The Art of Being Happy

LETTER III. THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED.

I proceed to examples and developments of the doctrine, chiefly insisted upon in the former letter. I draw them chiefly from Mr Combe, premising, that they exactly coincide with views which you cannot but remember to have heard me advance, before I had read his book on the constitution of man. It is a law of the animal creation, that not only the natural but even the acquired qualities are transmitted by parents to their offspring; and man, as an organized being, is subject to laws similar to those which govern the organization of the lower animals. ‘Children,’ says Dr Pritchard, ‘resemble in feature and constitution both parents; but I think more generally the father.’ Changes produced by external causes in the constitution and appearance of the individual are temporary; and, in general, acquired characters are transient, terminating with the individual, and having no influence on the progeny. The mental development of the Circassian race is known to be of the highest order. The nobles of Persia are children of Circassian mothers, and they are remarkable, in that country, for their mental and corporeal superiority over the other classes. Every one acquainted with the condition of our southern slaves, well understands the obvious fact, that the mulattoes are much superior, in quickness and capability of acquiring and retaining knowledge, to the negroes. The Indian half-breeds are remarkable for the immediate ascendency, which they acquire in their tribes over the full-blooded Indians. In oriental India, the intermarriages of the Hindoos with Europeans have produced an intermediate race much superior to the natives, and destined, it is already predicted, to be the future sovereigns of India. In fact, physiology has deduced no conclusion more certain, than that, in ordinary cases, the temperament and intellect of the children are a compound of that of their parents. Of this I might produce innumerable instances from history of the Alexanders, Cæsars, and Antonines, the distinguished great and wise, of ancient and modern times; and equally, in the opposite direction, in the Neros and Caligulas, the depraved and abandoned of all ages and countries, where observation has been able to trace their parentage.

One of the most fertile sources of human misery, then, arises from persons uniting in marriage, whose tempers, talents and dispositions do not harmonize. If it be true that natural talents and dispositions are connected by the Creator with particular constitutions of the parents, it is obviously one of his institutions, that these constitutions should be most seriously taken into the calculation in forming a compact for life. The Creator, having formed such ordinances in the unchangeable arrangements of nature, as to confer happiness, when they are discovered and observed, and misery, when they are unknown or unobserved, it is obviously our best wisdom to investigate and respect them. If individuals, after this truth reaches their conviction should go on, in imitation of the common example, to form reckless connexions, which can only eventuate in sorrow, it is obvious that they must do so either from contempt of the effects of this influence upon the happiness of domestic life, and a secret belief, that they may in some way evade its consequences, or from the predominance of avarice, or some other animal feeling, precluding them from yielding obedience to what they see to be an institution of the Creator.

At the first aspect of this subject three alternatives are presented, one of which, it should seem, must have a determining power upon the offspring. Either, in the first place, the corporeal and mental constitution, which the parents themselves inherit at birth, are transmitted so absolutely, as that the children are exact copies of the parents, without variation or modification, sex following sex; or, in the second place, the inherent qualities of the father and mother combine, and are transmitted in a modified form to the offspring; or, thirdly, the qualities of the children are determined jointly by the constitution of the parents, and the faculties and temperaments, which predominated in power and energy at the particular period, when the organic existence of the child commenced.

If these views are correct, and if a man and woman about to marry, have not only their own domestic happiness but that of five or more human beings depending on their attention to considerations essentially the same as the foregoing, how differently ought this contract to be viewed from the common aspect, which it presents to persons assuming its solemn stipulations! Yet it is astonishing, to what extent pecuniary and other minor considerations will induce men to investigate and observe the natural laws; and how small an influence moral and rational considerations exert upon this most important of all earthly connexions.

I cannot forbear, under this head, quoting entire another passage from the author, from whom I have substantially drawn many of the foregoing observations.

‘Rules, however, are best taught by examples; and I shall, therefore, proceed to mention some facts that have fallen under my own notice, or been communicated to me from authentic sources, illustrative of the practical consequences of infringing the law of hereditary descent.

‘A man, aged about fifty, possessed a brain, in which the animal, moral, and knowing intellectual organs were all strong, but the reflecting weak. He was pious, but destitute of education; he married an unhealthy young woman, deficient in moral development, but of considerable force of character; and several children were born. The father and mother were far from being happy; and, when the children attained to eighteen or twenty years of age, they were adepts in every species of immorality and profligacy; they picked their father’s pockets, stole his goods, and got them sold back to him, by accomplices, for money, which was spent in betting and cock-fighting, drinking, and low debauchery. The father was heavily grieved; but knowing only two resources, he beat the children severely as long as he was able, and prayed for them; his words were, that “if, after that, it pleased the Lord to make vessels of wrath of them, the Lord’s will must just be done.” I mention this last observation, not in jest, but in great seriousness. It was impossible not to pity the unhappy father; yet who that sees the institutions of the Creator to be in themselves wise, but in this instance to have been directly violated, will not acknowledge that the bitter pangs of the poor old man were the consequences of his own ignorance; and that it was an erroneous view of the divine administration, which led him to overlook his own mistakes, and to attribute to the Almighty the purpose of making vessels of wrath of his children, as the only explanation which he could give of their wicked dispositions. Who that sees the cause of his misery must not lament that his piety should not have been enlightened by philosophy, and directed to obedience, in the first instance, to the organic institutions of the Creator, as one of the prescribed conditions, without observance of which he had no title to expect a blessing upon his offspring.

‘In another instance, a man, in whom the animal organs, particularly those of Combativeness and Destructiveness, were very large, but with a pretty fair moral and intellectual development, married, against her inclination, a young woman, fashionably and showily educated, but with a very decided deficiency in Conscientiousness. They soon became unhappy, and even blows were said to have passed between them, although they belonged to the middle rank of life. The mother, in this case, employed the children to deceive and plunder the father, and, latterly, spent the produce in drink. The sons inherited the deficient morality of the mother, and the ill temper of the father. The family fireside became a theatre of war, and, before the sons attained a majority, the father was glad to get them removed from his house, as the only means by which he could feel even his life in safety from their violence; for they had by that time retaliated the blows with which he had visited them in their younger years; and he stated that he actually considered his life to be in danger from his own offspring.

‘In another family, the mother possesses an excellent development of the moral and intellectual organs, while, in the father, the animal organs predominate in great excess. She has been the unhappy victim of ceaseless misfortune, originating from the misconduct of her husband. Some of the children have inherited the father’s brain, and some the mother’s; and of the sons whose heads resembled the father’s, several have died through mere debauchery and profligacy under thirty years of age; whereas, those who resemble the mother are alive and little contaminated, even amidst all the disadvantages of evil example.

‘On the other hand, I am not acquainted with a single instance in which the moral and intellectual organs predominated in size, in both father and mother, and whose external circumstances also permitted their general activity, in which the whole children did not partake of a moral and intellectual character, differing slightly in degrees of excellence one from another, but all presenting the decided predominance of the human over the animal faculties.

‘There are well-known examples of the children of religious and moral fathers exhibiting dispositions of a very inferior description; but in all of these instances that I have been able to observe, there has been a large development of the animal organs in the one parent, which was just controlled, but not much more, by the moral and intellectual powers; and in the other parent, the moral organs did not appear to be in large proportion. The unfortunate child inherited the large animal development of the one, with the defective moral development of the other; and, in this way, was inferior to both. The way to satisfy one’s self on this point, is to examine the heads of the parents. In all such cases, a large base of the brain, which is the region of the animal propensities, will very probably be found in one or other of them.

‘Another organic law of the animal kingdom deserves attention; viz. that by which marriages betwixt blood relations tend decidedly to the deterioration of the physical and mental qualities of the offspring. In Spain, kings marry their nieces, and, in this country, first and second cousins marry without scruple; although every philosophical physiologist will declare that this is in direct opposition to the institutions of nature. This law holds also in the vegetable kingdom. “A provision, of a very simple kind, is, in some cases, made to prevent the male and female blossoms of the same plant from breeding together, this being found to hurt the breed of vegetables, just as breeding in and in does the breed of animals. It is contrived, that the dust shall be shed by the male blossom before the female is ready to be affected by it, so that the impregnation must be performed by the dust of some other plant, and in this way the breed be crossed.”’

Such considerations, I hope, will induce you to exercise cautious examination of this subject, if either of you should ever be placed in circumstances to contemplate assuming the duties of the wedded life. If you do not, you will have cast the pursuit of happiness upon the die of chance at the very outset of your career. Allow me, before I dismiss the book, from which I have already so liberally quoted, to extract one passage more, touching the application of the natural laws to the practical arrangements of life.

‘If a system of living and occupation were to be framed for human beings, founded on the exposition of their nature, which I have now given, it would be something like this.

‘1st. So many hours a day would require to be dedicated by every individual in health, to the exercise of his nervous and muscular systems, in labor calculated to give scope to these functions. The reward of obeying this requisite of his nature would be health, and a joyous animal existence; the punishment of neglect is disease, low spirits and death.

‘2dly. So many hours a day should be spent in the sedulous employment of the knowing and reflecting faculties; in studying the qualities of external objects, and their relations; also the nature of all animated beings, and their relations; not with the view of accumulating mere abstract and barren knowledge, but of enjoying the positive pleasure of mental activity, and of turning every discovery to account, as a means of increasing happiness, or alleviating misery. The leading object should always be to find out the relationship of every object to our own nature, organic, animal, moral, and intellectual, and to keep that relationship habitually in mind, so as to render our acquirements directly gratifying to our various faculties. The reward of this conduct would be an incalculably great increase of pleasure, in the very act of acquiring knowledge of the real properties of external objects, together with a great accession of power in reaping ulterior advantages, and in avoiding disagreeable affections.

‘3dly. So many hours a day ought to be devoted to the cultivation and gratification of our moral sentiments; that is to say, in exercising these in harmony with intellect, and especially in acquiring the habit of admiring, loving, and yielding obedience to the Creator and his institutions. This last object is of vast importance. Intellect is barren of practical fruit, however rich it may be in knowledge, until it is fired and prompted to act by moral sentiment. In my view, knowledge by itself is comparatively worthless and impotent, compared with what it becomes when vivified by elevated emotions. It is not enough that intellect is informed; the moral faculties must simultaneously cooperate; yielding obedience to the precepts which the intellect recognises to be true. One way of cultivating the sentiments would be for men to meet and act together, on the fixed principles which I am now endeavoring to unfold, and to exercise on each other in mutual instruction, and in united adoration of the great and glorious Creator, the several faculties of Benevolence, Veneration, Hope, Ideality, Wonder, and Justice. The reward of acting in this manner would be a communication of direct and intense pleasure to each other; for I refer to every individual who has ever had the good fortune to pass a day or an hour with a really benevolent, pious, honest, and intellectual man, whose soul swelled with adoration of his Creator, whose intellect was replenished with knowledge of his works, and whose whole mind was instinct with sympathy for human happiness, whether such a day did not afford him the most pure, elevated, and lasting gratification he ever enjoyed. Such an exercise, besides, would invigorate the whole moral and intellectual powers, and fit them to discover and obey the divine institutions.’

You will study, and obey the moral laws of the universe, of which you are a part, because you are moral beings, and because obedience to these laws constitutes the tie of affinity between you, the higher orders of being and the divinity. You will respect them, because it is the glory of your nature, that you alone, of all creatures below, are morally subject to them. Laying out of the question their momentous sanctions in the eternal future, you must be aware, that the Creator has annexed pleasure to obeying them, and pain to their violation as inevitably, as gravity belongs to matter. One would think, it must be enough to determine the conduct of a being, who laid claim to the character of rational, to know, that no art nor dexterity, that no repentance nor return to obedience, can avert the consequences of a single violation of these laws; and that no imaginable present good can counterbalance the future misery, that must accrue in consequence.

In regard, for example, to the practice of the most common and every day duties, who can doubt the truth of the trite adage, honesty is the best policy? This is, in effect, no more than saying, that the moral laws of the universe are constituted upon such principles, as to make it every man’s interest to obey them. It is as certain, that they are so constituted, as that fire will burn, or water drown you; and when you understand this constitution, it marks the same want of a sane mind to violate them, as to be unable to keep out of these elements. Yet the greater portion of the species do not constantly act upon a full belief in this hackneyed maxim. They think apparently, that they can in some way obtain the imagined advantage of dishonesty and evade the connected evil, not aware, that detection and diminished confidence may be avoided, for once or twice; but not the loss of self-respect, the pureness and integrity of internal principle, the certainty of forging the first link in a chain of bad habits, and a thousand painful consequences, which it would be easy to enumerate in detail. Almost every one deems that he may safely put forth every day false compliment, double-dealing, deception on a small scale, and little frauds, not cognisable by any law or code of honor. In a word, if actions are a test of the sincerity of conviction, very few really are convinced that honesty is the best policy.

We hold the man insane who should leap from a high building upon the pavement, or attempt to grapple with the blind power of the elements. But it is scarcely the subject of our remark, that the multitude about us, in the most important, as well as the minute concerns of life, live in habitual recklessness or violation of the organic and moral laws; and yet we certainly know, that whoever infringes them is as sure to pay the penalty, as he who madly places himself in opposition to the material laws. I can never present this astonishing and universal blindness in too many forms of repetition, if the effect is to bring you to view these two species of folly in the same light.

The reason clearly is, that in too many instances, men take no pains to acquaint themselves with these laws, and their bearing upon the constitution of man; or, deceived by the clamors of the inclinations, and the illusions of present pleasure and advantage, when balanced with future and remote penalties, they commit the infractions, and hope, that between the certain pleasure and the distant and contingent pain, they can interpose some evasion, and sever the consequences from the fault. The expectation always ends, like the alchymist’s dream, and the projector’s perpetual motion. Even in the apprehension of the consequences, the mind is paying the penalty of an unquiet conscience, and of an abatement of self-confidence, and self-respect, penalties, which very few earthly pleasures can compensate.

When I speak of these unchangeable laws, as emanations from the divine wisdom and goodness, as transcripts of the divine immutability, and as being the best of all possible arrangements, not to be superseded, or turned from their course by the wisest of beings, you will not understand me to bear upon the consoling and scriptural doctrine of providence. I firmly believe, and trust in it; not, however, in the popular view. It would not increase my veneration for the Almighty, to suppose that his laws required exceptions and variations, to meet particular cases; nor that they would call for frequent suspensions and changes, to provide for contingencies not foreseen at the commencement of the mighty movements. Such are not the grounds of my trust in the wisdom and goodness of the Supreme Being. I neither desire, nor expect any deviation of laws, as wise and good as they can be, in their general operation, to meet my particular wishes, or those of the friends most dear to me. I expect, that none of the powers of nature will change for me; I encourage no insane hopes, that things will forego their tendencies to meet my conveniences or pleasures. Prayer is a duty equally comforting and elevating; but my prayers are not, that these fixed laws of the divine wisdom may change for me; but that I may understand and conform to them. The providence, in which I believe, supposes no exceptions, infringements, or violations of the universal plan of the divine government. Miracles only seem such to us, because we see but a link or two in the endless chain of that plan. An ingenious mechanician constructs a clock, which will run many years, and only once in the whole period strike an alarm bell. It is a miracle to those who comprehend not, that it was part of the original plan of the mechanician. May we not with more probability adopt the same reasoning, in relation to the recorded miracles, as parts of the original plan of the Eternal?

Piety, established upon a knowledge of these laws, and a respect for them, and associated with veneration for their author, is rational, consistent, firm and manly. It seeks, it expects nothing in the puerile presumption, that the ordinances of a code, fitted for the whole system of the Creator, will be wrested to the wants of an insect. In docility and meekness it labors for conformity to those ordinances; in other words, to the divine will. It violates no principle, and calls for the exercise of no faith, that is repugnant to the dictates of common sense, and the teaching of common observation. Piety, founded on such views, abides the scrutiny of the severest investigation. No vacillation of the mind from varying fortunes, no questionings of unbelief, doubt and despair, can shake it. It rests firmly on the basis of the divine attributes. It holds fast to the golden chain, the last link of which is riveted to the throne of the Eternal.

Thus it seems to me indispensable, as a pre-requisite to the pursuit of happiness, that the inquirer should hold large discourse with the physical, organic and moral laws; that he should carefully investigate their whole bearing upon his constitution; that he should trace all their influences on him from the first hour, in which he opens his eyes on the light, to his departure out of life. I insist the more earnestly upon this, because in these days the study of the moral relations of things seems to me comparatively abandoned. The exact and natural sciences are studied, rather, it would seem, as an end, than a means. Natural philosophy, mathematics and astronomy may be highly useful; but who will compare these sciences, in regard to their utility and importance, with those, which guide the mind to their author, which teach the knowledge of his moral laws, which instruct us how to allay the passions, to moderate our expectations, and to establish morality on the basis of our regard to our own happiness?

If, then, you would give yourself to the patient study of the natural sciences, that you may gain reputation and the ability to be useful, much more earnestly will you study regimen, exercise, temperance, moderation, cheerfulness, the benefits of a balanced mind, and of a wise and philosophic conformity to an order of things, not a tittle of which you can change, that you may be resigned, useful and happy. All knowledge, which cannot be turned to this account, either as relates to yourselves, or others, is useless.

Innumerable counsels, in relation to your habits, your pleasures and pursuits, your studies, your tastes and modes of conduct, your beau idéal of natural and moral beauty, your standard of dignity and worth of character, press upon my mind, and all in some way connected with the views, which I have just taken. But I shall be able to present such of them as I may deem worthy to find a place in these letters, perhaps with most propriety and effect, as suggested in the form of notes[B] appended to the chapters of the essay of M. Droz, a paraphrase of which I now offer you.

LETTER IV. GENERAL VIEWS OF THE SUBJECT.

Man is created to be happy.[1] His desires and the wisdom of the Creator concur to prove the assertion. Yet the earth resounds with the complaints of the unhappy, although they are encompassed with the means of enjoyment, of which they appear to know neither the value nor the use. They resemble the shipwrecked mariner, on a desert isle, surrounded with fruits, of the flavors and properties of which he is ignorant, as he is doubtful whether they offer aliment or poison.

I was early impelled to investigate the character and motives of the crowd around me, eagerly rushing forward in pursuit of happiness. I soon noted multitudes relinquishing the chase in indolent despondency. They affirmed to me that they no longer believed in the existence of happiness. I felt an insatiate craving, and saw life through the illusive coloring of youth. Unwilling to resign my hopes, I inquired of others, who seemed possessed of greater strength of mind, and more weight of character, if they could guide me to the place of happiness? Some answered with an ill-concealed smile of derision, and others with bitterness. They declared that in their view the pleasures of life were more than counterbalanced by its pains. Because they were disappointed and discouraged, they deemed that their superior wisdom had enabled them to strip off the disguises of life, and contemplate it with sullen resignation.

I remarked others in high places, whose restless activity and brilliance dazzled the multitude and inspired envy. I eagerly asked of them the secret of happiness. Too proud and self-satisfied to dissemble, they made little effort to conceal their principles. I saw their hearts contracted by the vileness of egotism, and devoured with measureless ambition. A faithful scrutiny, which penetrated beyond their dazzling exterior, showed me the righteous reaction of their principles, and convinced me that they suffered according to their deserts.

Weary and disheartened, I left them, and repaired to the class of stern and austere moralists. They represented the world to me as a melancholy and mysterious valley, through which the sojourner passes, groaning on his way to the grave. Their doctrines inspired me at once with sadness and terror. I soon resumed the elastic confidence of youth, and replied, ‘I will never believe that the Author of my being, who has imaged in my heart such pure and tranquil pleasures, who has rendered man capable of chaste love, and of friendship in its sanctity, who has formed us innocent before we could practise virtue, and who has connected the salutary bitterness of repentance with errors, has unalterably willed our misery.’

Thence I passed to the opposite extreme, and accosted a gay and reckless throng, whose deportment showed that they had found the object of my pursuit. I discovered them to be fickle by character, and vacillating from indifference. They had only escaped the errors of the moralists, by substituting, in place of their austere maxims, enjoyments without any regard to consequences. I asked them to point me to happiness. Without comprehending the import of my question, they offered me participation in their pleasures. But I saw them prodigal of life, dissipating years in a few days, and reserving the remnant of their existence for unavailing repentance.[2]

In view of so many observations, I abandoned the idea of guiding my researches by the counsels of others; and began to inquire for the secret in my own bosom. I heard the multitude around me complaining, in disappointment and discouragement. I resolved, that I would not commence the pursuit of happiness by servilely following in their beaten path. I determined to reflect, and patiently investigate a subject of so much moment. I detected at once the error of the common impression, that pleasure and happiness are the same. The former, fickle and fleeting, assumes forms as various as human caprice; and its most attractive charm is novelty. The object which gives it birth today, ceases to please, or inspires disgust tomorrow. The perception of happiness is not thus changeable and transient. It creates the consciousness of an existence so tranquil and satisfying, that the longer we experience it, the more we desire to prolong its duration.

Another mistaken, though common impression is, that the more profoundly we reflect, and make the pursuit of happiness a study, the less we shall be likely to enjoy. This is an error not only in regard to happiness, but even pleasure. If it be innocent and exempt from danger, to analyze it, and reason upon it, so far from diminishing, prolongs the delight, and renders it higher. Without reflection we only skim its surface; we do not penetrate, and enjoy it.

Let us observe the few, who have acquired the wisdom to enjoy that existence, which the multitude waste. In their festal unions of friendship, let us mark the development of their desire to multiply the happy moments of life. By what ingenious and pleasant discussions do they heighten the charms of their condition! With what delicacy of tact do they analyze their enjoyments, to taste them with a more prolonged and exquisite relish! With what skill do they discipline themselves sometimes to efface the images of the future, that nothing may embitter, or distract their relish of the present; and sometimes to invoke remembrances and hopes, to impart to it still brighter embellishments!

Contrary to the prevalent impression, I therefore deem that, to reflect much upon it, is one of the wisest means in the pursuit of happiness. The first analysis of reflection, it is true, dispels the charm with which youth invests existence. It forces the conviction upon us, that the pleasures of life are less durable, and its forms more numerous and prolonged, than we had anticipated. The first result of the process is discouragement. But, as we continue to reflect, objects change their aspect a second time. The evils which at the first glance seemed so formidable, lose a portion of their terrific semblance; and the fleeting pleasures of existence receive new attractions from their analogy to human weakness.

They mistake, too, who suppose that the art on which I write has never been taught. The sages of Greece investigated the science of happiness as eloquently and profoundly, as they studied the other sciences. They wisely held the latter in estimation only so far as they were subservient to the former. In all succeeding ages there have arisen a few thinking men, who have regarded all their faculties, their advantages of nature and fortune, their studies and acquirements, not as ends in themselves, but as means conducive to the right pursuit of happiness.

So long a period has elapsed since this has been a subject of investigation, that when the opinion is advanced that this pursuit may be successfully conducted by system, its rules reduced to an art, and thus become assimilated to those of the other arts, most men are utterly incredulous.[3] No truth, however, is more simple. To attain to a knowledge of the rules, it is only requisite, as in the other arts, that there should be natural dispositions for the study, favorable circumstances, and an assiduous investigation of the precepts.

The influence of fortunate dispositions for this study is chiefly discernible in men of marked and energetic character. Some are endowed by nature with such firmness and force of character, that misfortune cannot shake them. It slides, if I may so speak, over the surface of their stoical hearts, and the shock of adversity inspires them almost with a sort of pleasure, calling forth the conscious feeling of power and independence for resistance. But we observe the greater number shrinking from affliction, and even images of sadness, enjoying the present without apparent consciousness, and forgetting the past without regret. Always fickle and frivolous, they evade suffering by recklessness and gayety. The most perfect organization for happiness[4] imparts at the same time great force to resist the pains of life, and keen sensibility to enjoy its pleasures. I am aware that great energy and quick sensibility are generally supposed to be incompatible qualities; I have, nevertheless, often seen them united. I would lay down precepts, by which to obtain the combination. By a more perfect education, it is hoped that, in the ages to come, this union may become general.

Perhaps some will ask, if he who thus assumes to teach the art of happiness has himself learned to be constantly happy? Endowed with a moderate share of philosophy, and aided by favorable circumstances, I have thus far found the pleasures of life greatly overbalancing its pains. But who can hope felicity without alloy? I would not conceal that I have had my share of inquietudes and regrets; and I have sometimes forgotten my principles. I resemble the pilot, who gives lessons upon his art after more than one shipwreck.

LETTER V. OUR DESIRES.

Whence are our most common sufferings? From desires which surpass our ability to satisfy them. The ancients relate, that Oromazes appeared to Usbeck, the virtuous, and said, ‘form a wish, and I will grant it.’ ‘Source of light,’ replied the sage, ‘I only wish to limit my desires by those things, which nature has rendered indispensable.’[6]

Let us not suppose, however, that a negative happiness, a condition exempt from suffering, is the most fortunate condition to which we may aspire. They who contend for this gloomy system, have but poorly studied the nature of man. If he errs in desiring positive enjoyments, if his highest aim ought to be, to live free from pain, the caves of the forest conceal those happy beings whom we ought to choose for our models.

Bounded by the present, animals sleep, eat, procreate, live without inquietude, and die without regret: and this is the perfection of negative happiness. Man, it is true, loses himself in vain projects. His long remembrances, his keen foresight create him suffering in the past and the future. His imagination brings forth errors, his liberty, crimes. But the abuse of his faculties does not disprove their excellence. Let him consecrate to directing them aright, that time which he has hitherto lost in mourning over their aberrations, and he will have reason to be grateful to the Creator, for having given him the most exalted rank among sublunary beings. If, on the other hand, he chooses to abandon that rank, of which he ought to be proud, he will degrade his immortal nature at his own cost; and will only add to his other evils the shame of wishing to render himself vile.

Let us examine those animals, the instincts of which have the nearest relation to intelligence. Not one of them takes possession of the paternal heritage, increases it, and transmits it to posterity. Man alone does this, improves his condition and his kind, and in this is essentially distinct from all other beings below. From the Eternal to him, and from him to animals the chain is twice broken.

For man, the absence of suffering and a negative happiness are not sufficient. His noble faculties refuse the repose of indifference. Created to aspire to whatever may be an element of enjoyment, let him cherish his desires, and let them indicate to him the path of happiness; too fortunate, if they do not entice him towards objects, which retire in proportion as he struggles to attain them, and towards those imaginary joys, of which the deceitful possession is more fertile in regrets than in pleasures.

Far from being the austere censor of desires, I admit, that they often produce charming illusions. What loveliness have they not spread over our spring of life! Our imagination at that time, as brilliant and as vivid as our age, embellished the whole universe, and every position in which our lot might one day place us. We were occupied with errors; but they were happy errors; and to desire was to enjoy.

Those enchanting dreams, which hold such a delightful place in the life of every man, whose imagination is gay and creative, spring from our desires. Ingenious fictions! Prolific visions! While ye cradle us, we possess the object of our magic reveries. Real possession may be less fugitive. But may it not also vanish like a dream?

Doubtless there are dangers blended with these seductive imaginings. In leaving the region of illusion, the greater part of men look with regret upon the abodes of reality, in which they must henceforward dwell. Let us not share their gloomy weakness. Let us learn to enjoy the moments of error, and perpetuate and renew them by remembrance. Children, only, are allowed to weep, when the waking moment dispels the toys, of which a dream had given them possession.

We give ourselves up to illusions without danger, if we have formed our reason; if we wisely think that the situation where our lot has placed us may have advantages which no other could offer. Imagination embellishes some hours without troubling any. Prompt to yield to the delightful visions, there are few of which I have not contemplated the charm. In seeing them vanish like a fleeting dream, I look round on my wife and children, and believe that I am remembered by a few friends. I open my heart to the pleasures of my retreat, which, though simple, are ever new. As the gilded creations of imagination disappear, I smile at my creative occupation, and console myself with the consciousness, that fancy can paint nothing brighter or more satisfying, than these my realities.[7]

But let me hasten to make an important distinction, to prevent the semblance of contradiction. Let me discriminate those fleeting desires, which amuse, or delude us for a moment, from those deep cravings, which, directing all our faculties towards a given end, necessarily exercise a strong influence upon life. It is time to contemplate the latter, and to suggest more grave reflections. While the scope of our faculties is limited to narrow bounds, our desires run out into infinity. From this fact result two reflections—the one afflicting, that the multitude are miserable, because it is easier to form, than to obtain our wishes; the other consoling, that they might be happy, since every one can regulate his desires.

Reduced to the necessity to realize, or restrain them, which course does wisdom indicate? Will ambition conduct us to repose?[8] He who chases its phantoms, resembles the child who imagines that he shall be able to grasp the rainbow, which spans the mountain in the distance. But from mountain to mountain, a new horizon spreads before his eyes. But the courage and perseverance requisite to regulate our desires, may intimidate us. We vex ourselves in the pursuit of fortune, honor and glory. Philosophy is worth more than the whole, and do we expect to purchase it without pain? True, she declares to us, that to realize our desires is a part of the science of happiness; but by no means the most important one. Yet it is the only one to which most men devote themselves. Philosophy should teach us, what desires we ought to receive and cherish, as inmates. When they are fleeting and spring from a gay and creative imagination, let us yield ourselves without fear to their transient dreams. But when they may exercise a long and decisive influence, let a mature examination teach us, whether wisdom allows the attempt to realize them. Oh! how much uncertainty and torment we might spare our weakness, if from infancy we directed our pursuit towards the essential objects of felicity, and if we stripped those, which, in their issue, produce chimerical hopes and bitter regrets, of their deceitful charms! What gratitude should we not owe that provident instruction, whose cares should indicate, and smooth our road to happiness! The great results, which might be obtained from education, would be, to moderate the desires, and to find some indemnities for the sorrows of life. On the present plan, by arousing our emulation, by enkindling our instinctive ardor to increase our fortune, and eclipse our rivals, we make it a study, if I may so say, to render ourselves discontented with our destiny; and, as if afraid that we should not be sufficiently perverted by the contagion of example, we invoke ambition and cupidity to enter the soul. We treat as chimerical those desires, which are so simple and pure, as to be pleasures of themselves, and which look to a happiness easy of attainment.

Let us, then, unlearn most of the ideas we have received. Let us close our eyes on the illusions which surround us. Let us remould our plan of life, and retain in the heart only those desires which nature has placed there. Let reflection impart energy to our mind, and be our guide in the new path which reason opens before us.

We shall be told, that these desires animate us unsought and continually. I admit it. But in most men they are the simple result of instinct, and are vague, and without decisive effect. A craving for happiness is diffused as widely as life. The enlightened desire of happiness is as rare as wisdom. The mass of our species do not avail themselves of life, to enjoy it; but apparently for other purposes. My first and fundamental maxim is, that no one should live by chance. Enfranchised from vulgar ideas, and guided by the principles of true wisdom, let happiness be our end; and let us view all our employments and pursuits, as means.

I meet men of sanguine temperament, who say in the pride of internal energy, ‘my calculations must succeed. I am certain to acquire wealth.’ Another of the same class assures me, that he sees no turn to his rapid career of advancement; and that he is confident of reaching the summit of greatness. What more fortunate result can he propose, than happiness? My pupil should make all his plans subservient to the numbering of happy days even from the commencement of his career.[9]

Let us beware, however, of aspiring after a perfect felicity. The art I discuss, will not descend from heaven. Its object is, to indicate desirable situations, to guide us towards them, when they offer, and to remove the vexations of life. The greater part of mankind might exist in comfort. They fail of this, in aiming at impracticable amelioration of their condition. It is an egregious folly only to contemplate the dark side of our case. I deem it a mark of wisdom and strength of mind, rather to exaggerate its advantages.

Let us carefully ascertain, what things are indispensable to our well-being; and let us discipline all our desires towards the acquisition of them. If I consult those who are driven onward by the whirlwind of life, to learn what objects are absolutely necessary to my end, what a long catalogue they will name! If I ask moralists, how many sacrifices, incompatible with human nature, will they impose! Agitated, and uncertain, I am conscious, that my powers are equally insufficient to amass all which the former prescribe, or to tear me from all which the latter disdainfully interdict.

In examining this all important subject, without the spirit of system, I realize, that the essentials of a happy life are tranquillity of mind, independence, health, competence, and the affection of some of our equals. Let us strive to acquire them. They are numerous, I admit, and difficult to unite in the possession of an individual. Nevertheless, if a severe discrimination enabled us to bound our pursuit by the desire of obtaining only these objects, what a great and happy change would be effected upon the earth; and how many disappointments would be henceforward unknown![10]

LETTER VI. TRANQUILLITY OF MIND.

By the word tranquillity I designate that state of the mind in which, estranged from the weaknesses of life, it tastes that happy calm which it owes to its own power and elevation. Inaccessible to storms, it still admits those emotions which give birth to pure pleasures, and yields to the generous movements which the virtues inspire. Tranquillity seems indifference only in the eyes of the vulgar. A delightful consciousness of existence accompanies it. We may meditate with a just pride upon the causes which produce it. Without reasoning we respire and enjoy it. It is the appropriate pleasure of the sage.

A pure conscience is the profoundest source of this delightful calm. Without it, we shall attempt in vain to veil our faults from ourselves, or to listen only to the voice of adulation. An interior witness must testify that we have sometimes sought occasions to be useful; and that we have always welcomed those who offered us opportunities to do good.

Another condition equally necessary is to close the heart against unregulated ambition. I am well aware, in laying down this precept, that I shall be deemed an idle dreamer. If you are convinced beyond argument that there is nothing worth seeking in life but distinctions and honors, you may close my book. If you are ready to receive these brilliant illusions when they come unsought, and return to the repose of your heart should you obtain them not, you may pursue the reading of my lessons.

Do not fear that I am about to announce trite truths touching the vices which ambition brings in its train, and the shameful actions and base measures by which it proposes to elevate its aspirant. Why should I declaim in common-place against ambition when I have truths to offer so pressing, simple and self-evident?

To consecrate to true enjoyment as many days as possible, to lose in disquieting desires as few moments as we may, these are the elements of my philosophy. The world, on the other hand, incessantly repeats, ‘Shine—ascend high places—bind fortune to your chariot wheels;’ the multitude listen, and consume life in tormenting desires which end in disappointment. I say to my disciple, make your pursuit, whatever it be, a source of present enjoyment, and be happy without delay. But the cry of objection reaches me, ‘would you wish him to vegetate in obscurity and never transcend the limits of the narrow circle in which he was born?’ I would have him enjoy the self-respect of conscious usefulness, and taste all the innocent pleasures of the senses, the heart, mind and understanding. Farther than these, I see nothing but the miserable inquietudes of vanity. I admit that the pleasures of gratified ambition are high flavored and intoxicating; but compelled to choose among enjoyments which cannot all be tasted together, I balance the delights which they spread over life with the pains which it must cost to obtain them. If I incline to ambition, I must fly privacy and my retreat; and renounce the pleasures which my family, friends and free pursuits daily renew. I must no longer inhabit the paradise of my pleasant dreams. Abandoning the simple and sincere enjoyments of obscurity, I abandon repose and independence.

Suppose I obtain those honors of which the distant brilliancy dazzles my vision, what destiny can I propose to myself? How long can I enjoy my honors? Besieged by incessant alarm, through fear of losing them, how often shall I sigh over the ill-judged exchange by which I bartered peace and privacy for them? Number all the truly happy days of the ambitious—they are those in which, forming his projects, and, in his imagination, removing the obstacles that lie in his way, he embellishes his career with the illusions of his fancy. Too often the desired objects, which in the distance glittered in his eyes, resemble those paintings which, seen from afar, present enchanting scenery, but offer only revolting views when beheld close at hand.

I wish to avoid the usual exaggeration upon these subjects. Moralists deceive us when painting the contrast between the virtues and the vices; they assign unmingled felicity to the one, and absolute misery to the other. I am sensible that even in his deepest inquietudes, and notwithstanding his desires and regrets, the votary of ambition still has his moments of intoxicating pleasure. It is not this alone, but happiness we seek. If we wish only to toil up the heights of ambition to enjoy the dignities of the summit, counsels are useless. If we ask for nothing more than pleasures, they may be varied to infinity, and be found pervading all situations in forms appropriate to all characters. This hypocrite, that victim of envy, yonder miser, do they experience, the moralist will ask, nothing but torment? Mark the misanthrope who incessantly repeats that in a world peopled with perverse beings and malign spirits, existence is an odious burden. This man, notwithstanding, finds his pleasures in a world which he affects so to detest. Every invective which he throws out against it, is a eulogy reflected back upon himself. He rises in his own estimation in proportion as he debases others, and finds in himself all the qualities which he makes them want. Does he meet with a partisan of his principles? how delightful for two misanthropes to communicate their discoveries, and to make a joint war of sarcasm upon the human race! Does he find an antagonist? he experiences a charm in controverting him. Besides, as in vilifying human nature, no one can want either facts or arguments to present it in hues sufficiently dark, in the complacency of conscious triumph, he terminates his war of words.

The votary of ambition not only has pleasures which are often dazzling, but perhaps enjoyments not within the ordinary ken, which require profound observation. The ardent aspiration after success gives a charm to efforts in the struggle which would otherwise present only unmixed bitterness. Acts in themselves vile, ridiculous, or revolting, contemplated as means essential to a proposed end, lose their meanness and tendency to lessen self-respect. It is possible, in this view, that even extraordinary humiliations may inspire the ambitious with a sort of pride, in the consciousness that he has strength to stoop to them for his purposes. In fine, it is too true that pleasure may be found in the most capricious aberrations, the most shameful vices, and the most atrocious crimes.

It will be seen that I abandon most of the trite declamation against ambition. I touch not on its long inquietudes, its inevitable torments, exacerbated a hundred fold, if their victim preserve degrees of mental elevation and remains of moral sentiment. Life passes pleasantly among men who have just views, upright hearts and frank manners, the true elements of greatness and enjoyment. Surrounded by such minds, we respire, as it were, a free and an empyrean atmosphere. Yield yourself to the empire of ambition; and in all countries, and in all time, you condemn yourself to live surrounded by greedy, unquiet, false and vindictive intriguers, gnashing their teeth at all success in which they had no agency. All that encircle you unite insolence and baseness.

Those who envy authority and office are worthy of commiseration. Men in power are happy, they think. They have but to wish, and it is accomplished. The epitaph of the Swedish minister is sublime, and the index of a great truth. He had run the career of power and fortune with success. When near the period of his death, he ordered this inscription for his tomb: Tandem Felix. At last I am happy.

We never leave the society of the great as we entered it. We have become either better or more perverse. Inexperience is easily dazzled with the superficial splendor. For a man of disciplined mind and a character of energy, it is the most useful of schools. Here he tests and confirms his principles. Here he observes, sometimes with terror, sometimes with disgust, the melancholy results of the seductive passions. He here sees those who seem to have reached all their aims enjoying the repose of happy privacy. I anticipate the objection, ‘that this is all absurdity; that not one will be so convinced of his misery as to resign his power and descend from his elevation to that obscurity for which he sighs.’ I believe it; and I see in this a deeper shade in his misery. He has so long experienced the pernicious excitement of this splendid torment, that he can no longer exist in repose.

Such is the lot of erring humanity, that the world naturally associates glory and happiness with ambition, and sees not that the association is formed by our own mental feebleness. To rise above vulgar errors and the common train of thinking, to form sage principles, and, still more, to have the courage and decision to follow them, this is the proof of real force of character. But, to feel the need of dazzling the vulgar, to be willing to creep in order to rise, to struggle and dispute for trinkets, this is the common standard by which the multitude estimate a great mind.

Philosophers are accused of having presented grandeur under an unfavorable aspect in order to console themselves for not having enjoyed it. History reads us another lesson. Aristotle instructed the son of Philip. Plato was received at the courts of kings. Cicero received the title of ‘father of his country’ by a decree of the senate. Boethius, thrice clad with the consular purple, when his locks were hoary, was dragged to a dungeon. He wrote ‘the consolations inspired by philosophy,’ and laid down his book at the foot of the scaffold. Marcus Aurelius honored the throne of the world by those modest virtues which shone still brighter in obscurity. Fenelon was raised to the highest dignities only to experience their bitterness, and, like his great predecessor, to owe his glory and his happy days only to wisdom and retirement. Franklin will be remembered in all time, not as the governor, legislator and ambassador, but as having trained himself to his admirable philosophy of common sense amidst the laborious occupations of a printer.

The certainty of acquiring the self-respect of conscious usefulness, a certainty which the great can seldom have, ought alone to determine a wise man to quit his obscurity. But if the emoluments and honors of a high station seduce us, let us value our independence and let us not exchange treasures for tinsel.

We have freedom to avoid every culpable action, and to contemplate with pity the chimeras of ambition. Let us see if in misfortune we can preserve tranquillity of mind.

LETTER VII. OF MISFORTUNE.

If we wish our precepts to be followed, we must avoid the extremes to which moralists and philosophers are too much inclined to press their doctrines, for they are impracticable in real life. It is useless to deny that there are evils against which the aids of reason and friendship are powerless. Let us leave him who is about to lose a being whose life is blended with his own, to groan unreproved. Time alone can enfeeble his remembrances and assuage his pain. To render man inaccessible to suffering would be to change his nature. Those austere moralists who treat our feebleness with disdain, and who would render us indifferent to the most terrible blows of destiny, would at the same time leave us no sensibility to taste pleasure. Nothing can be more absurd than the vain harangues by which common-place consolation is offered to those who mourn a wife, a child, a friend. All reasonings are ineffectual when opposed to these words, ‘I have lost the loved one. You inform me that my misfortune is without a remedy. Oh! if there were a remedy, instead of unavailing tears, I would employ it. It is precisely because there is none, that I grieve.’ ‘Your tears are useless.’ ‘Still they serve to solace me.’ ‘God has done it.’ ‘True, and God has formed my heart to suffer from his blow.’ ‘Your child is happy, and knew neither the errors nor the sorrows of life.’ ‘A parent’s instinctive love inspired the desire that I might teach it to avoid both and obtain happiness.’ ‘In the course of a long career your friend gave an example of all the virtues.’ ‘It is because the loss of these virtues is irreparable to me that I must deplore his death.’[11]

The greater portion of men, I admit, exaggerating their regrets, pay a tribute of dissembled grief rather to opinion, than to nature; and cold declamation and frivolous distractions are sufficient to console them. But the orators of consolation sometimes press their lessons on hearts which are really bleeding. Let such groan at liberty, and attempt not to contradict nature. Solitude may exalt the imagination; but it also inspires consoling ideas. In the silence of its refuge the desolate mourner brings himself to a nearer communion with him he regrets. He invokes, sees, and addresses him. Grief is more ingenious than we imagine in finding consolation, and has learned to employ different remedies according as the wounds are slight or deep. Two persons have each lost a dear friend. The one studiously avoids the places where he used to meet his friend. The other repairs to his desolate haunts, and surrounding himself by monuments associated with his memory, he seeks, if I may so say, to restore him to life.

The death of a beloved wife is, perhaps, the most inconsolable of evils. Let this follow a series of other misfortunes, and it so effaces their remembrance that the sufferer feels he has not until then known real grief. But if this affliction be one under which our strength is broken, let it be the only one to obtain this fatal triumph. Under all other misfortunes we may find in ourselves resources for sustaining them; and may invariably either evade or assuage them, or mitigate their bitterness by resignation.

Moralists have expatiated upon the manner in which a sage ought to contemplate the evils of life. Instead of subscribing to their trite maxims, often more imposing than practicable, I sketch a summary of my philosophy. I caution the feeble and erring beings that surround me, not to dream of unmixed happiness. I invite them to partake promptly of all innocent pleasures. The evils too often appended to them may follow. Know nothing of those which have no existence except in opinion. Struggle with courage to escape all that may be evaded. But if it become inevitable to meet them, let resignation, closing your eyes on the past, secure the repose of patient endurance when happiness exists for you no longer.

Permit me to give these ideas some development. If I may believe the most prevalent modern philosophy, tranquillity of mind is the result of organization, or temperament, and of circumstances. It is the burden of my inculcation, that it may be of our own procuring; and that we owe it still more to the masculine exercise of our reason, discipline, and mental energy, than to our temperament or condition.

We have reason to deplore that unhappy being, who, yielding to dreams of pleasure, forgets to forearm himself against a fatal awakening. The history of great political convulsions, and, more than all, that of the French revolution furnishes impressive examples of this spectacle. It offers more than one instance, in the feebler sex, of persons, who seemed created only to respire happiness. To the advantages of youth, talent and beauty, were united the most exalted rank, and wealth, pleasure and power, apparently to the extent of their wishes. To the dazzling fascination, with which a brilliant crowd surrounded their inexperience, many of them united the richer domestic enjoyments of the wife and mother. In the midst of their illusions, the revolutionary shout struck their ear, like a thunderstroke. Executioners bade them ascend the scaffold.[12]

These great catastrophes, I know, are rare. But there will never cease to be sorrows, which will receive their last bitterness only in death. They are all too painful to be sustained, unless they have been wisely foreseen. Let us think of misfortune, as of certain characters, with whom our lot may one day compel us to consort.

It is novelty alone, which gives our emotions extreme keenness. Whoever has strength of character, may learn to endure anything. The red men of the American wilderness are most impressive examples of this truth. Time, however, is the most efficacious teacher of the lesson of endurance. Poussin, in his painting of Eudomidas, has delineated the human heart with fidelity. The young girl of the piece abandons herself to despair. Half stretched upon the earth, her head falls supinely on the knees of the aged mother of the dying. This mother is sitting. Her attitude announces mingled meditation and grief. Amidst her tears, we trace firmness on her visage. One of the two women is taking her first lesson of misery. The other has already passed through a long apprenticeship of grief.[13]

Reflection imparts anticipated experience. It takes from misery that air of novelty, which renders it terrible. When a wise man experiences a reverse, his new position has been foreseen. He has measured the sorrows, and prepared the consolations. Into whatever scene of trial he is brought, he will show in no one the embarrassment of a stranger.

Taught to be conscious that we are feeble combatants, thrown upon an arena of strife, let us not calculate that destiny has no blows in store for us. Let us prepare for wounds, painful and slow to heal. Let us blunt the darts of misfortune in advance. Then, if they strike they will not penetrate so deep. But in premeditating the trials, which may be in reserve for our courage, let not anticipated solicitude disturb the present. Of all mental efforts, foresight is the most difficult to regulate. If we have it not, we fall into reverses unprepared. If we exercise it too far, we are perpetually miserable by anticipation.

The philosopher prepares himself for contingent perils by processes which impart a keener pleasure to present enjoyment. He better understands the value of the moments of joy, and learns to dispel the fears, which might mar their tranquillity. That is a gloomy wisdom, which condemns the precepts that invite us to draw, from the uncertainty of our lot, a motive to embellish the moment of actual happiness. Transient beings, around whom everything is changing and in motion, adopt my maxims. Let us aid those who surround us, to put them in practice. Let us render those who are happy today more happy. Tomorrow the opportunity may have passed forever.

As though nature had not sowed sufficient sorrows in our path during our short career, we have added to the mass by our own invention. The offspring of our vanity and puerile prejudices, these factitious pains seem sometimes more difficult to support, than real evils. A warrior, who has shown fearless courage in the deadly breach, has passed a sleepless night, because he was not invited to a party, or a feast; or because a riband, or a diploma has not been added to the many, with which he is already decorated. I had been informed, that the wife and son of a distinguished acquaintance were dangerously sick. I met him pale, and thoughtful. I was meditating, how to give him hope in regard to the objects of his supposed anxiety. While I was hesitating how to address him, he made known the subject of his real inquietude. He was in expectation of a high employment. The man of power, in whose hand was the gift, had just received him coldly a second time. He was anxiously calculating his remaining chances, and striving to divine the causes of his discouraging reception.

To avoid such ridiculous agonies, let us adopt a maxim, not the less true, because the phrase, in which I express it, may seem trivial. Three quarters and half the remaining quarter of our vexations are not worth wasting a thought upon their cause. I add, that even in expectations which appear important, we ought to fear trusting too little to chance. The order of events, which we call by this name, is often more sage than any that human calculation can arrange. If it decides in a manner which at first view seems greatly against us, let us defer our accusations, until we have more thoroughly tested the event. I have met a man, who had long been an aspirant for a certain place, with a radiant countenance, having just obtained it. Three months afterwards, he would have purchased at any price the power of recalling events. I have seen another friend in desolation, because he could not obtain the hand of the daughter of a man, whose enterprises promised an immense fortune. He had been rejected. The speculations of her father all failed; and the reputation of his integrity and good faith with them. The despairing lover would have shared the poverty and disgrace of a helpless family; and would have been tormented, besides, with an incompatible union, of itself sufficient to have rendered him miserable in the midst of all the expected prosperity. One event is contemplated with a charmed eye; another with despair. The issue alone can declare, which of the two we ought to have desired.

I grant, that we are surrounded by real dangers. I pretend not to be above suffering; and I attach no merit to becoming the reckless dupe of men or chance. The highest philosophy is at the same time the most simple and practicable. There is no error more common than one, which is taken for profound wisdom. Most men look too deep for the springs of events, and the motives of action. In many alternatives, we shall be most wise in giving the reins to chance. When we are menaced by an evident peril, let us summon all our energy, and courageously struggle to ward it off. If, after all, neither wisdom can evade it, nor bravery vanquish it, let us see, how true wisdom ordains us to sustain it.

How many are ignorant of the value of resignation, or confound it with weakness! The courage of resignation is, perhaps, the most high and rare of all the forms of that virtue. Man received the gift directly from the Author of his being. His desires, inquietudes, misguided opinions, the fruits of an ambitious and incongruous education, have weakened its force in the soul. Who can read the anecdote of the American wilderness without thrilling emotion? An Indian, descending the Niagara river, was drawn into the rapids above the sublime cataract. The nursling of the desert rowed with incredible vigor at first, in an intense struggle for life. Seeing his efforts useless, he dropped his oars, sung his death song, and floated in calmness down the abyss. His example is worthy of imitation. While there is hope, let us nerve all our force, to avail ourselves of all the chances it suggests. When hope ceases, and the peril must be braved, wisdom counsels calm resignation.[14]

In regard to unconquerable evils, the true doctrine is not vain resistance, but profound submission. It conceals the outline of what we have to suffer, as with a veil. It hastens to bring us the fruit of consoling time. It opens our eyes to a clearer view of the possessions which remain to us. It precedes hope, as twilight ushers in the day.

It is by laying down certain well ascertained principles of conduct, and re-examining them every day, that a new empire is given to reason, and that we learn to select the most eligible point in all situations in life. The Greek philosophers were, incontestably, the men, who best understood the art of becoming happy. Their studies led them to the unwearied contemplation of the true good, the advantages of elevation of mind, the danger of the passions, and a calm submission to inevitable ills. Such were the habitual subjects of their meditations and discourses. They suffered less from the evils of life, only because they cultivated habits of profound reflection.

Among the moderns, in pursuit of happiness, some study only to multiply their physical enjoyments; and limited to gross sensations, differ little from brutes, except in discoursing about what they eat. Others, higher in the scale of thought, cultivate the pleasures of literature and the fine arts. But disciplining but a single class of their powers, with a view to distinguish themselves from the vulgar, they are not always more happy. True philosophy is chiefly conversant about that kind of acquisition, which preëminently constitutes the rational man, forms his reason, and places him, as a master, in the midst of an unreflecting world surrounded by children full of ignorance and fatuity.

LETTER VIII. OF INDEPENDENCE.

We distinguish many kinds of liberty. That which we owe to equal laws, without being indispensable to a philosopher, renders the attainment of happiness more easy to him. However men differ in their political opinions, they all have an instinctive desire to be free. Every one is reluctant and afraid to submit himself to the capricious power of those about him. The thirst of power is only another form of this ardor for independence.

With what interest we read in history of those ignorant tribes, unknown to fame, whose liberty and simple manners at once astonish and delight us? When visiting the isles of Greece, where the charm of memory rendered the view of their actual slavery more revolting, what delight the traveller experiences in traversing the little isle of Casos which had never submitted to the Ottoman yoke! He there found the usages of the ancient Greeks, their costume, their beauty and their amiable and elevated natural manner. This isle is but a rock. But its dangerous shores have defended it against tyranny. Associations with the songs of Homer and Hesiod are renewed. Such a picture delights even a people whose manners are refined to a degree tending to depravation. Thus those opulent citizens who find the country a place of exile still decorate their splendid halls with landscapes and flowers.

Let not a sensitive and wandering imagination kindle too readily at the recitals of travellers. Were we to transport ourselves to one of those remote points of the earth where felicity is represented to have chosen her asylum, new usages, manners and pleasures, and a foreign people every moment reminding us that we are strangers, would, perhaps, give birth to the most painful regrets. When in our youth we were charmed as we read of the prodigies of Athens and Rome, we uttered the wish that we had been born in those renowned republics. There is little doubt that, had our wish been realized, we should be glad to escape their storms, in exchange for obscurely tranquil days.

It is a distinguished folly which impels men far from their country in search of happiness. The greater portion, deceived in their hopes after having wandered amidst danger, die with regret and sorrow, worn out with vexation resulting from the broken ties and remembrances of home. Home is the last thought that comes over the departing mind. ‘Et dulces moriens reminiscitur Argos.’ Ubi patria ibi bene is an adage which contains as much wise observation as elevated patriotism. Our country is our common mother. We ought to love and sustain her more firmly in her misery than in her prosperity.

Whatever manners, opinions and talents we carry into another country, we are still strangers there. The manners which we adopt are new and irksome. The eye sees nothing to awaken dear and embellished remembrances; and we find in the heart of no one the reverberating chord of ancient friendship and sympathy. We always regret the places where we knew the first pleasures and the first pains, and saw the first enchanting visions of life; the cherished spots where we learned to love and be loved. If, returning there, drawn back by an invincible sentiment, after a long absence we see it again, what sorrows await us! We find ourselves strangers in our own country. We ask for our parents and friends who departed in succession. The blows were struck at long intervals. We receive them all in a moment. We return to shed tears only on the tombs of our fathers![15]

Retreat and competence everywhere supply a wise man a degree of independence. Even when the sport of oppression and injustice, he yields to these evils as the caprices of destiny. He would be free in the midst of Constantinople under the government of the Sultan.

Another kind of liberty is the portion of but a few in our own country—the liberty of disposing of our whole time at our choice. To those who understand not the value of time, this liberty bequeaths a heavy bondage. But to those who have learned the secret of happiness it is of inestimable value. The privilege of the favored possessor of opulence is a high one. Neither the slave of business, fashion, opinion or routine, it is in his power at awaking to say ‘this day is all my own.’[15a]

But moralists exclaim, ‘you must pay your debt: you must render yourselves useful to society.’ Let me not be understood to inculcate the doctrine of indolence. Industry will have wings and power when you unite it to freedom. But how many repeat the hackneyed cry of ‘the debt to society,’ who, in the choice of their profession, had never a thought but of its honors and emoluments! This man whose industry in the pursuit of his choice proves that his toil is his pleasure, that man who is in earnest to serve every one whom he can oblige and who might have shone, had he chosen it, in the career of ambition, but who, modest, proud, studious and free, lives happily in the bosom of retreat, has this man done nothing to acquit his debt? Is his example useless to society?

If my condition deny me leisure and independence in regard to the disposal of my time, without bestowing much concern upon the choice of my profession, I should choose that most favorable to free thoughts, to breathing the open air, and, as much as might be, in view of a beautiful nature. I should consider it as a most important element in my happiness that I should be chiefly conversant with people of compatible characters. The profession of an advocate, perpetually conversant with the follies, vices and crimes of society, is one of the most trying, both to integrity and philosophy. That of the physician, continually witnessing groans, tears and physical suffering, however painful to sensibility, may become the source of high reflected pleasure to a generous and humane heart. I would avoid a function the disquieting responsibility of which would disturb my sleep. Above all, I should dread one of high honor and emolument, connected with proportionate uncertainty of tenure.

The balance of enjoyment being taken into view, I should prefer an occupation of privacy. It would be more easy at once to obtain and preserve. It would expose me less to envy and competition. Exempt from the inquietudes inspired by severe labors, and the ennui of important etiquette, I should at least find an absolute independence, every evening, at the relinquishment of my daily routine of occupation, and I should suffer no care for the morrow; I would learn to enhance the charms of my condition by thinking of the agitation, regrets and alarms of those who are still swept by the whirlwinds of life. In this way I would imitate him who, to procure a more delicious repose, placed his couch under a tent near the sea, to be lulled by the dashing of its waves and the noise of its storms. But it is time to contemplate the most useful kind of liberty, the only indispensable kind, and happily one which is accessible to all. It is the liberty resulting from self-command and inward mastery of ourselves. It has a value to cause all others to be forgotten—a value which no other kind can replace.

What liberty can that man enjoy who is the slave of ambition? A gesture, a look of the eye, a smile affrightens him and causes him painful and trembling calculations what that sinister sign of his master may presage.

Look at the opulent merchant whose hopes are the sport of the winds, seas, robbers, changes of trade, municipal regulations, and a crowd of agents who seem subordinate, but who really command him.

Whatever kind of liberty we aim to possess, we may certainly conclude that the surest means to enjoy it is to have few wants. But how restrain our wants? The greater portion are happily placed by their condition where they are ignorant of the objects which most powerfully excite and seduce desire. The golden mean secludes them from many temptations full of the bitterest regret, and exacts of them little effort of wisdom. In the class of men of leisure and elevated mind there are two means of rising above many wants.

The more austere philosophers have altogether disdained those pleasures which they could never hope to obtain. Reducing themselves to the limits of the strictest necessity, they indemnify themselves for some privations by the certainty of being secured from many pains, and by the sentiment of conscious independence. This is, doubtless, one of the surest means of obtaining independence; and they who attempt to employ any other, differ from the vulgar by their principles rather than their conduct.

How many objects, of which the contemplation awakens the desires, would have nothing dangerous if we could always exercise a stern self-control over our minds! The surest means of exercising this self-control is to reduce the number of our wants. To do it, I admit, demands a rare elevation of mind and the exercise of a high degree of philosophy. But since its value is beyond its cost, let us dare to acquire it.

While the fleeting dreams of pleasure hover around us, let reason still say to us, ‘an instant may dissipate them.’ Let us, then, be ready to find a new pleasure in the consciousness of our firmness and our masculine and vigorous independence. An enlightened mind reigns over pleasures; and while they glitter around, enjoys all that are innocent; but disdains a sigh or a regret when they have taken wings and disappeared.

I commend the example of Alcibiades, the disciple of the graces and of wisdom, who astonished in turn the proud Persian by his dignity, and the Lacedemonian by his austerity. His enemies may charge him with incessant change of principle. To me he seems always the same, always superior to the men and circumstances that surround him. Such strong mental stamina resemble those robust plants that sustain, without annoyance, the extremes of heat and cold.

LETTER IX. OF HEALTH.

Health results from moderation, gayety and the absence of care. Eternal wisdom has ordained, that the emotions which disturb our days, are those which have a natural tendency to shorten them.[16]

If there were ground for a single charge against the justice of nature, it would be, that the errors of inexperience seem punished with too great severity. We prodigally waste the material of life and enjoyment, as we do our other possessions, as if we thought it inexhaustible.

To the errors of youth succeed the vices of mature age. Ambition and cupidity, envy and hatred concur to devour the very aliment of life. The storms which prostrate the moral faculties, equally sap the physical energy. Every debasing passion is a consuming poison. To what other source of evil can we assign those inquietudes and puerile anxieties, which disturb the days of the greater portion of mankind? They are occupied by trifling interests, and agitated by vain debates. They watch for futile excitements, and are in desolation from chimerical troubles. Pleasant emotions sustain life, and produce upon it the effect of a gentle current of air upon flame. Trains of thought habitually elevated, and sometimes inclined to revery, impart pure and true gayety to the soul. To be able to command this train is one of the rarest felicities of endowment. A distinguished physician recorded in his tablets the apparent paradox, that three quarters of men die of vexation or grief.

Huffland has published a work, upon the art of prolonging life, full of interesting observations. ‘Philosophers,’ says he, ‘enjoy a delightful leisure. Their thoughts, generally estranged from vulgar interests, have nothing in common with those afflicting ideas, with which other men are continually agitated and corroded. Their reflections are agreeable by their variety, their vague liberty, and sometimes even by their frivolity. Devoted to the pursuits of their choice, the occupations of their taste, they dispose freely of their time. Oftentimes they surround themselves with young people, that their natural vivacity may be communicated to them, and, in some sort, produce a renewal of their youth.’ We may make a distinction between the different kinds of philosophy, in relation to their influence upon the duration of life. Those which direct the mind towards sublime contemplations, even were they in some degree superstitious, such as those of Pythagoras and Plato, are the most salutary. Next to them, I place those, the study of which, embracing nature, gives enlarged and elevated ideas upon infinity, the stars, the wonders of the universe, the heroic virtues, and other similar subjects. Such were those of Democritus, Philolaus, Xenophanes, the Stoics, and the ancient astronomers.’

‘I may cite next those less profound thinkers, who instead of exacting difficult researches, seemed destined only to amuse the mind; the followers of which philosophy, deviating wide from vulgar opinion, peaceably sustain the arguments for and against the propositions advanced. Such was the philosophy of Carneades and the Academicians, to whom we may add the Grammarians and Rhetoricians.’

‘But those which turn only upon painful subtilties, which are affirmative, dogmatic and positive, which bend all facts and opinions to form and adjust them to certain preconceived principles and invariable measures; in fine, such as are thorny, arid, narrow and contentious, these are fatal in tendency, and cannot but abridge the life of those, who cultivate them. Of this class was the philosophy of the Peripatetics, and that also of the Scholastics.’

Tumultuous passions and corroding cares are two sources of evil influences, which philosophy avoids. Another influence, adverse to life, is that mental feebleness, which renders persons perpetually solicitous about their health, effeminate and unhappy. Fixing their thoughts intensely on the functions of life, those functions, that are subjects of this anxious inspection, labor. Imagining themselves sick, they soon become so. The undoubting confidence that we shall not be sick, is perhaps the best prophylactic for preserving health.

I am ignorant of the exact influence of moral upon physical action, in relation to health. But of this I am confident, that it is prodigious; that physicians have not made it a sufficient element in their calculations, or employed it as they should; and that in future, under a wise and more philosophic direction, it may operate an immense result, both in restoring and preserving health.

A man reads a letter, which announces misfortunes, or sinister events. His head turns. His appetite ceases. He becomes faint, and oppressed; and his life is in danger. No contagion, however, no physical blow has touched him. A thought has palsied his forces in a moment; and has successively deranged every spring of life. We have read of persons of feeble and uninformed mind, who have fallen sick, in consequence of the cruel sport of those, who have ingeniously alarmed their imagination, and cautiously indicated to them a train of fatal symptoms. Since imagination can thus certainly overturn our physical powers, why may it not, under certain regulations, restore them? Among the numberless recorded cases of cures, reputed miraculous, it is probable, that a great part may be accounted for on this principle.[17]

Suppose a paralytic disciple of the school of miracles, whose head is exalted with ideas of the mystic power of certain holy men, and who is meditating on the succor which he expects from a divine interposition manifested in his favor. In an ecstasy of faith, he sees a minister of heaven descend enveloped in light, who bids him ‘arise, and walk.’ In a moment the unknown nervous energy, excited by the mysterious power of faith, touches the countless inert and relaxed movements. The man arises and walks. During the siege of Lyons, when bombs fell on the hospital, the terrified paralytics arose and fled.

I am not disposed to question all the cures, which in France have been attributed to magnetism. We know, what a salutary effect the sight of his physician produces on the patient, who has confidence in him. His cheerful and encouraging conversations are among the most efficient remedies. If we entertained a long cherished and intimate persuasion, that by certain signs, or touches, he could dispel our complaints, his gestures would have a high moral and physical influence. Magnetism was in this sense, as Bailly justly remarked, a true experiment upon the power of the imagination. At the moment of its greatest sway, while some regarded it an infallible specific, and others deemed it entirely inefficient, another class held it in just estimation. I cite an extract from the report of the Academy of Science.

‘We have sought,’ say they, ‘to recognise the presence of the magnetic fluid. But it escaped our senses. It was said, that its action upon animated bodies was the sole proof of its existence. The experiments, which we made upon ourselves, convinced us, that, as soon as we diverted our attention, it was powerless. Trials made upon the sick taught us, that infancy, which is unsusceptible of prejudice experienced nothing from it; that mental alienation resisted the action of magnetism, even in an habitual condition of excitability of the nerves, where the action ought to have been most sensible. The effects which are attributed to this fluid, are not visible, except when the imagination is forewarned, and capable of being struck. Imagination, then, seems to be the principle of the action.

‘It remained to be seen, whether we could reproduce these effects by the influence of imagination alone. We attempted it, and fully succeeded. Without touching the subjects, who believed themselves magnetised, and without employing any sign, they complained of pain and a great sensation of heat. On subjects, endowed with more excitable nerves, we produced convulsions, and what they called crises. We have seen an exalted imagination become sufficiently energetic to take away the power of speech in a moment. At the same time, we proved the nullity of magnetism, put in opposition with the imagination. Magnetism alone, employed for thirty minutes, produced no effect. Imagination put in action produced upon the same person, with the same means, in circumstances absolutely similar, a strong, and well defined convulsion.

‘In fine, to complete the demonstration, and to finish the painting of the effect of the imagination, a power equally capable of agitating, and calming, we have caused those convulsions to cease by the same power, which produced them—the power of the imagination.

‘What we have learned, or, at least what has been confirmed to us in a demonstrative and evident manner, by examination of the processes of magnetism is, that man can act upon man at every moment and almost at will, by striking his imagination; that signs and gestures the most simple may have effects the most powerful; and that the influence which may be exerted upon the imagination, may be reduced to an art, and conducted by method.’

These truths had never before acquired so much evidence. We know, that cures may be wrought by the single influence of imagination. Ambrose Paré Boerhaave, and many other physicians, have cited striking proofs of this fact. The first of these writers procured abundant sweats for a patient, in making him believe that a perfectly inert substance given him, was a violent sudorific.

It is worthy of the attention of moralists and physiologists, as well as physicians, to examine, to what point we may obtain salutary effects, by exciting the imagination. But perhaps, there would soon be cause to dread the perilous influence of this art, which can kill, as well as make alive. This excitable and vivid faculty is never more easily put in operation, that when acted upon by the presentiments of charlatanism and superstition.

We possess another means of operation, which may be exercised without danger, and the power of which is, also, capable of producing prodigies. Education rendering most men feeble and timid, they are ignorant, how much an energetic will can accomplish. It is able to shield us from many maladies; and to hasten the cure of those under which we labor.

In mortal epidemics, the physicians, who are alarmed at their danger, are ordinarily the first victims. Fear plunges the system into that state of debility, which predisposes it to fatal impressions, while the moral force of confidence, communicating its aid to physical energy, enables it to repel contagion.

I could cite many distinguished names of men, who attributed their cure, in desperate maladies, to the courage which never forsook them, and to the efforts which they made to keep alive the vital spark, when ready to become extinct. One of them pleasantly said, ‘I should have died like the rest, had I wished it.’[18]

Pecklin, Barthes and others think that extreme desire to see a beloved person once more, has sometimes a power to retard death. It is a delightful idea. I feel with what intense ardor one might desire to live another day, another hour, to see a friend or a child for the last time. The flame of love, replacing that of life, blazes up for a moment before both are quenched in the final darkness. The last prayer is accorded; and life terminates in tasting that pleasure for which it was prolonged. If this be true, the principle on which the most touching incident of romance is founded, is not a fiction.

I have no need to say that an energetic will to recover from sickness has no point of analogy with that fearful solicitude which the greater part of the sick experience. The latter, produced by mental feebleness, increases the inquietude and aggravates the danger. Even indifference would be preferable. If education had imparted to us the advantages of an energetic will and real force of mind, if from infancy we had been convinced of the efficacy of this moral power, we have no means to determine that it would not have been, in union with the desire of life, an element in the means of healing our maladies.

Medicine is still a science so conjectural that the most salutary method of cure, in my view, is that which strives not to contradict nature, but to second her efforts by moral means. I am ready to believe that amidst the real or imagined triumphs of science, those of medicine will, in the centuries to come, hold a rank to which its past achievements will have borne no proportion. But what an immense amount of experiment will be necessary! How many unfortunate beings must contribute to the expense of these experiments!

Contrary to the general opinion, I highly esteem physicians and think but very little of medicine. In the profession of medicine we find the greatest number of men of solid minds and various erudition; and the best friends of humanity. But they are in the habit of vaunting the progress of their science. To me it seems incessantly changing its principles, without ever varying its results. The systems of various great men have been successively received and rejected. Do we, however, imagine that the great physicians who have preceded us were more unfortunate in their practice than those of our days? Among the most eminent physicians of our cities, one practises by administering strong cathartics. Another is resolute for copious bleeding. A third bids us watch and wait the indications of nature. Each of these assumes that the system of the rest is fatal—and so, it would seem, it should be. At the end of the year, however, I doubt if any one of them all has more reproaches to make, as regards want of success, than any other.

From these facts, there are those who hold that it is most prudent to confide to nature, as the physician; forgetful that, if he could bring no other remedy than hope, he unites moral to physical aid. Yet, the very persons who, in health are readiest to maintain this doctrine, like children who are heroes during the day but cowards in the dark, when they are sick, are as prompt as others in sending for the physician.

Even if agitation and fear had not fatal effects, in rendering us more accessible to maladies, wisdom would strive to banish them, in pursuit of the science of happiness. Fear, by anticipating agony, doubles our sufferings. If there could exist a rational ground for continual inquietude, it would be found in a frail constitution. But how many men of the feeblest health survive those of the most vigorous and robust frame! Calculations upon the duration of life are so uncertain that we can always make them in our favor.

To him who cultivates a mild and pleasant philosophy, old age itself should not be contemplated with alarm. It may seem a paradox to say that all men are nearly of the same age, in reference to their chances of another day. Men are as confident of seeing tomorrow and the succeeding day, at eighty, as at sixteen. Such is the beautiful veil with which nature conceals from us the darkness of the future.

In general, men have less sympathy for the suffering than their condition ought to inspire. We meet them with a sad face and are more earnest to show them that we are afflicted ourselves, than to seek to cheer their dejection. We multiply so many questions touching their health that it would seem as if we feared to allow them to forget that they were sick.

Of all subjects of conversation, my own pains and physical infirmities have become the least interesting to me; as I know they must be to others. I do not wish that those who surround my sick bed should converse as though arranging the preparations for my last dress, or determining the hour of my interment.

If we would live in peace, and die in tranquillity, let us, as much as possible, avoid importunate cares. Our business is to unite as many friends as we may; and to beguile pain and sorrow by treasuring as many resources of innocent amusement as our means will admit. If our sufferings become painful and incurable, we must concentrate our mental energy and settle on our solitary powers of endurance. We die, or we recover. Nature, though calm, moves irresistibly to her point; and complaint is always worse than useless.[19]

But in arming ourselves with courage to support our own evils, let us preserve sensibility and sympathy for the sufferings of others. It is among the dangerously sick that we find those unfortunate beings who are most worthy to inspire our pity. Their only expectation is death, preceded by cruel tortures; and yet they, probably, suffer less for themselves than for weeping dependents whom they are leaving, it may be, without a single prop. Ah! during the few days of sorrow that remain to them on the earth, how earnestly ought we to strive to mitigate their pains, to calm their alarms and animate their feeble hopes! Blessed be that beneficent being who shall call one smile more upon their dying lips![20]

LETTER X. OF COMPETENCE.

Pretended sages announce to us, with sententious gravity, that virtue ought to be the single object of our desires; that, strengthened by it, we can support privations and misery without suffering. Useless moralists! Shall I yield faith to precepts which the experience of every day falsifies? It is only necessary, in refutation, to present a man who has broken his limb, or whose children suffer hunger.

His plan is wise, who examines, with a judgment free from ambition, the amount of fortune necessary to competence in his case, viewed in all its bearings; and commences the steady pursuit of it. Having reached that measure, if his desires impel him beyond the limit which, in a more reasonable hour, he prescribed for himself, he henceforward strives to be happy by sacrificing enjoyment. He barters it for a very uncertain means of purchasing even pleasures. In this way competence becomes useless to the greater part of those who obtain it. Victims of the common folly, and still wishing a little more, they lose, in the effort to get rich, the time which they ought to spend in enjoyment. We see grasping and adroit speculators on every side; and, but rarely, men who know how to employ the resources of a moderate fortune. It is not the art of acquiring beyond competence, but of wisely spending, that we need to learn.

Our business in life is to be happy; and yet, simple and obvious as this truism is, the greater number disdain or forget it. To judge from the passions and objects that we see exciting man to action, we should suppose that he was placed on the earth, not to become happy, but rich.

To what purpose so many cares and studies? ‘That man,’ we are answered with a peculiar emphasis, ‘has an immense income.’ In his rare, brilliant and envied condition, if he does not vegetate under the weight of ennui, I recognise in him a man of astonishing merit.

The opulent may be divided into two classes. The employment of the one is to watch over their expenditures. The other study the mode of dissipating their revenue. Can I present, in detail, the cares and vexations which an immense fortune brings? The possessor leaves discussion with his tenants, to commence angry disputes with his workmen. From these he departs to listen to the schemes of projectors, or to the information of advocates. Is not such a result dearly purchased at the expense of repose, independence and time? Would it not be better to relinquish a part of these possessions, in order to dispose, in peace, of the remainder? I admit that a man who devotes himself to lucrative pursuits is not overwhelmed with continual ennui. The banker respires again, after having grown pale over his accounts. A speculation has succeeded, and the enchantment of success banishes his alarms, fatigues and slavery. But he whose purpose in life is to secure as many happy moments as he can, and who sees how many innocent pleasures the other allows to escape him, would refuse his fortune at the price which he pays for it.

Another opulent class inherit fortunes acquired by the industry and sacrifices of their fathers. Rendered effeminate in a school, the reverse of that in which their fathers were trained, without resources in themselves, accustomed from infancy to have their least desires anticipated, under the influence of feeble parents, pliant and servile instructers, greedy servants and a seducing world, their appetite is early palled, and every pleasure in life worn out.

But suppose the rich heir brought up as though he were not rich, destiny places before him a strange alternative. If he succeed in resisting desires which everything excites and favors, what painful struggles! If he yield to them, what effort can preserve him an untainted mind? The experience of all time declares the improbability that he will resist. So many pretended friends are at hand to take up the cause of the present against the future, a cause, too, which always finds a powerful patron in our own bosoms! The pleasures of the senses have, besides, this dangerous advantage, that before we have tasted them we are sufficiently instructed by the imagination, that we shall receive vivid and delightful emotions from their indulgence. We are not certain that pleasures of a higher class have a charm of enchantment until after we have made the happy experiment. Thus everything prepares the opulent for the sadness of satiety, moral disgust and ennui without end, the only suffering of life which is not softened by hope.

You will sometimes see these men at public places where they are professedly in search of amusement, giving no sign of existence except by an occasional yawn. Cast your eyes on those spectators who are alive to the most vivid enthusiasm. They are young students or mechanics who have economised ten days to spend an hour of the eleventh in this amusement![21] It is in clean cottages, in small but well directed establishments, that pleasures are vivid, because they are obtained at a price, and through industry and order. A festival is projected, or a holiday returns. Friends are assembled, and how blithe and free is the joy! A slight economy has been practised to supply the moderate expenses. There is high pleasure in looking forward to the epoch and in making the arrangements in anticipation. There is still more pleasure in the remembrance. When the interval which separates us from pleasure is not very long, even this interval has charms.

What a touching narrative is recorded of the suppers of two of the greatest men of the past age, of whom one was the Abbe de Condillac. Both were so poor that the expenses were reduced to absolute necessaries. But what conversations prolonged the repast, and with what swiftness flew the enchanted hours! Neither great genius nor profound acquirements are necessary to enjoy evenings equally pleasant.

In an establishment of moderate competence, those who compose it rarely leave it. All the joys which spring up in the bosom of a beloved family seem to have been created for them. Give them riches, without changing their hearts, and they would taste less pleasure. New duties and amusements would trench upon a part of that time which had hitherto been sacred to friendship. More conversant with society, they would be less together. Receiving more visitants, they would see fewer friends. Transported into a new sphere where a thousand objects of comparison would excite their desires, they would, perhaps, for the first time, experience privations and regrets.

Women and young people taste the advantages which a retired, pleasant and modest condition offers only so long as they avoid comparisons of that lot with one which the world considers more favored. We must carry into the world a high philosophy, or never quit our retreat.

Persons even of a disciplined reason, just thought and a noble character, may grow dizzy, for a moment, with the splendor and noise of opulence, perceived for the first time. But as soon as they begin to blush and forfeit self-respect in tracing the causes of their intoxication, the scene vanishes, and, as they contemplate and compare, it is replaced by the sentiment of their own happiness. In the midst of the brilliant crowd they experience a legitimate pride in saying, ‘from how many regrets and cares am I saved! How many futilities are here, of which I have no need!’

But I shall be told that opulence has at least this advantage, that it attracts consideration. There is no doubt that many people measure the esteem they pay you by the scale of your riches. You will never persuade them that merit often walks on foot, while stupidity rides in a carriage.

But will a man esteem himself a philosopher, and take into his calculation the opinion of such fools as these? In a circle where opulence puts forth its splendor, when you experience a slight revulsion of shame in perceiving that the simplicity of your dress is remarked, ask yourself if you would change your mode of life, character and talents with those around you? If you feel that you would not, repress the weakness of wishing incompatible advantages; and resume the self-respect of an honest man.[21a]

To be satisfied with a moderate fortune is, perhaps, the highest test and best proof of philosophy. All others seem to me doubtful. He who can live content on a little, gives a pledge that he would preserve his probity and courage in the most difficult situations. He has placed his virtue, repose and happiness as far as possible above the caprices of his kind, and the vicissitudes of earthly things.

There are moments when the desire of wealth penetrates even the retreat of a sage, not with the puerile and dangerous wish to dazzle with show, but with the hope, dear to a good mind, that it might become a means of extended usefulness. When imagination creates her gay visions, we sometimes think of riches, and in our dreams make an employment of them worthy of envy. What a delightful field then opens before those who possess riches? They can encourage the progress of science, and aid in advancing the glory of letters. How much assistance they can offer to deserving young people whose first efforts announce happy dispositions, and whose character, at the same time, little fitted for worldly success, is a compound of independence and timidity? How much they may honor themselves in decking the modest retreat of the aged scholar who has consecrated his life to study, and who has neglected his personal fortune to enrich the age with inventions of genius! They have the means of giving a noble impulse to the arts, without trenching upon their resources. A picture, which perpetuates the remembrance of a generous or heroic exploit, costs no more than a group of bacchanalians or debauchees. A career more beautiful still, is open to opulence. Of how many vices and how many tears it may dry the source! A rich man, to become happy, has only to wish to become so. He can not only immortalize his name as the patron of arts and useful inventions, but, what is better, can deserve the blessings of the miserable. Such pleasures are durable, and may be tasted, with unsated relish, after a settled lassitude from the indulgence of all others.[22]

Let not such seducing dreams, however, leave us a prey to ambitious and disappointing desires at our awakening. It is in the sphere where Providence has placed us, that we must search for the means of being useful; and if there are pleasures which belong only to opulence, there are others which can best be found in mediocrity. Perhaps, in giving us riches, we shall realize but half the dream of virtue and contentment. ‘It seems to me,’ says Plato, ‘that gold and virtue were placed in the opposite scales of a balance; and that we cannot throw an additional weight into one scale, without subtracting an equal amount from the other.’

LETTER XI. OF OPINION AND THE AFFECTION OF MEN.

In selecting the same route, in which the agitated crowd is pressing onward, we are evidently on the wrong road to happiness; since we hear the multitude on every side expressing dissatisfaction with their life. If we choose a different path, we cannot expect to evade the shafts of censure, since the same multitude are naturally disposed, from pride of opinion, to think all, not on the same road with themselves, astray. It is, then, an egregious folly to hope for a happiness thus pursued by system, and for the approbation of the vulgar at the same time. Among the obstacles which are at war with our repose, one of the greatest, and at the same time most frivolous, is the fatal necessity of becoming of importance to others, instead of becoming calmly sufficient to ourselves. Like restless children, always seduced by appearances, it is a small point, that we are happy in our condition. We desire that it should excite envy. A happiness which glares not in the eyes of the multitude, compelling them to take note of it, is no longer regarded as happiness. There are both dupes and victims of opinion. Those who are devoured by the fever of intrigue, and those who, to dazzle others, dissipate their fortune, are the miserable victims. The dupes are those who voluntarily weary themselves out of three quarters of their life, and offer this as their apology—‘these visits, these ceremonies, these evening parties! they are tiresome, we grant. But we must mix with good company.’ Why not always mix with the best—your own enlightened and free thoughts?

I shall be obliged to present one truth under a thousand forms. It is that much courage is exacted for the attainment of happiness. Such a man has estimable qualities, an interesting family, tried friends, a fortune equal to his wants. His lot ought to seem a delightful one. How differently the public judge! ‘This man,’ says the public, ‘has intelligence. Why has he not increased his fortune? He is able to distinguish himself. Why has he not sought place or office? He seems to stand aloof, that he may pique himself on a proud and foolish originality. We judge him less favorably. Every one distinguishes himself, that can. To be without distinction is a proof that he has not power to acquire it.’ If the man, of whom this is said, has not courage, mourn over him. The public will end, by rendering him ashamed of his happiness.

To hear the false reasoning of the multitude is not what astonishes me. That stupid people, full of self-esteem, should hold these foolish discourses, with strong emphasis, is perfectly natural. What I wonder at is, that their maxims should guide people of understanding.

We are guilty of the whimsical contradiction of judging our own ideas with complacency, and of pronouncing upon those of others with severity. Yet we every day sacrifice principles which we esteem, through fear of being blamed by people whom we despise.[23]

The moment I escape the yoke of opinion, what a vast and serene horizon stretches out before my eyes! The pleasures of vanity scatter, like morning mists. Those of repose and independence remain. I no longer sacrifice to the disquieting desire of preserving a protector, or eclipsing my rivals. I am no longer the slave of gloomy etiquette. I henceforward prolong my delightful evenings for my own enjoyment. The caprices of men have lost their empire over me. If poor, I shall remain a stranger to the pains excited by blasting ridicule and overwhelming contempt. If rich, indolent and impertinent people will no longer regulate my expenses; and the happy choice of my pleasures will multiply my riches. These are presented to a wise man in two opposite relations. Do they call for a service? The most tender interest excites him to their aid. Do they show a disposition to manage him? He meets the attempt only with profound disdain. He who possesses a disciplined reason, and a courageous mind, does not choose to walk by the faith of a feeble and uncertain guide, who has need himself to be led. Allow yourself to become docile to the eccentric laws of opinion, and the slave of its imperious caprices, and follow it with the most earnest perseverance of loyalty; still it will finally terminate in condemning you.

But hypocrisy opens against me, and feeble men ask me, if it be not dangerous, thus to inculcate contempt of opinion? In following but a part of the ideas, which I announce, my readers might be led astray. The whole must be adopted, for a fair experiment of the result. A physician had chosen many plants, from which to form a salutary decoction. His patient swallowed the juice of but one and was poisoned.

Let us discard that timidity, which conducts to falsehood; and, to subserve morals, let us be faithful to truth. The wicked and the sage alike break the yoke of opinion; the former to increase his power of annoyance; the latter that of doing good.

I can conceive, that a depraved man will commit fewer faults, in yielding to the caprices of opinion, than in abandoning himself to his own errors. There are cruel passions and shameful vices, which he reproves even in the midst of his aberrations. But in doing so he gives to falsehood the name of politeness, and to cowardice the title of prudence. His favorite inculcation is, the terror of ridicule. To form true men, it is indispensable, that this precept should be engraven on their hearts—Fear nothing but remorse.

The simple and generous mind, that follows these lessons, and is worthy of happiness, need not blush, in view of his course. Only let him march on with unshrinking courage. In breaking the yoke of opinion, let him fly the still more shameful chains which the passions impose. In contemning the prejudices of the multitude dread still more those fatal instructers, who treat morality as a popular fable, and pretend to the honor of dispelling our errors. The aberrations of opinion prove only, that the most bold, not the most virtuous, press forward to announce their principles. These principles cannot annihilate that secret and universal opinion, that voice of conscience, without which the moral world would have presented only a chaos; and the human race would have perished. Consult those men, who have been instructed by the lessons of wisdom and experience. Consult those whom you would choose to resemble. Their first precept will be, that you descend into yourself. If we interrogate conscience, in good faith, she will enlighten us. She makes herself heard in the tumult of our vices, even against our will. If she become distorted, during the storm of our passions, she recovers the serenity of truth, as soon as that passes away; as a river, which has been agitated by a tempest, as soon as calm returns, reflects anew the verdure of the shores and the azure of heaven.

If there were a people formed by sage laws, whose words were frank, and whose actions upright, there it would be a duty to hearken to the voice of opinion in religious silence; and to follow its decrees, as though they were those of the divinity. Phocion asked, what foolish thing he had done when the Athenians applauded him? Happy the country, where this would have been a criminal pleasantry, and where the pages of that chapter which condemns opinion ought to be torn out.

Perhaps I may be accused of contradiction, in saying that, in the enlightened pursuit of happiness, the opinion of the multitude must be received with neglect; and yet, that it is pleasant to be esteemed by the society, of which we are members. We receive their services, and ought to know the pleasure of obliging them. We often share those weaknesses, which we censure in them. Our multiplied relations with them render their affection desirable. It may not be necessary to happiness; but it gives to enjoyment a more vivid charm.

May we be able, in pursuing the path indicated by wisdom, to obtain esteem, and taste the delight of a sentiment still pleasanter, and more precious. Friendship is, to esteem, what the flower is to the stem which sustains it.

But I can never imagine, that we ought to become subservient to the caprices of opinion. We should first be satisfied with ourselves; and afterwards, if it may be, with others. To merit affection, I perceive but two methods; to love our kind, and to cultivate those virtues which diffuse a charm over life.

LETTER XII. OF THE SENTIMENT MEN OUGHT TO INSPIRE.

There is no such being as a misanthrope. The men designated by this name, may be divided into many classes. In one class I see men of philosophic minds, revolted by our vices, or shocked by our contradictions, who censure these universal traits with a blunt frankness. Their disgust springs from the evils, which the universal follies of the age have shed upon our career. But if they really hated men, would they wield the pen of satire, in striving to correct them?

Another class consists of those unfortunate beings, who hope to find peace only in solitude. They fly a world which has pierced their heart with cruel wounds; and perhaps avow, in words, an implacable hatred towards men. But their sensibility belies their avowal; and we soothe their griefs, as soon as we ask their services.

Finally, there are those who strive only to render themselves singular, who are really less afflicted, than whimsical; rather officious than observing. These would tire us with the avowal of their love of mankind, if they did not deem that they render themselves more piquant and original by declaring that they hate them.

We may excuse indignation towards prejudices, contradictions and vices. But how can man have merited hatred or contempt? Man is good. Such is his primitive character, which he can never entirely efface. Good, but seduced, erring and unhappy, he has claims upon our most tender interest.

I do not propose to vex the question whether man is born good? I consider him to be born without either virtue or vice. But as he advances in life, nature arranges everything around him in such a manner, as ought to render him good. A mother is the first object that offers to his view. The first words which he hears express the tenderest affection. Caresses inspire his first sentiments; and his first occupations are sports.

Too soon, it is true, very different objects surround him. As he grows into life, he is struck with such a general spectacle of injustice, as reverses his ideas, and sours his character. But, although the contagion reaches him, and the passions and prejudices degrade him, some traits of his primitive goodness will always remain in his heart.

Even those terrible enthusiasts, who thrust themselves forward in the effervescence of party, who, to give triumph to their cause, blow up the incipient flame of civil discord, and with an unshrinking hand raise the sword of proscription, these fanatics may be strangers to every humane sentiment. Yet many of them are seen to love their wives and children with tenderness, and to preserve in the bosom of their family, so to speak, the germs of innocence. Robbers, the horror of society, whom the gibbet claims, honor themselves with some acts of humanity; and tyrants have their days of clemency.

During great calamities, natural sentiments develope themselves, and form a touching contrast with the scenes of horror with which they are surrounded. When a destructive conflagration is sweeping along a city, there are no distinctions, no animosities among the wretched sufferers, whom the same terror pursues. Enemies forget their hatred, and partisans their parties. The rich and poor cry out together. All love and aid each other. Misfortune has broken down the separating barriers of pride and prejudice, and they find each other good and equal.

Even upon the theatre of war, where the spectacle of destruction excites an appetite to destroy, we often discover affecting traces of humanity. At the siege of Mentz, in 1795, I remember that the advanced guards of the attack on the left, occupied an English garden, near the village of Montback. The garden was completely destroyed. The walks and labyrinths were changed, by the trampling of the soldiers, into high roads. Batteries were raised upon the mounds, from distance to distance, around which still grew rare trees and shrubs. The French bivouacs banished the verdure of the bowling greens; and in advance of them, a half overturned kiosk served for the front guard of the Austrians. The nearest water was on their side; the nearest wood on the side of the French. To obtain water, the French threw their canteens to the Austrians, who filled them and sent them back again. When night drew on, the French soldiers, in return, cut wood for the Austrians, and dragged fagots between the videttes of the two armies. Thus, waiting the signal to cut each other’s throat, the advance guards lived in peace, and made exchanges like those between friendly people. This spectacle excited in me a profound emotion; and I was scarcely able to refrain from tears, in seeing men, so situated, still good, on a soil red with blood.[24]

This primitive goodness is not the only beautiful trait which is continually developing to our view in human nature. For men to be generous, and magnanimous, the soul never entirely loses the elevation, which it received from its author.

Under oppression, in degradation, in slavery, men still preserve some impress of their first dignity. Those outrages which inflict personal humiliation, are among the most frequent causes of revolutions; and, perhaps tyrants incur less danger in shedding the blood of citizens, than in insulting them. An outrage upon a woman was the signal of the liberty of Rome. A similar crime drew on the fall of the Pisistrati, who had found no obstacle in overturning the laws of their country. The Swiss and Danes supported the rigors of a tyrannic yoke in silence. They arose the first day in which their oppressors exacted of them an act of degradation. Genoa had been conquered. An Austrian officer struck a man of the lower class. The indignant Genoese flew to arms, and drove away their conquerors.

Under the most absolute despotism, we sometimes see the subjects preserving magnanimous sentiments; and not being able to give them a useful direction, put forth, to serve their master, a courage equal to that with which free citizens honor themselves in serving their country. Of this I might cite striking proofs from the history of even barbarous nations.

A convincing demonstration, that an innate principle of elevation exists in the soul, results from the universality of religious ideas. Man is discouraged by his errors, his infirmities and faults in vain. An interior voice admonishes him of his high destination. Transient as he is, and comparatively lost in the immensity of the universe, he invokes the Divinity to sanctify the union of his espousals, and to preside over the birth of his infants. He raises his voice to him over the tombs of his fathers. When the contemplation of the works of the Eternal has inspired him with humble sentiments of himself, he still deems himself superior to all the beings that surround him. Occupying but a point on the globe, his disquieting thoughts embrace the universe. He beholds time devouring the objects of his affections, crumbling monuments and overturning even the works of nature. From the midst of the ruins he aspires to immortality.[24a]

What would not these sentiments, at once elevated and good, these precious germs produce, were they developed by happy circumstances! That they exist in the human bosom is a sufficient indication that we owe a tender interest to the being who possesses them. Let us love our kind, and cultivate the virtues which render us worthy of their affection.

LETTER XIII. OF SOME OF THE VIRTUES.

Placed in the midst of men, the most useful virtue is indulgence. To allow ourselves to become severe, is to forget how many good qualities we want ourselves; and from what faults we are preserved only by chance and our circumstances. It is to forget the weakness of men, and the empire exercised over them by the objects that surround them. To render exact justice to our kind, we ought to take into the estimate all the assistance and all the obstacles, with which they have met in their career. Thus weighing them, celebrated actions will become less astonishing, and faults begin to appear excusable.

By cultivating the spirit of indulgence, we learn the happy secret of being well with ourselves, and well with men. Some carry into their intercourse with the world an austere frankness. They are dreaded, and the opposition which they every day experience, increases their disagreeable and tiresome roughness, and their officious rudeness. Others, blushing at no complaisance, and equally supple and false, smile at what displeases them; praise what they feel to be ridiculous; and applaud what they know to be vile. Be indulgent, and you will not sacrifice self-esteem; and your frankness, far from annoying, will render your affability more amiable.

The less we occupy ourselves with the vices and aberrations of men, the more pleasant does existence become. Indulgence carries its own recompense with it, and causes us to see our kind almost such as they should be.

Let us extend a courageous indulgence towards those unfortunate beings, who are victims of long continued errors. Enough will be ready to assume the office of their accusers. Let us draw round them the veil of charity. I am aware that gloomy moralists will object to these views; and call them easy principles, that encourage the vices, flatter the passions, and excuse disorders. Believe me, the most easy and successful mode of reclaiming the wandering, is to carry encouragement and hope to their hearts, and to have faith in their repentance.[25]

Born in an age when every one professes to applaud toleration, far from adopting the real spirit, we scarcely know how to practise indulgence even towards abstract opinions, that differ from our own. Let us never forget the weakness and error of our own judgment and understanding; and then we shall possess an habitual temper of candor towards the views of others. In most instances, when we say ‘that man thinks rightly,’ the phrase, when translated, imports, ‘that man thinks as I do.’

Let us never forget that chance may have given us the opinions most dear to us. The ardent patron of this party, had he only been in a house contiguous to his own, would have had opinions and prejudices, the exact reverse of those he now reveres. It is not improbable that he might have died in the opposite ranks.

A particular idea, which you formerly deemed correct, at present seems false. Perhaps you may one day return to your first judgment. Let us accord, to our antagonist, a right which we frequently exercise for ourselves, the right to be deceived. During the contests of party, I have more than once seen the spectacle of two men changing their principles almost at the same moment, in such a manner, that one of them takes the place of the other in the faction, which, but a short time since, he professed to detest. Taking human nature as it is, into view, this does not astonish me. What I find strange is, that these two men should hate each other more than ever, and that it has become impossible to reconcile them, now that the one has espoused the opinion which the other held but a moment before.[26]

An essential truth that ought to be constantly announced, is, that both political and religious opinions have much less influence than is commonly imagined upon the qualities of the heart. No verity has been so completely demonstrated to my conviction. I have been conversant with men of all parties. In every one I have met with persons full of disinterestedness and integrity. To esteem them, it was only necessary to remark the noble and unshrinking courage with which they were willing to suspend everything on the issue of their convictions.[27]

A crowd of useful reflections upon this subject naturally offer, upon which it would be easy to enlarge.—The brevity of my plan impels me to other subjects. There is one quality, difficult to define, yet easily understood, which always affects us pleasantly. It is a quality as rare as its effects are useful; and yet we have scarcely a specific term in our language by which fully to designate it. An obliging disposition is the common phrase that conveys it. Examine all the pleasant things of life, and you will find this disposition the pleasantest of all. There often remains no memory of the benefits received. Of those we have rendered, something is always retained.

But what shall we say of the ungrateful? We are told that they are formidable from their numbers and boldness, and that they people the whole earth. How eccentric and contradictory are the common maxims of the world! We admit that we have a right to exact gratitude; and yet wish that benefits should be forgotten: I hold it wrong to depend upon gratitude, since the expectation will generally be deceived.—On the contrary, I approve his course, who keeps an exact account of his good actions. In reading the record, he will one day taste a legitimate reward. What reading can be so useful? To remember that we have done good in time past, is to bind us to beneficence in time to come. We hear it continually repeated, that it requires a sublime effort to do good to our enemies.—Men more zealous than enlightened have advanced, that the morality of the gospel has alone prescribed the rendering of good for evil. Evangelical duty is sufficiently elevated by being founded on the basis of higher sanctions and a future retribution; and rests not its claims upon new discoveries of what is true, beautiful and obligatory in morals. They who advocate that the grand maxims of evangelical morality are found nowhere else than in the gospel, seem to me to have committed two faults; the one in advancing an error, the other in tending to estrange men from the virtues they inculcate, by intimating that their practice exacts more than human power.

A writer of unquestionable piety, the late Sir William Jones found the grand maxim, ‘do unto others as you would wish them to do unto you,’ implied in the discourses of Lysias, Thales and Pittacus, and, word for word, in the original of Confucius. The obligation to render good for evil, he affirms, is inculcated in the religious books of the Hindoos and Arabians; in confirmation of which he cites many passages from them. The sentiment of moralists has everywhere been graven upon the human heart. It is enough that our Lord has sanctioned the sublime precepts that belong to our faith with immortal recompenses; and still more may we rely upon those sanctions, when we add to them the present pleasure of performing good actions.[27a]

Let us add, that in enjoining the gospel maxim to render good for evil, we inculcate elevation of mind, the source of all the virtues. But christian moralists have too often been tempted to neutralize or destroy the effect of their precepts, by pushing them to absurd or impracticable lengths. To practise forgiveness, and to do good, are evangelical commands, as sublime as they are conformable to our natural views of duty. To enjoin upon us to degrade ourselves in the estimate of our enemies, by feeling and acting towards them as though they were our friends, as some have understood the bearing of the christian precept, would be injurious and impracticable. Socrates pardoned his enemies, but preserved an imposing dignity. There was no abasement in the infinitely higher example of him, who, suffering on the cross, prayed for his murderers.

If such are our obligations as men and Christians towards our enemies, what duties ought we not to fulfil to those benefactors who have steadily sought occasions to be useful to us, to ward off danger from us, and to repair our misfortunes? To such let us seek incessant opportunities of acquitting our debt. Gratitude will prolong the pleasure conferred by their benefits.

Indulgence, and the desire to oblige, seem to me the two principal means of conciliating to ourselves the affections of our kind. A virtue which at least commands their esteem is integrity. Not only is he who practises it, faithful to his engagements, since he allows no promises of his to be held slight, but his uprightness makes itself felt in all his actions, and frankness in all his conversation. The faults that he commits he is prompt to acknowledge; he confesses them without false shame, and seeks neither to exaggerate nor extenuate them. Touching the interests which are common to him and other people, he decides for simple justice; and, in so awarding, does not deem that he injures himself, his first possession being his own self-respect. Without rendering me high services, he obliges me in the lesser charities, and procures me one of the most vivid pleasures I can taste, that of contemplating a noble character.

Among the virtues which ought to secure a kind regard, we universally assign to modesty a high rank. A simple and modest man lives unknown, until a moment, which he could not have foreseen, reveals his estimable qualities and his generous actions. I compare him to the concealed flower springing from an humble stem, which escapes the view, and is discovered only by its perfume. Pride quickly fixes the eye, and he who is always his own eulogist, dispenses every other person from the obligation to praise him. A truly modest man, emerging from his transient obscurity, will obtain those delightful praises which the heart awards without effort. His superiority, far from being importunate, will become attractive. Modesty gives to talents and virtues the same charm which chastity adds to beauty.

Let us carry into the world neither curiosity nor indiscretion. Curiosity is the defect of a little mind, which, not knowing how to employ itself at home, feels the necessity of being amused with the occupations of others. In relation to minute objects it is ridiculous. In important affairs it becomes odious. Let us know nothing about those debates, piques and parties, which it is not in our power to settle.

An attribute so precious, that, in my eye, it becomes a virtue, is a gentle and constant equality of temper.—To sustain it, not only exacts a pure mind, but a vigor of understanding which resists the petty vexations and fleeting contrarieties which a multitude of objects and events are continually bringing. What an unalterable charm does it give to the society of the man who possesses it! How is it possible to avoid loving him whom we are certain always to find with serenity on his brow and a smile in his countenance?

I foresee that our brilliant observers, as they run over these precepts, will say to me, ‘you resemble those philosophers who trace the plan of a republic, without taking into the account the passions of men or the state of society; a thousand times more unreasonable, than those writers of romance who publish their dreams as dreams. Your maxims upon indulgence will only awaken for you the pity due to good natured weakness. The maxim of the world is, be adroit to seize upon defects, and prompt to censure the weaknesses of men, that you may intimidate those who can only serve to annoy you; and give up to ridicule those who can only amuse you. Make a display of your desire to oblige. Pronounce sentimental phrases with grace. Make dupes if you can; but take care that you do not become one yourself, by having your own maxims practised upon you. Credit is not revenue, but a sum which becomes exhausted in proportion as you spend upon it, without replacing it. Ought I to be modest when so many examples prove that talents are a small thing, if there be not subjoined the happy talent of making them known. The man who speaks of himself with modesty is believed upon his word; and when I search for the causes of that admiration which certain personages have obtained, I can discover no other than the long obstinacy and persevering intrepidity which they have put in requisition to praise themselves. There are eulogies which men give themselves, of which, as of the calumnies that they wipe out, some traces will always remain. Finally, opinion alone renders our qualities estimable; and he who, with a view to succeed, should immediately cultivate the tawdry virtues which you celebrate, would be as ridiculous as he who should appear in society in the costume worn a century ago.’ They who say this are as right, in their views, as I am in mine. If the interest with which our kind inspires us, if our virtues cannot shield us from injustice, let us hold ourselves aloof from opinion, and while we allow the multitude their way of thinking, let it not disturb our repose. Among the circumstances essential to felicity, I count the attachment of some individuals, but not popularity.

LETTER XIV. OF MARRIAGE.

Since we cannot assure ourselves of the general affection, nor even of the justice of men, it becomes our interest, in the midst of the great mass, that we cannot move, to create a little world, which we can arrange at the disposal of our reason and affections.

In this retreat, dictated to us alike by our instincts and our hearts, let us forget the chimeras which the crowd pursue; and if the men of fashion and the world stare, ridicule, and even condemn us, let their murmurs sound in our ears as the dashing of the waves on the distant shore, to the stranger, under the hospitable roof which shelters him from the storm.

The universe of reason and affection must be composed of a single family. Of that universe a wedded pair must be the centre. A wife is the best and the only disinterested friend, by the award of nature. She remains such, when fortune has scattered all others. How many have been recalled to hope by a virtuous and affectionate wife, when all beside had been lost! How many, retrieved from utter despondency, have felt in an ineffable effusion of heart, that conjugal heroism and constancy were an ample indemnity for the deprivation of all other good things! How many, undeceived by external illusions, have in this way been brought home to their real good! If we wish to see the attributes of conjugal heroism, in their purest brilliancy, let us suppose the husband in the last degree of wretchedness. Let us imagine him not only culpable, but so estimated, and an outcast from society. Repentance itself, in the view of candor, has not been available to cloak his faults. She alone, accusing him not, is only prodigal of consolations. Embracing duties as severe as his reverses, she voluntarily shares his captivity or exile. He finds still, on the faithful bosom of innocence, a refuge, where remorse becomes appeased; as in former days, the proscribed found, at the foot of the altar, an asylum against the fury of men.

Marriage is generally assumed as a means of increasing credit and fortune, and of assuring success in the world. It should be undertaken as a chief element of happiness, in the retirement of domestic repose.[28] I would wish that my disciple, while still in the freshness of youth, might have reason and experience enough to select the beloved person, whom he would desire one day to espouse. I would hope, that, captivated with her dawning qualities, and earnestly seeking her happiness, he might win her tenderness, and find his satisfaction in training her to a conformity to his tastes, habits and character.

The freshness of her docile nature demands his first forming cares. As she advances in life she is moulded to happy changes, adapted to supply his defects. She is reared modest, amiable, instructed, respectable, and respected; one day to govern his family, and direct his house, by diffusing around the domestic domain, order and peace. Let neither romances, metaphysics, pedantry nor fashion render a qualification for these important duties, either trifling or vulgar in her view. Still, domestic duties are by no means to occupy all her hours. The time which is not devoted to them will flow quietly on in friendly circles, not numerous, but animated by gayety, friendship and the inexplicable pleasures which spring from intercourse with rational society. There are, also, more unimportant duties, which we expect her not to neglect. We wish her to occupy some moments at a toilet; where simplicity should be the basis of elegance; and where native tact might develope the graces, and vary, and multiply, if I may so say, the forms of her beauty. In fine, the versatility of her modes of rendering herself agreeable, should increase the chances of always escaping ennui in her presence.

But train women to visit a library as savans, and they will be likely to bring from it pedantry without solid instruction; and coquetry without feminine amiability. I would not be understood to question the capability of the female understanding. I am not sure that I would wish the wife of my friend to have been an author, though some of the most amiable and enlightened women have been such. But I deem that in their mental constitution, and in the assignment of their lot, providence has designated them to prefer the graces to erudition; and that to acquire a wreath of laurels, they must ordinarily relinquish their native crown of roses.[28a] When we see a husband and wife thus united by tenderness, good hearts and simple tastes, everything presages for them a delightful futurity. Let them live contented in their retirement. Instead of wishing to blazon, let them conceal their happiness, and exist for each other. Life will become to them the happiest of dreams.

Perhaps the world will say, ‘you speak, it may be, of such a wife as you would be understood to possess yourself. But you do not paint marriage in the abstract, while you thus describe happiness as finding a habitation within the domestic walls, and pain and sorrow without: how many people find eternal ennui at home, and respire pleasure, only when they have fled their own threshold.’ There are few wives so perfect, says La Bruyere, ‘as to hinder their husbands from repenting at least once in a day, that they have a wife; or from envying the happiness of him who has none.’

This sentence, instead of containing a just observation, is only an epigram. In looking round a circle of individuals, ridiculously called the world, we shall find happy family establishments less rare than we imagine. Besides, it would be absurd to count among unhappy unions, all those which are not wholly exempt from stormy passions. Not only is perfect felicity a chimerical expectation on the earth, but we meet with many people who would be fatigued into ennui in a perfect calm, and who require a little of the spice of contrariety to season the repast of life. I would not covet their taste; but there are modes of being singular, which, without imparting happiness, procure pleasures. Finally, supposing the number of unhappy marriages to be as immense as is contended, what is the conclusion? The great majority adopting, as maxims of life, principles so different from mine, it would be strange if they obtained such results as I desire.

In these days, the deciding motive with parents, in relation to marriage, is interest; and, what seems to me revolting in the spirit of the age, is, that the young have also learned to calculate. When a man marries simply on a speculation of interest, if he sees his fortune and distinction secured, reign disorder and alienation in his house as they may, he is still happier than he deserves to be.

Our marriages of inclination guaranty happiness no more than our marriages of interest. What results should be anticipated from the blind impulse of appetite? Let there be mutual affection, such as reason can survey with a calm and severe scrutiny. Such love as is painted in romances is but a fatal fever. It is children alone who believe themselves in love, only when they feel themselves in a delirium. They have imagined that life should be a continual ecstasy; and these indulged dreams of anticipation spoil the reality of wedded life. I have supposed the husband older than his wife. I have imagined him forming the character of his young, fair and docile companion; and that, so to speak, they have become assimilated to each other’s tastes and habits. The right combination of reason and love assures for them, under such circumstances, as much as possible, a futurity of happiness.

I might here speak of the misery of jealousy and infidelity, and the comparative guilt of these vices in the husband and the wife. But these are sources of torment only in unions contracted and sustained by the maxims and the spirit of the world. According to my views these crimes could not mar the marriages which were undertaken from right motives, and under the approving sanction of severe reason. I, therefore, pass them by, as not belonging to my subject; and as supposing that when marriage is the result of wise foresight and regulated choice, and when its duties are discharged from a proper sense of their obligation, such faults can not occur.

Another cause of disunion springs from the proud temper of some wives. They erroneously and obstinately persuade themselves that fidelity includes all their duty. More than one husband, incessantly tormented by an imperious and capricious wife, feels almost disposed to envy the gentle spouse who sleeps pleasantly under deceitful caresses. As much as an honest man ought to avoid crimes, in order to merit his reputation and sustain it, ought the highest meed awarded to women to be bestowed, not on those alone who are chaste, but on those who know how to watch over the happiness of their family by eager attentions and studious cares.

This petulance of temper is commonly supposed to be a conjoined attribute of conjugal fidelity. I have sometimes seen wives both peevish and coquettish, and I cannot imagine a more odious combination. If we despise the man who is rough and slovenly at home, and becomes charming in society, what sentiment does that wife merit who wears out her husband’s patience with her arrogance, and puts on seducing graces, and affects sensibility, in the presence of strangers?

I have often heard men who were sensible upon every other subject, express their conviction that the orientals, in excluding their women from all eyes but their own, had established the only reasonable domestic policy. There is no more wit than humanity in this barbarous sentiment, however frequently it is uttered. No one could be in earnest, in wishing to copy, into free institutions, this appalling vestige of slavery. But my inward respect for women withholds me from flattering them. Authority ought to belong to the husband; and the influence of tenderness, graces and the charms of constancy, gentleness and truth, constituting the appropriate female empire, belongs of right to the wife. I take leave to illustrate this phrase. Masculine vigor, and aptitude to contend and resist, clearly indicate that nature has confided authority to man. To dispossess him of it, and control him by a still more irresistible sway, it is necessary that the feeble sex should learn patience, docility, passive courage, and the management of their appropriate weapons in danger and sorrow, and to become energetic for the endurance of the peaceful cares of the domestic establishment. Man is formed by nature for the calls of active courage; and woman, for the appalling scenes of pain and affliction, and the agony of the sick and dying bed. In a word, all argument apart, nature has clearly demonstrated to which sex authority belongs.

I discover that the defects of man spring from the tendency of his natural traits, in which force predominates, to run to excess. I see his gentle companion endowed with attributes and qualities naturally tending to temper his defects. The means she has received to reach this end announce that it is the purpose of nature that she should use them with this view. She has charms which, when rightly applied, none can resist. Her character is a happy compound of sensibility, wisdom and levity. She has superadded a felicity of address which she owes to her organization, and which the reserve, that her education imposes, serves to develope. Thus the qualities, and even the imperfections of the two sexes serve to bring them together. It follows, that man should possess authority, and woman influence, for their mutual happiness.

When the wife commands, I cease to behold a respectable married pair. I see a ridiculous tyrant, and a still more ridiculous slave. It is vain to urge that she may be most capable of authority, and that her orders may be conformable to wisdom and justice. They are absurd, from the very circumstance that they are orders. The virtues which the husband ought to practise towards his wife must have their origin in love, which can only be inspired, and which flies all restraint. In a single position, the wife honors herself in assuming authority. It is when reverses have overwhelmed and desolated her husband, so that, ceasing to sustain her and changing the natural order, she supports him. Grant that he receives hope as her gift; grant that he is compelled to blush in imitating her example of courage; she aspires to this power no longer than to be able to restore him to the place whence misery had cast him down.[30]

It is a truth that ought not to be contested, that dissatisfied husbands and wives often love each other more than they imagine. Suppose them to believe themselves indifferent; and to seem so; and even on the verge of mutual hate; should one of them fall sick, we see the other inspired with sincere alarms. Suppose them on the eve of separation; when the fatal moment comes, both recoil from the act. Habit almost causes the pains, to which we have been long accustomed, to become cause of regret when they cease. When the two begin mutually to complain of their destiny, I counsel each, instead of wishing to criminate and correct each other, to give each other an example of mutual forbearance and indulgence. It may be, that the cause of their mutual dissatisfaction is unreal; the supposed wrong not intended, the suspicion false. Candor and forgiveness will appease all. The husband may have gone astray only in thought; which is beyond human privilege to fathom. The wife may have minor defects and an unequal temper, without forfeiting much excellence and many remaining claims to be loved. The morbid influence of ill health and irresistible temperament, in their powerful action upon the temper, may have been the source whence the faults flowed on either part; and the mutual wrongs may thus have been, in some sense, independent of the will of the parties. Bound, as they are, in such intimate and almost indissoluble relations, before they give that happiness, which they hoped and promised, to the winds, let them exhaust their efforts of self-command and mutual indulgence, to bring back deep and true affection.

The purest happiness of earth is, unquestionably, the portion of two beings wisely and fitly united in the bonds of indissoluble confidence and affection. What a touching picture does Madame de Stael present in these lines: ‘I saw, during my sojourn in England, a man of the highest merit united to a wife worthy of him. One day, as we were walking together, we met some of those people that the English call gipseys, who generally wander about in the woods in the most deplorable condition. I expressed pity for them thus enduring the union of all the physical evils of nature. “Had it been necessary,” said the affectionate husband, pointing to his wife, “in order to spend my life with her, that I should have passed thirty years in begging with them, we would still have been happy.” “Yes,” responded the wife, “the happiest of beings.”’

LETTER XV. CHILDREN.

One of the happiest days, and, perhaps, the most beautiful of life, is when the birth of a child opens the heart of the parent to emotions, as yet, unknown.[31] Yet what torments are prepared by this epoch! What painful anxiety, what agonies their sufferings excite! What terror, when we fear for their infant life! These alarms terminate not with their early age. The inquietude with which their parents watch over their destiny fills every period of their life to their last sigh.

The compensating satisfaction which they bring must be very vivid, since it counterbalances so many sufferings. In order to love them, we have no need to be convinced that they will respond to our cares, and one day repay them. If there be in the human heart one disinterested sentiment, it is parental love. Our tenderness for our children is independent of reflection. We love them because they are our children. Their existence makes a part of ours; or, rather, is more than ours. All that is either useful or pleasant to them, brings us a pure happiness, springing from their health, their gayety, their amusements.

The chief end which we ought to propose to ourselves, in rearing them, is to train and dispose them so that they may wisely enjoy that existence which is accorded them. Of all the happy influences which can be brought to bear upon their mind and manners, none is more beneficial than the example of parental gentleness. The good Plutarch most eloquently advanced this doctrine in ancient time. Montaigne, Rousseau, M’Kenzie, and various writers of minor fame among the moderns, have reproduced his ideas, and, by their authority, have finally effected a happy revolution in education. I delight to trace the most important ideas thus reproduced by enlightened and noble minds in different ages. It is chiefly by persevering in the system of the influence of gentleness that we may expect an ultimate melioration in the human character and condition.

But scarcely has any such salutary change been effected, before minds, either superficial or soured, see only the inconveniences which accompany it; and, instead of evading or correcting them, would return to the point whence they started. We hear people regretting the decline of the severity of ancient education; and maintaining the wisdom of those contrarieties and vexations which children used to experience; ‘a fitting discipline of preparation,’ say they, ‘to prepare them for the sorrows of life.’ Would they, on the same principle, inflict bruises and contusions, to train them to the right endurance of those that carelessness or accident might bring? ‘It is an advantage,’ say they, ‘to put them to an apprenticeship of pain at the period when the sorrow it inflicts is light and transient.’ This mode of speaking, with many others of similar import, presents a combination of much error with some truth.

The sufferings of childhood seem to us trifling and easy to endure, because time has interposed distance between them and us; and we have no fear of ever meeting them again. It does not cease to be a fact, that the child that passes a year under the discipline of the ferule of a severe master, is as unhappy as a man deprived a year of his liberty. The latter, in truth, has less reason to complain; since he ought to find, in the discipline of his reason, and his maturity and force of character, more powerful motives for patient endurance. Parents! Providence has placed the destiny of your children in your hands. When you thus sacrifice the present to an uncertain future, you ought to have strong proof that you will put at their disposal the means of indemnification. If the sacrifice of the present to the future were indispensable, I would not dissuade from it. But my conviction is, that the best means of preparing them for the future may be found in rendering them as happy as possible for the present. If it should be your severe trial to be deprived of them in their early days, you will, at least, have the consolation of being able to say, ‘I have rendered them happy during the short time they were confided to me.’ Strive then, by gentleness, guided by wisdom and authority, to cast the sunshine of enjoyment upon the necessary toils and studies of the morning of their existence.

It is the stern award of nature to bring them sorrows. Our task is to soothe them. I feel an interest when I see the child regret the trinket it has broken, or the bird it has reared. Nature in this way, gives them the first lessons of pain, and strengthens them to sustain the more bitter losses of maturer days. Let us prudently second the efforts of nature; and to console the weeping child, let us not attempt to change the course of these fugitive ideas, nor to efface the vexation by a pleasure. In unavoidable suffering let the dawning courage and reason find strength for endurance. Let us first share the regrets, and gently bring the sufferer to feel the inutility of tears. Let us accustom him not to throw away his strength in useless efforts; and let us form his mind to bear without a murmur the yoke of necessity. These maxims, I am aware, are directly against the spirit of modern education, which is almost entirely directed towards the views of ambition.

But while I earnestly inculcate gentleness in parental discipline, I would not confound it with weakness. I disapprove that familiarity between parents and children which is unfavorable to subordination. Fashion is likely to introduce an injurious equality into this relation. I see the progress of this dangerous effeminacy with regret. The dress and expenditures which would formerly have supplied ten children, scarcely satisfy at present the caprices of one. This foolish complaisance of parents prepares, for the future husbands and wives, a task most difficult to fulfil. Let us not, by anticipating and preventing the wishes of children, teach them to be indolent in searching for their own pleasures. Their age is fertile in this species of invention. That they may be successful in seizing enjoyment, little more is requisite to be performed on our part than to break their chains.

There are two fruitful sources of torments for children. One is, what the present day denominates politeness. It is revolting to me to see children early trained to forego their delightful frankness and simplicity, and learning artificial manners. We wish them to become little personages; and we compel them to receive tiresome compliments, and to repeat insignificant formulas of common-place flattery. In this way, politeness, destined to impart amenity to life, becomes a source of vexation and restraint. It would seem as if we thought it so important a matter to teach the usages of society, that they could never be known unless the study were commenced in infancy. Besides, do we flatter ourselves, that we shall be able to teach children the modes and the vocabulary of politeness, without initiating them, at the same time, in the rudiments of falsehood? They are compelled to see that we consider it a trifle. If we wish them to become flatterers and dishonest, I ask what more efficient method we could take?

Labor is the second source of their sufferings. I would by no means be understood to dissuade from the assiduous cultivation of habits of industry. You may enable children to remove mountains, if you will contrive to render their tasks a matter of amusement and interest. The extreme curiosity of children announces an instinctive desire for instruction. But instead of profiting by it, we adopt measures which tend to stifle it. We render their studies tiresome, and then say that the young naturally tire of study.

When the parent is sufficiently enlightened to rear his child himself, instead of plying him with rudimental books, dictionaries and restraint, let him impart the first instructions by familiar conversation. Ideas advanced in this way are accommodated to the comprehension of the pupil, by mutual good feeling rendered attractive, and brought directly within the embrace of his mind. This instruction leads him to observe, and accustoms him to compare, reflect and discriminate, offers the sciences under interesting associations, and inspires a natural thirst for instruction. Of all results which education can produce, this is the most useful. A youth of fifteen, trained in this way, will come into possession of more truths, mixed with fewer errors, than much older persons reared in the common way. He will be distinguished by the early maturity of his reason, and by his eagerness to cultivate the sciences, which, instead of producing fatigue or disgust, will every day give birth to new ideas and new pleasures. I am nevertheless little surprised, that the scrupulous advocates of the existing routine should insist that such a method tends to form superficial thinkers. I can only say to these profound panegyrists of the present order of instruction, that the method which I recommend, was that of the Greeks.—Their philosophers taught while walking in the shade of the portico or of trees, and were ignorant of the art of rendering study tiresome, and not disposed to throw over it the benefits of constraint. Modern instructers ought, therefore, to find that they were shallow reasoners, and that their poets and artists could have produced only crude and unfinished efforts.[33]

Besides, this part of education is of trifling importance, compared with the paramount obligation to give the pupil robust health, pure morals, and an energetic mind. I deeply regret that the despotic empire of opinion is more powerful than paternal love. Instead of gravely teaching to your son the little arts of shining in the world, have the courage to say to him, ‘oblige those of thy kind whose sufferings thou canst lighten, and exhibit a constant and universal example of good morals. Form, every evening, projects necessary for enjoying a happy and useful succeeding day.’ Thus you will see him useful, good and happy, if not great in the world’s estimation. You will behold him peacefully descending the current of time. In striking the balance with life, he will be able to say, I have known only those sufferings which no wisdom could evade, and no efforts repel. But such are the prejudices of the age, to give such counsels to a son requires rare and heroic courage.

Is not that filial ingratitude, of which parents so generally complain, the bitter fruit of their own training?—You fill their hearts with mercenary passions, and with measureless ambition. You break the tenderest ties, and send them to distant public schools. Your children, in turn, put your lessons to account, and abandon your importunate and declining age, if you depend on them, to mercenary hands. When they were young, you ridiculed them out of their innocent recklessness, and frankness, and want of worldly wisdom. You vaunted to them that ambition and those arts of rising, which, put in practice, have steeled their hearts against filial piety, as well as the other affections that belong not to calculation. Since the paramount object of your training was to teach them to shine, and make the most out of every body, you have at least a right to expect from their vanity, pompous funeral solemnities. I revere that indication of infinite wisdom, that has rendered the love of the parent more anxious and tender than that of the child. The intensity of the affections ought to be proportionate to the wants of the beings that excite them. But ingratitude is not in nature. Better training would have produced other manners. In rearing our children with more enlightened care, in inspiring them with moderate desires, in reducing their eagerness for brilliancy and distinction, we shall render them happy, without stifling their natural filial sentiments; and we shall thus use the best means of training them to sustain and soothe our last moments, as we embellished their first days.[34]

LETTER XVI. OF FRIENDSHIP.

Let us bring within the family circle a few persons of amiable manners and simple tastes. Our domestic retreat may then become our universe. But we must search for real friends, with capabilities for continuing such. If interest and pleasure break the accidental ties of a day, shall friendship, which was always a stranger to the connexion, be accused of the infraction?

A real friend must not be expected from the common ties of vulgar interest; but must be, in the circle to which he belongs, as a brother of adoption. So simple should be our confidence in the entireness of his affection, and the disinterestedness and wisdom of his advice, as to incline us to consult him without afflicting our wife or children by a useless communication of our perplexities. To him we should be able to confide our fears; and while we struggle, by his advice and aid to escape the pressing evil which menaces to overwhelm us, our family may still repose in tranquil security.[35]

If he suffer in turn, we share his pains. If he have pleasures, we reciprocally enjoy them. If either party experience reverses, instead of finding himself alone in misery, he receives consolations so touching and tender, that he ceases to complain of a lot which has enabled him to become acquainted with the depth of the resources of friendship.

How pure is the sentiment, how simple the pleasures, which flow from the intercourse of two men united by similar opinions and like desires, who have both cultivated letters, the arts, and true wisdom! With what rapidity the moments of these charming conversations fly! Even the hours consecrated to study are less pleasant, perhaps less instructive. Such a friend, so to speak, is of a different nature from that of the rest of men. They either conceal our defects, or cause us to see them from motives of ill feeling. A friend so discusses them, in our presence, as not to wound us. He kindly reproaches us with faults, to our face, which he extenuates, or excuses before others in our absence. We can never fully comprehend to what extent a friend may be useful and dear until after having been a long time the faithful companion of his good and evil fortune. What emotions we experience in giving ourselves up to the remembrance of the common perils, storms and trials we have experienced together! It is never without tenderness of heart that we say, ‘we have had the same thoughts, affections and hopes. Such an event penetrated us with common joy; such another filled us with grief. Uniting our efforts, we rescued a victim of poverty and misfortune. We mutually shared his tears of gratitude. The hard necessity of circumstances separated us; and our paths so diverged that seas and mountains divided us. But we still remained present to each other, in communion of thought. He had fears for me, and I for him, as we foresaw each other’s dangers. I learned his condition, interpreted his thoughts and feelings, and said, ‘such a fear agitates him; he forms such a project, conceives such a hope.’ Finally, we met again. What charms, what effusion of heart in the union!’

It is a puerile absurdity to be proud of the reputation of one to whom we are united by the ties of blood—a distinction which nature gave us. But we may be justly proud of the rare qualities of our friend. The ties of this relation are not the work of nature or contingency. We prove that, in meriting his esteem, we, at least, resemble him in the qualities of his heart.

I immediately form a high opinion of the man whom I hear earnest in the applause of the talents or virtues of his friend. He possesses the qualities which he applauds; since he has need to affirm their existence in the person he loves.

This noble and pure sentiment has had its peaceable heroes. What names, what examples could I not cite, in ancient and in modern times! What splendid and affecting proofs of identity of fortune, joys and sorrows, and even danger and death! I knew two friends, of whom every one spoke with respect. One of them was asked the extent of his fortune? ‘Mine is small,’ he replied, ‘but my friend is rich.’ The other, a few days before he died of a contagious disease, asked, ‘why so many persons were allowed to enter his chamber? No one,’ he added, ‘ought to be admitted but my friend.’ Thus were they one in fortune, in life and in death.[36]

I deem, that even moralists have sought to render this peaceable sentiment, this gentle affection, and the only one exempt from storms, too exclusive. I am aware, how much our affections become enfeebled, in proportion as their objects multiply. There is force in the quaint expression of an old author. ‘Love is like a large stream which bears heavy laden boats. Divide it into many channels, and they run aground.’ Still, we may give the honored name of friend to several, without profaning it, if there exist between us mutual sympathy, high esteem and tender interest; if our pleasures and pains are, in some sense, common stock, and we are reciprocally capable of a sincere devotion to each other’s welfare. As much, however, as I revere the real sentiment, I am disgusted by the sickly or exaggerated affectation of it.

The sentiment is still more delightful when inspired by a woman. I shall be asked, if it can exist in its purity between persons of the different sexes? I answer in the affirmative, when the impulses of youth no longer agitate the heart. We then experience the whole charm of the sentiment, as the difference of sex, which is never entirely forgotten, imparts to it a vague and touching tenderness and an ideal delight for which language is too poor to furnish terms.

Why can love and friendship, the sunshine of existence, decay in the heart? Why are they not eternal? But since it is not so, if we are cruelly deceived in our affections, the surest means of medicating our pain is, instead of cherishing misanthropic distrust, to look round and form the same generous ties anew. Has your friend abandoned you? or, worse, has your wife become unworthy of your love? It is better to be deceived a thousand times than to add, to the grief of wounded affection, the insupportable burden of general distrust, misanthropy and hatred. Let these baneful feelings never usurp the place of those sentiments which must constitute human happiness. Pardon to those by whom you have been loved, the sorrows which their abandonment has caused you, in consideration of those days of the past which was embellished by their friendship.

But these treasons and perfidies are only frequent in the intercourse of those who are driven about by the whirlwinds of life; in which so many opposing interests, so many deceitful pleasures confuse and separate men. The simple minded and good, whose days flow pleasantly in retreat, every day value more the price of those ties that unite them. Their happiness is veiled and guarantied by a guardian obscurity.

I give place to none of the illusions of inexperience in regard to men.[37] The errors, contradictions and vices with which they are charged, exist. I admit that the greater part of satires are faithful paintings. But there are still to be found, everywhere, persons whose manners are frank, whose heart is good, and whose temper amiable. These persons exist in sufficient numbers to compose this new world of which I have spoken. Writers are disposed to declaim against men. I have never ceased to feel good will towards my kind. I have chosen only to withdraw from the multitude, in order to select my position in the centre of a small society. For me there are no longer stupid or wicked people on the earth.

I have examined the essential things of life, tranquillity and independence of mind, health, competence and the affection of some of our kind. I wish now to give my observations something more of detail and diversity. But I wish it still to be borne in mind, that I give only the materials and outlines of an essay, and make no pretensions to fill out a complete treatise. I wish that a temple may be raised to happiness. Hands, more skilful than mine, will rear it. It is sufficient to my purpose to indicate those delightful sites, in the midst of which it may be erected.

LETTER XVII. THE PLEASURES OF THE SENSES.

Nature has decreed, that each one of our senses should be a source of pleasure. But if we seek our enjoyment, only in physical sensations, the same stern arbiter has enacted, that our capability of pleasure should soon be exhausted, and that, palled and disgusted, we should die without having known true happiness.[38]

Exactly in proportion as pleasures are less associated with the mind, their power to give us any permanent satisfaction is diminished. On the contrary, they become vivid and durable, precisely in the degree in which they awaken and call forth moral ideas. They become celestial, when they connect the past with the present, the present with the future, and the whole with heaven.

In proportion as we scrutinize the pleasures of the senses, we shall always find their charm increasing in the same degree, as losing, if I may so say, their physical stain, they rise in the scale of purification, and become transformed, in some sense, to the dignity of moral enjoyments.

I look at a painting: it represents an old man, a child, a woman giving alms, and a soldier, whose attitude expresses astonishment. I admire the fidelity, the truth and coloring of the picture; and my eye is intensely gratified. But remaining ignorant of the subject, I go away, and the whole shortly vanishes from my memory. I see it again; and am now struck with the inscription at the bottom, ‘Date obolum Belisario.’ I remember an interesting passage of history. A crowd of moral images throng upon my spirit: I soften to tenderness; and I comprehend the affecting lesson, which the artist is giving me. I review the painting, again and again; and thrill at the view of the blind warrior, and of the child holding out his helmet to receive alms.

When we travel, those points of view in the landscape which long fix our eye, are those which awaken ideas of innocence and peace; affecting the heart with associations connected with the morning of our life; or ideas of that power and immensity, which move and elevate the soul. The paintings of nature, as well as those of men, are thus capable of being embellished by moral associations. In travelling, I perceive a delightful isle embosomed in a peaceful lake. While I contemplate it, with the simple pleasure excited by a charming landscape, I am told that it is inhabited by a happy pair, who were long crossed and separated; but who wore out the persevering opposition of fortune; and are now living there in the innocence and peace of the first tenants of paradise. How different an interest the landscape now assumes! I behold the happy pair, without care or regret, sheltered from jealous observation, enjoying the dream of their happy love, gratefully contemplating the Author of the beautiful nature around them, and elevating their love and their hearts, as a sacrifice to HIM.

Sites, which, in themselves, have no peculiar charm, become most beautiful as soon as they awaken touching remembrances. Suppose yourself cast by misfortune on the care of a stranger in a strange land. He attempts to dispel your dejection, and says, ‘these countries are hospitable, and nature here puts forth all her opulence; come, and enjoy it with us.’ The gay landscapes, which spread before you, all assume the appearance of strangers; and offer no attractions. But while your eye traverses the scenery with indifference, you see blue hills melting into the distant horizon. No person remarks them, but yourself. They resemble the mountains of your own country, the scenes upon which your infant view first rested. You turn away to conceal the new emotions, and your eyes are filling with tears. You continue to gaze fondly on those hills, dear to memory. In the midst of a rich landscape, they are all that interests you. You return to review them every day, and demand of them their treasured remembrances and illusions,—the dearest pleasures of your exile.[39]

All the senses would offer me examples, in illustration of this idea. Deprive the pleasures of physical love of moral associations, which touch the heart, and you take from it all that elevates the enjoyment above that of the lowest animals. Else, why do modesty, innocence, the expression of unstained chastity, and the graces of simplicity possess such enchanting attractions? The truth, that there exists in love a charm stronger than physical impulse, is not unknown even to women of abandoned manners. The most dangerous of all those in this unhappy class, are they, who, not relying on their beauty, feign still to possess, or deeply to regret those virtues, which they have really cast away.

There are useful duties upon this subject, which I should find it difficult to present in our language. In proportion as the manners of a people reach the extreme refinement of artifice and corruption, their words become chaste. It is a final and sterile homage rendered to modesty.

The last delights which imagination can add to the pleasures of love, are not to be sought in those vile places where libertinism is an art. We must imagine the first wedded days of a young and innocent pair, whose spirits are blended in real affection, in similar tastes, pursuits and hopes, who realize those vague images which they had scarcely allowed before to float across their mind.

They who seek in the pleasures of taste only physical sensations, degrade their minds and finish their useless existence in infirmity and brutal degradation. The pleasures of taste should only serve to render the other enjoyments more vivid, the imagination more brilliant, and the pursuits of life more easy and pleasant.—All objects should present themselves under a gay aspect. A happy veil should shroud those pains which have been, or are to be endured. Even the wine cup, more powerful than the waters of Lethe, should not only procure forgetfulness of the past, but embellishment of the future.

The pleasures derived from odors are only vivid, when they impart to the mind a fleeting and vague exaltation. If the orientals indulge a passion for respiring perfumes, it is not solely to procure pleasurable physical sensations. An embalmed atmosphere exalts the senses, and disposes the mind to pleasant revery, and paints dreams of paradise upon the indolent imagination.

Were I disposed to present the details of a system upon this subject, the sense of hearing would offer me a crowd of examples. The brilliant and varied accents of the nightingale are ravishing. But what a difference between hearing the melody from a cage, and listening to the song at the noon of night, when a cool and pure air refreshes the lassitude of the burning day, and we behold objects by the light of the moon, and hear the strains of the solitary bird poured from her free bower!

A symphony, the sounds of which only delight the ear, would soon become wearying. If it have no other determinate expression, it ought, at least, to inspire revery, and produce an effect not unlike that of perfumes upon the orientals.

Suppose we have been at an opera, got up with all the luxury of art. Emotions of delight and astonishment rapidly succeed each other, and we believe it impossible to experience new sensations of pleasure. In returning home, we chance to hear in the distance, through the stillness of night, a well remembered song of our infancy, that was sung to us by some one dear to our memory. It is at once a music exciting more profound emotion, than all the strains of art which we so recently thought could not be surpassed. The remembrances of infancy and home rush upon the spirit, and efface the pompous spectacle, and the artificial graces of execution.[39a]

Observations to the same effect might be multiplied without end. If you desire pleasures, fertile in happy remembrances, if you wish to preserve elevation of mind and freshness of imagination, choose, among the pleasures of the senses, only those which associate with moral ideas. Feeble, when separated from the alliance of those ideas, they become fatal when they exclude them. To dare to taste them, is to sacrifice happiness to pleasures which are alike ephemeral and degrading. It is to resemble him, who should strip the tree of its flowers, to enjoy their beauty. He loses the fruits which would have followed, and scarcely casts his eye on the flowers before they have faded.

LETTER XVIII. THE PLEASURES OF THE HEART.

The Creator has put forth in his gifts, a magnificence which should impress our hearts. What variety in those affectionate sentiments, of the delights of which our natures are susceptible! Without going out of the family circle, I enumerate filial piety, fraternal affection, friendship, love, and parental tenderness. These different sentiments can all coëxist in our hearts, and, so far from weakening each other, each tends to give vigor and intensity to the other. No doubt, the need of so many affections and props attests our feebleness and dependence. But I can scarcely conceive of the happiness, which a being, impassible to weaknesses and wants, could find in himself. I am ready to bless that infirmity of our natures, which is the source of such pure pleasures, and such tender affections.

Let us avoid confounding that sensibility which exacts the pleasures of the heart, with that which produces impassioned characters. They differ as essentially as the genial, vital warmth, from the burning of a fever. Indolence, objects calculated strongly to strike the imagination, and those maxims which corrupt the understanding, develope a vague and ardent sensibility, which sometimes conducts to crime, and always to misery. The other species is approved by reason and preserved by virtue. We owe to it those pure emotions which impart upon earth an indistinct sentiment of the joys of heaven.

There are men, however, who dread genuine sensibility; and, under the conviction that it will multiply their pains, study to eradicate the germs of it from their soul.

Hume was unhappily an unbeliever; but I might easily cite from his life many honorable traits indicative of a good natural disposition. He remarked to a friend, who confided to him his secret sorrows, ‘you entertain an internal enemy, who will always hinder you from being happy. It is your sensibility of heart.’ ‘What!’ responded his friend with a kind of terror, ‘have you not sensibility?’ ‘No. My reason alone speaks, and it declares that it is right to soothe distress.’

In listening to this reply of Hume, we are at once struck with the idea, that the greater part of those who adopt his principles, do not pause at the same point with their model. They sink into that heartless class, who see all human calamities with a dry eye, provided they have no tendency to abridge their own enjoyments.

Suppose even that they pursue the lessons of the Scotch philosopher to better purpose; and without any emotion, without any impulse of heart, hold out a succoring hand to those who suffer. This, perhaps, may answer the claims of reason. But the social instinct will always repel that austere morality, which would give to the human heart an unnatural insensibility, and deprive it, if I may so say, of its amiable weakness. I would hardly desire to see a man oppose a courage, too stoical, to his own miseries. The natural tears which he sheds in extreme affliction, are his guaranty for the sympathy which he will feel for my sorrows.

It is a vile but common maxim, that two conditions are necessary to success in life. The one is, to have a selfish heart. The other, the adage of egotism, is, that to avoid suffering, we must stifle sensibility. I say to these heartless philosophers of the world, that if the only requisite is to avoid suffering, through destitution of feeling, to die is the surest method of all.[40]

The secret of happiness does not consist in avoiding all evils; for in that case, we must learn to love nothing. If there be a lot on earth worthy of envy, it is that of a man, good and tender hearted, who beholds his own creation in the happiness of all who surround him. Let him who would be happy, strive to encircle himself with happy beings. Let the happiness of his family be the incessant object of his thoughts. Let him divine the sorrows and anticipate the wishes of his friends. Let him inspire the fidelity of affection in his domestics, by pledging to them a comfortable and pleasant old age. Let him, as far as may be, preserve the same servants, and give them all needed succor and counsel. In fine, let the inmates and dependents of the house all respire a calm and regulated happiness. Let even the domestic animals know, that humanity presides over their condition.

Entertaining such views, it will be easy to see in what light I contemplate those men who take pleasure in witnessing the combats of animals. What man who has a heart, can see spectacles, equally barbarous and detestable, with satisfaction; such as dogs tearing to pieces a bull, exhausted with wounds, cocks mangling each other, the encounter of brutal boxers, or of bad boys in the streets, encouraged to the diabolical sport of fighting? These are the true schools of cowardly and savage ferocity, and not of manly courage, as too many have supposed.[41] But it is not my purpose to draw a painting in detail of the abominations of cruelty, or the pleasures of beneficence, and I resume my rapid and desultory reflections.

To preserve the sentiments of beneficence and sensibility, let us avoid the pride which mars them. Beneficence in one respect resembles love. Like that, it courts concealment and the shade.

The most useful direction we can give to beneficence is, to multiply its gifts as widely as possible. Let us avoid imitating those men who are always fearful of being deceived by those who solicit their pity. In an uncertainty whether or not you ought to extend succor, grant it. It can only expose you to the error that is least subject to repentance.[42]

Offer useful counsels and indulgent consolations. Save, from despair, the unfortunate victim, who groans under the remorse of an unpremeditated fault. Unite him again to society by those cords which his imprudence has broken. Rekindle in him the love of his kind, by saying to him, ‘though you may not recover innocence, repentance can at least restore your virtue.’

If we have access to the opulent and powerful, we have an honorable, but difficult task to fulfil. To assume the often thankless office of soliciting frequent favors for friends, without losing the consideration necessary to success, requires peculiar tact, discernment and dignity.—Above all, it requires disinterested zeal. In attempting this delicate duty in the form of letters, we may soon dissipate our slender fund of credit. Letters of recommendation resemble a paper currency. They are redeemed in specie so long as they are issued discreetly, and in small amounts, but which become worse than blank paper, as soon as we multiply them too far.[43]

Such is the intrinsic attraction of beneficence, that even if we refuse to practise it, we still love whatever retraces its image. A romance affects us. Pathetic scenes soften our hearts at the theatre. In thus embracing the shadow, we pay a sublime testimonial to the substance.

The example of beneficence so readily finds its way to every heart, that we are affected even in thinking of those who practise it. The coldest hearts pay a tribute of veneration to those women, who, in consecrating themselves to the service of the poor and the sick, encounter extreme fatigue, disgust, and often abuse from the wretched objects themselves, in the squalidness and filth of prisons and hospitals. How beautiful to learn to put forth patience to mitigate the maladies of the body, and hope, to soothe those of the mind![44] Ye, who practise virtues thus touching and sublime, may well hope the highest recompenses of heaven. Such alone are worthy of your pure spirits. Ye seem to have passed in light across our dark sphere, only to fulfil a transient and celestial mission, to return again to your country.

LETTER XIX. THE PLEASURES OF THE UNDERSTANDING.

In the savage man the intellectual faculties sleep. As soon as his appetites are satisfied, he sees neither pleasures to desire, nor pains to fear. He lies down and sleeps again. This negative happiness would bring desolation to the heart of a civilized man. All his faculties have commenced their development. He experiences a new craving, which occupations, grave or futile, but rapidly changed and renewed, can alone appease. If there occur between them intervals which can be filled neither by remembrances, nor by necessary repose, lassitude and ennui intervene, and measure for him the length of these chasms in life by sadness.

The next enemy to happiness, after vice, is ennui. Some escape it without much seeming calculation. My neighbor every morning turns over twenty gazettes, the state articles of which are copied the one from the other. Economising the pleasure of this reading, and gravely reposing in the intervals, he communicates, sometimes with an oracular tone, sometimes with a modest reserve, his reflections to those who surround him; and, at length, leaves the reading room with the importance of one who feels that he has discharged a debt to society.

In public places, it is not the spectacles, but the emotions of the common people who behold them, that are worthy of contemplation. In the murder of a poor tragedy by poorer actors, what transports from this enthusiastic mass of the audience when a blow of the poniard, preceded by a pompous maxim, lays the tyrant of the piece low! What earnest feeling, what sincere tears do we witness! How much more worthy of envy these honest people who lose their enjoyment neither by the revolting improbability of the situations, nor by the absurdity of the dialogue, nor by the mouthing of the rehearsal, than those fastidious critics who exalt their intellectual pride at the expense of these cheap enjoyments!

From the moment in which a man feels sincere pleasure in cultivating his understanding, he may date defiance to the fear of the weight of time. He has the magic key which unlocks the exhaustless treasury of enjoyments. He lives in the age and country which he prefers. Space and time are no longer obstacles to his happiness. He interrogates the wise and good of all ages and all countries; and his conversations with them cease, or change object, as soon as he chooses. How much gratitude does he owe the author of nature for having impressed on genius so many different impulses! With Plato, he is among the sages of Greece, hearing their lessons and associating his wishes with theirs for the happiness of his kind.[45] In the range of history, he ascends to the infancy of empires and time. Does he court repose? Horace bids him gather the roses before they fade; or Shakspeare reminds him, when illusions will vanish like the baseless fabric of a vision.

If a man has powers and acquirements, it is a great evil, if he is disposed to fatigue others with his self-love. If we could number all the subjects of which the most accomplished scholar is ignorant, we should perceive that the interval between him and a common person is not so immense as he may imagine. Ought he to be astonished if the real friends of the Muses tire of his declamations, his recitations and occupancy with himself?

To attain truth should be the real end of all study. In such researches the mind kindles, as by enchantment, at every step! The desire to succeed, produces that noble emotion which is always developed by ardent zeal and pure intentions. Success, although we were to think nothing of its results, inspires a kind of pleasure; because truth comports with our understanding, as brilliant and soft colors agree with the eye, or pleasant sounds with the ear. This enjoyment naturally associates with another still more vivid. The effect of truth is universally salutary; and every instance in which our feeble intellect discovers some gleams, elevates the spirit, and intimately penetrates it with a high degree of happiness.

One of the chief advantages of study is, that it enfranchises the mind from those prejudices that disturb life. How many, and what agonizing torments have been caused by those which are associated with false ideas of religion.[46] After those great calamities in the dark ages which destroyed the traces of the sciences and arts, men, pursued by terror, seemed to imagine that they constantly saw malevolent spirits flying among the clouds or wandering in the depth of woods. The sound of strong wind and thunder came to their ear as the voice of infernal divinities; and, prostrate with terror, they sought to appease their angry gods by bloody sacrifices. In process of time, a small number of men, enlightened by observation, dared to raise the veil by degrees, and succeeded in dissipating these terrors by tracing the seeming prodigies to some of the simplest laws of physics. The phantoms of superstition vanished, and, in the light of reason, revealed a just and beneficent Divinity presiding over obedient nature.

We think, in our pride, that an immense interval separates us from those times of disaster, ignorance and alarm. How many of our kind, unhappy by their intellectual weakness, still tremble before the jealous and implacable god of their imaginations, who enjoins hatred and wrath; and punishes even the errors of opinion by the most horrible torments. The man who is exempt from prejudices is alone capable of prostrating himself before the Divinity from a feeling of love, and whose prayer, alike confident and resigned, is addressed to his noble attributes of power, justice and clemency.

There are other errors which study dispels. The student who is charmed with communion with the muses, does not consume his best years in gloomy intrigues; nor do you meet him pressing forward in the path which ambition has traced. The Greeks, fertile in significant allegories, supposed the same divinity to preside over the sciences and wisdom.

The habit of living in converse with the noblest works of mind and art, produces elevation of soul; and he who has an elevated mind must be intrinsically good and happy. Exempt from the weaknesses of vanity, free from the tumultuous passions, he cultivates the noble and generous virtues for the pleasure of practising them. Disdaining a mass of objects of desire which disturb the vulgar, he offers a small mark to misery. Should adversity strike him, he has resources so much the more sure, as he finds them in himself.

No one can ever taste the full charm of letters and the arts, except in the bosom of retirement. If he reads and meditates only for the pursuit of fame, amusements change to labors. If we propose to enter the lists, outstrip rivals, and direct a party, we are soon agitated with little passions, but great inquietudes. Heaven, sternly decreeing that no earthly felicity shall be unalloyed, has placed a thirst for celebrity as a drawback upon the love of study.

But ought the ardor to render immortal services—ought the noble ambition to be useful, to be stifled? Are not these the source of pleasures as pure as they are ravishing? I contemplate an immense and indestructible republic, composed of all those men who devote themselves to the happiness of their kind. Occupied without relaxation or abatement in continuing the works which their predecessors have begun, they bequeath to their successors the care of pursuing and crowning their labors. Men of genius are the chiefs of this republic. As they have talents which separate them from the rest of the human race; they have also pleasures reserved for themselves alone. What a sublime sentiment must have elevated the spirit of Newton when a part of the mysterious laws of the universe first dawned on his mind! A glow still more delightful must have pervaded the bosom of Fenelon when meditating the most beautiful lessons which wisdom ever announced to the powerful and the rulers of the people. To these privileged beings it belongs, to give a powerful impulse to minds, and to trace a new path for the generations to come.

I shall have attained my humble ambition if, docile to the voice of the wise, I shall be able, in any degree, to indicate the way in which these lessons may be put in practice. I shall thus have contributed my aid to dissipate the night of prejudice and vice.

LETTER XX. THE PLEASURES OF THE IMAGINATION.

If these words denote pleasures which have no reality, let us no longer use them.[47] The person who, during the twelve hours of every day that he passed in sleep, believed himself clothed with royal authority, shared a lot exactly similar to the king who, dreaming through the same number of hours, imagined that he suffered cold and hunger, and asked the pity of the peasants in the streets.

All our pleasures are fugitive, and they are all real. That wonderful faculty, the imagination, awakens past pleasures, charms the instant that is flowing, and either veils the future, or embellishes it in the radiance of hope.

Let us banish that vulgar prejudice which represents reason and imagination as two enemies which cannot coëxist. The severest reason ought to disdain no easy and pure pleasures. The happy paintings even of a dream bring joy, until their rainbow hues melt away. The dreams of the imagination have greatly the advantage over those of sleep. Our will gives them birth. We prolong, dissipate and renew them at pleasure.[48] All, who have learned to multiply these happy moments, know, at the same time, how to enjoy these agreeable visions, and paint with enchantment those dreamy hours which they owe to the effervescence of a gay imagination.

There are situations in which reason has no better counsel to give us than to yield ourselves up to those illusions which mingle pleasures with our sufferings. I knew a worthy, but unfortunate man, who passed twenty months in prison. He informed me that, every night, he had a dream, in which he imagined that his wife and children visited him and restored him to liberty. This dream left a remembrance so profound, an emotion so delightful, that he determined to attempt to renew it by day. When evening came, exciting his imagination to its most vigorous action, he endeavored to persuade himself that the moment of the reunion was come. He represented to himself the transport of his wife and the caresses of his children; and he allowed no thought but these delightful visions to occupy his mind until the moment when sleep once more wrapped him in forgetfulness. The habit of concentrating his imagination for this result, he assured me, finally rendered these illusions incredibly vivid and real. He expected night with impatience; and the certainty that the close of day would bring some happy moments, threw over the tedious hours an emotion which mitigated his sufferings.

These charming illusions, in misfortune, resemble those brilliant boreal lights which, in the midst of a night that lasts for weeks, present the image of dawn during the dreary winters of the polar circle. An excitable and vivid faculty, which deceives misfortune, ought to embellish happiness. To the pleasant things we possess, it adds those we desire. By its magic, we renew the hours of which the memory is dear. We taste the pleasures which a distant future promises; and see, at least, the fleeting shadow of those which are passing away.

A gloomy philosopher has told us, that such illusions are the effect of a transient insanity. It seems to me that insane thoughts are those which create ennui; and that reasonable ideas are those which throw innocent charms over life. If you reject these views, be persuaded, at least, not to adopt a false and gloomy wisdom. You ought rather to prefer the conviction that everything below is folly.[50] But still, I can distinguish gay follies, frightful follies, and amiable follies; and I easily discover that there is a choice among them.

Why should the morose being who perceives only bad people on the earth, and only miseries in the future, blame him who cradles flattering hopes, always springing up anew, for allowing himself to be beguiled by the illusions of his imagination? Both deceive themselves. But the one cherishes a mistake which brings hatred and suffering, and the other lives on gaily in his illusions.

Wisdom does not disdain a faculty merely for being brilliant; and, to taste all the pleasures of imagination, it is indispensable that reason should be much exercised.

Imagination resembles the magician of an oriental romance who transports his favorite hero to scenes of enchantment, to try him with pleasures; and then delivers him over to a hostile magician, who multiplies peril and misery around him. This creative faculty, in its perversion, is as fertile to invent torments as, in its more propitious moods, to bring forth pleasures. If once we resign ourselves to its gloomy caprices, it conjures up the terror of a thousand unreal evils. Reason cannot always follow its meteor path; but ought, at least, to point out the course in which happiness invites it to walk.

The aid of reason is still more necessary at the moment when the chimeras of imagination disappear. It is an afflicting moment. Reason should prepare us to meet it. Every man, with an elevated mind and a good heart, has delighted to imagine himself far away from the stupid and wicked; in a smiling country, separated from the rest of the world, and alone with a few friends. Suppose this dream realized; I am aware that, tomorrow, the peaceful exile might be indulging regrets for the place he had left; and forming plans to escape from the ennui of the new country. Since we change our destiny in these respects, without altering our instinctive desire of change, let us study the art of softening the pains of our actual condition; and let us learn to extract all possible advantages from it by imparting to it, if nothing more, the embellishment created by the happy anticipations of a fertile imagination.

Ought we to indulge regrets because these paintings of the imagination so rapidly disappear. I have seen the rich and the great stripped, in a moment, of their fortune and power; and shall I afflict myself because my dream has vanished? These unfortunate people lost all that was dear to them, forever. For me, I can renew these pleasures of imagination at my will.

Far from sacrificing any of our faculties, let us exercise them all; and let them mutually conduce to our happiness. As we advance in life, our reason should grow to the calm of mature age. But let the imagination and the heart still preserve scintillations of the fire of youth.

LETTER XXI. MELANCHOLY.

There is no pleasure of earth but, as soon as it becomes vivid, has a tendency to tinge itself with melancholy. The birth of an infant, the convalescence of a father, the return of a friend who has been long absent, fill the eyes with tears. Nature has thus chosen to mingle the colors of joy and sadness. Having destined us to experience each of the emotions in turn, she has ordained that the shades of transition should melt into each other.[51]

The dearest remembrances are those which are accompanied by tenderness of heart. The sports of infancy, the first loves, the perils we have forever escaped, and the faults we have learned to repair, are of the number. Whoever will recollect the happiest moments of his life, will find them to have produced this emotion.

But there are two kinds of melancholy; or rather, we must not confound melancholy with gloom. Will the slight tenderness of sorrow which imparts a new charm to the fugitive pleasures of existence be inspired by those gloomy books which this age has attempted to bring into fashion; by those terrific and wild dreams in which hideous personages enact revolting scenes? Modern imagination has painted melancholy a tall and unearthly spectre enveloped in a winding sheet. The real traits of her countenance are those of innocence occupied in pleasant revery; and at the same time that tears are in her eyes, a smile dwells on her lips.

It is the resort of a sterile imagination and a cold heart, to invest even the tomb with borrowed ideas of darkness; to wait for night in which to visit it; and to torment the fancy to people it with sinister phantoms. Real sensibility would not require such an effort to be awakened. It fills my mind with a pleasing sadness to wander in the church-yard, under the melancholy radiance of the moon, among monuments of white marble, and hear the night breeze sigh among the weeping willows. I am deeply affected with, here and there, a touching inscription.[52] I remember one in which a father says, that he has had five children, and that here sleeps the last that remained to him for consolation. In another, a father and mother announce that their daughter died at seventeen, a victim of their weak indulgence, and of the extravagant modes of the time. This sojourn of repose, these words written in the abodes of silence, which inspire tenderness for those that are no more, and those whose treasured affection still remembers them, always penetrate the soul with an emotion not without its charms. In the view of tombs, we immediately direct our thoughts to an internal survey of ourselves. I mark out my place among the peaceful mansions. I imagine the vernal grass and flowers reviving over my place of rest. My imagination transports me to the days which I shall not see, and sounds for me the soothing dirge of the adieus of friendship pronounced over the spot where I am laid.[53]

I generally carry from my sojourn in these our last mansions, one painful sentiment. I remark that many tombs are raised by parents for their children; by husbands for their wives; by widows for their husbands. I observe that there are but few erected by children for their fathers. Perhaps it is right that love should ascend in that scale, rather than descend in the other.

Occasional visits to ruins and tombs inspire salutary melancholy. But the habit of frequently contemplating these lugubrious objects is dangerous. It blunts sensibility and creates the necessity of always requiring strong emotions. It nourishes in the soul sombre ideas which do not associate with happiness. Without doubt, there are those who are so unhappy as to long for the repose of the grave; who find solace in these gloomy spectacles. Young, after having lost his only daughter, after having in vain solicited a little consecrated earth to cover the remains of the youthful victim; after being reduced to the necessity of interring the loved one with his own hands, might be tempted to fly his kind and love only night, solitude and tombs. There have been men, condemned by the award of nature, to such reverses as nourish an incurable and perpetual melancholy. Their frigid imitators, without their reason and profound feeling, in wishing to render themselves singular, become tiresome and ridiculous in their melancholy.

Writers of the most splendid genius of the age have consecrated their talents to celebrate melancholy; not that melancholy which has a smile of profound sensibility, but that which has been cradled in tombs and which holds out to us the full draught of sadness. There is something in these heart-rending scenes, these lugubrious spectacles, which the age seeks with avidity. A writer whose talent tends to render his errors seducing, has taken pleasure in viewing the christian religion as opening an inexhaustible source of melancholy. It seems to exalt his mind, most of all, when it presents itself to him under a funereal aspect.

He paints religion as born in the forests of Horeb and Sinai, forever surrounded with a formidable gloom; and offering to our adorations a God who died for men. He describes the invasion of the barbarians, the persecutions of the first believers, cloisters arising from deep and dark groves, and melancholy continually receiving new accessions from the austere rules imposed upon the pious inmates.

‘There,’ said he, ‘the tenants of these religious seclusions dug their own tombs, by the light of the moon, in the cemeteries of their own cloisters. Their couch was a coffin. Some of them occasionally wandered away to sojourn among the ruins of Memphis and Babylon, striking the chords of the harp of David, surrounded by beasts of prey. Some condemned themselves to perpetual silence. Others sung a continual hymn, echoing the sighs of Job, the lamentations of Jeremiah, or the penitential songs of the prophet king. Their monasteries were built on sites the most savage, on the summits of Lebanon, in the deep forests of Gaul, or on the crags of the British shores. How sad the knell of the religious bells, heard at the noon of night, must have sounded when calling the vestals to their vigils and prayers! The sounds, as they swelled and died away, mingled the last strains of the hymns with the distant dashing of the waves. How profound must have been the meditations of the solitary who, from his grated window, indulged in revery, as his eye wandered over the illimitable sea, perhaps agitated with a tempest! What a contrast between the fury of the waves and the calm of his retreat! The expiring cries of men are heard as they dash upon the rocks at the foot of the asylum of peace. Infinity stretches out on one side of their cell; and on the other the slab of a tomb alone separates between eternity and life. All the different forms of misfortune, remembrance, manners, and the scenes of nature concurred to render the christian religion the genius of melancholy.’[53a]

Can it be thought, for a moment, possible that sighs without end, the love of deserts and the hope of the tomb are all the consolations that this divine religion is calculated to bring to the heart of man? Such an error could only have had its origin in an unregulated imagination. The christian religion, though pensive and serious, is not sad. Less brilliant, less imaginative than paganism, less friendly to pleasure, she is far more favorable to happiness.

My opinion in regard to the legitimate tendency of religion, is not only different but directly opposite. A pure religion must produce tranquillity, confidence and joy. It is departure from religious views which are true and just, that is followed by a vague sadness, gloom and despondency.

These funereal and yet eloquent paintings, traced with the enthusiasm of melancholy, must have had the effect to increase the number of men of atrabilious temperament, weary of the world, and tired of themselves. Were it true that the christian religion inspired an insatiate craving for funereal reveries, far from considering it as I do, divine, I should estimate it anti-social.—The true friends of the christian religion always paint it as it is, more powerful than even human misery; giving clothing to the naked, bread to the hungry, an asylum to the sick, a peaceful home to the returning prodigal, and a mother to the orphan; wiping away the tears of innocence with a celestial hand, and filling the eyes of the culpable and contrite with tears of consolation. Let pious thankfulness and a calm courage, which even death cannot shake, environ its modest heroes. Let its martyrs be those of charity and toleration;—the protestant opening an asylum to catholic, falling under the fanatical fury of his brethren; and when bloody and impious mandates order the massacre of protestants, the catholic sheltering them in his mansion. Such was the spirit of Erasmus; such, of the divine Fenelon; such, of William Penn, and a few tolerant lights that have gleamed through ages of persecution and darkness. Such are the men whose disciples we desire to multiply. Let us cease to incorporate melancholy errors and gloomy follies with the religion of peace, confidence and hope. Eloquence was imparted for a nobler use.

LETTER XXII. RELIGIOUS SENTIMENTS.

The philosophy of happiness must find its ultimate requisite in the hopes of religion. Man must be persuaded that his present life has relation to a never ending future, and that an eternal providence watches over the universe, before he will abandon himself with a tranquil confidence to those irresistible laws by which he is borne along. He then marches towards the future, as he would confidently follow a guide of tried prudence and fidelity in a dark path.[54]

In the fever and tumult of worldly pleasures and pursuits, the voice of wisdom has little chance to be heard, and it seems necessary that misfortune should have forced the mind in upon itself, before we become inclined to find resources in religion. Then we invoke this sublime and consoling power, and like the friend that avoids our prosperity and our festivals, but returns to cheer our misfortunes, this celestial friend is at hand to offer her sustaining succor. We may class all those pleasures as noxious, which will not associate with this august visitant. Even in our periods of happiness, if we pause for the reflection of a moment, we find the need of immortality. All the generous and tender affections acquire a new charm in alliance with religious ideas, in the same manner as objects beautiful in themselves, receive a new lustre when a pure light is thrown upon them. Filial piety becomes more touching in those children who pray with fervor for the preservation of the life of a mother. Let a pious courage guide the sister of charity, and she becomes the angel of consolation, as she visits the abodes of misery. Even virtue itself does not receive its celestial impress, except in alliance with religious sentiments. A few of the higher philosophers among the great ancients, and Fenelon, Newton, Milton and a few other men of immortal name, saw the divinity as He is, and contemplated the perfect model of his infinite perfections. Their efforts tended to coöperate with the divine views of order and harmony, in constantly directing human actions and thoughts towards good. The beautiful system of the gospel has the same simplicity of object; and its tendency to honor and meliorate humanity is directed by the highest wisdom. Sentiments which give to all our faculties a direction, fertilize genius as well as virtue. High models, in any walk of mind, will never be produced in a world whose inhabitants believe in nothing but matter, fortuitous combinations, and the annihilation of our being. Apostles of atheism! your dreary creed throws an impenetrable gloom upon the universe, and dries the source of all high thoughts. The advocates of these views vaunt the necessity of proclaiming the truth. I, too, am the fearless advocate of the truth, and have no dread of its results. But could I be persuaded, that religious hopes were unfounded, I should be tempted to renounce my confidence in truth itself; and no longer to inculcate the necessity of loving and seeking to propagate it. It is by the light of this divine torch, that real sages have desired to investigate religion. Were it possible that the elevated and consoling ideas, which religion offers, could be baseless and absurd chimeras, error and truth would be so confounded, that there would no longer remain any discriminating sign by which to distinguish the one from the other. Atheists boast that they are the only frank and hardy antagonists of superstition. They are its most effectual allies. The superstitious have brought forth the atheists, and the atheists have re-produced the superstitious; as, in revolutions, resistance produces fury, and that multiplies resistance.

I have known excellent men, apparently earnest and docile inquirers for truth, who have desired in vain to establish in their mind these consoling convictions.—Their understanding refused to respond to the wish of their hearts.

Why can I not impart this happy conviction to their understanding? My subject precludes reasoning, and I only know arguments that are very simple; but I think with Bacon, that it needs quite as much credulity to adopt the opinion of atheists, as to yield faith to all the reveries of the Talmud or the Koran. The more profoundly I attempt to investigate the doctrines of infidelity, and consider everything that surrounds me, as resulting from the combinations of chance, the play of atoms, the efforts of brute matter, the more my inquiries are involved in darkness. I strive in vain to give to any hypothesis of atheism the honest semblance of probability. Matter cannot reflect upon the order which its different parts require. Neither can those parts interchange reason and discussion. Neither an atom, nor a globe can say to others of their class, ‘such are the courses in which we must move.’ Let us simplify difficulties, as much as possible, and admit that matter has always existed; let us even suppose motion essential to it; a supreme intelligence is none the less necessary to the harmony of the universe. Without a governor of worlds, I can only conceive of nihility or chaos.

From the sublimest of all thoughts, there is a God, flow all the truths which my heart desires. The beautiful superstructure of Christianity results, as a corollary, or ultimate inference, from this consoling axiom. The system which rejects the soul’s immortality, is equally absurd with that of atheism. Of the different arguments against the being of a God, the most striking one is that which is drawn from the evils which prevail on the earth. The first thought of every man of sensibility, is, that had he the power to make a world, he would banish misery from it, and so arrange the order of things, as that existence should be, to all conscious beings, a succession of moments, each marked by happiness. But infirmities, vices, misery, sorrow and death pursue us. How reconcile the misery of the creation with the power and beneficence of the Creator? How resolve this strange problem? How explain this revolting contradiction? Immortality is the only solution of the enigma of life.[55]

A whimsical combination of deism and materialism forms, at present, the most widely diffused system among the unbelieving. They have imagined a God possessing only physical power, and contemplating the movement of his innumerable worlds, alike indifferent to crime and virtue. He beholds with the same carelessness the generations that pass, and those that succeed; and sees deliverers and tyrants alike confounded in their fall.—Admit the truth of such dogmas, and the conceptions of a religious man would possess more expansion and sublimity than the views of the Eternal. Socrates, without the illumination of the gospel, could have taught them better. Surrounded by his weeping disciples, he points them beyond the tomb to the places where the sage at last respires freely; and where the misfortunes and inequalities of earth are redressed. In painting these illusions of hope, if they are vain, the sage has conceived in his dreams an equity superior to that of the infinite Being. Let us dare to maintain that the feeble children of clay have a right to entertain ideas of order and desert, more just than those of the Creator, or admit that the heart, made capable of the desire of another life, is destined to enjoy it.

The destiny of all the inferior orders that surround us, appears to terminate upon the earth. Ours alone is evidently not accomplished here. The animals, exempt from vice, incapable of virtue, experience, in ceasing to live, neither hopes nor regrets. They die without the foresight of death. Man, in the course of an agitated life, degrades himself by follies and vices, or honors himself by generous and useful actions. Remembrances, loves, ties, in countless forms, twine about his heart. He is torn, in agony, from beings for whom he has commenced an affection that he feels might be eternal. Persecuted for his virtue, proscribed for his wisdom and courage, calumniated for his most conscientious acts, he turns to heaven a fixed look of confidence and hope. Has he nothing to perform beyond death? Has the author of nature forgotten his justice, only in completing his most perfect work?

Our immortality is a necessary consequence of the existence of God. Let us not wander astray in vain discussions, which, with our present faculties, we can never master—such as relate to the nature of the soul. My hopes, my convictions, rest not upon a cloudy, metaphysical argument. Neither can the proud treatise of a sophist weaken, nor the puerile dialectics of a pedant increase it. It is enough for me that there is a God. Virtue in misfortune must have hopes which do not terminate with the tomb. The sublime inculcation of Socrates was, ‘preserve confidence in death.’ But recompense in another existence supposes merit; and merit requires liberty.

Is man free? We can reduce this question which has been so much vexed, and so often obscured, to terms of entire simplicity. It has been most forcibly presented by Hobbes, the vile apostle at once of atheism and despotism, who seems to have striven to unite the most pernicious doctrines with an example, which merits execration. ‘Two objects,’ he remarks, ‘attract us in opposite directions. As long as they produce impressions nearly equal, our mind, in a state of uncertainty, vacillates from the one to the other; and we believe, that we are deliberating. Finally, one of the objects strikes us with a stronger impression than the other. We are drawn towards it; and we believe that it is because we will it.—Thus, man, always passive, yields to the strongest and most vivid sensation. Free actions would be an effect without a cause.’ Admirable reasoning! What other freedom could I wish, than to prefer what seems to me the most desirable? Let the disciples of Hobbes instruct me how they would choose that man should determine, in order to be conscious of liberty? Would they wish him to choose the object that is repugnant to him? This is too evidently absurd. Should he vacillate in indifference between the one object and the other? This would be to sink into an existence of perfect apathy, without reason or will. Man has all the liberty, of which such a being is capable—all, in fact, which he could desire.

How puerile are these metaphysical subtleties, when employed upon moral truths![56] What a monster would man become on the system of the fatalists! What is that system worth, the consequences of which cannot be admitted? If we act under the inevitable empire of fatalism, why is he who proclaims this doctrine, indignant at the thought of crime? Does he contemplate Socrates and his executioners with the same approbation?—Will he regard with the same feeling Antoninus dictating pious lessons to his son, and Nero assassinating his mother? Will he estimate as alike meritorious a persecuted Christian praying for his enemies, and the monarch ordering the massacre of St Bartholomew? Do such contrasts offend us? And why? According to the system of fatalism, the good ought to inspire us with less interest than the wicked. A blind fatality awards to the virtuous that pure pleasure, that is inseparably connected with good actions. They receive a high reward without any merit; while the others are a prey to remorse, and the incessant object of public hatred and abhorrence. If they are innocent, as on the principles of fatalism they must be, how ought we to mourn over them, and pity them! What purpose can these doctrines serve? He who advocates them, is conscious of impulses to do good, and deliberates upon alternatives in the courses which honor and duty call him to pursue. His principles, then, are contradicted by the voice of his own heart. When he has committed a fault, it declares to him that he might have chosen a contrary part.—When he has done a virtuous action, it inspires emotions of joy, which render him conscious that he is a free agent. This voice within is anterior to all reasoning, and as incapable of being invalidated as any other consciousness. Inexhaustible emotions of satisfaction spring from religious hopes. Reanimated by them, I no longer see tears without consolation, nor fear an eternal adieu.—The tomb, though a fearful, is but a frail barrier, which separates us from those real joys, of which the pleasures of a fugitive existence are but the shadow.

Never would men have exchanged their natural convictions, their internal aspirations, their instinctive hopes of immortality, for the lurid and deceptive glare of infidelity, if religious views had not been disfigured by being combined with the grossest errors and prejudices. Of these, there are two which every good man ought to strive to eradicate from all minds, and if it were possible, to purge from the earth.

The first causes us to behold in the divinity a menacing and implacable judge, constantly eager to execute vengeance. Monstrous conception! Revolting error! Infancy and old age, the two extremes of earthly existence, which from their feebleness, call for our most soothing cares, are those most persecuted with this vile and fierce prejudice. A cruel superstition has selected these terrific ideas, these horrible images, with which to besiege the bed of death, to light up the scene of agony—of parting and trembling apprehensions—with the flames of perdition. My bosom swells with mingled emotions, when I see any one attempting to darken the feeble and docile reason of a child with these sinister views. Pursued even in his dreams by these terrible menaces, before he knows the meaning of crime, he has already felt its torments. Astonishing infatuation! It is in this aspect that gloomy religionists have presented the compassionate and sustaining hope of the gospel. Instead of inspiring sweet and consoling ideas, they have succeeded in filling innocence with remorse.

The other prejudice is intolerance, or that spirit which causes us to view all persons guilty, whose faith is different from ours. While religion enjoins it upon us to cover the faults of our kind with a veil of indulgence, intolerance teaches us to transform their opinions into crimes. Religion rears asylums for the unfortunate.—Intolerance prepares scaffolds for all whom she chooses to denominate heretics. The one invokes ministers of charity, and the other, executioners. The one wipes away tears, and the other sheds blood.

Intolerance without power is simply ridiculous; but becomes most odious when armed with authority. The cry of humanity is ‘Peace with all men.’ If any were excepted, it should be the intolerant. Even they merit no severer punishment, than the inflictions of their own fury. They may attain to deliverance from remorse in their confident delirium, and may count their crimes as virtues, through the influence of self-blindness. But this strange obliquity of the understanding, this horrible intoxication, repels happiness. Joy and peace must fly the soul, of which this spirit has taken possession.

In another life, the measure of our felicity in the mansions of the just, will be the happiness we have created for the beings around us in this fleeting existence. A religious man constantly strives to render this, our terrestrial sojourn, more like the abode towards which his thoughts are elevated. His constant occupation is to mitigate suffering, banish prejudice and hatred, and calm the fury of party. All his relations are those of peace and love. Intolerant men! Who, of your number, will hope to hear it said of him in the retribution of the just, ‘much has been forgiven him, because he has loved much?’

LETTER XXIII. OF THE RAPIDITY OF LIFE.

In considering the different ages of life, the first sentiment I feel, is gratitude for the variety of pleasures, destined for us by nature. Thrice happy for us, if we knew how to taste the charms of all the situations through which we pass! Instead of this, we first regret infancy, then youth, then mature age. The happy period is always that which is no more.

It is a great folly to sadden the present, in looking back upon the past, as though it had been darkened by no shadow of a cloud. The sorrows which nature sends us in infancy, resemble spring showers, the traces of which are effaced by a passing breeze. The pains and alarms of each age have been chiefly the work of men. Who cannot remember the violent palpitations which he felt, when, exposed to the searching eye of his companions, he went forward to excuse his not having prepared his task, his translation or theme, at school? I have seen situations more perilous, since that time, but no misfortunes have awakened more bitterness, than the preference granted by the professor to the theme of another over mine. The beautiful age, for a frivolous being, is youth; for the ambitious, maturity; for the recluse, old age; for a reasonable man, each age: for heaven has reserved peculiar pleasures for each.

The second sentiment I experience, in contemplating life, is, regret to see the moments so rapidly gliding away. Time flies, and days and years steal away as rapidly as hours. Still, some complain of the burden of time, and endure cruel suffering from not knowing how to employ it.

To prolong my days, I will neither ask the elixir of life from alchymists, nor precepts from physicians. A severe regimen tends to abridge life. Multiplied privations give a sadness to the spirit, more noxious than the prescribed remedies are salutary. Besides, what is physical without moral life; that is to say, improvement and enjoyment? Physicians vaunt the miracles of abstinence and a careful regimen in the case of Cornaro, the Venetian, who was born dying, and yet spun out the thread of life with so much care that he vegetated a century. To attain this result, he weighed his aliment, and marked every hour of the day, with the most minute exactness. Bacon cites the case, but jests upon a man who believed himself living, because, in fact, he was not dead.

Moderation, cheerfulness and the happy employment of time furnish the best means of living as many days as nature permits; and the regimen of philosophic moralists has an effect more certain than that of physicians.[57]

Every one has observed that a year in youth presents a long perspective; and that the further we advance in our career, the more the course of time seems to accelerate. Let us strive to investigate the causes which so modify our judgments, with a view, if it be possible, to avoid them.

There is one inevitable cause—experience. At sixteen, what an illimitable prospective space is seen in the sixteen years that are to succeed! The termination of the latter period is lost to vision in the future, as the commencement of the first years are effaced from the memory of the past. But, in touching the goal which seemed so distant, we have discovered a scale by which the mind’s eye measures the future. Impatient youth, burning to overleap the interval which separates the object from the desires, strives to accelerate the tardy hours. In mature age, on the contrary, seeing every day bringing us nearer the termination of our career, we begin to regret the want of power to arrest the march of time. Thus our weakness hastens the flight which we desire to delay. Let us be less fearful of the uncertain future, and the hours will lose their desolating swiftness.

Finally, in our youth, all objects being new, produce the vivid impression of novelty. Every instant is filled with landmarks of memory, because in every instant a new sensation is produced, and a new link in the chain of the succession of ideas. As we advance in time, objects imperceptibly cease to excite our curiosity. We pass by beautiful objects and striking events which once filled us with transport or surprise, with a carelessness which fails to fix them in our memory. We return mechanically to the occupations of the preceding day, scarcely noting the transit of those monotonous periods which were rendered remarkable neither by ennui nor pleasure. Let us avoid this mental carelessness, which gives new speed to the flight of time, and is so fatal to happiness. Friends of humanity, of literature, of the arts and true enjoyment, let us preserve the mind in its freshness, the imagination in its youthful brilliancy. Let us thus arrest the happy moments; and let us preserve the enthusiasm of youth enlightened by the taste of mature age, for everything which merits our admiration.[58]

If we desire that our days should not be abridged, we must love retreat. The immediate result of this shelter is to keep off a crowd of officious and indolent people. There are those who would not think of taking our money, and who yet will steal hours and days from us without scruple. They seem not to realize the value of these fractions of time which are the material of life.

But while the idle rob us of hours, we ourselves sacrifice years. A great portion of our race, deafened by the clamor of the passions, agitated by feverish dreams, are scarcely conscious of existence; and, awakening for a moment, at death, regret that they have been long on the earth and yet have not lived. A few others, after having been long swept onward by the torrent, taught at last by experience, resist, land and fix their sojourn far from the tumult; and, finally, begin to taste the pleasant consciousness of existence. Why not prolong these final hours to the utmost? If our pursuits interdict us from the independent command of our time, we may, at least, consecrate portions of every evening to retreat, in order to review the past, pause on the present, and prepare for the future. Thus, making every day count in accumulating the pleasant stores of memory, we add it to the happy days of the past, and no longer allow life to vanish like a dream.

It is, more than all, in converse with ourselves that we give a right direction to the mind, elevation to the soul, and gentleness and firmness to the character. Life is a book in which we every day read a page. We ought to note down every instructive incident that passes.

The admirable Marcus Aurelius took delight in converse with himself; and learned to find enjoyment in the present by extracting from the past lessons for the future. I never fail to be affected when I read the account which he gives of all those persons whose cares had concurred to form his character and his manners. ‘I learned,’ says he, ‘of my grandfather Verus, to be gentle and complaisant.

‘The reputation which my father left, and the memory of his good actions which has been preserved, taught me modesty. My mother formed me to piety, taught me to be liberal, and not even to meditate, still less, to do a wrong.

‘I owe it to my governor that I am patient of labor, indulge few wants, know how to work with my own hands, meddle with no business that does not concern me, and give no encouragement to informers.

‘Diognetus taught me not to be amused with frivolities, to yield no credit to charlatans and enchanters, and to have no faith in conjurations, demons and superstitions of that sort. I learned of him to permit every one to speak to me with entire freedom, and to apply myself wholly to philosophy.

‘Rusticus made me perceive that I needed to correct my manners, that I ought to avoid the pride of the sophists, and not use effort to inspire the people with admiration of my patience and austerity of life; to be always ready to pardon those who had offended me, and to receive them kindly whenever they were disposed to resume their former intercourse.

‘I learned of Apollonius to be at the same time frank and firm in my designs, to follow no guide but my reason, even in the smallest matters, and to be always composed, even under the most acute sufferings. By his example I was instructed that it is possible to be at once severe and gentle.

‘Sextus taught me to govern my house as a good father, to preserve a simple gravity without affectation, to attempt to divine and anticipate the wishes and necessities of my friends; to endure, with calmness and patience, the ignorant and presumptuous who speak without thinking what they say; and to sustain relations of kindness with all.

‘I learned from Alexander, the grammarian, in disputation to use no injurious words in reply to my antagonist.

‘Fronto taught me to know that kings are surrounded by the envious, by knaves and hypocrites.

‘Alexander, the Platonist, instructed me never to say or to write to any person interceding for my interest, “I have had no time to attend to your affairs;” nor to allege, as an excuse, “I have been overwhelmed with business;” but to be always prompt to render all those good offices which the bonds of society demand.

‘I owe to my brother Severus, the love which I have for truth and justice. From him I derived the desire to govern my states by equal laws, and to reign in such a manner as that my subjects might possess perfect liberty.

‘I thank the Divinity for having given me virtuous ancestors, a good father, a good mother, a good sister, good preceptors and good friends; in a word, all the good things I could have desired.’[59]

A crowd of useful thoughts cannot but flow from such self-converse. Hold every day one of these solitary conversations with yourself. This is the way in which to attain the highest relish of existence; and, if I may so say, to cast anchor in the river of life.

LETTER XXIV. ON DEATH.

If we were to allow ourselves to express the wish that we might never die, an absurd wish which, perhaps, every man has sometimes indulged, a moralist might say, ‘Suppose it were granted, where would be the end of dissension, hatred, revenge? Where would the victim whom injustice pursues, find an asylum and repose?’ To all this it is sufficient to reply, that if we accuse nature for having subjected us to the penalty of death, we have not less reason to accuse her for having often rendered death desirable, as a relief from greater evils. Instead of showing herself so niggardly in bestowing happy moments, why did she not spare humanity the evils that render death a comparative release?

There are, as I believe, more solid reasons to justify nature in rendering death an inevitable allotment. When, undertaking to reform the universe in my day dreams, I render our earthly existence eternal, I find no difficulty in imagining all the evils which afflict us removed. But I strain my imagination to no purpose to give form and reality to those pleasures which shall be adequate to replace those which this new order of things cannot admit. Suppose that it were no longer necessary that generation should succeed generation; and that death were banished from the earth. The same beings, without hopes or fears, would always cover its surface. No more loves; no more parental tenderness; no more filial piety! Flattering hopes forsake the bosom along with enchanting remembrances. All those affections which give value to life owe their existence to death.[60]

Our prejudices transform death into a terrible spectre, accompanied by frightful dreams. The dark and anti-social doctrine, that we were placed on the earth for the punishment of exile, and that we ought never to intermit our contemplation of the grave, was imagined by hypocrites, who preached to others contempt of the world, that they might appropriate it to themselves. A wise man sees in existence a gift which he ought not to sacrifice. In learning how to live, he instructs himself how to die.

We must sometimes look Death in the face to judge how we shall be able to sustain his approach.[61] It is not necessary often to repeat this stern examination which presents gloomy ideas, even to minds the most disciplined. Another manner of contemplating the final scene offers all the useful results of the first, and presents nothing afflicting. It consists in observing the influence which death ought to exercise over life. This term, unknown, but always near, should render our duties more sacred, our affections more tender, our pleasures more vivid. In noting the rapidity of the flight of time, a wise man seizes upon those ideas which disturb the hours of the multitude, to enhance the charm of his own thoughts. It was not without an aim that certain of the ancient philosophers placed in their festal hall a death’s head decked with roses.

Those who say that death is nothing, may be thought to affect the semblance of courage. They speak, in fact, only one of the simplest truths. The term death is the sign of a purely negative idea; and denotes an instant impossible for thought to measure. It is not yet death, or it is past; and there is no interval.

Without doubt, the circumstances which precede it are extremely afflicting. Sudden deaths ought to cost us fewer tears than any others. Yet we hear it repeated, with a sigh, ‘the unfortunate sufferer lingered but a few hours.’ Was not that space sufficiently long when the moments were counted by agony? Let us not tinge our views by the coloring of egotism; and we shall perceive in this prompt departure, two motives for consolation; that the deceased, whom we regret, saw not the long approach of death in advance; and, that, in meeting it, he experienced a brief pang. Such an end is worthy of envy, and is the last benefit of heaven.

So died my father, the best of fathers, whom every one recognised by his force of character, his gentleness and serenity. He did not dazzle, either by his vivacity of mind, or the variety of his acquirements. But he so said the simplest things as to render them the best. During sixty-five years he shared the pains of others, but never added to them. One day, having experienced unaccustomed fatigue, he retired early, and a few moments after, slept in death. Such a death, without pain and alarm, was worthy of a life so pure that, to render him happy in the life to come, it would be only necessary to leave him the remembrance of what he had been and what he had done upon earth.

A fact recognised by numberless observing physicians is, that the last agony of a good man is rarely violent. It is probable, that in regard to all forms of death, mankind generally entertain the most erroneous conceptions. The vulgar, naturally embracing ideas that terrify them, believe that the dissolution of our earthly being is accompanied by all conceivable torments. It is probable, on the contrary, that, in entering upon eternal repose, we experience sensations analogous to those of a wearied man who feels the sweet influence of sleep stealing gently upon him.

These sensations, it is true, can be imagined to belong only to the last moments. Cruel maladies may precede them. But it would seem that nature invariably employs some means to mitigate the evils which she inflicts. Among mortal diseases, those which are severely painful are equally rapid; while those which are slow in their progress are comparatively free from pain. They allow the patient time to accustom himself to the idea of his departure. It is common for those who die in this way to close their career in the indulgence of dreamy and melancholy musings, solacing themselves alternately by resignation and hope.

A spectacle, touching to the heart, and, unhappily, too common, is presented in the case of a fair and florid young woman struck with a pulmonary malady. Absolute unconsciousness of danger often accompanies this cruel disease to the last moment. We are perfectly aware that the patient cannot survive the coming winter. We hear her pantingly discuss the projects which she expects to execute with her companions when health and spring shall return. The contrast of her daily increasing debility with her gentle gayety, and of her future projects, with the rapid approach of death, makes the heart bleed. Every one is pained for her but herself. The hectic fever imparts a kind of joyous inspiration; and nature, to absolve itself for inflicting death on one so young, leads her to her last hour in tranquil security. Death is to her as a sleep.

It is certain that physical sufferings are not those which infuse the utmost bitterness into this last cup. The gloomy thoughts with which death is invested are excited much more keenly by those affections which attach us to earth and our kind. We may well hold the understanding of those ambitious persons in disdain who instruct us, that when they have finished their vast projects their days shall thenceforward glide in peace and serenity. Death uniformly surprises them, tormenting themselves in the pursuit of their shadows. Others, with less show of stupidity, repine because death strikes them reposing upon their pleasures. Their groans are caused by having forgotten the rapidity and evanescence of their joys. They had not known how to give them an additional charm in saying, ‘we possess them but for a day.’

But suppose we regret neither ambitious projects nor transient pleasures, may we not wish to live longer for our children? I attempt not to inculcate an impracticable or exaggerated system. There is a situation in which death is fearful. There is a period in which it would seem as if man ought not to die. It commences when one has become a parent, and terminates when his sustaining hand is no longer indispensable to his family.

If nature calls us to quit life before this epoch, all consolations resemble the remedies which palliate the pains of the dying, without possessing efficacy to remove them. Still we dare not so outrage nature as to believe that there can exist a situation in which a good man can find no alleviation for his sorrows. In quitting a life which he would wish to retain longer, for the happiness of those most dear to him, he may derive force and magnanimity from the thought that he owes it to himself to leave an example of courage and decent dignity in the last act; that he may show the influence of piety, resignation, the hope of a good man, and the discipline of that philosophy which forbids its disciple to struggle against the inevitable lot.

The approach of death always brings associations of gloom when it comes in advance of old age, to destroy the tender affections. In the slow and natural course of years, it is an event as simple, as little to be deprecated, as the other occurrences of life. Alas! during a short sojourn, we see those who were most dear continually falling around us. We soon retain a less number with us than exist already in another world. The family is divided. I am not surprised that it becomes a matter of indifference to a wise man to remain with his present friends, or go and rejoin those that are absent.

As long as our children have need of our support, we resemble a traveller charged with business of extreme importance. As soon as these cares become useless, we resemble him who travels at leisure and by chance; and who takes up his lodging for the night wherever the setting sun surprises him. For me, I see the second epoch drawing near. If I reach it, I shall bless heaven for having awarded me a sufficient number of years, and for having diffused over them so few pains.

Let us not charge that man with weakness who, when on the eve of departure for distant and untravelled countries, is perceived to impart the intonation and tenderness of sorrow to his adieus. Ought we to exact more of him whom death is about to conduct to that ‘undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveller returns?’ I would not seem to affect an austere and unnatural courage. But whenever delivered from the only heart-rending agony, I will hope and strive to preserve sufficient tranquillity of mind to impress the sentiment on those I love, that we ought, with becoming dignity, to submit ourselves to the immutable laws of nature; that complaint is useless, and murmuring unjust; and that it becomes us, with transient but subdued emotion, to say, as we receive the final embrace, ‘may we meet again!’

LETTER XXV. CONCLUSION OF ‘DROZ SUR L’ART D’ETRE HEUREUX.’

I shall have attained my purpose if these sketches should produce any degree of conviction that man, in exercising his faculties, can mitigate his pains and multiply his pleasures, and, consequently, should serve as the outlines of a plan for reducing the pursuit of happiness to an art. I am aware that no view could be offered more contrary to the prevalent opinions in society. The morose and the frivolous make common cause to attack it. To them the very idea seems absurd; and the most indulgent among them question the good faith of him who announces it.[62]

To such grave and learned authorities, and more, even to the general suffrage against it, I might dare to oppose counterbalancing authorities. From Socrates to Franklin, I see philosophers who have been persuaded that man may be directed in the art, and instructed in the science of happiness; and that his faculties may be enlarged to pursue it. Who are the men that have entertained this persuasion? The very elite of the human race. Was each individual of them surrounded by those happy circumstances which would naturally inspire the same philosophy? They were persons who had experienced all the conditions of life. As if nature had studied to prove, by great examples, that our happiness depends upon our reason more than upon our circumstances, Epictetus lived in chains, and Marcus Aurelius on a throne.

We justly render homage to the Greek philosophers. Is their glory founded on their physics, long since known to be full of errors, or their metaphysics, often puerile? Upon neither; but they have merited the veneration of ages by indicating principles, the practice of which, would render us better and more happy.

Which of the sciences did the admirable Socrates chiefly esteem? The single one which teaches us how to live as we ought. Let it not be said that I substitute one science for another; and that Socrates taught morals, and not my pretended science of happiness. With the Greeks, morals had a perfectly definite end. Their philosophers held all their teaching subservient to conducting their disciples to happiness. Illustrious men! we disdain their maxims, but still revere their names. What fruit have we obtained from the boasted light and improvement of the age? We speak with enthusiasm of those sciences which they judged frivolous; and we treat as chimerical those studies which they judged alone worthy of human nature.

Suppose it had been said to these philosophers, ‘you will never reform the human race; and, instead of profitless dreams about wisdom and happiness, you ought to desist from subjects so futile, and consecrate your vigils to sciences more worthy to occupy your thoughts.’ Would they not have smiled with pity upon such counsel? Had they deigned to reply, would they not have said, ‘We are well aware that we shall not purify the heart of the wicked of its pride, envy, cupidity; but shall we derive no glory from having confirmed some good men in their career? In the midst of storms we felt our energies invigorated as we perceived that our spirits were in accordance with theirs. However feeble may have been the influence of our writings, affront not humanity by supposing that ours, however partial may have been their circulation, will, nowhere, find minds worthy to profit by them. Perhaps they will kindle the holy love of virtue in some of those who may read them in the youthful age of unsophisticated and generous resolutions. Few, who read, will practise our doctrine in all its extent. Almost every one will be indebted to it for some solitary principles. It is possible we may never have numerous disciples. But we shall have some in all countries and in all time. It is a truth that ought to satisfy us, that such discussions are based neither upon exaggeration nor revery. The science of happiness would indeed be chimerical if we expected that it would impart the same charms to all predicaments in which our lot might cast us. Instead of indulging such visionary hopes, if these discussions dissipate the errors which veil the true good from our eyes, if we learn to bring together all the easy and innocent pleasures, and to render the painful moments of life more rapid, we have been taught an art which it is possible to demonstrate and improve to an indefinite extent.’

Does this art appear difficult? Let any one be named which it exacts no effort to acquire. Will it be thought that it cannot become of general utility? Will professors, of the highest reputation, cease to teach eloquence because they do not form as many orators as they have pupils? The more maturely I have reflected upon the art in question, the more clearly I am convinced that it may be assimilated to the other arts. It differs from them only in its superior importance. The interest and attention that all the rest merit should be measured only by their relation, more or less direct, to this first of all arts. To settle the utility of any science, law, enterprise, or action, I know no better measure than to note its influence on human happiness.

If moral lessons leave but a transient influence, it may be attributed to two principal causes; the weakness of our nature, and the contagion of example. A third belongs to those who teach us the doctrine of morals, and is found in their exaggeration of their doctrine. They elevate the altar of wisdom upon steep mountains; and discourage our first steps, by proclaiming the painful efforts necessary to scale them. From the sadness of the ministers of the worship, it would not be inferred, that the divinity of the place was liberal in dispensing pure pleasures, bright hopes, oblivion of pain, and remembrances almost as pleasant as either.

It is a fatal error to imagine that it is useful to exaggerate the doctrine of morals. To do this, fails not to excite disgust towards the precepts inculcated. Men, that have been deceived upon these points, as soon as they judge for themselves, in their impatience to shake off the yoke of prejudices, are tempted to reject principles the most wise with those errors by which they have been misled. That we may be heard and followed, let us be true. Let us present, with force, the evils which the abuse of our faculties brings upon our short career.—Let us avow with equal frankness, that we commit an egregious mistake, if we refuse, or neglect to draw from our faculties all the advantages in our power, to embellish life.

The doctrine of morals is a phrase that has been often employed to designate the propagation of false and extravagant principles. For this phrase, which is too worn out, and of equivocal import, suppose we substitute a definition, which will clearly indicate the end, towards which, morals ought to be directed. Morals is that which teaches the art of happiness. If it be not so, the foundation of ethics is a mere matter of convention, either useless or dangerous.

Morals should be taught only as subservient to happiness. Austerity should be banished equally from the manner of teaching and from the matter that is taught.—They are the useful teachers, whose tenderness of heart impels them rather to inspire virtue than to enjoin it; and whose brilliant imagination enables them to offer wise principles under such pleasant forms as charm the mind and awaken curiosity. If I were to point to one of the best works on morals, according to my judgment, I would name ‘The Vicar of Wakefield.’ To present a family struggling with every form of misfortune, and constantly opposing resignation or courage to each, is to offer the sublimest painting that it is possible to execute. The concurrence of genius and virtue could alone have conceived the idea. All good men owe the tribute of gratitude and veneration to the memory of the author.

The concurrent influence of public institutions and education would be necessary to render the general habits conformable to happiness. Books, the influence of which I certainly have not exaggerated, may be useful to men, raised by the discipline of their reason above the multitude. That man is happy, who knows how to add good books to the number of his friends, who often retires from the world to enjoy their peaceful and instructive conversation, and always brings back serenity, courage and hope.

Were the doctrine true, that it is impossible to increase the happiness or diminish the evils of life, it is not perceived that it would not still be necessary to follow my principles. Preach this discouraging doctrine to a good man, and you may afflict him, but will obtain no influence over his conduct. He will always strive to improve his condition, mitigate the sufferings that press upon him, and render men more compassionate and happy. Such noble efforts cannot be entirely lost. The pure intentions, the sincere wishes, which he forms for the good of his kind, give to his mind a pleasant serenity. It assures his own happiness to meditate the means of increasing that of others.

LETTER XXVI. THE CHOICE OF A PROFESSION.

The considerate Knight of La Mancha would not dismiss his follower and friend to the government of Barataria, without a few more last words, and without arming him for his high functions with a copious homily of counsels and admonitions. Before I leave you to the stern encounter of the painful emergencies of life, to unravel its intricacies, and settle its innumerable perplexing and difficult alternatives, I do not mean to oppress your memory with the thousand and one particular directions, to meet every imaginable occurrence with the right mode of conduct. Innumerable cases of perplexity will be continually occurring, that can only be settled by extempore judgment and prudence. I shall limit my counsels to a single one among the many questions of universal application, each one of which present a great variety of aspects and alternatives; questions of difficult solution for the young; and yet on the right disposal of which depend their character, success and happiness in life. Among the subjects to which I refer, are, the choice of a profession—decision in regard to our plans and projects—the selection of our company—the dispositions with which we should regard the place assigned us in society—the deportment appropriate to gentlemen and ladies—the proper selection of books—the mode and place of worship, and what are the best evidences of true wisdom in character. The first of these is the only one upon which I shall offer you my remarks.

In the choice of a profession, the first point to be consulted is our physical and mental temperament and endowment, or aptitude. That some are constituted for sedentary and inactive pursuits, others to beat the anvil, follow the plough, or mount the reeling mast with a firm step in the uproar of a tempest; some for the bar, others for the pulpit, and still others to be musicians, painters, poets or engineers, I consider a truth so universally and obviously taught by observation and experience, that I shall not deem it necessary to pause to prove it to such as would contest it. I am sufficiently informed that there are those who contend that all minds are formed equal and alike—and that all the after differences result from education and circumstances. With them, Virgil and Byron had no constitutional aptitudes to poetry, and the same training that gave Handel and Gluck their preëminence in music, would have imparted to any other mind equal skill. According to their system, La Place and Zerah Colburn were no earlier or more strongly inclined to mathematics, than other children. These sapient physiologists in descending to the animal tribes, ought to find, that web-footed animals had no natural aptitude for water, the canine tribes for animal food, and the ruminating, to feed on grass and vegetables. I shall leave those who hold this dogma to retain it unquestioned so far as I am concerned; and they will be obliged to leave me to mine, which is, that there are immense differences in the physical and mental constitution, differences which every enlightened parent discovers in his children from the very dawn of their faculties—differences which every intelligent instructer notes in his pupils, as soon as he becomes intimately acquainted with them—differences which, to keen and close observation, distinguish more or less each individual in the immense mass of society. No matter how much alike these persons are reared and trained; the most striking diversities of endowment are often observed in members of the same family, reared and educated with all possible uniformity. This is, no doubt, a beautiful trait of that general impress of variety, which providence has marked upon every portion of the animate and inanimate creation. Nature has willed, that not only men should possess an untiring diversity of form, countenance and mind, but that not two pebbles on the shore, or insects in the air, should be found precisely alike. The sign manual of the Creator on his works is a grand and infinite variety.

The physiological inquiry whence these differences of temperament and aptitude arise, is one, which belongs to another subject; though I have no wish to conceal my belief, that the fundamental positions of phrenology are as immovably founded in fact, and as certainly follow from observation, as the leading axioms of any physical science. It is enough for my present purpose, that the order of every form of society calls for an infinite variety of aptitude, talent and vocation, and that nature has furnished the requisite variety of endowment, adequately to meet those calls.

The ancient system, still in use, goes on the supposition, that all minds are originally alike; and that all children are equally fit to be trained for each of the vocations. Hence we see tailors at the anvil, and blacksmiths on the shopboard, innumerable excellent ploughmen generating prose, and sleeping at the bar and pulpit, and ingenious fiddlers ruined as engineers; in a word, all that ludicrous disarrangement and seeming play at cross purposes, in virtue of which, men, who would have been borne, by a strong current, to the first place in the profession for which nature designed them, become dull and useless in another. A great part of the whole labor of instruction has thus been worse than thrown away. It has been the hard effort of poetic fiction, laboring the huge stone up an acclivity, to see it recoil and hear it thunder back again; the effort to circumvent, and cross the purposes of nature.

It seems to me to be among the most responsible inquiries of a parent and a conscientious instructor, what pursuit or calling is indicated for his child by his temperament and aptitude? The boy, who, like Pope, even in childhood lisps in numbers, because the numbers come, will probably be found to have not only an ear for the peculiar harmony of rhythm, but an inventive mind, stored with images, and a quick eye to catch the various phases of nature and society. If placed under favorable circumstances, and judicious training, this child will become a poet, while ninety-nine in a hundred of those, who make verses, could by no forcing of nature ever rise higher than rhymers. Thus may be detected the embryo germs of temperament, endowment and character, which give the undeveloped promise of the future orator, lawyer, mathematician, naturalist, mechanician, in a word, of the mind fitted to attain distinction in any walk in society. I am aware of the mistakes, which fond and doting parents are likely to make, in interpreting an equivocal, perhaps an accidental sally of the cherished child, to be a sure proof of genius and endowment. No judicious and intelligent parent will be in much danger of being led astray by fondness so weak and misguided.—Wherever real endowment exists, it never fails to put forth continual indications. It is the elastic vigor of nature working at the root, to which no foolish partiality will be blind.

It is true, that nature, equally beneficent in what she has granted, and what she has withheld, forms the million for the common duties and undistinguished employments; stamps them at once with a characteristic uniformity and variety; and sends them forth with specific adaptations, but not so strongly marked, as not to be mistaken with comparative impunity. Hence the ordinary pursuits and employments of life are conducted with general success, notwithstanding these smaller mistakes in regard to endowment.

Not so in those rarer instances, where she has seen fit to stamp the clear and strong impress of peculiar endowment and aptitude, in which the embryo poet, painter, mathematician, naturalist, and orator are indicated by such unequivocal signs, as cannot easily be overlooked, or mistaken by any competent judge. Hence, in the biography of most of those who have truly and greatly distinguished themselves, we are informed that the most ordinary people about them were perfectly aware of the harbingers of their future greatness. I am confident, that to keen and faithful observation these harbingers are as palpable in the germ, as in the development. To mistake in such a case, and not only to withdraw the youthful aspirant from the career to which nature beckons him, but to force him into one, in which every effort must be rowing against the stream, is to consign him to an Egyptian bondage, a slavery of the soul, by which many a spirit of firmer mould has been broken down, and lost to society, and others worse than lost, rendered the scourge and curse of all with whom their lot was cast.

Such as have arrived at a maturity of reason and years, to have the responsibility of the choice of a profession cast upon themselves, will infer, what are my views in regard to the first element, by which they ought to be directed. It involves a previous question, for what pursuit or calling their temperament, faculties and powers best fit them? By long and close observation, pursued with a fidelity proportioned to its importance, by intent study of themselves, as called out by the changes of their health and prospects, the fluctuations of their spirits, their collisions with society, in all the contingencies that befall them, they can scarcely fail to form some conception of the peculiar cast of their powers, and the walk in life, for which their capabilities are best adapted. If they select wisely in this respect, habit and time will certainly render it the profession of their inclinations.

As soon as the mind begins to survey the professions, in regard to the honors, emolument and success, which they respectively offer, there is great danger, lest imagination, taking the place of reason, should look at the scene through a prism, and see all the chances of an illusive brilliancy of promise, which sober experience will be sure to disappoint. There are the immense promises of the law, alluring a crowd of aspirants and competitors, the greater portion of whom must fail to realize their expectations. There are the honors of the physician, binding him, by the strongest of all ties, to the confidence and affection of the families that employ him. He exercises the only profession that does not depend upon the caprice of fashion, or the vibrations of transient feeling.—There is the ministry, with its time-honored claims, its peculiar title to be admitted to the privacy of affection, sickness and death, and its paramount capability of the highest forms of that only eloquence that swells and softens the heart, by coming home to men’s business and bosoms. There is the varied range, and the rapidly acquired fortunes of merchandize and commerce; the growing interest and importance of the new portico to a new order of nobility, manufactures. There is agriculture, always seen to be the most satisfactory and useful of employments, and now rapidly coming to be viewed in the light of scientific investigation and of a liberal pursuit. To adjust and settle the respective views, which the judgment and imagination will take of the chances of these various pursuits, and their contiguity to love, marriage, wealth, and distinction, will be found to be no easy task. Sometimes one view will predominate—sometimes another; and the mind appears like a pendulum vibrating between them.

Reason presents one decisive view of the subject. All these chances—all these balances of advantage and disadvantage have long since settled to their actual and natural level. If the law presents more tempting baits, and more rich and glittering prizes, over-crowded competition, heart-wearing scramble, difficulty of rising above the common level, into the sun and air of distinction, are appended, as inevitable weights, in the opposing scale. The advantages and disadvantages of all the professions are adjusted by the level of society, exactly in the same way. He who is guided in this inquiry by common sense, will comprehend at a glance, that it is impossible, in the nature of things, to combine all the advantages and evade all the disadvantages of any one pursuit. No expectation more irrational and disappointing can be indulged, than to unite incompatible circumstances of happiness. The inquirer must reflect, that such a pursuit connects a series of fortunate chances; but there are the counterbalancing evils. Such another has a different series of both. It is folly to expect to form an amalgam of these immiscible elements. Reason can expect no more than that we unite in the calling, finally fixed upon, as many fortunate circumstances as possible, and avoid, as far as may be, its inconveniences and evils.

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