We all of us complain of the shortness of time, saith Seneca, and yet
have much more than we know what to do with. Our lives, says he, are
spent either in doing nothing at all, or in doing nothing to the purpose,
or in doing nothing that we ought to do. We are always complaining our
days are few, and acting as though there would be no end of them. That
noble philosopher described our inconsistency with ourselves in this
particular, by all those various turns of expression and thoughts which
are peculiar to his writings.
I often consider mankind as wholly inconsistent with itself in a point
that bears some affinity to the former. Though we seem grieved at the
shortness of life in general, we are wishing every period of it at an
end. The minor longs to be of age, then to be a man of business, then to
make up an estate, then to arrive at honours, then to retire. Thus,
although the whole of life is allowed by every one to be short, the
several divisions of it appear long and tedious. We are for lengthening
our span in general, but would fain contract the parts of which it is
composed. The usurer would be very well satisfied to have all the time
annihilated that lies between the present moment and next quarter-day.
The politician would be contented to lose three years in his life, could
he place things in the posture which he fancies they will stand in after
such a revolution of time. The lover would be glad to strike out of his
existence all the moments that are to pass away before the happy meeting.
Thus, as fast as our time runs, we should be very glad, in most part of
our lives, that it ran much faster than it does. Several hours of the
day hang upon our hands, nay, we wish away whole years; and travel
through time as through a country filled with many wild and empty wastes,
which we would fain hurry over, that we may arrive at those several
little settlements or imaginary points of rest which are dispersed up and
down in it.
If we divide the life of most men into twenty parts, we shall find that
at least nineteen of them are mere gaps and chasms, which are neither
filled with pleasure nor business. I do not, however, include in this
calculation the life of those men who are in a perpetual hurry of
affairs, but of those only who are not always engaged in scenes of
action; and I hope I shall not do an unacceptable piece of service to
these persons, if I point out to them certain methods for the filling up
their empty spaces of life. The methods I shall propose to them are as
follow.
The first is the exercise of virtue, in the most general acceptation of
the word. That particular scheme which comprehends the social virtues
may give employment to the most industrious temper, and find a man in
business more than the most active station of life. To advise the
ignorant, relieve the needy, comfort the afflicted, are duties that fall
in our way almost every day of our lives. A man has frequent
opportunities of mitigating the fierceness of a party; of doing justice
to the character of a deserving man; of softening the envious, quieting
the angry, and rectifying the prejudiced; which are all of them
employments suited to a reasonable nature, and bring great satisfaction
to the person who can busy himself in them with discretion.
There is another kind of virtue that may find employment for those
retired hours in which we are altogether left to ourselves, and destitute
of company and conversation; I mean that intercourse and communication
which every reasonable creature ought to maintain with the great Author
of his being. The man who lives under an habitual sense of the Divine
presence, keeps up a perpetual cheerfulness of temper, and enjoys every
moment the satisfaction of thinking himself in company with his dearest
and best of friends. The time never lies heavy upon him: it is
impossible for him to be alone. His thoughts and passions are the most
busied at such hours when those of other men are the most inactive. He
no sooner steps out of the world but his heart burns with devotion,
swells with hope, and triumphs in the consciousness of that Presence
which everywhere surrounds him; or, on the contrary, pours out its fears,
its sorrows, its apprehensions, to the great Supporter of its existence.
I have here only considered the necessity of a man's being virtuous, that
he may have something to do; but if we consider further that the exercise
of virtue is not only an amusement for the time it lasts, but that its
influence extends to those parts of our existence which lie beyond the
grave, and that our whole eternity is to take its colour from those hours
which we here employ in virtue or in vice, the argument redoubles upon us
for putting in practice this method of passing away our time.
When a man has but a little stock to improve, and has opportunities of
turning it all to good account, what shall we think of him if he suffers
nineteen parts of it to lie dead, and perhaps employs even the twentieth
to his ruin or disadvantage? But, because the mind cannot be always in
its fervours, nor strained up to a pitch of virtue, it is necessary to
find out proper employments for it in its relaxations.
The next method, therefore, that I would propose to fill up our time,
should be useful and innocent diversions. I must confess I think it is
below reasonable creatures to be altogether conversant in such diversions
as are merely innocent, and have nothing else to recommend them but that
there is no hurt in them. Whether any kind of gaming has even thus much
to say for itself, I shall not determine; but I think it is very
wonderful to see persons of the best sense passing away a dozen hours
together in shuffling and dividing a pack of cards, with no other
conversation but what is made up of a few game phrases, and no other
ideas but those of black or red spots ranged together in different
figures. Would not a man laugh to hear any one of this species
complaining that life is short?
The stage might be made a perpetual source of the most noble and useful
entertainments, were it under proper regulations.
But the mind never unbends itself so agreeably as in the conversation of
a well-chosen friend. There is indeed no blessing of life that is any
way comparable to the enjoyment of a discreet and virtuous friend. It
eases and unloads the mind, clears and improves the understanding,
engenders thoughts and knowledge, animates virtue and good resolutions,
soothes and allays the passions, and finds employment for most of the
vacant hours of life.
Next to such an intimacy with a particular person, one would endeavour
after a more general conversation with such as are able to entertain and
improve those with whom they converse, which are qualifications that
seldom go asunder.
There are many other useful amusements of life which one would endeavour
to multiply, that one might on all occasions have recourse to something
rather than suffer the mind to lie idle, or run adrift with any passion
that chances to rise in it.
A man that has a taste of music, painting, or architecture, is like one
that has another sense, when compared with such as have no relish of
those arts. The florist, the planter, the gardener, the husbandman, when
they are only as accomplishments to the man of fortune, are great reliefs
to a country life, and many ways useful to those who are possessed of
them.
But of all the diversions of life, there is none so proper to fill up its
empty spaces as the reading of useful and entertaining authors. But this
I shall only touch upon, because it in some measure interferes with the
third method, which I shall propose in another paper, for the employment
of our dead, inactive hours, and which I shall only mention in general to
be the pursuit of knowledge.
Part Two.
--_Hoc est_
_Vivere bis_, _vita posse priore frui_.
MART., _Ep._ x. 23.
The present joys of life we doubly taste,
By looking back with pleasure to the past.
The last method which I proposed in my Saturday's paper, for filing up
those empty spaces of life which are so tedious and burthensome to idle
people, is the employing ourselves in the pursuit of knowledge. I
remember Mr. Boyle, speaking of a certain mineral, tells us that a man
may consume his whole life in the study of it without arriving at the
knowledge of all its qualities. The truth of it is, there is not a
single science, or any branch of it, that might not furnish a man with
business for life, though it were much longer than it is.
I shall not here engage on those beaten subjects of the usefulness of
knowledge, nor of the pleasure and perfection it gives the mind, nor on
the methods of attaining it, nor recommend any particular branch of it;
all which have been the topics of many other writers; but shall indulge
myself in a speculation that is more uncommon, and may therefore,
perhaps, be more entertaining.
I have before shown how the unemployed parts of life appear long and
tedious, and shall here endeavour to show how those parts of life which
are exercised in study, reading, and the pursuits of knowledge, are long,
but not tedious, and by that means discover a method of lengthening our
lives, and at the same time of turning all the parts of them to our
advantage.
Mr. Locke observes, "That we get the idea of time or duration, by
reflecting on that train of ideas which succeed one another in our minds:
that, for this reason, when we sleep soundly without dreaming, we have no
perception of time, or the length of it whilst we sleep; and that the
moment wherein we leave off to think, till the moment we begin to think
again, seems to have no distance." To which the author adds, "and so I
doubt not but it would be to a waking man, if it were possible for him to
keep only one idea in his mind, without variation and the succession of
others; and we see that one who fixes his thoughts very intently on one
thing, so as to take but little notice of the succession of ideas that
pass in his mind whilst he is taken up with that earnest contemplation,
lets slip out of his account a good part of that duration, and thinks
that time shorter than it is."
We might carry this thought further, and consider a man as on one side,
shortening his time by thinking on nothing, or but a few things; so, on
the other, as lengthening it, by employing his thoughts on many subjects,
or by entertaining a quick and constant succession of ideas. Accordingly,
Monsieur Malebranche, in his "Inquiry after Truth," which was published
several years before Mr. Locke's Essay on "Human Understanding," tells
us, "that it is possible some creatures may think half an hour as long as
we do a thousand years; or look upon that space of duration which we call
a minute, as an hour, a week, a month, or a whole age."
This notion of Monsieur Malebranche is capable of some little explanation
from what I have quoted out of Mr. Locke; for if our notion of time is
produced by our reflecting on the succession of ideas in our mind, and
this succession may be infinitely accelerated or retarded, it will follow
that different beings may have different notions of the same parts of
duration, according as their ideas, which we suppose are equally distinct
in each of them, follow one another in a greater or less degree of
rapidity.
There is a famous passage in the Alcoran, which looks as if Mahomet had
been possessed of the notion we are now speaking of. It is there said
that the Angel Gabriel took Mahomet out of his bed one morning to give
him a sight of all things in the seven heavens, in paradise, and in hell,
which the prophet took a distinct view of; and, after having held ninety
thousand conferences with God, was brought back again to his bed. All
this, says the Alcoran, was transacted in so small a space of time, that
Mahomet at his return found his bed still warm, and took up an earthen
pitcher, which was thrown down at the very instant that the Angel Gabriel
carried him away, before the water was all spilt.
There is a very pretty story in the Turkish Tales, which relates to this
passage of that famous impostor, and bears some affinity to the subject
we are now upon. A sultan of Egypt, who was an infidel, used to laugh at
this circumstance in Mahomet's life, as what was altogether impossible
and absurd: but conversing one day with a great doctor in the law, who
had the gift of working miracles, the doctor told him he would quickly
convince him of the truth of this passage in the history of Mahomet, if
he would consent to do what he should desire of him. Upon this the
sultan was directed to place himself by a huge tub of water, which he did
accordingly; and as he stood by the tub amidst a circle of his great men,
the holy man bade him plunge his head into the water and draw it up
again. The king accordingly thrust his head into the water, and at the
same time found himself at the foot of a mountain on the sea-shore. The
king immediately began to rage against his doctor for this piece of
treachery and witchcraft; but at length, knowing it was in vain to be
angry, he set himself to think on proper methods for getting a livelihood
in this strange country. Accordingly he applied himself to some people
whom he saw at work in a neighbouring wood: these people conducted him to
a town that stood at a little distance from the wood, where, after some
adventures, he married a woman of great beauty and fortune. He lived
with this woman so long that he had by her seven sons and seven
daughters. He was afterwards reduced to great want, and forced to think
of plying in the streets as a porter for his livelihood. One day as he
was walking alone by the sea-side, being seized with many melancholy
reflections upon his former and his present state of life, which had
raised a fit of devotion in him, he threw off his clothes with a design
to wash himself, according to the custom of the Mahometans, before he
said his prayers.
After his first plunge into the sea, he no sooner raised his head above
the water but he found himself standing by the side of the tub, with the
great men of his court about him, and the holy man at his side. He
immediately upbraided his teacher for having sent him on such a course of
adventures, and betrayed him into so long a state of misery and
servitude; but was wonderfully surprised when he heard that the state he
talked of was only a dream and delusion; that he had not stirred from the
place where he then stood; and that he had only dipped his head into the
water, and immediately taken it out again.
The Mahometan doctor took this occasion of instructing the sultan that
nothing was impossible with God; and that He, with whom a thousand years
are but as one day, can, if He pleases, make a single day--nay, a single
moment--appear to any of His creatures as a thousand years.
I shall leave my reader to compare these Eastern fables with the notions
of those two great philosophers whom I have quoted in this paper; and
shall only, by way of application, desire him to consider how we may
extend life beyond its natural dimensions, by applying ourselves
diligently to the pursuit of knowledge.
The hours of a wise man are lengthened by his ideas, as those of a fool
are by his passions. The time of the one is long, because he does not
know what to do with it; so is that of the other, because he
distinguishes every moment of it with useful or amusing thoughts; or, in
other words, because the one is always wishing it away, and the other
always enjoying it.
How different is the view of past life, in the man who is grown old in
knowledge and wisdom, from that of him who is grown old in ignorance and
folly! The latter is like the owner of a barren country, that fills his
eye with the prospect of naked hills and plains, which produce nothing
either profitable or ornamental; the other beholds a beautiful and
spacious landscape divided into delightful gardens, green meadows,
fruitful fields, and can scarce cast his eye on a single spot of his
possessions that is not covered with some beautiful plant or flower.