_Of the danger of idleness in solitude._
Idleness is truly said to be the root of all evil; and solitude certainly
encourages in the generality of its votaries this baneful disposition.
Nature has so framed the character of man, that his happiness essentially
depends on his passions being properly interested, his imagination
busied, and his faculties employed; but these engagements are seldom
found in the vacant scenes and tedious hours of retirement from the
world, except by those who have acquired the great and happy art of
furnishing their own amusements; an art which, as we have already shown,
can never be learnt in the irrational solitude of caves and cells.
The idleness which solitude is so apt to induce, is dangerous in
proportion to the natural strength, activity, and spirit of the mind;
for it is observed, that the highest characters are frequently goaded
by that restlessness which accompanies leisure, to acts of the wildest
outrage and greatest enormity. The ancient legislators were so conscious
that indolence, whether indulged in solitude or in society, is the nurse
of civil commotion, and the chief instigator of moral turpitude, that
they wisely framed their laws to prevent its existence. Solon, observing
that the city was filled with persons who assembled from all parts on
account of the great security in which the people lived in Attica,
that the country withal was poor and barren, and being conscious that
merchants, who traffic by sea, do not use to transport their goods where
they can have nothing in exchange, turned the attention of the citizens
to manufactures; and for this purpose made a law, that he who was three
times convicted of idleness, should be deemed _infamous_; that no son
should be obliged to maintain his father if he had not taught him a
trade; that trade should be accounted _honorable_; and that the council
of the Areopagus should examine into every man’s means of living, and
chastise the idle with the greatest severity. Draco conceived it so
necessary to prevent the prevalency of a vice to which man is by nature
prone, and which is so destructive to his character, and ruinous to his
manners, that he punished idleness with death. The tyrant Pisistratus, as
Theophrastus relates, was so convinced of the importance of preventing
idleness among his subjects, that he made a law against it, which
produced at once industry in the country, and tranquillity in the city.
Pericles, who, in order to relieve Athens from a number of lazy citizens,
whose lives were neither employed in virtuous actions, nor guarded from
guilt by habits of industry, planted colonies in Chersonesus, Naxos,
Andros, Thrace, and even in Italy, and sent them thither; for this
sagacious statesman saw the danger of indulging this growing vice, and
wisely took precautions to prevent it. Nothing, indeed, contributes more
essentially to the tranquillity of a nation, and to the peaceful demeanor
of its inhabitants, than those artificial wants which luxury introduces;
for, by creating a demand for the fashionable articles, they engage the
attention, and employ the hands of a multitude of manufacturers and
artificers, who, if they were left in that restless indolence which the
want of work creates, would certainly be unhappy themselves, and in
all probability would be fomenting mischief in the minds of others. To
suspend only for one week, the vast multitudes that are employed in the
several mechanical trades and manufactories in Great Britain, would be
to run the risk of involving the metropolis of that great, flourishing,
and powerful country, once more in flames; for it would be converting
the populace into an aptly disposed train of combustible matter, which
being kindled by the least spark of accidental enthusiasm, by the heat
of political faction, or, indeed, by their own internal fermentation,
would explode into the most flagrant enormities. Nature, it is said,
abhors a _vacuum_; and this old peripatetic principle may be properly
applied to the intellect, which will embrace any thing, however absurd
or criminal, rather than be wholly without an object. The same author
also observes, that every man may date the predominance of those desires
that disturb his life, and contaminate his conscience, from some unhappy
hour when too much leisure exposed him to their incursions; for that _he_
has lived with little observation, either on himself or others, who does
not know that to be idle is to be vicious. “Many writers of eminence in
physic,” continues this eminent writer, whose works not only disclose
his general acquaintance with life and manners, but a profound knowledge
of human nature, “have laid out their diligence upon the consideration
of those distempers to which men are exposed by particular states of
life; and very learned treatises have been produced upon the maladies
of the camp, the sea, and the mines. There are, indeed, few employments
which a man accustomed to academical inquiries and medical refinements,
would not find reason for declining, as dangerous to health, did not
his learning or experience inform him, that almost every occupation,
however inconvenient or formidable, is happier and safer than _a life
of sloth_. The necessity of action is not only demonstrable from the
fabric of the body, but evident from observation of the universal
practice of mankind; who for the preservation of health in those whose
rank or wealth exempts them from the necessity of lucrative labors, have
invented sports and diversions, though not of equal use to the world
with manual trades, yet of equal fatigue to those who practice them,
and differing only from the drudgery of the husbandman or manufacturer,
as they are acts of choice, and therefore performed without the painful
sense of compulsion. The huntsman rises early, pursues his game through
all the dangers and obstructions of the chase, swims rivers, and scales
precipices, till he returns home, no less harassed than the soldier,
and has, perhaps, sometimes incurred as great hazard of wounds and
death; yet he has no motive to excite his ardor; he is neither subject
to the command of a general, nor dreads the penalties of neglect or
disobedience: he has neither profits nor honors to expect from his perils
and conquests: but acts with the hope of mural or civic garlands, and
must content himself with the praise of his tenants and companions. But
such is the constitution of man, that _labor is its own reward_; nor
will any external incitements be requisite, if it be considered how
much happiness is gained, and how much misery escaped, by frequent and
violent agitation of the body. Ease is the most that can be hoped from a
sedentary and inactive habit; but ease is a mere neutral state, between
pain and pleasure. The dance of spirits, the bound of vigor, readiness
of enterprise, and defiance of fatigue, are reserved for him that braces
his nerves, and hardens his fibres; that keeps his limbs pliant with
motion; and, by frequent exposure fortifies his frame against the common
accidents of cold and heat. With ease, however, if it could be secured,
many would be content; but nothing terrestrial can be kept at a stand.
Ease, if it is not rising into pleasure, will be settling into pain;
and whatever hopes the dreams of speculation may suggest, of observing
the proportion between retirement and labor, and keeping the body in a
healthy state by supplies exactly equal to its weight, we know that, in
effect, the vital powers, unexcited by motion, grow gradually languid,
decay, and die. It is necessary to that perfection of which our present
state is capable, that the mind and body should both be kept in action;
that neither the faculties of the one nor the other should be suffered to
grow lax or torpid for want of use; that neither health can be purchased
by voluntary submission to ignorance, nor knowledge cultivated at the
expense of that health, which must enable it either to give pleasure to
its possessor, or assistance to others. It is too frequently the pride of
students, to despise those amusements which give to the rest of mankind
strength of limbs and cheerfulness of heart. Solitude and contemplation
are, indeed, seldom consistent with such skill in common exercises or
sports, as is necessary to make them practised with delight; and no
man is willing to do that of which the necessity is not pressing, when
he knows that his awkwardness but makes him ridiculous. I have always
admired the wisdom of those by whom our female education was instituted,
for having contrived that all women, of whatever condition, should be
taught some arts of manufacture, by which the vacuities of recluse and
domestic leisure may be filled up. These arts are more necessary, as
the weakness of their sex, and the general system of life, debar ladies
from many enjoyments, which, by diversifying the circumstances of men,
preserve them from being cankered by the rust of their own thoughts. I
know not how much of the virtue and happiness of the world may be the
consequence of this judicious regulation. Perhaps the most powerful
fancy might be unable to figure the confusion and slaughter that would
be produced by so many piercing eyes and vivid understandings, turned
loose upon mankind, with no other business than to sparkle and intrigue,
to perplex and destroy. For my own part, whenever chance brings within
my observation a knot of misses busy at their needles, I consider myself
as in the school of virtue; and though I have no extraordinary skill
in plain work, or embroidery, look upon their operations with as much
satisfaction as their governess, because I regard them as providing a
security against the most dangerous ensnarers of the soul, by enabling
them to exclude idleness from their solitary moments, and with idleness,
her attendant train of passions, fancies, chimeras, fears, sorrows,
and desires. Ovid and Cervantes will inform them that love has no power
but on those whom he catches unemployed: and Hector, in the Iliad, when
he sees Andromache overwhelmed with tears, sends her for consolation
to the loom and the distaff. Certain it is, that wild wishes, and vain
imaginations, never take such firm possession of the mind, as when it is
found empty and unemployed.”
Idleness, indeed, was the spreading root from which all the vices and
crimes of the oriental nuns so luxuriantly branched. Few of them had any
taste for science, or were enabled by the habits either of reflection, or
industry to charm away the tediousness of solitude, or to relieve that
weariness which must necessarily accompany their abstracted situation.
The talents with which nature had endowed them were uncultivated; the
glimmering lights of reason were obscured by a blind and headlong zeal;
and their temper soured by the circumstances of their forlorn conditions.
Certain it is, that the only means of avoiding unhappiness and misery in
solitude, and perhaps in society also, is to keep the mind continually
engaged in, or occupied by, some laudable pursuit. The earliest
professors of a life of solitude, although they removed themselves far
from the haunts of men, among “caverns deep and deserts idle,” where
nature denied her sons the most common of her blessings, employed
themselves in endeavoring to cultivate the rude and barren soil during
those intervals in which they were not occupied in the ordinary labors
of religion; and even those whose extraordinary sanctity confined them
the whole day in their cells, found the necessity of filling up their
leisure, by exercising the manual arts for which they were respectively
suited. The rules, indeed, which were originally established in most of
the convents, ordained that the time and attention of a monk should never
be for a moment vacant or unemployed: but this excellent precept was
soon rendered obsolete; and the sad consequences which resulted from its
non-observance, we have already, in some degree, described.