No. 28. SATURDAY, JUNE 23, 1750.
_Illi mors gravis incubat,_
_Qui, notus nimis omnibus,_
_Ignotus moritur sibi._
SENECÆ, Thyest. ii. 401.
To him, alas! to him, I fear,
The face of death will terrible appear,
Who in his life, flattering his senseless pride,
By being known to all the world beside,
Does not himself, when he is dying, know,
Nor what he is, nor whither he's to go.
COWLEY.
I have shewn, in a late essay, to what errours men are hourly betrayed
by a mistaken opinion of their own powers, and a negligent inspection of
their own character. But as I then confined my observations to common
occurrences and familiar scenes, I think it proper to inquire, how far a
nearer acquaintance with ourselves is necessary to our preservation from
crimes as well as follies, and how much the attentive study of our own
minds may contribute to secure to us the approbation of that Being, to
whom we are accountable for our thoughts and our actions, and whose
favour must finally constitute our total happiness.
If it be reasonable to estimate the difficulty of any enterprise by
frequent miscarriages, it may justly be concluded that it is not easy
for a man to know himself; for wheresoever we turn our view, we shall
find almost all with whom we converse so nearly as to judge of their
sentiments, indulging more favourable conceptions of their own virtue
than they have been able to impress upon others, and congratulating
themselves upon degrees of excellence, which their fondest admirers
cannot allow them to have attained.
Those representations of imaginary virtue are generally considered as
arts of hypocrisy, and as snares laid for confidence and praise. But I
believe the suspicion often unjust; those who thus propagate their own
reputation, only extend the fraud by which they have been themselves
deceived; for this failing is incident to numbers, who seem to live
without designs, competitions, or pursuits; it appears on occasions
which promise no accession of honour or of profit, and to persons from
whom very little is to be hoped or feared. It is, indeed, not easy to
tell how far we may be blinded by the love of ourselves, when we reflect
how much a secondary passion can cloud our judgment, and how few faults
a man, in the first raptures of love, can discover in the person or
conduct of his mistress.
To lay open all the sources from which errour flows in upon him who
contemplates his own character, would require more exact knowledge of
the human heart, than, perhaps, the most acute and laborious observers
have acquired. And since falsehood may be diversified without end, it is
not unlikely that every man admits an imposture in some respect peculiar
to himself, as his views have been accidentally directed, or his ideas
particularly combined.
Some fallacies, however, there are, more frequently insidious, which it
may, perhaps, not be useless to detect; because, though they are gross,
they may be fatal, and because nothing but attention is necessary to
defeat them.
One sophism by which men persuade themselves that they have those
virtues which they really want, is formed by the substitution of single
acts for habits. A miser who once relieved a friend from the danger of a
prison, suffers his imagination to dwell for ever upon his own heroic
generosity; he yields his heart up to indignation at those who are blind
to merit, or insensible to misery, and who can please themselves with
the enjoyment of that wealth, which they never permit others to partake.
From any censures of the world, or reproaches of his conscience, he has
an appeal to action and to knowledge: and though his whole life is a
course of rapacity and avarice, he concludes himself to be tender and
liberal, because he has once performed an act of liberality and
tenderness.
As a glass which magnifies objects by the approach of one end to the
eye, lessens them by the application of the other, so vices are
extenuated by the inversion of that fallacy, by which virtues are
augmented. Those faults which we cannot conceal from our own notice, are
considered, however frequent, not as habitual corruptions, or settled
practices, but as casual failures, and single lapses. A man who has from
year to year set his country to sale, either for the gratification of
his ambition or resentment, confesses that the heat of party now and
then betrays the severest virtue to measures that cannot be seriously
defended. He that spends his days and nights in riot and debauchery,
owns that his passions oftentimes overpower his resolutions. But each
comforts himself that his faults are not without precedent, for the best
and the wisest men have given way to the violence of sudden temptations.
There are men who always confound the praise of goodness with the
practice, and who believe themselves mild and moderate, charitable and
faithful, because they have exerted their eloquence in commendation of
mildness, fidelity, and other virtues. This is an errour almost universal
among those that converse much with dependants, with such whose fear or
interest disposes them to a seeming reverence for any declamation,
however enthusiastic, and submission to any boast, however arrogant.
Having none to recall their attention to their lives, they rate
themselves by the goodness of their opinions, and forget how much more
easily men may shew their virtue in their talk than in their actions.
The tribe is likewise very numerous of those who regulate their lives,
not by the standard of religion, but the measure of other men's virtue;
who lull their own remorse with the remembrance of crimes more atrocious
than their own, and seem to believe that they are not bad while another
can be found worse[41].
For escaping these and thousand other deceits, many expedients have been
proposed. Some have recommended the frequent consultation of a wise
friend, admitted to intimacy, and encouraged to sincerity. But this
appears a remedy by no means adapted to general use: for in order to
secure the virtue of one, it pre-supposes more virtue in two than will
generally be found. In the first, such a desire of rectitude and
amendment, as may incline him to hear his own accusation from the mouth
of him whom he esteems, and by whom, therefore, he will always hope that
his faults are not discovered; and in the second, such zeal and honesty,
as will make him content for his friend's advantage to loose his
kindness.
A long life may be passed without finding a friend in whose understanding
and virtue we can equally confide, and whose opinion we can value at
once for its justness and sincerity. A weak man, however honest, is
not qualified to judge. A man of the world, however penetrating, is not
fit to counsel. Friends are often chosen for similitude of manners, and
therefore each palliates the other's failings, because they are his own.
Friends are tender, and unwilling to give pain, or they are interested,
and fearful to offend.
These objections have inclined others to advise, that he who would know
himself, should consult his enemies, remember the reproaches that are
vented to his face, and listen for the censures that are uttered in
private. For his great business is to know his faults, and those
malignity will discover, and resentment will reveal. But this precept
may be often frustrated; for it seldom happens that rivals or opponents
are suffered to come near enough to know our conduct with so much
exactness as that conscience should allow and reflect the accusation.
The charge of an enemy is often totally false, and commonly so mingled
with falsehood, that the mind takes advantage from the failure of one
part to discredit the rest, and never suffers any disturbance afterward
from such partial reports.
Yet it seems that enemies have been always found by experience the most
faithful monitors; for adversity has ever been considered as the state
in which a man most easily becomes acquainted with himself, and this
effect it must produce by withdrawing flatterers, whose business it
is to hide our weaknesses from us, or by giving loose to malice, and
licence to reproach; or at least by cutting off those pleasures which
called us away from meditation on our own conduct, and repressing that
pride which too easily persuades us that we merit whatever we enjoy.
Part of these benefits it is in every man's power to procure to himself,
by assigning proper portions of his life to the examination of the rest,
and by putting himself frequently in such a situation, by retirement and
abstraction, as may weaken the influence of external objects. By this
practice he may obtain the solitude of adversity without its melancholy,
its instructions without its censures, and its sensibility without its
perturbations.
The necessity of setting the world at a distance from us, when we are
to take a survey of ourselves, has sent many from high stations to the
severities of a monastic life; and, indeed, every man deeply engaged in
business, if all regard to another state be not extinguished, must have
the conviction, though perhaps, not the resolution of Valdesso, who,
when he solicited Charles the Fifth to dismiss him, being asked, whether
he retired upon disgust, answered that he laid down his commission for
no other reason but because _there ought to be some time for sober
reflection between the life of a soldier and his death_.
There are few conditions which do not entangle us with sublunary hopes
and fears, from which it is necessary to be at intervals disencumbered,
that we may place ourselves in his presence who views effects in their
causes, and actions in their motives; that we may, as Chillingworth
expresses it, consider things as if there were no other beings in the
world but God and ourselves; or, to use language yet more awful, _may
commune with our own hearts, and be still_.
Death, says Seneca, falls heavy upon him who is too much known to
others, and too little to himself; and Pontanus, a man celebrated among
the early restorers of literature, thought the study of our own hearts
of so much importance, that he has recommended it from his tomb. _Sum_
Joannes Jovianus Pontanus, _quem amaverunt bonæ musæ, suspexerunt viri
probi, honestaverunt reges domini; jam scis qui sim, vel qui potius
fuerim; ego vero te, hospes, noscere in tenebris nequeo, sed teipsum
ut noscas rogo_. "I am Pontanus, beloved by the powers of literature,
admired by men of worth, and dignified by the monarchs of the world.
Thou knowest now who I am, or more properly who I was. For thee,
stranger, I who am in darkness cannot know thee, but I intreat thee
to know thyself."
I hope every reader of this paper will consider himself as engaged to
the observation of a precept, which the wisdom and virtue of all ages
have concurred to enforce: a precept, dictated by philosophers,
inculcated by poets, and ratified by saints.
[Footnote 41: But they measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing
themselves among themselves, are not wise. 2 Cor. x. 12.]
No. 29. TUESDAY, JUNE 26, 1750.
_Prudens futuri temporis exitum_
_Caliginosa nocte premit Deus;_
_Ridetque, si mortalis ultra_
_Fas trepidat----_
HOR. lib. iii. Od. xxix. 29.
But God has wisely hid from human sight
The dark decrees of human fate,
And sown their seeds in depth of night;
He laughs at all the giddy turns of state,
When mortals search too soon, and fear too late.
DRYDEN.
There is nothing recommended with greater frequency among the gayer
poets of antiquity, than the secure possession of the present hour, and
the dismission of all the cares which intrude upon our quiet, or hinder,
by importunate perturbations, the enjoyment of those delights which our
condition happens to set before us.
The ancient poets are, indeed, by no means unexceptionable teachers of
morality; their precepts are to be always considered as the sallies of
a genius, intent rather upon giving pleasure than instruction, eager to
take every advantage of insinuation, and, provided the passions can be
engaged on its side, very little solicitous about the suffrage of
reason.
The darkness and uncertainty through which the heathens were compelled
to wander in the pursuit of happiness, may, indeed, be alleged as an
excuse for many of their seducing invitations to immediate enjoyment,
which the moderns, by whom they have been imitated, have not to plead.
It is no wonder that such as had no promise of another state should
eagerly turn their thoughts upon the improvement of that which was
before them; but surely those who are acquainted with the hopes and
fears of eternity, might think it necessary to put some restraint upon
their imagination, and reflect that by echoing the songs of the ancient
bacchanals, and transmitting the maxims of past debauchery, they not
only prove that they want invention, but virtue, and submit to the
servility of imitation only to copy that of which the writer, if he was
to live now, would often be ashamed.
Yet as the errours and follies of a great genius are seldom without some
radiations of understanding, by which meaner minds may be enlightened,
the incitements to pleasure are, in those authors, generally mingled
with such reflections upon life, as well deserve to be considered
distinctly from the purposes for which they are produced, and to be
treasured up as the settled conclusions of extensive observation, acute
sagacity, and mature experience.
It is not without true judgment, that on these occasions they often
warn their readers against inquiries into futurity, and solicitude
about events which lie hid in causes yet unactive, and which time has
not brought forward into the view of reason. An idle and thoughtless
resignation to chance, without any struggle against calamity, or
endeavour after advantage, is indeed below the dignity of a reasonable
being, in whose power Providence has put a great part even of his
present happiness; but it shews an equal ignorance of our proper sphere,
to harass our thoughts with conjectures about things not yet in being.
How can we regulate events, of which we yet know not whether they will
ever happen? And why should we think, with painful anxiety, about that
on which our thoughts can have no influence?
It is a maxim commonly received, that a wise man is never surprised;
and, perhaps, this exemption from astonishment may be imagined to
proceed from such a prospect into futurity, as gave previous intimation
of those evils which often fall unexpected upon others that have less
foresight. But the truth is, that things to come, except when they
approach very nearly, are equally hidden from men of all degrees of
understanding; and if a wise man is not amazed at sudden occurrences,
it is not that he has thought more, but less upon futurity. He never
considered things not yet existing as the proper objects of his
attention; he never indulged dreams till he was deceived by their
phantoms, nor ever realized nonentities to his mind. He is not surprized,
because he is not disappointed; and he escapes disappointment, because
he never forms any expectations.
The concern about things to come, that is so justly censured, is not
the result of those general reflections on the variableness of fortune,
the uncertainty of life, and the universal insecurity of all human
acquisitions, which must always be suggested by the view of the world;
but such a desponding anticipation of misfortune, as fixes the mind upon
scenes of gloom and melancholy, and makes fear predominate in every
imagination.
Anxiety of this kind is nearly of the same nature with jealousy in love,
and suspicion in the general commerce of life; a temper which keeps the
man always in alarms; disposes him to judge of every thing in a manner
that least favours his own quiet, fills him with perpetual stratagems
of counteraction, wears him out in schemes to obviate evils which never
threatened him, and at length, perhaps, contributes to the production of
those mischiefs of which it had raised such dreadful apprehensions.
It has been usual in all ages for moralists to repress the swellings of
vain hope, by representations of the innumerable casualties to which
life is subject, and by instances of the unexpected defeat of the wisest
schemes of policy, and sudden subversions of the highest eminences of
greatness. It has, perhaps, not been equally observed, that all these
examples afford the proper antidote to fear as well as to hope, and may
be applied with no less efficacy as consolations to the timorous, than
as restraints to the proud.
Evil is uncertain in the same degree as good, and for the reason that
we ought not to hope too securely, we ought not to fear with too much
dejection. The state of the world is continually changing, and none
can tell the result of the next vicissitude. Whatever is afloat in the
stream of time, may, when it is very near us, be driven away by an
accidental blast, which shall happen to cross the general course of the
current. The sudden accidents by which the powerful are depressed, may
fall upon those whose malice we fear; and the greatness by which we
expect to be overborne, may become another proof of the false flatteries
of fortune. Our enemies may become weak, or we grow strong before our
encounter, or we may advance against each other without ever meeting.
There are, indeed, natural evils which we can flatter ourselves with
no hopes of escaping, and with little of delaying; but of the ills
which are apprehended from human malignity, or the opposition of rival
interests, we may always alleviate the terrour by considering that our
persecutors are weak and ignorant, and mortal like ourselves.
The misfortunes which arise from the concurrence of unhappy incidents
should never be suffered to disturb us before they happen; because, if
the breast be once laid open to the dread of mere possibilities of
misery, life must be given a prey to dismal solicitude, and quiet must
be lost for ever.
It is remarked by old Cornaro, that it is absurd to be afraid of the
natural dissolution of the body, because it must certainly happen, and
can, by no caution or artifice, be avoided. Whether this sentiment be
entirely just, I shall not examine; but certainly if it be improper to
fear events which must happen, it is yet more evidently contrary to
right reason to fear those which may never happen, and which, if they
should come upon us, we cannot resist.
As we ought not to give way to fear, any more than indulgence to hope,
because the objects both of fear and hope are yet uncertain, so we ought
not to trust the representations of one more than of the other, because
they are both equally fallacious; as hope enlarges happiness, fear
aggravates calamity. It is generally allowed, that no man ever found the
happiness of possession proportionate to that expectation which incited
his desire, and invigorated his pursuit; nor has any man found the evils
of life so formidable in reality, as they were described to him by his
own imagination: every species of distress brings with it some peculiar
supports, some unforeseen means of resisting, or power of enduring.
Taylor justly blames some pious persons, who indulge their fancies too
much, set themselves, by the force of imagination, in the place of the
ancient martyrs and confessors, and question the validity of their own
faith, because they shrink at the thoughts of flames and tortures. It
is, says he, sufficient that you are able to encounter the temptations
which now assault you; when God sends trials, he may send strength.
All fear is in itself painful, and when it conduces not to safety is
painful without use. Every consideration therefore, by which groundless
terrours may be removed, adds something to human happiness. It is
likewise not unworthy of remark, that in proportion as our cares are
employed upon the future they are abstracted from the present, from the
only time which we can call our own, and of which if we neglect the
apparent duties, to make provision against visionary attacks, we shall
certainly counteract our own purpose; for he, doubtless, mistakes his
true interest, who thinks that he can increase his safety, when he
impairs his virtue.
No. 30. SATURDAY, JUNE 30, 1750.
_----Vultus ubi tuus_
_Affulsit, populo gratior it dies,_
_Et soles metius nitent._
HOR. lib. iv. Ode v. 7.
Whene'er thy countenance divine
Th' attendant people cheers,
The genial suns more radiant shine,
The day more glad appears.
ELPHINSTON.