RASSELAS AND NEKAYAH CONTINUE THEIR CONVERSATION
"Dear princess," said Rasselas, "you fall into the common errors of
exaggeratory declamation, by producing, in a familiar disquisition,
examples of national calamities, and scenes of extensive misery, which
are found in books rather than in the world, and which, as they are
horrid, are ordained to be rare. Let us not imagine evils which we do
not feel, nor injure life by misrepresentations. I cannot bear that
querulous eloquence which threatens every city with a siege like that of
Jerusalem, that makes famine attend on every flight of locusts, and
suspends pestilence on the wing of every blast that issues from the
south.
"On necessary and inevitable evils which overwhelm kingdoms at once, all
disputation is vain: when they happen they must be endured. But it is
evident, that these bursts of universal distress are more dreaded than
felt; thousands and ten thousands flourish in youth and wither in age,
without the knowledge of any other than domestic evils, and share the
same pleasures and vexations, whether their kings are mild or cruel,
whether the armies of their country pursue their enemies or retreat
before them. While courts are disturbed with intestine competitions, and
ambassadors are negotiating in foreign countries, the smith still plies
his anvil, and the husbandman drives his plough forward; the necessaries
of life are required and obtained; and the successive business of the
seasons continues to make its wonted revolutions.
"Let us cease to consider what, perhaps, may never happen, and what,
when it shall happen, will laugh at human speculation. We will not
endeavour to modify the motions of the elements, or to fix the destiny
of kingdoms. It is our business to consider what beings like us may
perform; each labouring for his own happiness, by promoting within his
circle, however narrow, the happiness of others.
"Marriage is evidently the dictate of nature; men and women are made to
be companions of each other; and therefore I cannot be persuaded but
that marriage is one of the means of happiness."
"I know not," said the princess, "whether marriage be more than one of
the innumerable modes of human misery. When I see and reckon the various
forms of connubial infelicity, the unexpected causes of lasting discord,
the diversities of temper, the oppositions of opinion, the rude
collisions of contrary desire where both are urged by violent impulses,
the obstinate contests of disagreeing virtues where both are supported
by consciousness of good intention, I am sometimes disposed to think
with the severer casuists of most nations, that marriage is rather
permitted than approved, and that none, but by the instigation of a
passion too much indulged, entangle themselves with indissoluble
compacts."
"You seem to forget," replied Rasselas, "that you have, even now,
represented celibacy as less happy than marriage. Both conditions may be
bad, but they cannot both be worst. Thus it happens when wrong opinions
are entertained, that they mutually destroy each other, and leave the
mind open to truth."
"I did not expect," answered the princess, "to hear that imputed to
falsehood which is the consequence only of frailty. To the mind, as to
the eye, it is difficult to compare with exactness objects vast in their
extent, and various in their parts. Where we see or conceive the whole
at once, we readily note the discriminations, and decide the preference;
but of two systems, of which neither can be surveyed by any human being
in its full compass of magnitude and multiplicity of complication, where
is the wonder that, judging of the whole by parts, I am alternately
affected by one and the other, as either presses on my memory or fancy?
We differ from ourselves, just as we differ from each other, when we see
only part of the question, as in the multifarious relations of politics
and morality; but when we perceive the whole at once, as in numerical
computations, all agree in one judgment, and none ever varies his
opinion."
"Let us not add," said the prince, "to the other evils of life the
bitterness of controversy, nor endeavour to vie with each other in
subtleties of argument. We are employed in a search, of which both are
equally to enjoy the success, or suffer by the miscarriage. It is
therefore fit that we assist each other. You surely conclude too hastily
from the infelicity of marriage against its institution: will not the
misery of life prove equally that life cannot be the gift of heaven? The
world must be peopled by marriage, or peopled without it."
"How the world is to be peopled," returned Nekayah, "is not my care, and
needs not be yours. I see no danger that the present generation should
omit to leave successors behind them: we are not now inquiring for the
world, but for ourselves."