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 locust, 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 tens of 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
season 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 were made to
be the 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 contest 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 compact.”
“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 worse. 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. When 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 in 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
subtilties 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
need 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.”