not obtained the proper qualifications of an author, can have no excuse
for the arrogance of writing, but the power of imparting to mankind
something necessary to be known. A man uneducated or unlettered may
sometimes start a useful thought, or make a lucky discovery, or obtain
by chance some secret of nature, or some intelligence of facts, of which
the most enlightened mind may be ignorant, and which it is better to
reveal, though by a rude and unskilful communication, than to lose for
ever by suppressing it.
But few will be justified by this plea; for of the innumerable books and
pamphlets that have overflowed the nation, scarce one has made any
addition to real knowledge, or contained more than a transposition of
common sentiments, and a repetition of common phrases.
It will be naturally inquired, when the man who feels an inclination to
write, may venture to suppose himself properly qualified; and, since
every man is inclined to think well of his own intellect, by what test
he may try his abilities, without hazarding the contempt or resentment
of the publick.
The first qualification of a writer is a perfect knowledge of the
subject which he undertakes to treat; since we cannot teach what we do
not know, nor can properly undertake to instruct others while we are
ourselves in want of instruction. The next requisite is, that he be
master of the language in which he delivers his sentiments: if he treats
of science and demonstration, that he has attained a style clear, pure,
nervous, and expressive; if his topicks be probable and persuasory, that
he be able to recommend them by the superaddition of elegance and
imagery, to display the colours of varied diction, and pour forth the
musick of modulated periods.
If it be again inquired, upon what principles any man shall conclude
that he wants those powers, it may be readily answered, that no end is
attained but by the proper means; he only can rationally presume that he
understands a subject, who has read and compared the writers that have
hitherto discussed it, familiarized their arguments to himself by long
meditation, consulted the foundations of different systems, and
separated truth from errour by a rigorous examination.
In like manner, he only has a right to suppose that he can express his
thoughts, whatever they are, with perspicuity or elegance, who has
carefully perused the best authors, accurately noted their diversities
of style, diligently selected the best modes of diction, and
familiarized them by long habits of attentive practice.
No man is a rhetorician or philosopher by chance. He who knows that he
undertakes to write on questions which he has never studied, may without
hesitation determine, that he is about to waste his own time and that of
his reader, and expose himself to the derision of those whom he aspires
to instruct: he that without forming his style by the study of the best
models hastens to obtrude his compositions on the publick, may be
certain, that whatever hope or flattery may suggest, he shall shock the
learned ear with barbarisms, and contribute, wherever his work shall be
received, to the depravation of taste and the corruption of language.
[1] See Knox. Essay 50.
No. 119. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 25, 1753.
_Latius regnes, avidum domando
Spiritum, quam si Libyam remotis
Gadibus jungas, et uterque Poenus
Serviat uni._ Hor. Lib. ii. Ode ii. 9.
By virtue's precepts to controul
The thirsty cravings of the soul,
Is over wider realms to reign
Unenvied monarch, than if Spain
You could to distant Lybia join,
And both the Carthages were thine. FRANCIS.
When Socrates was asked, "which of mortal men was to be accounted
nearest to the _gods_ in happiness?" he answered, "that man who is in
want of the fewest things."
In this answer, Socrates left it to be guessed by his auditors, whether,
by the exemption from want which was to constitute happiness, he meant
amplitude of possessions or contraction of desire. And, indeed, there is
so little difference between them, that Alexander the Great confessed
the inhabitant of a tub the next man to the master of the world; and
left a declaration to future ages, that if he was not Alexander he
should wish to be Diogenes.
These two states, however, though they resemble each other in their
consequence, differ widely with respect to the facility with which they
may be attained. To make great acquisitions can happen to very few; and
in the uncertainty of human affairs, to many it will be incident to
labour without reward, and to lose what they already possess by
endeavours to make it more: some will always want abilities, and others
opportunities to accumulate wealth. It is therefore happy, that nature
has allowed us a more certain and easy road to plenty; every man may
grow rich by contracting his wishes, and by quiet acquiescence in what
has been given him, supply the absence of more.
Yet so far is almost every man from emulating the happiness of the gods,
by any other means than grasping at their power, that it seems to be the
great business of life to create wants as fast as they are satisfied. It
has been long observed by moralists, that every man squanders or loses a
great part of that life, of which every man knows and deplores the
shortness: and it may be remarked with equal justness, that though every
man laments his own insufficiency to his happiness, and knows himself a
necessitous and precarious being, incessantly soliciting the assistance
of others, and feeling wants which his own art or strength cannot
supply; yet there is no man, who does not, by the superaddition of
unnatural cares, render himself still more dependent; who does not
create an artificial poverty, and suffer himself to feel pain for the
want of that, of which, when it is gained, he can have no enjoyment.
It must, indeed, be allowed, that as we lose part of our time because it
steals away silent and invisible, and many an hour is passed before we
recollect that it is passing; so unnatural desires insinuate themselves
unobserved into the mind, and we do not perceive that they are gaining
upon us, till the pain which they give us awakens us to notice. No man
is sufficiently vigilant to take account of every minute of his life, or
to watch every motion of his heart. Much of our time likewise is
sacrificed to custom; we trifle, because we see others trifle; in the
same manner we catch from example the contagion of desire; we see all
about us busied in pursuit of imaginary good, and begin to bustle in the
same chase, lest greater activity should triumph over us.
It is true, that to man as a member of society, many things become
necessary, which, perhaps, in a state of nature are superfluous; and
that many things, not absolutely necessary, are yet so useful and
convenient, that they cannot easily be spared. I will make yet a more
ample and liberal concession. In opulent states, and regular
governments, the temptations to wealth and rank, and to the distinctions
that follow them, are such as no force of understanding finds it easy to
resist.
If, therefore, I saw the quiet of life disturbed only by endeavours
after wealth and honour; by solicitude, which the world, whether justly
or not, considered as important; I should scarcely have had courage to
inculcate any precepts of moderation and forbearance. He that is engaged
in a pursuit, in which all mankind profess to be his rivals, is
supported by the authority of all mankind in the prosecution of his
design, and will, therefore, scarcely stop to hear the lectures of a
solitary philosopher. Nor am I certain, that the accumulation of honest
gain ought to be hindered, or the ambition of just honours always to be
repressed. Whatever can enable the possessor to confer any benefit upon
others, may be desired upon virtuous principles; and we ought not too
rashly to accuse any man of intending to confine the influence of his
acquisitions to himself.
But if we look round upon mankind, whom shall we find among those that
fortune permits to form their own manners, that is not tormenting
himself with a wish for something, of which all the pleasure and all the
benefit will cease at the moment of attainment? One man is beggaring his
posterity to build a house, which when finished he never will inhabit;
another is levelling mountains to open a prospect, which, when he has
once enjoyed it, he can enjoy it no more; another is painting ceilings,
carving wainscot, and filling his apartments with costly furniture, only
that some neighbouring house may not be richer or finer than his own.
That splendour and elegance are not desirable, I am not so abstracted
from life to inculcate; but if we inquire closely into the reason for
which they are esteemed, we shall find them valued principally as
evidences of wealth. Nothing, therefore, can show greater depravity of
understanding, than to delight in the show when the reality is wanting;
or voluntarily to become poor, that strangers may for a time imagine us
to be rich.
But there are yet minuter objects and more trifling anxieties. Men may
be found, who are kept from sleep by the want of a shell particularly
variegated! who are wasting their lives, in stratagems to obtain a book
in a language which they do not understand; who pine with envy at the
flowers of another man's parterre; who hover like vultures round the
owner of a fossil, in hopes to plunder his cabinet at his death; and who
would not much regret to see a street in flames, if a box of medals
might be scattered in the tumult.
He that imagines me to speak of these sages in terms exaggerated and
hyperbolical, has conversed but little with the race of virtuosos. A
slight acquaintance with their studies, and a few visits to their
assemblies, would inform him, that nothing is so worthless, but that
prejudice and caprice can give it value; nor any thing of so little use,
but that by indulging an idle competition or unreasonable pride, a man
may make it to himself one of the necessaries of life.
Desires like these, I may surely, without incurring the censure of
moroseness, advise every man to repel when they invade his mind; or if
he admits them, never to allow them any greater influence than is
necessary to give petty employments the power of pleasing, and diversify
the day with slight amusements.
An ardent wish, whatever be its object, will always be able to interrupt
tranquillity. What we believe ourselves to want, torments us not in
proportion to its real value, but according to the estimation by which
we have rated it in our own minds; in some diseases, the patient has
been observed to long for food, which scarce any extremity of hunger
would in health have compelled him to swallow; but while his organs were
thus depraved, the craving was irresistible, nor could any rest be
obtained till it was appeased by compliance. Of the same nature are the
irregular appetites of the mind; though they are often excited by
trifles, they are equally disquieting with real wants: the Roman, who
wept at the death of his lamprey, felt the same degree of sorrow that
extorts tears on other occasions.
Inordinate desires, of whatever kind, ought to be repressed upon yet a
higher consideration; they must be considered as enemies not only to
happiness but to virtue. There are men, among those commonly reckoned
the learned and the wise, who spare no stratagems to remove a competitor
at an auction, who will sink the price of a rarity at the expense of
truth, and whom it is not safe to trust alone in a library or cabinet.
These are faults, which the fraternity seem to look upon as jocular
mischiefs, or to think excused by the violence of the temptation: but I
shall always fear that he, who accustoms himself to fraud in little
things, wants only opportunity to practise it in greater; "he that has
hardened himself by killing a sheep," says Pythagoras, "will with less
reluctance shed the blood of a man."
To prize every thing according to its _real_ use ought to be the aim of
a rational being. There are few things which can much conduce to
happiness, and, therefore, few things to be ardently desired. He that
looks upon the business and bustle of the world, with the philosophy
with which Socrates surveyed the fair at Athens, will turn away at last
with his exclamation, "How many things are here which I do not want!"
No. 120. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 29, 1753.
_--Ultima semper
Expectanda dies homini: dicique beatus
Ante obitum nemo supremaque funera debet._ OVID. Met. Lib. iii. 135.
But no frail man, however great or high,
Can be concluded blest before he die. ADDISON.
The numerous miseries of human life have extorted in all ages an
universal complaint. The wisest of men terminated all his experiments in
search of happiness, by the mournful confession, that "all is vanity;"
and the ancient patriarchs lamented, that "the days of their pilgrimage
were few and evil."
There is, indeed, no topick on which it is more superfluous to
accumulate authorities, nor any assertion of which our own eyes will
more easily discover, or our sensations more frequently impress the
truth, than, that misery is the lot of man, that our present state is a
state of danger and infelicity.
When we take the most distant prospect of life, what does it present us
but a chaos of unhappiness, a confused and tumultuous scene of labour
and contest, disappointment and defeat? If we view past ages in the
reflection of history, what do they offer to our meditation but crimes
and calamities? One year is distinguished by a famine, another by an
earthquake; kingdoms are made desolate, sometimes by wars, and sometimes
by pestilence; the peace of the world is interrupted at one time by the
caprices of a tyrant, at another by the rage of the conqueror. The
memory is stored only with vicissitudes of evil; and the happiness, such
as it is, of one part of mankind, is found to arise commonly from
sanguinary success, from victories which confer upon them the power, not
so much of improving life by any new enjoyment, as of inflicting misery
on others, and gratifying their own pride by comparative greatness.
But by him that examines life with a more close attention, the happiness
of the world will be found still less than it appears. In some intervals
of publick prosperity, or to use terms more proper, in some
intermissions of calamity, a general diffusion of happiness may seem to
overspread a people; all is triumph and exultation, jollity and plenty;
there are no publick fears and dangers, and "no complainings in the
streets." But the condition of individuals is very little mended by this
general calm: pain and malice and discontent still continue their
havock; the silent depredation goes incessantly forward; and the grave
continues to be filled by the victims of sorrow.
He that enters a gay assembly, beholds the cheerfulness displayed in
every countenance, and finds all sitting vacant and disengaged, with no
other attention than to give or to receive pleasure, would naturally
imagine, that he had reached at last the metropolis of felicity, the
place sacred to gladness of heart, from whence all fear and anxiety were
irreversibly excluded. Such, indeed, we may often find to be the opinion
of those, who from a lower station look up to the pomp and gaiety which
they cannot reach: but who is there of those who frequent these
luxurious assemblies, that will not confess his own uneasiness, or
cannot recount the vexations and distresses that prey upon the lives of
his gay companions?
The world, in its best state, is nothing more than a larger assembly of
beings, combining to counterfeit happiness which they do not feel,
employing every art and contrivance to embellish life, and to hide their
real condition from the eyes of one another.
The species of happiness most obvious to the observation of others, is
that which depends upon the goods of fortune; yet even this is often
fictitious. There is in the world more poverty than is generally
imagined; not only because many whose possessions are large have desires
still larger, and many measure their wants by the gratifications which
others enjoy; but great numbers are pressed by real necessities which it
is their chief ambition to conceal, and are forced to purchase the
appearance of competence and cheerfulness at the expense of many
comforts and conveniencies of life.
Many, however, are confessedly rich, and many more are sufficiently
removed from all danger of real poverty: but it has been long ago
remarked, that money cannot purchase quiet; the highest of mankind can
promise themselves no exemption from that discord or suspicion, by which
the sweetness of domestick retirement is destroyed; and must always be
even more exposed, in the same degree as they are elevated above others,
to the treachery of dependants, the calumny of defamers and the violence
of opponents.
Affliction is inseparable from our present state: it adheres to all the
inhabitants of this world, in different proportions indeed, but with an
allotment which seems very little regulated by our own conduct. It has
been the boast of some swelling moralists, that every man's fortune was
in his own power, that prudence supplied the place of all other
divinities, and that happiness is the unfailing consequence of virtue.
But, surely, the quiver of Omnipotence is stored with arrows, against
which the shield of human virtue, however adamantine it has been
boasted, is held up in vain: we do not always suffer by our crimes; we
are not always protected by our innocence.
A good man is by no means exempt from the danger of suffering by the
crimes of others; even his goodness may raise him enemies of implacable
malice and restless perseverance: the good man has never been warranted
by Heaven from the treachery of friends, the disobedience of children or
the dishonesty of a wife; he may see his cares made useless by
profusion, his instructions defeated by perverseness, and his kindness
rejected by ingratitude; he may languish under the infamy of false
accusations, or perish reproachfully by an unjust sentence.
A good man is subject, like other mortals, to all the influences of
natural evil; his harvest is not spared by the tempest, nor his cattle
by the murrain; his house flames like others in a conflagration; nor
have his ships any peculiar power of resisting hurricanes: his mind,
however elevated, inhabits a body subject to innumerable casualties, of
which he must always share the dangers and the pains; he bears about him
the seeds of disease, and may linger away a great part of his life under
the tortures of the gout or stone; at one time groaning with
insufferable anguish, at another dissolved in listlessness and languor.
From this general and indiscriminate distribution of misery, the
moralists have always derived one of their strongest moral arguments for
a future state; for since the common events of the present life happen
alike to the good and bad, it follows from the justice of the Supreme
Being, that there must be another state of existence, in which a just
retribution shall be made, and every man shall be happy and miserable
according to his works.
The miseries of life may, perhaps, afford some proof of a future state,
compared as well with the mercy as the justice of God. It is scarcely to
be imagined that Infinite Benevolence would create a being capable of
enjoying so much more than is here to be enjoyed, and qualified by
nature to prolong pain by remembrance, and anticipate it by terrour, if
he was not designed for something nobler and better than a state, in
which many of his faculties can serve only for his torment; in which he
is to be importuned by desires that never can be satisfied, to feel many
evils which he had no power to avoid, and to fear many which he shall
never feel: there will surely come a time, when every capacity of
happiness shall be filled, and none shall be wretched but by his own
fault.
In the mean time, it is by affliction chiefly that the heart of man is
purified, and that the thoughts are fixed upon a better state.
Prosperity, allayed and imperfect as it is, has power to intoxicate the
imagination, to fix the mind upon the present scene, to produce
confidence and elation, and to make him who enjoys affluence and honours
forget the hand by which they were bestowed. It is seldom that we are
otherwise, than by affliction, awakened to a sense of our own
imbecility, or taught to know how little all our acquisitions can
conduce to safety or to quiet; and how justly we may ascribe to the
superintendence of a higher Power, those blessings which in the
wantonness of success we considered as the attainments of our policy or
courage.
Nothing confers so much ability to resist the temptations that
perpetually surround us, as an habitual consideration of the shortness
of life, and the uncertainty of those pleasures that solicit our
pursuit; and this consideration can be inculcated only by affliction. "O
Death! how bitter is the remembrance of thee, to a man that lives at
ease in his possessions!" If our present state were one continued
succession of delights, or one uniform flow of calmness and
tranquillity, we should never willingly think upon its end; death would
then surely surprise us as "a thief in the night;" and our task of duty
would remain unfinished, till "the night came when no man can work."
While affliction thus prepares us for felicity, we may console ourselves
under its pressures, by remembering, that they are no particular marks
of divine displeasure; since all the distresses of persecution have been
suffered by those, "of whom the world was not worthy;" and the Redeemer
of mankind himself was "a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief!"
No. 126. SATURDAY, JANUARY 19, 1754.
--_Steriles nec legit arenas
Ut caner et paucis, mersitque hoc pulvere verum._ LUCAN.
Canst thou believe the vast eternal Mind Was e'er to Syrts and
Lybian sands confin'd? That he would choose this waste, this barren
ground, To teach the thin inhabitants around, And leave his truth in
wilds and deserts drown'd?
There has always prevailed among that part of mankind that addict their
minds to speculation, a propensity to talk much of the delights of
retirement: and some of the most pleasing compositions produced in every
age contain descriptions of the peace and happiness of a country life.
I know not whether those who thus ambitiously repeat the praises of
solitude, have always considered, how much they depreciate mankind by
declaring, that whatever is excellent or desirable is to be obtained by
departing from them; that the assistance which we may derive from one
another, is not equivalent to the evils which we have to fear; that the
kindness of a few is overbalanced by the malice of many; and that the
protection of society is too dearly purchased by encountering its
dangers and enduring its oppressions.
These specious representations of solitary happiness, however
opprobrious to human nature, have so far spread their influence over the
world, that almost every man delights his imagination with the hopes of
obtaining some time an opportunity of retreat. Many, indeed, who enjoy
retreat only in imagination, content themselves with believing, that
another year will transport them to rural tranquillity, and die while
they talk of doing what, if they had lived longer, they would never have
done. But many likewise there are, either of greater resolution or more
credulity, who in earnest try the state which they have been taught to
think thus secure from cares and dangers; and retire to privacy, either
that they may improve their happiness, increase their knowledge, or
exalt their virtue.
The greater part of the admirers of solitude, as of all other classes of
mankind, have no higher or remoter view, than the present gratification
of their passions. Of these, some, haughty and impetuous, fly from
society only because they cannot bear to repay to others the regard
which themselves exact; and think no state of life eligible, but that
which places them out of the reach of censure or control, and affords
them opportunities of living in a perpetual compliance with their own
inclinations, without the necessity of regulating their actions by any
other man's convenience or opinion.