THE PRINCESS CONTINUES HER REMARKS UPON PRIVATE LIFE
Nekayah, perceiving her brother's attention fixed, proceeded in her
narrative.
"In families, where there is or is not poverty, there is commonly
discord: if a kingdom be, as Imlac tells us, a great family, a family
likewise is a little kingdom, torn with factions and exposed to
revolutions. An unpractised observer expects the love of parents and
children to be constant and equal; but this kindness seldom continues
beyond the years of infancy: in a short time the children become rivals
to their parents; benefits are allayed by reproaches, and gratitude
debased by envy.
"Parents and children seldom act in concert: each child endeavours to
appropriate the esteem or fondness of the parents, and the parents, with
yet less temptation, betray each other to their children; thus, some
place their confidence in the father, and some in the mother, and by
degrees the house is filled with artifices and feuds.
"The opinions of children and parents, of the young and the old, are
naturally opposite, by the contrary effects of hope and despondence, of
expectation and experience, without crime or folly on either side. The
colours of life in youth and age appear different, as the face of nature
in spring and winter. And how can children credit the assertions of
parents, which their own eyes show them to be false?
"Few parents act in such a manner as much to enforce their maxims by the
credit of their lives. The old man trusts wholly to slow contrivance and
gradual progression; the youth expects to force his way by genius,
vigour, and precipitance. The old man pays regard to riches, and the
youth reverences virtue. The old man deifies prudence; the youth commits
himself to magnanimity and chance. The young man, who intends no ill,
believes that none is intended, and therefore acts with openness and
candour; but his father, having suffered the injuries of fraud, is
impelled to suspect, and too often allured to practise it. Age looks
with anger on the temerity of youth, and youth with contempt on the
scrupulosity of age. Thus parents and children, for the greatest part,
live on to love less and less; and, if those whom nature has thus
closely united are the torments of each other, where shall we look for
tenderness and consolation?"
"Surely," said the prince, "you must have been unfortunate in your
choice of acquaintance: I am unwilling to believe, that the most tender
of all relations is thus impeded in its effects by natural necessity."
"Domestic discord," answered she, "is not inevitably and fatally
necessary; but yet it is not easily avoided. We seldom see that a whole
family is virtuous; the good and evil cannot well agree; and the evil
can yet less agree with one another; even the virtuous fall sometimes to
variance, when their virtues are of different kinds, and tending to
extremes. In general, those parents have most reverence who most deserve
it; for he that lives well cannot be despised.
"Many other evils infest private life. Some are the slaves of servants
whom they have trusted with their affairs. Some are kept in continual
anxiety by the caprice of rich relations, whom they cannot please and
dare not offend. Some husbands are imperious, and some wives perverse:
and, as it is always more easy to do evil than good, though the wisdom
or virtue of one can very rarely make many happy, the folly or vice of
one may often make many miserable."
"If such be the general effect of marriage," said the prince, "I shall,
for the future, think it dangerous to connect my interest with that of
another, lest I should be unhappy by my partner's fault."
"I have met," said the princess, "with many who live single for that
reason; but I never found that their prudence ought to raise envy. They
dream away their time without friendship, without fondness, and are
driven to rid themselves of the day, for which they have no use, by
childish amusements or vicious delights. They act as beings under the
constant sense of some known inferiority, that fills their minds with
rancour, and their tongues with censure. They are peevish at home, and
malevolent abroad; and, as the outlaws of human nature, make it their
business and their pleasure to disturb that society which debars them
from its privileges. To live without feeling or exciting sympathy, to be
fortunate without adding to the felicity of others, or afflicted without
tasting the balm of pity, is a state more gloomy than solitude: it is
not retreat, but exclusion from mankind. Marriage has many pains, but
celibacy has no pleasures."
"What then is to be done?" said Rasselas; "the more we inquire, the less
we can resolve. Surely he is most likely to please himself that has no
other inclination or regard."