IMLAC ENTERS, AND CHANGES THE CONVERSATION.
HERE Imlac entered, and interrupted them. “Imlac,” said Rasselas, “I
have been taking from the Princess the dismal history of private life,
and am almost discouraged from further search.”
“It seems to me,” said Imlac, “that while you are making the choice of
life you neglect to live. You wander about a single city, which, however
large and diversified, can now afford few novelties, and forget that you
are in a country famous among the earliest monarchies for the power and
wisdom of its inhabitants—a country where the sciences first dawned that
illuminate the world, and beyond which the arts cannot be traced of civil
society or domestic life.
“The old Egyptians have left behind them monuments of industry and power
before which all European magnificence is confessed to fade away. The
ruins of their architecture are the schools of modern builders; and from
the wonders which time has spared we may conjecture, though uncertainly,
what it has destroyed.”
“My curiosity,” said Rasselas, “does not very strongly lead me to survey
piles of stone or mounds of earth. My business is with man. I came
hither not to measure fragments of temples or trace choked aqueducts, but
to look upon the various scenes of the present world.”
“The things that are now before us,” said the Princess, “require
attention, and deserve it. What have I to do with the heroes or the
monuments of ancient times—with times which can never return, and heroes
whose form of life was different from all that the present condition of
mankind requires or allows?”
“To know anything,” returned the poet, “we must know its effects; to see
men, we must see their works, that we may learn what reason has dictated
or passion has excited, and find what are the most powerful motives of
action. To judge rightly of the present, we must oppose it to the past;
for all judgment is comparative, and of the future nothing can be known.
The truth is that no mind is much employed upon the present; recollection
and anticipation fill up almost all our moments. Our passions are joy
and grief, love and hatred, hope and fear. Of joy and grief, the past is
the object, and the future of hope and fear; even love and hatred respect
the past, for the cause must have been before the effect.
“The present state of things is the consequence of the former; and it is
natural to inquire what were the sources of the good that we enjoy, or
the evils that we suffer. If we act only for ourselves, to neglect the
study of history is not prudent. If we are entrusted with the care of
others, it is not just. Ignorance, when it is voluntary, is criminal;
and he may properly be charged with evil who refused to learn how he
might prevent it.
“There is no part of history so generally useful as that which relates to
the progress of the human mind, the gradual improvement of reason, the
successive advances of science, the vicissitudes of learning and
ignorance (which are the light and darkness of thinking beings), the
extinction and resuscitation of arts, and the revolutions of the
intellectual world. If accounts of battles and invasions are peculiarly
the business of princes, the useful or elegant arts are not to be
neglected; those who have kingdoms to govern have understandings to
cultivate.
“Example is always more efficacious than precept. A soldier is formed in
war, and a painter must copy pictures. In this, contemplative life has
the advantage. Great actions are seldom seen, but the labours of art are
always at hand for those who desire to know what art has been able to
perform.
“When the eye or the imagination is struck with any uncommon work, the
next transition of an active mind is to the means by which it was
performed. Here begins the true use of such contemplation. We enlarge
our comprehension by new ideas, and perhaps recover some art lost to
mankind, or learn what is less perfectly known in our own country. At
least we compare our own with former times, and either rejoice at our
improvements, or, what is the first motion towards good, discover our
defects.”
“I am willing,” said the Prince, “to see all that can deserve my search.”
“And I,” said the Princess, “shall rejoice to learn something of the
manners of antiquity.”
“The most pompous monument of Egyptian greatness, and one of the most
bulky works of manual industry,” said Imlac, “are the Pyramids: fabrics
raised before the time of history, and of which the earliest narratives
afford us only uncertain traditions. Of these the greatest is still
standing, very little injured by time.”
“Let us visit them to-morrow,” said Nekayah. “I have often heard of the
Pyramids, and shall not rest till I have seen them, within and without,
with my own eyes.”