every deviation from rectitude, soon disgusted by ignorance or
impertinence, and always expecting from the conversation of mankind more
elegance, purity and truth, than the mingled mass of life will easily
afford. Such men are in haste to retire from grossness, falsehood and
brutality; and hope to find in private habitations at least a negative
felicity, an exemption from the shocks and perturbations with which
publick scenes are continually distressing them.
To neither of these votaries will solitude afford that content, which
she has been taught so lavishly to promise. The man of arrogance will
quickly discover, that by escaping from his opponents he has lost his
flatterers, that greatness is nothing where it is not seen, and power
nothing where it cannot be felt: and he, whose faculties are employed in
too close an observation of failings and defects, will find his
condition very little mended by transferring his attention from others
to himself: he will probably soon come back in quest of new objects, and
be glad to keep his captiousness employed on any character rather than
his own.
Others are seduced into solitude merely by the authority of great names,
and expect to find those charms in tranquillity which have allured
statesmen and conquerors to the shades: these likewise are apt to wonder
at their disappointment, for want of considering, that those whom they
aspire to imitate carried with them to their country-seats minds full
fraught with subjects of reflection, the consciousness of great merit,
the memory of illustrious actions, the knowledge of important events,
and the seeds of mighty designs to be ripened by future meditation.
Solitude was to such men a release from fatigue, and an opportunity of
usefulness. But what can retirement confer upon him, who having done
nothing can receive no support from his own importance, who having known
nothing can find no entertainment in reviewing the past, and who
intending nothing can form no hopes from prospects of the future? He
can, surely, take no wiser course than that of losing himself again in
the crowd, and filling the vacuities of his mind with the news of the
day.
Others consider solitude as the parent of philosophy, and retire in
expectation of greater intimacies with science, as Numa repaired to the
groves when he conferred with Egeria. These men have not always reason
to repent. Some studies require a continued prosecution of the same
train of thought, such as is too often interrupted by the petty
avocations of common life: sometimes, likewise, it is necessary, that a
multiplicity of objects be at once present to the mind; and every thing,
therefore, must be kept at a distance, which may perplex the memory or
dissipate the attention.
But though learning may be conferred by solitude, its application must
be attained by general converse. He has learned to no purpose, that is
not able to teach; and he will always teach unsuccessfully, who cannot
recommend his sentiments by his diction or address.
Even the acquisition of knowledge is often much facilitated by the
advantages of society: he that never compares his notions with those of
others, readily acquiesces in his first thoughts, and very seldom
discovers the objections which may be raised against his opinions; he,
therefore, often thinks himself in possession of truth, when he is only
fondling an errour long since exploded. He that has neither companions
nor rivals in his studies, will always applaud his own progress, and
think highly of his performances, because he knows not that others have
equalled or excelled him. And I am afraid it may be added, that the
student who withdraws himself from the world, will soon feel that ardour
extinguished which praise or emulation had enkindled, and take the
advantage of secrecy to sleep, rather than to labour.
There remains yet another set of recluses, whose intention entitles them
to higher respect, and whose motives deserve a more serious
consideration. These retire from the world, not merely to bask in ease
or gratify curiosity, but that, being disengaged from common cares, they
may employ more time in the duties of religion; that they may regulate
their actions with stricter vigilance, and purify their thoughts by more
frequent meditation.
To men thus elevated above the mists of mortality, I am far from
presuming myself qualified to give directions. On him that appears to
"pass through things temporal," with no other care than not to "finally
lose the things eternal," I look with such veneration as inclines me to
approve his conduct in the whole, without a minute examination of its
parts; yet I could never forbear to wish, that while vice is every day
multiplying seducements, and stalking forth with more hardened
effrontery, virtue would not withdraw the influence of her presence, or
forbear to assert her natural dignity by open and undaunted perseverance
in the right. Piety practised in solitude, like the flower that blooms
in the desert, may give its fragrance to the winds of Heaven, and
delight those unbodied spirits that survey the works of God and the
actions of men; but it bestows no assistance upon earthly beings, and
however free from taints of impurity, yet wants the sacred splendour of
beneficence.
Our Maker, who, though he gave us such varieties of temper and such
difference of powers, yet designed us all for happiness, undoubtedly
intended that we should obtain that happiness by different means. Some
are unable to resist the temptations of importunity, or the impetuosity
of their own passions incited by the force of present temptations: of
these it is undoubtedly the duty to fly from enemies which they cannot
conquer, and cultivate, in the calm of solitude, that virtue which is
too tender to endure the tempests of publick life. But there are others,
whose passions grow more strong and irregular in privacy; and who cannot
maintain an uniform tenour of virtue, but by exposing their manners to
the publick eye, and assisting the admonitions of conscience with the
fear of infamy: for such it is dangerous to exclude all witnesses of
their conduct, till they have formed strong habits of virtue, and
weakened their passions by frequent victories. But there is a higher
order of men so inspired with ardour, and so fortified with resolution,
that the world passes before them without influence or regard: these
ought to consider themselves as appointed the guardians of mankind: they
are placed in an evil world, to exhibit publick examples of good life;
and may be said, when they withdraw to solitude, to desert the station
which Providence assigned them.
No. 128. SATURDAY, JANUARY 26, 1754.
_Ille sinistrorsum, hic dextrorsum abit; unus utrique
Error, sed variis illudit partibus._--HOR. Lib. ii. Sat. iii. 50.
When in a wood we leave the certain way,
One error fools us, though we various stray,
Some to the left, and some to t'other side. FRANCIS.
It is common among all the classes of mankind, to charge each other with
trifling away life: every man looks on the occupation or amusement of
his neighbour, as something below the dignity of our nature, and
unworthy of the attention of a rational being.
A man who considers the paucity of the wants of nature, and who, being
acquainted with the various means by which all manual occupations are
now facilitated, observes what numbers are supported by the labour of a
few, would, indeed, be inclined to wonder, how the multitudes who are
exempted from the necessity of working, either for themselves or others,
find business to fill up the vacuities of life. The greater part of
mankind neither card the fleece, dig the mine, fell the wood, nor gather
in the harvest; they neither tend herds nor build houses; in what then
are they employed?
This is certainly a question, which a distant prospect of the world will
not enable us to answer. We find all ranks and ages mingled together in
a tumultuous confusion, with haste in their motions, and eagerness in
their looks; but what they have to pursue or avoid, a more minute
observation must inform them.
When we analyze the crowd into individuals, it soon appears that the
passions and imaginations of men will not easily suffer them to be idle:
we see things coveted merely because they are rare, and pursued because
they are fugitive; we see men conspire to fix an arbitrary value on that
which is worthless in itself, and then contend for the possession. One
is a collector of fossils, of which he knows no other use than to show
them; and when he has stocked his own repository, grieves that the
stones which he has left behind him should be picked up by another. The
florist nurses a tulip, and repines that his rival's beds enjoy the same
showers and sunshine with his own. This man is hurrying to a concert,
only lest others should have heard the new musician before him; another
bursts from his company to the play, because he fancies himself the
patron of an actress; some spend the morning in consultations with their
tailor, and some in directions to their cook; some are forming parties
for cards, and some laying wagers at a horse-race.
It cannot, I think, be denied, that some of these lives are passed in
trifles, in occupations by which the busy neither benefit themselves nor
others, and by which no man could be long engaged, who seriously
considered what he was doing, or had knowledge enough to compare what he
is, with what he might be made. However, as people who have the same
inclination generally flock together, every trifler is kept in
countenance by the sight of others as unprofitably active as himself; by
kindling the heat of competition, he in time thinks himself important,
and by having his mind intensely engaged, he is secured from weariness
of himself.
Some degree of self-approbation is always the reward of diligence; and I
cannot, therefore, but consider the laborious cultivation of petty
pleasures, as a more happy and more virtuous disposition, than that
universal contempt and haughty negligence, which is sometimes associated
with powerful faculties, but is often assumed by indolence when it
disowns its name, and aspires to the appellation of greatness of mind.
It has been long observed, that drollery and ridicule is the most easy
kind of wit: let it be added that contempt and arrogance is the easiest
philosophy. To find some objection to every thing, and to dissolve in
perpetual laziness under pretence that occasions are wanting to call
forth activity, to laugh at those who are ridiculously busy without
setting an example of more rational industry, is no less in the power of
the meanest than of the highest intellects.
Our present state has placed us at once in such different relations,
that every human employment, which is not a visible and immediate act of
goodness, will be in some respect or other subject to contempt; but it
is true, likewise, that almost every act, which is not directly vicious,
is in some respect beneficial and laudable. "I often," says Bruyere,
"observe from my window, two beings of erect form and amiable
countenance, endowed with the powers of reason, able to clothe their
thoughts in language, and convey their notions to each other. They rise
early in the morning, and are every day employed till sunset in rubbing
two smooth stones together, or, in other terms, in polishing marble."
"If lions could paint," says the fable, "in the room of those pictures
which exhibit men vanquishing lions, we should see lions feeding upon
men." If the stone-cutter could have written like Bruyere, what would he
have replied?
"I look up," says he, "every day from my shop, upon a man whom the
idlers, who stand still to gaze upon my work, often celebrate as a wit
and a philosopher. I often perceive his face clouded with care, and am
told that his taper is sometimes burning at midnight. The sight of a man
who works so much harder than myself, excited my curiosity. I heard no
sound of tools in his apartment, and, therefore, could not imagine what
he was doing; but was told at last, that he was writing descriptions of
mankind, who when he had described them would live just as they had
lived before; that he sat up whole nights to change a sentence, because
the sound of a letter was too often repeated: that he was often
disquieted with doubts, about the propriety of a word which every body
understood; that he would hesitate between two expressions equally
proper, till he could not fix his choice but by consulting his friends;
that he will run from one end of Paris to the other, for an opportunity
of reading a period to a nice ear; that if a single line is heard with
coldness and inattention, he returns home dejected and disconsolate; and
that by all this care and labour, he hopes only to make a little book,
which at last will teach no useful art, and which none who has it not
will perceive himself to want. I have often wondered for what end such a
being as this was sent into the world; and should be glad to see those
who live thus foolishly, seized by an order of the government, and
obliged to labour at some useful occupation."
Thus, by a partial and imperfect representation, may every thing be made
equally ridiculous. He that gazed with contempt on human beings rubbing
stones together, might have prolonged the same amusement by walking
through the city, and seeing others with looks of importance heaping one
brick upon another; or by rambling into the country, where he might
observe other creatures of the same kind driving a piece of sharp iron
into the clay, or, in the language of men less enlightened, ploughing
the field.
As it is thus easy by a detail of minute circumstances to make every
thing little, so it is not difficult by an aggregation of effects to
make every thing great. The polisher of marble may be forming ornaments
for the palaces of virtue, and the schools of science; or providing
tables on which the actions of heroes and the discoveries of sages shall
be recorded, for the incitement and instruction of generations. The
mason is exercising one of the principal arts by which reasoning beings
are distinguished from the brute, the art to which life owes much of its
safety and all its convenience, by which we are secured from the
inclemency of the seasons, and fortified against the ravages of
hostility; and the ploughman is changing the face of nature, diffusing
plenty and happiness over kingdoms, and compelling the earth to give
food to her inhabitants.
Greatness and littleness are terms merely comparative; and we err in our
estimation of things, because we measure them by some wrong standard.
The trifler proposes to himself only to equal or excel some other
trifler, and is happy or miserable as he succeeds or miscarries: the man
of sedentary desire and unactive ambition sits comparing his power with
his wishes; and makes his inability to perform things impossible, an
excuse to himself for performing nothing. Man can only form a just
estimate of his own actions, by making his power the test of his
performance, by comparing what he does with what he can do. Whoever
steadily perseveres in the exertion of all his faculties, does what is
great with respect to himself; and what will not be despised by Him, who
has given to all created beings their different abilities: he faithfully
performs the task of life, within whatever limits his labours may be
confined, or how soon soever they may be forgotten.
We can conceive so much more than we can accomplish, that whoever tries
his own actions by his imagination, may appear despicable in his own
eyes. He that despises for its littleness any thing really useful, has
no pretensions to applaud the grandeur of his conceptions; since nothing
but narrowness of mind hinders him from seeing, that by pursuing the
same principles every thing limited will appear contemptible.
He that neglects the care of his family, while his benevolence expands
itself in scheming the happiness of imaginary kingdoms, might with equal
reason sit on a throne dreaming of universal empire, and of the
diffusion of blessings over all the globe: yet even this globe is
little, compared with the system of matter within our view! and that
system barely something more than nonentity, compared with the boundless
regions of space, to which neither eye nor imagination can extend.
From conceptions, therefore, of what we might have been, and from wishes
to be what we are not, conceptions that we know to be foolish, and
wishes which we feel to be vain, we must necessarily descend to the
consideration of what we are. We have powers very scanty in their utmost
extent, but which in different men are differently proportioned.
Suitably to these powers we have duties prescribed, which we must
neither decline for the sake of delighting ourselves with easier
amusements, nor overlook in idle contemplation of greater excellence or
more extensive comprehension.
In order to the right conduct of our lives, we must remember, that we
are not born to please ourselves. He that studies simply his own
satisfaction, will always find the proper business of his station too
hard or too easy for him. But if we bear continually in mind our
relation to the Father of Being, by whom we are placed in the world, and
who has allotted us the part which we are to bear in the general system
of life, we shall be easily persuaded to resign our own inclinations to
Unerring Wisdom, and do the work decreed for us with cheerfulness and
diligence.
No. 131. TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 1754.
--_Misce
Ergo aliquid nostris de moribus_. JUV. Sat. iv. 322.
And mingle something of our times to please. DRYDEN, Jun.
Fontanelle, in his panegyrick on Sir Isaac Newton, closes a long
enumeration of that great philosopher's virtues and attainments, with an
observation, that "he was not distinguished from other men, by any
singularity either natural or affected."
It is an eminent instance of Newton's superiority to the rest of
mankind, that he was able to separate knowledge from those weaknesses by
which knowledge is generally disgraced; that he was able to excel in
science and wisdom without purchasing them by the neglect of little
things; and that he stood alone, merely because he had left the rest of
mankind behind him, not because he deviated from the beaten track.
Whoever, after the example of Plutarch, should compare the lives of
illustrious men, might set this part of Newton's character to view with
great advantage, by opposing it to that of Bacon, perhaps the only man,
of later ages, who has any pretensions to dispute with him the palm of
genius or science.
Bacon, after he had added to a long and careful contemplation of almost
every other object of knowledge a curious inspection into common life,
and after having surveyed nature as a philosopher, had examined "men's
business and bosoms" as a statesman; yet failed so much in the conduct
of domestick affairs, that, in the most lucrative post to which a great
and wealthy kingdom could advance him, he felt all the miseries of
distressful poverty, and committed all the crimes to which poverty
incites. Such were at once his negligence and rapacity, that, as it is
said, he would gain by unworthy practices that money, which, when so
acquired, his servants might steal from one end of the table, while he
sat studious and abstracted at the other.
As scarcely any man has reached the excellence, very few have sunk to
the weakness of Bacon: but almost all the studious tribe, as they obtain
any participation of his knowledge, feel likewise some contagion of his
defects; and obstruct the veneration which learning would procure, by
follies greater or less, to which only learning could betray them.
It has been formerly remarked by _The Guardian_, that the world punishes
with too great severity the errours of those, who imagine that the
ignorance of little things may be compensated by the knowledge of great;
for so it is, that as more can detect petty failings than can
distinguish or esteem great qualifications, and as mankind is in general
more easily disposed to censure than to admiration, contempt is often
incurred by slight mistakes, which real virtue or usefulness cannot
counterbalance.
Yet such mistakes and inadvertencies it is not easy for a man deeply
immersed in study to avoid; no man can become qualified for the common
intercourses of life, by private meditation: the manners of the world
are not a regular system, planned by philosophers upon settled
principles, in which every cause has a congruous effect, and one part
has a just reference to another. Of the fashions prevalent in every
country, a few have arisen, perhaps, from particular temperatures of the
climate; a few more from the constitution of the government; but the
greater part have grown up by chance; been started by caprice, been
contrived by affectation, or borrowed without any just motives of choice
from other countries.
Of all these, the savage that hunts his prey upon the mountains, and the
sage that speculates in his closet, must necessarily live in equal
ignorance: yet by the observation of those trifles it is, that the ranks
of mankind are kept in order, that the address of one to another is
regulated, and the general business of the world carried on with
facility and method.
These things, therefore, though small in themselves, become great by
their frequency: and he very much mistakes his own interest, who to the
unavoidable unskilfulness of abstraction and retirement, adds a
voluntary neglect of common forms, and increases the disadvantages of a
studious course of life by an arrogant contempt of those practices, by
which others endeavour to gain favour and multiply friendships.
A real and interior disdain of fashion and ceremony, is indeed, not very
often to be found: much the greater part of those who pretend to laugh
at foppery and formality, secretly wish to have possessed those
qualifications which they pretend to despise; and because they find it
difficult to wash away the tincture which they have so deeply imbibed,
endeavour to harden themselves in a sullen approbation of their own
colour. Neutrality is a state, into which the busy passions of man
cannot easily subside; and he who is in danger of the pangs of envy, is
generally forced to recreate his imagination with an effort of comfort.
Some, however, may be found, who, supported by the consciousness of
great abilities, and elevated by a long course of reputation and
applause, voluntarily consign themselves to singularity, affect to cross
the roads of life because they know that they shall not be jostled, and
indulge a boundless gratification of will because they perceive that
they shall be quietly obeyed. Men of this kind are generally known by
the name of Humourists, an appellation by which he that has obtained it,
and can be contented to keep it, is set free at once from the shackles
of fashion: and can go in or out, sit or stand, be talkative or silent,
gloomy or merry, advance absurdities or oppose demonstration, without
any other reprehension from mankind, than that it is his way, that he is
an odd fellow, and must be let alone.
This seems to many an easy passport through the various factions of
mankind; and those on whom it is bestowed, appear too frequently to
consider the patience with which their caprices are suffered as an
undoubted evidence of their own importance, of a genius to which
submission is universally paid, and whose irregularities are only
considered as consequences of its vigour. These peculiarities, however,
are always found to spot a character, though they may not totally
obscure it; and he who expects from mankind, that they should give up
established customs in compliance with his single will, and exacts that
deference which he does not pay, may be endured, but can never be
approved.