THE HAPPINESS OF A LIFE LED ACCORDING TO NATURE
Rasselas went often to an assembly of learned men, who met at stated
times to unbend their minds and compare their opinions. Their manners
were somewhat coarse, but their conversation was instructive, and their
disputations acute, though sometimes too violent, and often continued
till neither controvertist remembered upon what question they began.
Some faults were almost general among them: every one was desirous to
dictate to the rest, and every one was pleased to hear the genius or
knowledge of another depreciated.
In this assembly Rasselas was relating his interview with the hermit,
and the wonder with which he heard him censure a course of life which he
had so deliberately chosen, and so laudably followed. The sentiments of
the hearers were various. Some were of opinion that the folly of his
choice had been justly punished by condemnation to perpetual
perseverance. One of the youngest among them, with great vehemence,
pronounced him an hypocrite. Some talked of the right of society to the
labour of individuals, and considered retirement as a desertion of duty.
Others readily allowed that there was a time when the claims of the
public were satisfied, and when a man might properly sequester himself,
to review his life and purify his heart.
One, who appeared more affected with the narrative than the rest,
thought it likely that the hermit would, in a few years, go back to his
retreat, and perhaps, if shame did not restrain or death intercept him,
return once more from his retreat into the world: "For the hope of
happiness," said he, "is so strongly impressed, that the longest
experience is not able to efface it. Of the present state, whatever it
be, we feel, and are forced to confess, the misery; yet, when the same
state is again at a distance, imagination paints it as desirable. But
the time will surely come, when desire will be no longer our torment,
and no man shall be wretched but by his own fault."
"This," said a philosopher, who had heard him with tokens of great
impatience, "is the present condition of a wise man. The time is
already come, when none are wretched but by their own fault. Nothing is
more idle than to inquire after happiness, which nature has kindly
placed within our reach. The way to be happy is to live according to
nature, in obedience to that universal and unalterable law with which
every heart is originally impressed; which is not written on it by
precept, but engraven by destiny, not instilled by education, but
infused at our nativity. He that lives according to nature will suffer
nothing from the delusions of hope, or importunities of desire; he will
receive and reject with equability of temper, and act or suffer as the
reason of things shall alternately prescribe. Other men may amuse
themselves with subtle definitions, or intricate ratiocinations. Let
them learn to be wise by easier means: let them observe the hind of the
forest, and the linnet of the grove; let them consider the life of
animals, whose motions are regulated by instinct: they obey their guide,
and are happy. Let us therefore, at length, cease to dispute, and learn
to live; throw away the encumbrance of precepts, which they who utter
them with so much pride and pomp do not understand, and carry with us
this simple and intelligible maxim: that deviation from nature is
deviation from happiness."
When he had spoken, he looked round him with a placid air, and enjoyed
the consciousness of his own beneficence. "Sir," said the prince with
great modesty, "as I, like all the rest of mankind, am desirous of
felicity, my closest attention has been fixed upon your discourse; I
doubt not the truth of a position which a man so learned has so
confidently advanced. Let me only know what it is to live according to
nature."
"When I find young men so humble and so docile," said the philosopher,
"I can deny them no information which my studies have enabled me to
afford. To live according to nature, is to act always with due regard to
the fitness arising from the relations and qualities of causes and
effects; to concur with the great and unchangeable scheme of universal
felicity; to co-operate with the general disposition and tendency of the
present system of things."
The prince soon found that this was one of the sages whom he should
understand less as he heard him longer. He therefore bowed and was
silent; and the philosopher, supposing him satisfied, and the rest
vanquished, rose up, and departed with the air of a man that had
co-operated with the present system.