subdue,
this mental ray, which inflames the whole soul, and exalts it into the
fervor of enthusiasm, hurries it into the extravagance of superstition:
or precipitates it into the furious frenzies of fanaticism.
The powerful tumult reigns in every part,
Pants in the breast, and swells the rising heart.
Enthusiasm is that ecstacy of the mind, that lively transport of the
soul, which is excited by the pursuit or contemplation of some great
and noble object, the novelty of which awakens attention, the truth of
which fixes the understanding, and the grandeur of which, by firing the
fancy, engages the aid of every passion, and prompts the mind to the
highest undertakings. A just and rightly formed enthusiasm is founded in
reason, and supported by nature, and carries the mind above its ordinary
level, into the unexplored regions of art and science. The rational
enthusiast, indeed, rises to an elevation so far above the distinct view
of vulgar eyes, that common understandings are apt to treat him either
with blind admiration, or cool contempt, only because they are incapable
of comprehending his real character; and while some bow to him as an
extraordinary genius, others rail at him as an unhappy lunatic. The
powers of enthusiasm, however, when founded upon proper principles, so
strengthen and invigorate the faculties of the mind, as to enable it
to resist danger undismayed, and to surmount difficulties that appear
irresistible. Those, indeed, who have possessed themselves of this power
to any extraordinary degree, have been considered as _inspired_, and
their great achievements conceived to have been directed by councils,
and sustained by energies of a divine or super-mundane nature. Certain
it is, that we owe to the spirit of enthusiasm whatever is great in art,
sublime in science, or noble in the human character: and the elegant and
philosophic Lord Shaftsbury, while he ridicules the absurdities of this
wonderfully powerful and extensive quality, admits that it is impossible
to forbear ascribing to it whatever is greatly performed by heroes,
statesmen, poets, orators, and even philosophers themselves: and who
that is not contented to wallow in the mire of gross sensuality, would
not quit the noisy scenes of tumultuous dissipation, and repair with
joy and gladness to solitary shades, to the bower of tranquillity, and
the fountain of peace, to majestic forests, and to verdant groves, to
acquire this necessary ingredient to perfect excellence? Who would not
willingly pierce the pensive gloom, or dwell among the brighter glories
of the golden age, to acquire by a warm and glowing, but correct and
chaste contemplation of the beautiful and sublime works of nature, these
ravishing sensations, and gain this noble fervor of the imagination? A
proper study of the works of nature amidst the romantic scenery of sylvan
solitude, is certainly the most likely means of inspiring the mind with
true enthusiasm, and leading genius to her most exalted heights; but
the attempt is dangerous. There are few men in whose minds airy notions
do not sometimes tyrannize. “To indulge the power of fiction,” says a
celebrated writer, “and send imagination out upon the wing, is often the
sport of those who delight too much in silent speculation. When we are
alone, we are not always busy; the labor of excogitation is too violent
to last long; the ardor of inquiry will sometimes give way to idleness
or satiety. He who has nothing external that can divert him, must find
pleasure in his own thoughts, and must conceive himself what he is not;
for who is pleased with what he is? He then expatiates in boundless
futurity, and culls from all imaginable conditions that which for the
present moment he should most desire, amuses his desires with impossible
enjoyments, and confers upon his pride unattainable dominion. The mind
dances from scene to scene, unites all pleasures in all combinations,
riots in delights which nature and fortune, with all their bounty, cannot
bestow. In time some particular train of ideas fixes the attention; all
other intellectual gratifications are rejected; the mind in weariness or
leisure, recurs constantly to the favorite conception, and feasts on the
luscious falsehood whenever she is offended with the bitterness of truth.
By degrees the reign of fancy is confirmed; she grows first imperious,
and in time despotic: then fictions begin to operate as realities, false
opinions fasten on the mind, and life passes in dreams of rapture or of
anguish. This is one of the dangers of solitude.”
These observations lead us to consider the character of the fanatical
visionary, who feels, like the happy enthusiast, the same agitation of
passion, and the same inflammation of mind; but as the feelings of one
are founded upon knowledge, truth, and nature, so the feelings of the
other are the result of ignorance and error, and all the glittering
meteors of his brain the effects of imposture and deception. Of this
species of enthusiasm Mr. Locke gives the following description: “In all
ages men in whom melancholy has mixed with devotion, or whose conceit
of themselves has raised them into an opinion of a greater familiarity
with God, and a nearer admittance to his favors, than is afforded to
others, have often flattered themselves with a persuasion of an immediate
intercourse with the Deity, and frequent communication with his divine
spirit. Their minds being thus prepared, whatever groundless opinion
comes to settle itself strongly upon their fancies, is an illumination
from the Spirit of God, and whatever odd action they find in themselves
a strong inclination to do, that impulse is concluded to be a call or
direction from heaven, and must be obeyed; it is a commission from above,
and they cannot err in executing it. This species of enthusiasm, though
arising from the conceit of a warm and overweening brain, works, when it
once gets footing, more powerfully on the persuasions and actions of men
than either reason, revelation, or both together; men being forwardly
obedient to all the impulses they receive from themselves.” The fantastic
images, indeed, which the wildness of his imagination creates, subdues
his reason, and destroys the best affections of his heart, while his
passions take the part of their furious assailants, and render him the
victim of his visionary conceptions. It is not, however, from sources of
fanatical devotion, or irrational solitude, that this vicious species of
enthusiasm alone arises. The follies of faquiers, the extravagance of
orgaists, the absurdities of hermits, and the mummery of monks, are not
more enthusiastically injurious to the true interests of mankind, or more
pregnant with all the calamitous effects of this baleful vice, than those
unprincipled systems of politics and morals which have been of late years
obtruded on the world, and in which good sense is sacrificed, and true
science disgraced.
The growth of fanaticism, whether moral, political, religious, or
scientific, is not confined exclusively to any age or country; the seeds
of it have been but too plentifully sown in all the regions of the earth;
and it is almost equally baneful and injurious in whatever soil they
spring. Every bold, turbulent, and intriguing spirit, who has sufficient
artifice to inflame the passions of the inconstant multitude, the moment
he calls the demon of fanatacism to his aid, becomes troublesome, and
frequently dangerous, to the government under which he lives. Even the
affectation of this powerful but pernicious quality, is able to produce
fermentations, highly detrimental to the peace of society. In the very
metropolis of Great Britain, and among the enlightened inhabitants of
that kingdom, Lord George Gordon, in the present age, was enabled, by
assuming the hypocritical appearance of piety, and standing forth as
a champion of a religious sect, to convulse the nation, and endanger
its safety. In the twenty-first year of the reign of his Britannic
Majesty, the present powerful and illustrious King George III. an act
of parliament was passed to relieve the Roman Catholics residing in
England from the penalties and disabilities which had been imposed on
them at the revolution. An extension of the same relief to the Catholics
of Scotland was also said to be intended by parliament. The report
spread an immediate alarm throughout the country; societies were formed
for the defence of the Protestant faith; committees appointed, books
dispersed, and, in short, every method taken to inflame the zeal of the
people. These attempts being totally neglected by government, and but
feebly resisted by the more liberal minded in the country, produced all
their effects. A furious spirit of bigotry and persecution soon showed
itself, and broke out into the most outrageous acts of violence against
the Papists at Edinburgh, Glasgow, and elsewhere; but as government did
not think it advisable to repress this spirit by force, the just and
benevolent intentions of the legislature were laid aside. The successful
resistance of the zealots in Scotland to any relaxation of the penal
laws against the Papists, seems to have given the first rise to the
Protestant Association in England; for about the same time bills were
dispersed, and advertisements inserted in the newspapers, inviting those
who wished well to the cause to unite under that title; and Lord George
Gordon, who had been active at the head of the malcontents in Scotland,
was chosen their President. The ferment was suffered to increase during
a course of several years. His lordship was a member of the senate, and
his extraordinary conduct in the house, and frequent interruption he gave
to the business of parliament, as well as the unaccountable manner in
which he continually brought in and treated matters relative to religion
and the danger of popery, and the caprice with which he divided the house
upon questions wherein he stood nearly or entirely alone, were passed
over, along with other singularities in his dress and manners, rather as
subjects of pleasantry than of serious notice or reprehension. On Monday,
the 29th of May, 1780, a meeting was held at Coachmaker’s Hall, pursuant
to a public advertisement, in order to consider of the mode of presenting
a petition to the House of Commons. Lord George Gordon took the chair;
and, after a long inflammatory harangue, in which he endeavoured to
persuade his hearers of the rapid and alarming progress that popery was
making in the kingdom, he proceeded to observe, that the only way to
stop it, was going in a firm, manly, and resolute manner to the house
and showing their representatives that they were determined to preserve
their religious freedom with their lives; that, for his part, he would
run all hazards with the people; and if the people were too lukewarm to
run all hazards with him, when their conscience and their country called
them forth, they might get another president, for that he would tell them
candidly, he was not a lukewarm man himself; and that, if they meant to
spend their time in mock debate, and idle opposition, they might get
another leader. This speech was received with the loudest applause, and
his lordship then moved the following resolution: “That the whole body
of the Protestant Association do attend in St. George’s Fields, on Friday
next, at ten o’clock in the morning, to accompany their president to the
House of Commons at the delivery of the Protestant petition;” which was
carried unanimously. His Lordship then informed them, that if less than
twenty thousand of his fellow citizens attended him on that day, he would
not present their petition. Accordingly, on Friday, the 2d day of June,
1780, at ten in the forenoon, several thousands assembled at the place
appointed, marshalling themselves in ranks, and waiting for their leader,
who arrived about an hour afterward, and they all proceeded to the houses
of parliament. Here they began to exercise the most arbitrary power over
both lords and commons, by obliging almost all the members to put blue
cockades on their hats, and call out “no popery!” Some they compelled
to take oaths to vote for the repeal of this obnoxious act; others they
insulted in the most indecent and insolent manner. They took possession
of all the avenues up to the very door of both houses of parliament,
which they twice attempted to force open, and committed many outrages on
the persons of the members. Nor were they dispersed, or the remaining
members able to leave their seats, until a military force arrived. The
houses were adjourned to the 19th of June. But so dreadful a spectacle
of calamity and horror was never known in any age or country, as that
which the metropolis of England exhibited on the evening and the day
which succeeded this seditious congregation. These astonishing effects
produced by the real or pretended fanaticism of a simple individual,
sufficiently display the power of this dangerous quality, when artfully
employed to inflame the passions of the unthinking multitude. But it is
worthy of observation, that while this incendiary sustained among his
followers the character of a pious patriot, of a man without the smallest
spot or blemish, of being, in short, the most virtuous guardian of the
established religion of the country, he regularly indulged his holy
fervors, and sanctified appearances, every evening, in the company of
common prostitutes, or professed wantons.
The fire of fanaticism is, indeed, so subtilely powerful, that it is
capable of inflaming the coldest mind. The mildest and the most rational
dispositions have been occasionally injured by its heat. The rapidity of
its progress certainly depends, in a great degree, on the nature of the
materials on which it acts; but, like every dangerous conflagration, its
first appearances should be watched, and every means taken to extinguish
its flames. The extinction is, perhaps, most happily and readily effected
by those counteractions which the common occupations, and daily duties
of life produce on the mind, when judiciously opposed to this flagrant
evil. Of the advantages, at least, of this resource, a circumstance in
the history of the late Dr. Fothergill affords a remarkable example. This
celebrated physician possessed the greatest tranquillity of mind, and
had obtained so complete a dominion over his passions, that he declared
to a friend, recently before his death, that he could not recollect a
single instance, during the whole course of his life, in which they had
been improperly disturbed. This temper, which perfectly suited to the
character of the religion he professed, the tenets of which he strictly
practised, he maintained on all occasions; nor was there any thing in his
general conduct or manner that betrayed to his most familiar friends the
least propensity toward enthusiasm; and yet, distant as the suspicion
must be, under these circumstances, that he should ever be under the
influence of superstition, it is well known, that while he was a student
at Edinburgh, where he was distinguished for the mildness of his manners
and the regularity of his conduct, he one day, in an eccentric sally
of fanaticism ran, almost entirely naked through the streets of that
city, warning all its inhabitants of the impending wrath of heaven;
and exhorting them in the most solemn manner, to avert the approaching
danger, by humbly imploring the mercy of the offended Deity; but this
religious paroxysm was of short duration. He was at this time in habits
of intimacy with the great characters who then filled the professional
chairs of the university, and ardently engaged in the pursuits of study;
and the exercises which his daily tasks required, together with the
company and conversation of these rational, well-informed, and thinking
men, preserved his reason, and soon restored him to the full and free
enjoyment of those faculties, from which both science and humanity
afterward derived so many benefits.
The conduct of St. Francis, commonly called the holy Francis of Assisi,
was in some degree similar; excepting that the madness of this fanatic
continued throughout his life, while the delirium of Fothergill
lasted but a day. This saint was born at Assisi, in the province of
Umbria, in the year 1182. His real name of baptism was John; but, on
account of the facility with which he acquired the French language, so
necessary at that time in Italy, especially for the business for which
he was intended, he was called Francis. He is said to have been born
with the figure of a cross on his right shoulder, and to have dreamt
that he was designed by heaven to promote the interests of that holy
sign. His disposition was naturally mild, his comprehension quick,
his feelings acute, his manners easy, his imagination vivid, and his
passions inordinately warm. A careless and unrestrained indulgence of the
propensities of youth had led him into a variety of vicious habits and
libertine extravagances, until the solitude to which a fit of sickness
confined him, brought him to a recollection, and forced him to reflect
upon the dangerous tendency of his past misconduct. His mind started with
horror at the dreadful scene his retrospection presented to his view;
and he resolved to quit the company of his former associates, to reform
the profligacy of his life, to restore his character, and to save, by
penitence and prayer, his guilty soul. These serious reflections wrought
so powerfully on his dejected mind, that he fell into an extravagant
kind of devotion, more resembling madness than religion. Fixing on a
passage in St. Matthew, in which our Saviour desires his apostles to
_provide neither gold nor silver, nor brass in their purses; nor scrip
for their journey; neither two coats, neither shoes, nor yet staves_,
he was led to consider a voluntary and absolute poverty as the essence
of the gospel, and to prescribe this poverty as a sacred rule, both to
himself and to the few who followed him. He accordingly wandered through
the streets of Assisi, in garments that scarcely concealed his nakedness,
in order, as he said, to inure himself to the taunts and ridicule of
his former companions, whom he now called the children of sin, and
followers of satan. The father of the young saint, supposing, from these
extravagances, that the sickness under which he had so long labored had
disordered his intellects, prepared to provide him with some proper
place of confinement, until time or medical regimen should restore him
to his right senses; but the saint, having been informed of his father’s
friendly intention, declined his parental care, and quitting his house,
sought a sanctuary in the palace of the bishop of Assisi. The diocesan
immediately sent to the father of the fugitive, and, after hearing him
upon the subject of his right to provide for the safety of his son, he
turned calmly to the son and desired him to reply. The son immediately
tore off the tattered garments which he then wore, and casting them with
scorn and indignation at the feet of his astonished parent exclaimed,
“_there, take back all your property. You were, indeed, my earthly
father; but henceforth I disclaim you; for I own no father but him who
is in heaven._” The bishop, either really or affectedly delighted with
this unnatural rant of the young enthusiast, threw his own mantle over
the saint, and exhorted him to persevere in his holy resolution, and
to cherish with increasing ardor, the divine inspiration of his pious
mind. The frantic youth, animated by the warm approbation of the bishop
proceeded in his religious course, and abandoning the city, retired
into the deepest gloom of an adjacent forest, to indulge the fervors of
that false enthusiasm which had overpowered his brain. In this retreat
a second vision confirmed him in his holy office; and being encouraged
by pope Innocent III, and Honorius, he established, in the year 1209,
the Order of Saint Francis. If this ridiculous enthusiast had corrected
the extravagances of his overheated imagination, by a cool and temperate
exercise of his reason, by studying, like the celebrated physician we
have just mentioned, some liberal science, he might, with the talents he
possessed, have become a really useful member of society. But these wild
shoots, if suffered to grow to any height, cannot afterward be easily
eradicated: and even Fothergill, if he had lived like Francis, in an age
of superstitious delusion, and had been encouraged to believe the truth
of his fanatic conceptions, his temporary frenzy might have continued
through life; and his character, instead of being revered as a promoter
of an useful science, have been held up by an ignorant multitude to the
contempt and ridicule of posterity.
The vacancy of solitude, by leaving the mind to its own ideas, encourages
to a great excess these wild and eccentric sallies of the imagination.
He who has an opportunity to indulge, without interruption or restraint
the delightful musings of an excursive fancy, will soon lose all relish
for every other pleasure, and neglect every employment which tends to
interrupt the gratification of such an enchanting though dangerous
propensity. During the quietude of a sequestered life, imagination
usurps the throne of reason, and all the feeble faculties of the mind
obey her dictates, until her voice becomes despotic. If the high powers
be exercised on the agreeable appearances of nature, and the various
entertainments, poetry, painting, music, or any of the elegant arts, are
capable of affording,
… Then the inexpressive strain
Diffuses its enchantment; fancy dreams
Of sacred fountains, and elysian groves,
And vales of bliss; the intellectual Power
Bends from his awful throne a wandering ear,
And smiles; the passions, gently smoothed away,
Sink to divine repose, and love and joy
Alone are waking.
But if the mind, as in the solitude of monastic seclusion, fixes its
attention on ascetic subjects, and fires the fancy with unnatural
legends, the soul, instead of sinking to divine repose, feels a morbid
melancholy and discontented torpor, which extinguishes all rational
reflection, and engenders the most fantastic visions.
Men even of strong natural understandings, highly improved by education,
have, in some instances, not been able to resist the fatal effects of
intense application, and long continued solitude. The learned Molanus,
having, during a course of many years, detached his mind from all objects
of sense, neglected all seasonable and salutary devotion, and giving
an uncontrolled license to his imagination fancied, in the latter part
of his life, that he was a _barley corn_; and although he received his
friends with great courtesy and politeness, and conversed upon subjects
both of science and devotion with great ease and ingenuity, he could
never afterward be persuaded to stir from home, lest, as he expressed his
apprehension, he should be picked up in the street, and swallowed by a
fowl.
The female mind is still more subject to these delusions of disordered
fancy; for, as their feelings are more exquisite, their passions warmer,
and their imaginations more active than those of the other sex, solitude,
when carried to excess, affects them in a much greater degree. Their
bosoms are much more susceptible to the injurious influence of seclusion,
to the contagion of example, and to the dangers of illusion. This may,
perhaps, in some degree, account for the similarity of disposition which
prevails in cloisters, and other institutions which confine women
entirely to the company of each other. The force of example and habit is,
indeed, in such retreats, surprisingly powerful. A French medical writer,
of great merit, and undoubted veracity, relates, that in a convent of
nuns, where the sisterhood was unusually numerous, one of those secluded
fair ones was seized with a strange impulse to mew like a cat; that
several others of the nuns in a short time followed her example; and
that at length this unaccountable propensity became general throughout
the convent; the whole sisterhood joined, at stated periods, in the
practice of mewing, and continued it for several hours. But of all the
extraordinary fancies recorded of the sex, none can exceed that which
Cardan relates to have happened in one of the convents of Germany, during
the fifteenth century. One of the nuns, who had long been secluded from
the sight of man, was seized with the strange propensity to bite all her
companions; and extraordinary as it may seem, this disposition spread
until the whole house was infected with the same fury. The account,
indeed, states, that this mania extended even beyond the walls of the
convent, and that the disease was conveyed to such a degree from cloister
to cloister, throughout Germany, Holland, and Italy, that the practice at
length prevailed in every female convent in Europe.
The instances of the pernicious influence of a total dereliction of
society, may possibly appear to the understandings of the present
generation extravagant and incredible; but they are certainly true; and
many others of a similar nature might be adduced from the most authentic
histories of the times. The species, when prevented from enjoying a free
intercourse and rational society with each other, almost change their
nature; and the mind, feeding continually on the melancholy musings
of the imagination, in the cold and cheerless regions of solitude,
engenders humors of the most eccentric cast. Excluded from those social
communications which nature enjoins, with the means of gratifying the
understanding, amusing the senses, or interesting the affections, fancy
roves at large into unknown spheres, and endeavors to find in ideal forms
entertainment and delight. Angelic visions, infernal phantoms, amazing
prodigies, the delusions of alchemy, the frenzies of philosophy, and the
madness of metaphysics, fill the disordered brain. The intellect fastens
upon some absurd idea, and fosters it with the fondest affection,
until its increasing magnitude subdues the remaining powers of sense
and reason. The slightest retrospect into the conduct of the solitary
professors of every religious system, proves the lamentable dangers to
which they expose their mental faculties, by excluding themselves from
the intercourse of rational society. From the prolific womb of solitude
sprung all the mysterious ravings and senseless doctrines of the New
Platonists. The same cause devoted the monks and anchorites of the
Christian church to folly and fanaticism. Fakirs, Bramins, and every
other tribe of religious enthusiasts, originated from the same source.
By abandoning the pleasures of society, and renouncing the feelings
of nature, they sacrificed reason upon the altar of superstition, and
supplied its place with ecstatic fancies, and melancholy musings. There
is nothing more evident, than that our holy religion, in its original
constitution, was set so far apart from all refined speculations, that it
seemed in a manner diametrically opposite to them. The great founder of
Christianity gave one simple rule of life to all men; but his disciples,
anxious to indulge the natural vanity of the human mind, and misled, in
some degree, by the false philosophy which at that period overspread the
heathen world, introduced various doctrines of salvation, and new schemes
of faith. Bigotry, a species of superstition never known before, took
place in men’s affections, and armed them with new jealousies against
each other: barbarous terms and idioms were every day invented; monstrous
definitions imposed, and hostilities, the fiercest imaginable, exercised
on each other by the contending parties. Fanaticism, with all the
train of visions, prophecies, dreams, charms, miracles, and exorcises,
succeeded; and spiritual feats, of the most absurd and ridiculous nature,
were performed in monasteries, or up and down, by their mendicant or
itinerant priests and ghostly missionaries. Solitude impressed the
principles upon which these extravagances were founded, with uncommon
force on the imagination; and the mind, working itself into holy fervors
and inspirations, give birth to new extravagances. The causes which
operated on the minds of men to produce such ridiculous effects, acted
with double force on the ardent temper, warm imagination, and excessive
sensibility of the female world. That which was mere fantasy with the
one sex, became frenzy with the other. Women, indeed, are, according
to the opinion of Plato, the nurses of fanaticism; and their favorite
theme is that which has been dignified by the appellation of _a sublime
passion for poetry_: an ardent, refined love of heaven; but which, in
fact, is only the natural effects of the heart, swollen intumescently
by an unreined, prolific, and too ardent imagination. Instances of this
kind are discoverable in all the accounts that have been published of the
holy fervors of these penitents, particularly in those of Catherine of
Sienna, of Joan of Cambray, of Angelina of Foligny, of Matilda of Saxony,
of Maria of the Incarnation, of Mary Magdalen of Pazzio, of Gertrude of
Saxony, and many others. The celebrated Armelle, who was born in the year
1606, at Campenac, in the diocese of St. Malo, and who died at Vannes in
the year 1671, possessed great personal beauty, a quick and lively mind,
and an uncommon tenderness of heart. Her parents, who were honest and
industrious villagers, placed her as a menial servant in the house of
a neighboring gentleman, with whom she lived for five and thirty years
in the practice of the most exemplary piety and extraordinary virtue,
at least, according to the accounts which he gave from time to time of
her conduct. During the time she resided with this gentleman, his groom,
finding the kitchen door fastened, had the curiosity to peep through the
key-hole, where he discovered the pious maid, in a paroxysm of divine
ecstacy, performing the humble office of spitting a capon. The agitation
of this holy spirit so affected the mind of the astonished youth, that,
it is said by the Ursuline sister who has written the life of this great
luminary of French sanctity, under the title of _The school for the love
of God_, he became immediately enamored with the beauties of religion,
and renouncing the pomps and vanities of the world, entered into a
monastery, at the same time that his holy companion thought proper to
withdraw from future observation into the convent of Vannes, where she
devoted the remainder of her life, and died, as it is reported, in an
excess of divine love. The youthful days of Armelle had been passed in
almost total solitude; for her occupation at the house in which she was
placed by her parents, was confined entirely to the kitchen, and she
had scarcely any other intercourse than with its furniture. It appears,
however, from the history of her life, that she was from her childhood
excessively fond of reciting an _ave_ or _paternoster_; and while
occupied in tending the flocks, her original employment, amused herself
in telling her rosary; “by which means,” says the Ursuline sister, “she
made, even in her pastoral state of simplicity and ignorance, such great
advances in divine love that, the first moment she was allowed to pay her
adoration to the crucifix the fervency of her pious passion burst forth
with such ecstacy, that she eagerly snatched the holy object to her arms,
and embraced it with a transport so warmly affectionate, that streams of
tenderness rushed from her eyes.”
It is truly said by a celebrated English writer, to be “of the utmost
importance to guard against extremes of every kind in religion. We must
beware lest by seeking to avoid one rock we split upon another. It has
been long the subject of remark, that superstition and enthusiasm are two
capital sources of delusion: superstition, on the one hand, attaching
men with immoderate zeal to the ritual and external points of religion;
and enthusiasm, on the other, directing their whole attention to
internal emotions and mystical communications with the spiritual world;
while neither the one nor the other had paid sufficient regard to the
great moral duties of the Christian life. But running with intemperate
eagerness from these two great abuses of religion, men have neglected
to observe that there are extremes opposite to each of them, into which
they are in hazard of precipitating themselves. Thus the horror of
superstition has sometimes reached so far as to produce contempt for all
external institutions; as if it were possible for religion to subsist in
the world without forms of worship, or public acknowledgment of God. It
has also happened, that some, who, in the main are well affected to the
cause of goodness, observing that persons of a devout turn have at times
been carried away by warm affections into unjustifiable excesses, have
thence hastily concluded that all devotion was akin to enthusiasm; and
separating religion totally from the heart and affections, have reduced
it to a frigid observance of what they call the rules of virtue.” These
extremes are to be carefully avoided. True devotion is rational and well
founded; and consists in the lively exercise of that affection which we
owe to the Supreme Being, comprehending several emotions of the heart,
which all terminate in the same great object.
These are among the evils which an irrational solitude is capable of
producing upon an unrestrained and misdirected imagination; but I do
not mean to contend indiscriminately, that solitude is generally to be
considered as dangerous to the free indulgence of this delightful faculty
of the mind. Solitude, well chosen, and rationally pursued, is so far
from being either the open enemy, or the treacherous friend of a firm
and fine imagination, that it ripens its earliest shoots, strengthens
their growth, and contributes to the production of its richest and most
valuable fruits. To him who has acquired the happy art of enjoying in
solitude the charms of nature, and of indulging the powers of fancy
without impairing the faculty of reason
… Whate’er adorns
The princely dome, the column, and the arch,
The breathing marble, and the sculptured gold,
Beyond the proud possessor’s narrow claim,
His happy breast enjoys. For him the spring
Distils her dews, and from the silken gem
Its lucid leaves unfolds: for him the hand
Of autumn tinges every fertile branch
With blooming gold, and blushes like the morn.
Each passing hour sheds tribute from her wings;
And still new beauties meet his lonely walk,
And loves unfelt attract him. Not a breeze
Flies o’er the meadow; not a cloud imbibes
The setting sun’s effulgence; not a strain
From all the tenants of the warbling shade
Ascends, but whence his bosom can partake
Fresh pleasure, unreproved. Nor thence partake
Fresh pleasure only: for the attentive mind,
By this harmonious action on her powers,
Becomes herself harmonious.