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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Thoughts on Man
+His Nature, Productions and Discoveries
+Interspersed with Some Particulars
+Respecting the Author
+by William Godwin
+
+#1 in our series by William Godwin
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+Thoughts on Man
+His Nature, Productions and Discoveries
+Interspersed with Some Particulars
+Respecting the Author
+by
+William Godwin
+
+December, 1996 [Etext #743]
+
+
+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Thoughts on Man
+His Nature, Productions and Discoveries
+Interspersed with Some Particulars
+Respecting the Author by William Godwin
+
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+
+
+THOUGHTS ON MAN
+HIS NATURE, PRODUCTIONS AND DISCOVERIES
+INTERSPERSED WITH SOME PARTICULARS
+RESPECTING THE AUTHOR
+by
+WILLIAM GODWIN
+
+
+
+ Oh, the blood more stirs
+To rouse a lion, than to start a hare!
+
+SHAKESPEARE
+
+
+
+
+LONDON:
+EFFINGHAM WILSON, ROYAL EXCHANGE.
+1831.
+
+PREFACE
+
+In the ensuing volume I have attempted to give a defined and
+permanent form to a variety of thoughts, which have occurred to
+my mind in the course of thirty-four years, it being so long
+since I published a volume, entitled, the Enquirer,--thoughts,
+which, if they have presented themselves to other men, have, at
+least so far as I am aware, never been given to the public
+through the medium of the press.  During a part of this period I
+had remained to a considerable degree unoccupied in my character
+of an author, and had delivered little to the press that bore my
+name.--And I beg the reader to believe, that, since I entered in
+1791 upon that which may be considered as my vocation in life, I
+have scarcely in any instance contributed a page to any
+periodical miscellany.
+
+My mind has been constitutionally meditative, and I should not
+have felt satisfied, if I had not set in order for publication
+these special fruits of my meditations.  I had entered upon a
+certain career; and I held it for my duty not to abandon it.
+
+One thing further I feel prompted to say.  I have always regarded
+it as my office to address myself to plain men, and in clear and
+unambiguous terms.  It has been my lot to have occasional
+intercourse with some of those who consider themselves as
+profound, who deliver their oracles in obscure phraseology, and
+who make it their boast that few men can understand them, and
+those few only through a process of abstract reflection, and by
+means of unwearied application.
+
+To this class of the oracular I certainly did not belong.  I felt
+that I had nothing to say, that it should be very difficult to
+understand.  I resolved, if I could help it, not to "darken
+counsel by words without knowledge."  This was my principle in
+the Enquiry concerning Political Justice.  And I had my reward. 
+I had a numerous audience of all classes, of every age, and of
+either sex.  The young and the fair did not feel deterred from
+consulting my pages.
+
+It may be that that book was published in a propitious season.  I
+am told that nothing coming from the press will now be welcomed,
+unless it presents itself in the express form of amusement.  He
+who shall propose to himself for his principal end, to draw aside
+in one particular or another the veil from the majesty of
+intellectual or moral truth, must lay his account in being
+received with little attention.
+
+I have not been willing to believe this:  and I publish my
+speculations accordingly.  I have aimed at a popular, and (if I
+could reach it) an interesting style; and, if I am thrust aside
+and disregarded, I shall console myself with believing that I
+have not neglected what it was in my power to achieve.
+
+One characteristic of the present publication will not fail to
+offer itself to the most superficial reader.  I know many men who
+are misanthropes, and profess to look down with disdain on their
+species.  My creed is of an opposite character.  All that we
+observe that is best and most excellent in the intellectual
+world, is man:  and it is easy to perceive in many cases, that
+the believer in mysteries does little more, than dress up his
+deity in the choicest of human attributes and qualifications.  I
+have lived among, and I feel an ardent interest in and love for,
+my brethren of mankind.  This sentiment, which I regard with
+complacency in my own breast, I would gladly cherish in others.
+In such a cause I am well pleased to enrol myself a missionary.
+
+     February 15, 1831.
+
+
+The particulars respecting the author, referred to in the
+title-page, will be found principally in Essays VII, IX, XIV, and
+XVIII.
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+Essay. 
+I.  Of Body and Mind.  The Prologue 
+II.  Of the Distribution of Talents  
+III.  Of Intellectual Abortion 
+IV.  Of the Durability of Human Achievements and Productions 
+V.  Of the Rebelliousness of Man 
+VI.  Of Human Innocence  
+VII.  Of the Duration of Human Life 
+VIII.  Of Human Vegetation 
+IX.  Of Leisure  
+X.  Of Imitation and Invention 
+XI.  Of Self-Love and Benevolence  
+XII.  Of the Liberty of Human Actions 
+XIII.  Of Belief 
+XIV.  Of Youth and Age 
+XV.  Of Love and Friendship  
+XVI.  Of Frankness and Reserve 
+XVII.  Of Ballot 
+XVIII.  Of Diffidence  
+XIX.  Of Self Complacence  
+XX.  Of Phrenology 
+XXI.  Of Astronomy 
+XXII.  Of the Material Universe 
+XXIII.  Of Human Virtue.  The Epilogue
+
+
+THOUGHTS, &c.
+
+
+ESSAY I.
+OF BODY AND MIND.
+
+THE PROLOGUE.
+
+There is no subject that more frequently occupies the attention
+of the contemplative than man:  yet there are many circumstances
+concerning him that we shall hardly admit to have been
+sufficiently considered.
+
+Familiarity breeds contempt.  That which we see every day and
+every hour, it is difficult for us to regard with admiration.  To
+almost every one of our stronger emotions novelty is a necessary
+ingredient.  The simple appetites of our nature may perhaps form
+an exception.  The appetite for food is perpetually renewed in a
+healthy subject with scarcely any diminution and love, even the
+most refined, being combined with one of our original impulses,
+will sometimes for that reason withstand a thousand trials, and
+perpetuate itself for years.  In all other cases it is required,
+that a fresh impulse should be given, that attention should anew
+be excited, or we cannot admire.  Things often seen pass feebly
+before our senses, and scarcely awake the languid soul.
+
+"Man is the most excellent and noble creature of the world, the
+principal and mighty work of God, the wonder of nature, the
+marvel of marvels[1]."
+
+[1] Anatomy of Melancholy, p. 1.
+
+
+Let us have regard to his corporeal structure.  There is a
+simplicity in it, that at first perhaps we slightly consider. 
+But how exactly is it fashioned for strength and agility!  It is
+in no way incumbered.  It is like the marble when it comes out of
+the hand of the consummate sculptor; every thing unnecessary is
+carefully chiseled away; and the joints, the muscles, the
+articulations, and the veins come out, clean and finished.  It
+has long ago been observed, that beauty, as well as virtue, is
+the middle between all extremes:  that nose which is neither
+specially long, nor short, nor thick, nor thin, is the perfect
+nose; and so of the rest.  In like manner, when I speak of man
+generally, I do not regard any aberrations of form, obesity, a
+thick calf, a thin calf; I take the middle between all extremes;
+and this is emphatically man.
+
+Man cannot keep pace with a starting horse:  but he can
+persevere, and beats him in the end.
+
+What an infinite variety of works is man by his corporeal form
+enabled to accomplish!  In this respect he casts the whole
+creation behind him.
+
+What a machine is the human hand!  When we analyse its parts and
+its uses, it appears to be the most consummate of our members. 
+And yet there are other parts, that may maintain no mean
+rivalship against it.
+
+What a sublimity is to be attributed to his upright form!  He is
+not fashioned, veluti pecora, quae natura prona atque ventri
+obedientia finxit.  He is made coeli convexa tueri.  The looks
+that are given him in his original structure, are "looks
+commercing with the skies."
+
+How surpassingly beautiful are the features of his countenance;
+the eyes, the nose, the mouth!  How noble do they appear in a
+state of repose!  With what never-ending variety and emphasis do
+they express the emotions of his mind!  In the visage of man,
+uncorrupted and undebased, we read the frankness and
+ingenuousness of his soul, the clearness of his reflections, the
+penetration of his spirit.  What a volume of understanding is
+unrolled in his broad, expanded, lofty brow!  In his countenance
+we see expressed at one time sedate confidence and awful
+intrepidity, and at another godlike condescension and the most
+melting tenderness.  Who can behold the human eye, suddenly
+suffused with moisture, or gushing with tears unbid, and the
+quivering lip, without unspeakable emotion?  Shakespear talks of
+an eye, "whose bend could awe the world."
+
+What a miraculous thing is the human complexion!  We are sent
+into the world naked, that  all the variations of the blood might
+be made visible.  However trite, I cannot avoid quoting here the
+lines of the most deep-thinking and philosophical of our poets:
+
+                         We understood
+      Her by her sight:  her pure and eloquent blood
+      Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought,
+      That one might almost say her body thought.
+
+What a curious phenomenon is that of blushing! It is impossible
+to witness this phenomenon without interest and sympathy.  It
+comes at once, unanticipated by the person in whom we behold it.
+It comes from the soul, and expresses with equal certainty shame,
+modesty, and vivid, uncontrollable affection.  It spreads, as it
+were in so many stages, over the cheeks, the brow, and the neck,
+of him or her in whom the sentiment that gives birth to it is
+working.
+
+Thus far I have not mentioned speech, not perhaps the most
+inestimable of human gifts, but, if it is not that, it is at
+least the endowment, which makes man social, by which principally
+we impart our sentiments to each other, and which changes us from
+solitary individuals, and bestows on us a duplicate and
+multipliable existence.  Beside which it incalculably increases
+the perfection of one.  The man who does not speak, is an
+unfledged thinker; and the man that does not write, is but half
+an investigator.
+
+Not to enter into all the mysteries of articulate speech and the
+irresistible power of eloquence, whether addressed to a single
+hearer, or instilled into the ears of many,--a topic that belongs
+perhaps less to the chapter of body than mind,--let us for a
+moment fix our thoughts steadily upon that little implement, the
+human voice.  Of what unnumbered modulations is it susceptible! 
+What terror may it inspire!  How may it electrify the soul, and
+suspend all its functions!  How infinite is its melody!  How
+instantly it subdues the hearer to pity or to love!  How does the
+listener hang upon every note praying that it may last for ever,
+
+               ----that even silence
+      Was took ere she was ware, and wished she might
+      Deny her nature, and be never more,      
+      Still to be so displaced.
+
+It is here especially that we are presented with the triumphs of
+civilisation.  How immeasurable is the distance between the voice
+of the clown, who never thought of the power that dwells in this
+faculty, who delivers himself in a rude, discordant and
+unmodulated accent, and is accustomed to confer with his fellow
+at the distance of two fields, and the man who understands his
+instrument as Handel understood the organ, and who, whether he
+thinks of it or no, sways those that hear him as implicitly as
+Orpheus is said to have subdued the brute creation!
+
+From the countenance of man let us proceed to his figure.  Every
+limb is capable of speaking, and telling its own tale.  What can
+equal the magnificence of the neck, the column upon which the
+head reposes!  The ample chest may denote an almost infinite
+strength and power.  Let us call to mind the Apollo Belvidere,
+and the Venus de Medicis, whose very "bends are adornings."  What
+loftiness and awe have I seen expressed in the step of an
+actress, not yet deceased, when first she advanced, and came down
+towards the audience!  I was ravished, and with difficulty kept
+my seat!  Pass we to the mazes of the dance, the inimitable
+charms and picturesque beauty that may be given to the figure
+while still unmoved, and the ravishing grace that dwells in it
+during its endless changes and evolutions.
+
+The upright figure of man produces, incidentally as it were, and
+by the bye, another memorable effect.  Hence we derive the power
+of meeting in halls, and congregations, and crowded assemblies. 
+We are found "at large, though without number," at solemn
+commemorations and on festive occasions.  We touch each other, as
+the members of a gay party are accustomed to do, when they wait
+the stroke of an electrical machine, and the spark spreads along
+from man to man.  It is thus that we have our feelings in common
+at a theatrical representation and at a public dinner, that
+indignation is communicated, and patriotism become irrepressible.
+
+One man can convey his sentiments in articulate speech to a
+thousand; and this is the nursing mother of oratory, of public
+morality, of public religion, and the drama.  The privilege we
+thus possess, we are indeed too apt to abuse; but man is scarcely
+ever so magnificent and so awful, as when hundreds of human heads
+are assembled together, hundreds of faces lifted up to
+contemplate one object, and hundreds of voices uttered in the
+expression of one common sentiment.
+
+But, notwithstanding the infinite beauty, the magazine of
+excellencies and perfections, that appertains to the human body,
+the mind claims, and justly claims, an undoubted superiority.  I
+am not going into an enumeration of the various faculties and
+endowments of the mind of man, as I have done of his body.  The
+latter was necessary for my purpose.  Before I proceeded to
+consider the ascendancy of mind, the dominion and loftiness it is
+accustomed to assert, it appeared but just to recollect what was
+the nature and value of its subject and its slave.
+
+By the mind we understand that within us which feels and thinks,
+the seat of sensation and reason.  Where it resides we cannot
+tell, nor can authoritatively pronounce, as the apostle says,
+relatively to a particular phenomenon, "whether it is in the
+body, or out of the body."  Be it however where or what it may,
+it is this which constitutes the great essence of, and gives
+value to, our existence; and all the wonders of our microcosm
+would without it be a form only, destined immediately to perish,
+and of no greater account than as a clod of the valley.
+
+It was an important remark, suggested to me many years ago by an
+eminent physiologer and anatomist, that, when I find my attention
+called to any particular part or member of my body, I may be
+morally sure that there is something amiss in the processes of
+that part or member.  As long as the whole economy of the frame
+goes on well and without interruption, our attention is not
+called to it.  The intellectual man is like a disembodied spirit.
+
+He is almost in the state of the dervise in the Arabian Nights,
+who had the power of darting his soul into the unanimated body of
+another, human or brute, while he left his own body in the
+condition of an insensible carcase, till it should be revivified
+by the same or some other spirit.  When I am, as it is vulgarly
+understood, in a state of motion, I use my limbs as the
+implements of my will.  When, in a quiescent state of the body, I
+continue to think, to reflect and to reason, I use, it may be,
+the substance of the brain as the implement of my thinking,
+reflecting and reasoning; though of this in fact we know nothing.
+
+We have every reason to believe that the mind cannot subsist
+without the body; at least we must be very different creatures
+from what we are at present, when that shall take place.  For a
+man to think, agreeably and with serenity, he must be in some
+degree of health.  The corpus sanum is no less indispensible than
+the mens sana.  We must eat, and drink, and sleep.  We must have
+a reasonably good appetite and digestion, and a fitting
+temperature, neither too hot nor cold.  It is desirable that we
+should have air and exercise.  But this is instrumental merely. 
+All these things are negatives, conditions without which we
+cannot think to the best purpose, but which lend no active
+assistance to our thinking.
+
+Man is a godlike being.  We launch ourselves in conceit into
+illimitable space, and take up our rest beyond the fixed stars. 
+We proceed without impediment from country to country, and from
+century to century, through all the ages of the past, and through
+the vast creation of the imaginable future.  We spurn at the
+bounds of time and space; nor would the thought be less futile
+that imagines to imprison the mind within the limits of the body,
+than the attempt of the booby clown who is said within a thick
+hedge to have plotted to shut in the flight of an eagle.
+
+We never find our attention called to any particular part or
+member of the body, except when there is somewhat amiss in that
+part or member.  And, in like manner as we do not think of any
+one part or member in particular, so neither do we consider our
+entire microcosm and frame.  The body is apprehended as no more
+important and of intimate connection to a man engaged in a train
+of reflections, than the house or apartment in which he dwells. 
+The mind may aptly be described under the denomination of the
+"stranger at home."  On set occasions and at appropriate times we
+examine our stores, and ascertain the various commodities we
+have, laid up in our presses and our coffers.  Like the governor
+of a fort in time of peace, which was erected to keep out a
+foreign assailant, we occasionally visit our armoury, and take
+account of the muskets, the swords, and other implements of war
+it contains, but for the most part are engaged in the occupations
+of peace, and do not call the means of warfare in any sort to our
+recollection.
+
+The mind may aptly be described under the denomination of the
+"stranger at home."  With their bodies most men are little
+acquainted.  We are "like unto a man beholding his natural face
+in a glass, who beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and
+straightway forgetteth what manner of man he is."  In the
+ruminations of the inner man, and the dissecting our thoughts and
+desires, we employ our intellectual arithmetic, we add, and
+subtract, and multiply, and divide, without asking the aid,
+without adverting to the existence, of our joints and members. 
+Even as to the more corporeal part of our avocations, we behold
+the external world, and proceed straight to the object of our
+desires, without almost ever thinking of this medium, our own
+material frame, unaided by which none of these things could be
+accomplished.  In this sense we may properly be said to be
+spiritual existences, however imperfect may be the idea we are
+enabled to affix to the term spirit.
+
+Hence arises the notion, which has been entertained ever since
+the birth of reflection and logical discourse in the world, and
+which in some faint and confused degree exists probably even
+among savages, that the body is the prison of the mind.  It is in
+this sense that Waller, after completing fourscore years of age,
+expresses himself in these affecting and interesting couplets.
+
+      When we for age could neither read nor write,
+      The subject made us able to indite.
+      The soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed,
+      Lets in new light by chinks that time hath made:
+      Stronger by weakness, wiser, men become,
+      As they draw near to their eternal home.
+
+Thus it is common with persons of elevated soul to talk of
+neglecting, overlooking, and taking small account of the body. 
+It is in this spirit that the story is recorded of Anaxarchus,
+who, we are told, was ordered by Nicocreon, tyrant of Salamis, to
+be pounded in a mortar, and who, in contempt of his mortal
+sufferings, exclaimed, "Beat on, tyrant! thou dost but strike
+upon the case of Anaxarchus; thou canst not touch the man
+himself."  And it is in something of the same light that we must
+regard what is related of the North American savages.  Beings,
+who scoff at their tortures, must have an idea of something that
+lies beyond the reach of their assailants.
+
+It is just however to observe, that some of the particulars here
+related, belong not less to the brute creation than to man.  If
+men are imperfectly acquainted with their external figure and
+appearance, this may well be conceived to be still more
+predicable of the inferior animals.  It is true that all of them
+seem to be aware of the part in their structure, where lie their
+main strength and means of hostility.  Thus the bull attacks with
+his horns, and the horse with his heels, the beast of prey with
+his claws, the bird with his beak, and insects and other venomous
+creatures with their sting.  We know not by what impulse they are
+prompted to the use of the various means which are so intimately
+connected with their preservation and welfare; and we call it
+instinct.  We may be certain it does not arise from a careful
+survey of their parts and members, and a methodised selection of
+the means which shall be found most effectual for the
+accomplishment of their ends.  There is no premeditation; and,
+without anatomical knowledge, or any distinct acquaintance with
+their image and likeness, they proceed straight to their purpose.
+
+Hence, even as men, they are more familiar with the figures and
+appearance of their fellows, their allies, or their enemies, than
+with their own.
+
+Man is a creature of mingled substance.  I am many times a day
+compelled to acknowledge what a low, mean and contemptible being
+I am.  Philip of Macedon had no need to give it in charge to a
+page, to repair to him every morning, and repeat, "Remember, sir,
+you are a man."  A variety of circumstances occur to us, while we
+eat, and drink, and submit to the humiliating necessities of
+nature, that may well inculcate into us this salutary lesson. 
+The wonder rather is, that man, who has so many things to put him
+in mind to be humble and despise himself, should ever have been
+susceptible of pride and disdain.  Nebuchadnezzar must indeed
+have been the most besotted of mortals, if it were necessary that
+he should be driven from among men, and made to eat grass like an
+ox, to convince him that he was not the equal of the power that
+made him.
+
+But fortunately, as I have said, man is a "stranger at home." 
+Were it not for this, how incomprehensible would be
+
+      The ceremony that to great ones 'longs,
+      The monarch's crown, and the deputed sword,
+      The marshal's truncheon, and the judge's robe!
+
+How ludicrous would be the long procession and the caparisoned
+horse, the gilded chariot and the flowing train, the colours
+flying, the drums beating, and the sound of trumpets rending the
+air, which after all only introduce to us an ordinary man, no
+otherwise perhaps distinguished from the vilest of the ragged
+spectators, than by the accident of his birth!
+
+But what is of more importance in the temporary oblivion we are
+enabled to throw over the refuse of the body, it is thus we
+arrive at the majesty of man.  That sublimity of conception which
+renders the poet, and the man of great literary and original
+endowments "in apprehension like a God," we could not have, if we
+were not privileged occasionally to cast away the slough and
+exuviae of the body from incumbering and dishonouring us, even as
+Ulysses passed over his threshold, stripped of the rags that had
+obscured him, while Minerva enlarged his frame, and gave
+loftiness to his stature, added a youthful beauty and grace to
+his motions, and caused his eyes to flash with more than mortal
+fire.  With what disdain, when I have been rapt in the loftiest
+moods of mind, do I look down upon my limbs, the house of clay
+that contains me, the gross flesh and blood of which my frame is
+composed, and wonder at a lodging, poorly fitted to entertain so
+divine a guest!
+
+A still more important chapter in the history of the human mind
+has its origin in these considerations.  Hence it is that
+unenlightened man, in almost all ages and countries, has been
+induced, independently of divine revelation, to regard death, the
+most awful event to which we are subject, as not being the
+termination of his existence.  We see the body of our friend
+become insensible, and remain without motion, or any external
+indication of what we call life.  We can shut it up in an
+apartment, and visit it from day to day.  If we had perseverance
+enough, and could so far conquer the repugnance and humiliating
+feeling with which the experiment would be attended, we might
+follow step by step the process of decomposition and
+putrefaction, and observe by what degrees the "dust returned unto
+earth as it was."  But, in spite of this demonstration of the
+senses, man still believes that there is something in him that
+lives after death.  The mind is so infinitely superior in
+character to this case of flesh that incloses it, that he cannot
+persuade himself that it and the body perish together.
+
+There are two considerations, the force of which made man a
+religious animal.  The first is, his proneness to ascribe
+hostility or benevolent intention to every thing of a memorable
+sort that occurs to him in the order of nature.  The second is
+that of which I have just treated, the superior dignity of mind
+over body.  This, we persuade ourselves, shall subsist uninjured
+by the mutations of our corporeal frame, and undestroyed by the
+wreck of the material universe.
+
+
+
+ESSAY II.
+OF THE DISTRIBUTION OF TALENTS.
+
+{Greek - omitted} Thucydides, Lib.I, cap. 84.
+
+SECTION I.
+
+PRESUMED DEARTH OF INTELLECTUAL POWER.--SCHOOLS FOR THE EDUCATION
+OF YOUTH CONSIDERED.--THE BOY AND THE MAN COMPARED.
+
+One of the earliest judgments that is usually made by those whose
+attention is turned to the characters of men in the social state,
+is of the great inequality with which the gifts of the
+understanding are distributed among us.
+
+Go into a miscellaneous society; sit down at table with ten or
+twelve men; repair to a club where as many are assembled in an
+evening to relax from the toils of the day--it is almost
+proverbial, that one or two of these persons will perhaps be
+brilliant, and the rest "weary, stale, flat and unprofitable."
+
+Go into a numerous school--the case will be still more striking. 
+I have been present where two men of superior endowments
+endeavoured to enter into a calculation on the subject; and they
+agreed that there was not above one boy in a hundred, who would
+be found to possess a penetrating understanding, and to be able
+to strike into a path of intellect that was truly his own.  How
+common is it to hear the master of such a school say, "Aye, I am
+proud of that lad; I have been a schoolmaster these thirty years,
+and have never had such another!"
+
+The society above referred to, the dinner-party, or the club, was
+to a considerable degree select, brought together by a certain
+supposed congeniality between the individuals thus assembled. 
+Were they taken indiscriminately, as boys are when consigned to
+the care of a schoolmaster, the proportion of the brilliant would
+not be a whit greater than in the latter case.
+
+A main criterion of the superiority of the schoolboy will be
+found in his mode of answering a casual question proposed by the
+master.  The majority will be wholly at fault, will shew that
+they do not understand the question, and will return an answer
+altogether from the purpose.  One in a hundred perhaps, perhaps
+in a still less proportion, will reply in a laudable manner, and
+convey his ideas in perspicuous and spirited language.
+
+It does not certainly go altogether so ill, with men grown up to
+years of maturity.  They do not for the most part answer a plain
+question in a manner to make you wonder at their fatuity.
+
+A main cause of the disadvantageous appearance exhibited by the
+ordinary schoolboy, lies in what we denominate sheepishness.  He
+is at a loss, and in the first place stares at you, instead of
+giving an answer.  He does not make by many degrees so poor a
+figure among his equals, as when he is addressed by his seniors.
+
+One of the reasons of the latter phenomenon consists in the
+torpedo effect of what we may call, under the circumstances, the
+difference of ranks.  The schoolmaster is a despot to his
+scholar; for every man is a despot, who delivers his judgment
+from the single impulse of his own will.  The boy answers his
+questioner, as Dolon answers Ulysses in the Iliad, at the point
+of the sword.  It is to a certain degree the same thing, when the
+boy is questioned merely by his senior.  He fears he knows not
+what,--a reprimand, a look of lofty contempt, a gesture of
+summary disdain.  He does not think it worth his while under
+these circumstances, to "gird up the loins of his mind."  He
+cannot return a free and intrepid answer but to the person whom
+he regards as his equal.  There is nothing that has so
+disqualifying an effect upon him who is to answer, as the
+consideration that he who questions is universally acknowledged
+to be a being of a higher sphere, or, as between the boy and the
+man, that he is the superior in conventional and corporal
+strength.
+
+Nor is it simple terror that restrains the boy from answering his
+senior with the same freedom and spirit, as he would answer his
+equal.  He does not think it worth his while to enter the lists. 
+He despairs of doing the thing in the way that shall gain
+approbation, and therefore will not try.  He is like a boxer,
+who, though skilful, will not fight with one hand tied behind
+him.  He would return you the answer, if it occurred without his
+giving himself trouble; but he will not rouse his soul, and task
+his strength to give it.  He is careless; and prefers trusting to
+whatever construction you may put upon him, and whatever
+treatment you may think proper to bestow upon him.  It is the
+most difficult thing in the world, for the schoolmaster to
+inspire into his pupil the desire to do his best.
+
+Among full-grown men the case is different.  The schoolboy,
+whether under his domestic roof, or in the gymnasium, is in a
+situation similar to that of the Christian slaves in Algiers, as
+described by Cervantes in his History of the Captive.  "They were
+shut up together in a species of bagnio, from whence they were
+brought out from time to time to perform certain tasks in common:
+
+they might also engage in pranks, and get into scrapes, as they
+pleased; but the master would hang up one, impale another, and
+cut off the ears of a third, for little occasion, or even wholly
+without it."  Such indeed is the condition of the child almost
+from the hour of birth.  The severities practised upon him are
+not so great as those resorted to by the proprietor of slaves in
+Algiers; but they are equally arbitrary and without appeal.  He
+is free to a certain extent, even as the captives described by
+Cervantes; but his freedom is upon sufferance, and is brought to
+an end at any time at the pleasure of his seniors.  The child
+therefore feels his way, and ascertains by repeated experiments
+how far he may proceed with impunity.  He is like the slaves of
+the Romans on the days of the Saturnalia.  He may do what he
+pleases, and command tasks to his masters, but with this
+difference--the Roman slave knew when the days of his licence
+would be over, and comported himself accordingly; but the child
+cannot foresee at any moment when the bell will be struck, and
+the scene reversed.  It is commonly enough incident to this
+situation, that the being who is at the mercy of another, will
+practise, what Tacitus calls, a "vernacular urbanity," make his
+bold jests, and give utterance to his saucy innuendoes, with as
+much freedom as the best; but he will do it with a wary eye, not
+knowing how soon he may feel his chain plucked!  and himself
+compulsorily reduced into the established order.  His more usual
+refuge therefore is, to do nothing, and to wrap himself up in
+that neutrality towards his seniors, that may best protect him
+from their reprimand and their despotism.
+
+The condition of the full-grown man is different from that of the
+child, and he conducts himself accordingly.  He is always to a
+certain degree under the control of the political society of
+which he is a member.  He is also exposed to the chance of
+personal insult and injury from those who are stronger than he,
+or who may render their strength more considerable by combination
+and numbers.  The political institutions which control him in
+certain respects, protect him also to a given degree from the
+robber and assassin, or from the man who, were it not for
+penalties and statutes, would perpetrate against him all the
+mischiefs which malignity might suggest.  Civil policy however
+subjects him to a variety of evils, which wealth or corruption
+are accustomed to inflict under the forms of justice; at the same
+time that it can never wholly defend him from those violences to
+which he would be every moment exposed in what is called the
+state of nature.
+
+The full-grown man in the mean time is well pleased when he
+escapes from the ergastulum where he had previously dwelt, and in
+which he had experienced corporal infliction and corporal
+restraint.  At first, in the newness of his freedom, he breaks
+out into idle sallies and escapes, and is like the full-fed steed
+that manifests his wantonness in a thousand antics and ruades. 
+But this is a temporary extravagance.  He presently becomes as
+wise and calculating, as the schoolboy was before him.
+
+The human being then, that has attained a certain stature,
+watches and poises his situation, and considers what he may do
+with impunity.  He ventures at first with no small diffidence,
+and pretends to be twice as assured as he really is.  He
+accumulates experiment after experiment, till they amount to a
+considerable volume.  It is not till he has passed successive
+lustres, that he attains that firm step, and temperate and
+settled accent, which characterise the man complete.  He then no
+longer doubts, but is ranged on the full level of the ripened
+members of the community.
+
+There is therefore little room for wonder, if we find the same
+individual, whom we once knew a sheepish and irresolute
+schoolboy, that hung his head, that replied with inarticulated
+monotony, and stammered out his meaning, metamorphosed into a
+thoroughly manly character, who may take his place on the bench
+with senators, and deliver a grave and matured opinion as well as
+the best.  It appears then that the trial and review of
+full-grown men is not altogether so disadvantageous to the
+reckoning of our common nature, as that of boys at school.
+
+It is not however, that the full-grown man is not liable to be
+checked, reprimanded and rebuked, even as the schoolboy is.  He
+has his wife to read him lectures, and rap his knuckles; he has
+his master, his landlord, or the mayor of his village, to tell
+him of his duty in an imperious style, and in measured sentences;
+if he is a member of a legislature, even there he receives his
+lessons, and is told, either in phrases of well-conceived irony,
+or by the exhibition of facts and reasonings which take him by
+surprise, that he is not altogether the person he deemed himself
+to be.  But he does not mind it.  Like Iago in the play, he
+"knows his price, and, by the faith of man, that he is worth no
+worse a place" than that which he occupies.  He finds out the
+value of the check he receives, and lets it "pass by him like the
+idle wind"--a mastery, which the schoolboy, however he may affect
+it, never thoroughly attains to.
+
+But it unfortunately happens, that, before he has arrived at that
+degree of independence, the fate of the individual is too often
+decided for ever.  How are the majority of men trampled in the
+mire, made "hewers of wood, and drawers of water," long, very
+long, before there was an opportunity of ascertaining what it was
+of which they were capable!  Thus almost every one is put in the
+place which by nature he was least fit for:  and, while perhaps a
+sufficient quantity of talent is extant in each successive
+generation, yet, for want of each man's being duly estimated, and
+assigned his appropriate duty, the very reverse may appear to be
+the case.  By the time that they have attained to that sober
+self-confidence that might enable them to assert themselves, they
+are already chained to a fate, or thrust down to a condition,
+from which no internal energies they possess can ever empower
+them to escape.
+
+
+SECTION II.
+
+EQUALITY OF MAN WITH MAN.--TALENTS EXTENSIVELY DISTRIBUTED.--WAY
+IN WHICH THIS DISTRIBUTION IS COUNTERACTED.--THE APTITUDE OF
+CHILDREN FOR DIFFERENT PURSUITS SHOULD BE EARLY SOUGHT OUT.--
+HINTS FOR A BETTER SYSTEM OF EDUCATION.--AMBITION AN UNIVERSAL
+PRINCIPLE.
+
+The reflections thus put down, may assist us in answering the
+question as to the way in which talents are distributed among men
+by the hand of nature.
+
+All things upon the earth and under the earth, and especially all
+organised bodies of the animal or vegetable kingdom, fall into
+classes.  It is by this means, that the child no sooner learns
+the terms, man, horse, tree, flower, than, if an object of any of
+these kinds which he has never seen before, is exhibited to him,
+he pronounces without hesitation, This is a man, a horse, a tree,
+a flower.
+
+All organised bodies of the animal or vegetable kingdom are cast
+in a mould of given dimension and feature belonging to a certain
+number of individuals, though distinguished by inexhaustible
+varieties.  It is by means of those features that the class of
+each individual is determined.
+
+To confine ourselves to man.
+
+All men, the monster and the lusus naturae excepted, have a
+certain form, a certain complement of limbs, a certain internal
+structure, and organs of sense--may we not add further, certain
+powers of intellect?
+
+Hence it seems to follow, that man is more like and more equal to
+man, deformities of body and abortions of intellect excepted,
+than the disdainful and fastidious censors of our common nature
+are willing to admit.
+
+I am inclined to believe, that, putting idiots and extraordinary
+cases out of the question, every human creature is endowed with
+talents, which, if rightly directed, would shew him to be apt,
+adroit, intelligent and acute, in the walk for which his
+organisation especially fitted him.
+
+But the practices and modes of civilised life prompt us to take
+the inexhaustible varieties of man, as he is given into our
+guardianship by the bountiful hand of nature, and train him in
+one uniform exercise, as the raw recruit is treated when he is
+brought under the direction of his drill-serjeant.
+
+The son of the nobleman, of the country-gentleman, and of those
+parents who from vanity or whatever other motive are desirous
+that their offspring should be devoted to some liberal
+profession, is in nearly all instances sent to the
+grammar-school.  It is in this scene principally, that the
+judgment is formed that not above one boy in a hundred possesses
+an acute understanding, or will be able to strike into a path of
+intellect that shall be truly his own.
+
+I do not object to this destination, if temperately pursued.  It
+is fit that as many children as possible should have their chance
+of figuring in future life in what are called the higher
+departments of intellect.  A certain familiar acquaintance with
+language and the shades of language as a lesson, will be
+beneficial to all.  The youth who has expended only six months in
+acquiring the rudiments of the Latin tongue, will probably be
+more or less the better for it in all his future life.
+
+But seven years are usually spent at the grammar-school by those
+who are sent to it.  I do not in many cases object to this.  The
+learned languages are assuredly of slow acquisition.  In the
+education of those who are destined to what are called the higher
+departments of intellect, a long period may advantageously be
+spent in the study of words, while the progress they make in
+theory and dogmatical knowledge is too generally a store of
+learning laid up, to be unlearned again when they reach the
+period of real investigation and independent judgment.  There is
+small danger of this in the acquisition of words.
+
+But this method, indiscriminately pursued as it is now, is
+productive of the worst consequences.  Very soon a judgment may
+be formed by the impartial observer, whether the pupil is at home
+in the study of the learned languages, and is likely to make an
+adequate progress.  But parents are not impartial.  There are
+also two reasons why the schoolmaster is not the proper person to
+pronounce:  first, because, if he pronounces in the negative, he
+will have reason to fear that the parent will be offended; and
+secondly, because he does not like to lose his scholar.  But the
+very moment that it can be ascertained, that the pupil is not at
+home in the study of the learned languages, and is unlikely to
+make an adequate progress, at that moment he should be taken from
+it.
+
+The most palpable deficiency that is to be found in relation to
+the education of children, is a sound judgment to be formed as to
+the vocation or employment in which each is most fitted to excel.
+
+As, according to the institutions of Lycurgus, as soon as a boy
+was born, he was visited by the elders of the ward, who were to
+decide whether he was to be reared, and would be made an
+efficient member of the commonwealth, so it were to be desired
+that, as early as a clear discrimination on the subject might be
+practicable, a competent decision should be given as to the
+future occupation and destiny of a child.
+
+But this is a question attended with no common degree of
+difficulty.  To the resolving such a question with sufficient
+evidence, a very considerable series of observations would become
+necessary.  The child should be introduced into a variety of
+scenes, and a magazine, so to speak, of those things about which
+human industry and skill may be employed, should be successively
+set before him.  The censor who is to decide on the result of the
+whole, should be a person of great sagacity, and capable of
+pronouncing upon a given amount of the most imperfect and
+incidental indications.  He should be clear-sighted, and vigilant
+to observe the involuntary turns of an eye, expressions of a lip,
+and demonstrations of a limb.
+
+The declarations of the child himself are often of very small use
+in the case.  He may be directed by an impulse, which occurs in
+the morning, and vanishes in the evening.  His preferences change
+as rapidly as the shapes we sometimes observe in the evening
+clouds, and are governed by whim or fantasy, and not by any of
+those indications which are parcel of his individual
+constitution.  He desires in many instances to be devoted to a
+particular occupation, because his playfellow has been assigned
+to it before him.
+
+The parent is not qualified to judge in this fundamental
+question, because he is under the dominion of partiality, and
+wishes that his child may become a lord chancellor, an
+archbishop, or any thing else, the possessor of which condition
+shall be enabled to make a splendid figure in the world.  He is
+not qualified, because he is an interested party, and, either
+from an exaggerated estimate of his child's merits, or from a
+selfish shrinking from the cost it might require to mature them,
+is anxious to arrive at a conclusion not founded upon the
+intrinsic claims of the case to be considered.
+
+Even supposing it to be sufficiently ascertained in what calling
+it is that the child will be most beneficially engaged, a
+thousand extrinsical circumstances will often prevent that from
+being the calling chosen.  Nature distributes her gifts without
+any reference to the distinctions of artificial society.  The
+genius that demanded the most careful and assiduous cultivation,
+that it might hereafter form the boast and ornament of the world,
+will be reared amidst the chill blasts of poverty; while he who
+was best adapted to make an exemplary carpenter or artisan, by
+being the son of a nobleman is thrown a thousand fathoms wide of
+his true destination.
+
+Human creatures are born into the world with various
+dispositions.  According to the memorable saying of Themistocles,
+One man can play upon a psaltery or harp, and another can by
+political skill and ingenuity convert a town of small account,
+weak and insignificant, into a city noble, magnificent and great.
+
+It is comparatively a very little way that we can penetrate into
+the mysteries of nature.
+
+Music seems to be one of the faculties most clearly defined in
+early youth.  The child who has received that destination from
+the hands of nature, will even in infancy manifest a singular
+delight in musical sounds, and will in no long time imitate
+snatches of a tune.  The present professor of music in the
+university of Oxford contrived for himself, I believe at three
+years old, a way for playing on an instrument, the piano forte,
+unprompted by any of the persons about him.  This is called
+having an ear.
+
+Instances nearly as precocious are related of persons, who
+afterwards distinguished themselves in the art of painting.
+
+These two kinds of original destination appear to be placed
+beyond the reach of controversy.
+
+Horace says, The poet is born a poet, and cannot be made so by
+the ingenuity of art:  and this seems to be true.  He sees the
+objects about him with an eye peculiarly his own; the sounds that
+reach his ear, produce an effect upon him, and leave a memory
+behind, different from that which is experienced by his fellows. 
+His perceptions have a singular vividness.
+
+      The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
+      Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;    
+
+      And his imagination bodies forth      
+      The forms of things unknown,
+
+It is not probable that any trainings of art can give these
+endowments to him who has not received them from the gift of
+nature.
+
+The subtle network of the brain, or whatever else it is, that
+makes a man more fit for, and more qualified to succeed in, one
+occupation than another, can scarcely be followed up and detected
+either in the living subject or the dead one.  But, as in the
+infinite variety of human beings no two faces are so alike that
+they cannot be distinguished, nor even two leaves plucked from
+the same tree[2], so it may reasonably be presumed, that there
+are varieties in the senses, the organs, and the internal
+structure of the human species, however delicate, and to the
+touch of the bystander evanescent, which may give to each
+individual a predisposition to rise to a supreme degree of
+excellence in some certain art or attainment, over a million of
+competitors.
+
+[2] Papers between Clarke and Leibnitz, p. 95.
+
+
+It has been said that all these distinctions and anticipations
+are idle, because man is born without innate ideas.  Whatever is
+the incomprehensible and inexplicable power, which we call
+nature, to which he is indebted for his formation, it is
+groundless to suppose, that that power is cognisant of, and
+guides itself in its operations by, the infinite divisibleness of
+human pursuits in civilised society.  A child is not designed by
+his original formation to be a manufacturer of shoes, for he may
+be born among a people by whom shoes are not worn, and still less
+is he destined by his structure to be a metaphysician, an
+astronomer, or a lawyer, a rope-dancer, a fortune-teller, or a
+juggler.
+
+It is true that we cannot suppose nature to be guided in her
+operations by the infinite divisibleness of human pursuits in
+civilised society.  But it is not the less true that one man is
+by his structure best fitted to excel in some one in particular
+of these multifarious pursuits, however fortuitously his
+individual structure and that pursuit may be brought into
+contact.  Thus a certain calmness and steadiness of purpose, much
+flexibility, and a very accurate proportion of the various limbs
+of the body, are of great advantage in rope-dancing; while
+lightness of the fingers, and a readiness to direct our thoughts
+to the rapid execution of a purpose, joined with a steadiness of
+countenance adapted to what is figuratively called throwing dust
+in the eyes of the bystander, are of the utmost importance to the
+juggler:  and so of the rest.
+
+It is as much the temper of the individual, as any particular
+subtlety of organ or capacity, that prepares him to excel in one
+pursuit rather than a thousand others.  And he must have been a
+very inattentive observer of the indications of temper in an
+infant in the first months of his existence, who does not confess
+that there are various peculiarities in that respect which the
+child brings into the world with him.
+
+There is excellent sense in the fable of Achilles in the island
+of Scyros.  He was placed there by his mother in female attire
+among the daughters of Lycomedes, that he might not be seduced to
+engage in the Trojan war.  Ulysses was commissioned to discover
+him, and, while he exhibited jewels and various woman's ornaments
+to the princesses, contrived to mix with his stores a suit of
+armour, the sight of which immediately awakened the spirit of the
+hero.
+
+Every one has probably within him a string more susceptible than
+the rest, that demands only a kindred impression to be made, to
+call forth its latent character.  Like the war-horse described in
+the Book of Job:  "He paweth in the valley, and rejoiceth in his
+strength; he goeth on to meet the armed men; he smelleth the
+battle afar off, the thunder of the captains, and the shouting."
+
+Nothing can be more unlike than the same man to himself, when he
+is touched, and not touched, upon
+
+           the master-string
+                That makes most harmony or discord to him.
+
+It is like the case of Manlius Torquatus in Livy, who by his
+father was banished among his hinds for his clownish demeanour
+and untractableness to every species of instruction that was
+offered him, but who, understanding that his parent was
+criminally arraigned for barbarous treatment of him, first
+resolutely resorted to the accuser, compelling him upon pain of
+death to withdraw his accusation, and subsequently, having
+surmounted this first step towards an energetic carriage and
+demeanour, proved one of the most illustrious characters that the
+Roman republic had to boast.
+
+Those children whose parents have no intention of training them
+to the highest departments of intellect, and have therefore no
+thought of bestowing on them a classical education, nevertheless
+for the most part send them to a school where they are to be
+taught arithmetic, and the principles of English grammar.  I
+should say in this case, as I said before on the subject of
+classical education, that a certain initiation in these
+departments of knowledge, even if they are pursued a very little
+way, will probably be beneficial to all.
+
+But it will often be found, in these schools for more ordinary
+education, as in the school for classical instruction, that the
+majority of the pupils will be seen to be unpromising, and, what
+is usually called, dull.  The mistake is, that the persons by
+whom this is perceived, are disposed to set aside these pupils as
+blockheads, and unsusceptible of any species of ingenuity.
+
+It is unreasonable that we should draw such a conclusion.
+
+In the first place, as has been already observed, it is the most
+difficult thing in the world for the schoolmaster to inspire into
+his pupil the desire to do his best.  An overwhelming majority of
+lads at school are in their secret hearts rebels to the
+discipline under which they are placed.  The instructor draws,
+one way, and the pupil another.  The object of the latter is to
+find out how he may escape censure and punishment with the
+smallest expence of scholastic application.  He looks at the task
+that is set him, without the most distant desire of improvement,
+but with alienated and averted eye.  And, where this is the case,
+the wonder is not that he does not make a brilliant figure.  It
+is rather an evidence of the slavish and subservient spirit
+incident to the majority of human beings, that he learns any
+thing.  Certainly the schoolmaster, who judges of the powers of
+his pupil's mind by the progress he makes in what he would most
+gladly be excused from learning, must be expected perpetually to
+fall into the most egregious mistakes.
+
+The true test of the capacity of the individual, is where the
+desire to succeed, and accomplish something effective, is already
+awakened in the youthful mind.  Whoever has found out what it is
+in which he is qualified to excel, from that moment becomes a new
+creature.  The general torpor and sleep of the soul, which is
+incident to the vast multitude of the human species, is departed
+from him.  We begin, from the hour in which our limbs are enabled
+to exert themselves freely, with a puerile love of sport. 
+Amusement is the order of the day.  But no one was ever so fond
+of play, that he had not also his serious moments.  Every human
+creature perhaps is sensible to the stimulus of ambition.  He is
+delighted with the thought that he also shall be somebody, and
+not a mere undistinguished pawn, destined to fill up a square in
+the chess-board of human society.  He wishes to be thought
+something of, and to be gazed upon.  Nor is it merely the wish to
+be admired that excites him:  he acts, that he may be satisfied
+with himself.  Self-respect is a sentiment dear to every heart. 
+The emotion can with difficulty be done justice to, that a man
+feels, who is conscious that he is breathing his true element,
+that every stroke that he strikes will have the effect he
+designs, that he has an object before him, and every moment
+approaches nearer to that object.  Before, he was wrapped in an
+opake cloud, saw nothing distinctly, and struck this way and that
+at hazard like a blind man.  But now the sun of understanding has
+risen upon him; and every step that he takes, he advances with an
+assured and undoubting confidence.
+
+It is an admirable remark, that the book which we read at the
+very time that we feel a desire to read it, affords us ten times
+the improvement, that we should have derived from it when it was
+taken up by us as a task.  It is just so with the man who chooses
+his occupation, and feels assured that that about which he is
+occupied is his true and native field.  Compare this person with
+the boy that studies the classics, or arithmetic, or any thing
+else, with a secret disinclination, and, as Shakespear expresses
+it, "creeps like snail, unwillingly, to school." They do not seem
+as if they belonged to the same species.
+
+The result of these observations certainly strongly tends to
+support the proposition laid down early in the present Essay,
+that, putting idiots and extraordinary cases out of the question,
+every human creature is endowed with talents, which, if rightly
+directed, would shew him to be apt, adroit, intelligent and
+acute, in the walk for which his organisation especially fitted
+him.
+
+
+SECTION III.
+
+ENCOURAGING VIEW OF OUR COMMON NATURE.--POWER OF SOUND EXPOSITION
+AFFORDED TO ALL.--DOCTRINE OF THIS ESSAY AND THE HYPOTHESIS OF
+HELVETIUS COMPARED.--THE WILLING AND UNWILLING PUPIL
+CONTRASTED.--MISCHIEVOUS TENDENCY OF THE USUAL MODES OF
+EDUCATION.
+
+What a beautiful and encouraging view is thus afforded us of our
+common nature!  It is not true, as certain disdainful and
+fastidious censurers of their fellow-men would persuade us to
+believe, that a thousand seeds are sown in the wide field of
+humanity, for no other purpose than that half-a-dozen may grow up
+into something magnificent and splendid, and that the rest,
+though not absolutely extinguished in the outset, are merely
+suffered to live that they may furnish manure and nourishment to
+their betters.  On the contrary, each man, according to this
+hypothesis, has a sphere in which he may shine, and may
+contemplate the exercise of his own powers with a well-grounded
+satisfaction.  He produces something as perfect in its kind, as
+that which is effected under another form by the more brilliant
+and illustrious of his species.  He stands forward with a serene
+confidence in the ranks of his fellow-creatures, and says, "I
+also have my place in society, that I fill in a manner with which
+I have a right to be satisfied."  He vests a certain portion of
+ingenuity in the work he turns out.  He incorporates his mind
+with the labour of his hands; and a competent observer will find
+character and individuality in it.
+
+He has therefore nothing of the sheepishness of the ordinary
+schoolboy, the tasks imposed upon whom by his instructor are
+foreign to the true bent of his mind, and who stands cowed before
+his seniors, shrinking under the judgment they may pass upon him,
+and the oppression they may exercise towards him.  He is probably
+competent to talk in a manner that may afford instruction to men
+in other respects wise and accomplished, and is no less clear and
+well-digested in his discourse respecting the subjects to which
+his study and labour have been applied, than they are on the
+questions that have exercised the powers of analysis with which
+they are endowed.  Like Elihu in the Book of Job, he says, "I am
+young, and you are old; I said therefore, Days shall speak, and
+multitude of years shall teach wisdom.  But there is a spirit in
+man; and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth him
+understanding.  Great men are not always wise; neither do the
+aged understand judgment.  Hearken therefore to me; and I also
+will shew my opinion."
+
+What however in the last instance is affirmed, is not always
+realised in the experiment.  The humblest mechanic, who works con
+amore, and feels that he discharges his office creditably, has a
+sober satisfaction in the retrospect, and is able to express
+himself perspicuously and well on the subject that has occupied
+his industry.  He has a just confidence in himself.  If the
+occasion arises, on which he should speak on the subject of what
+he does, and the methods he adopts for effecting it, he will
+undoubtedly acquit himself to the satisfaction of those who hear
+him.  He knows that the explanations he can afford will be sound
+and masculine, and will stand the test of a rigid examination.
+
+But, in proportion as he feels the ground on which he stands, and
+his own power to make it good, he will not fail to retire from an
+audience that is not willing to be informed by him.  He will
+often appear in the presence of those, whom the established
+arrangements of society call his superiors, who are more
+copiously endowed with the treasures of language, and who,
+confident perhaps in the advantage of opulence, and what is
+called, however they may have received it, a liberal education,
+regard with disdain his artless and unornamented explanations. 
+He did not, it may be, expect this.  And, having experienced
+several times such unmerited treatment, he is not willing again
+to encounter it.  He knew the worth of what he had to offer. 
+And, finding others indisposed to listen to his suggestions, he
+contentedly confines them within the circle of his own thoughts.
+
+To this it must be added that, though he is able to explain
+himself perspicuously, yet he is not master of the graces of
+speech, nor even perhaps of the niceties of grammar.  His voice
+is not tuned to those winning inflections by which men,
+accustomed to the higher ranks of society, are enabled so to
+express themselves,
+
+      That aged ears play truant at their tales,
+      And younger hearings are quite ravished,
+      So sweet and voluble is their discourse.
+
+On the contrary there is a ruggedness in his manner that jars
+upon the sense.  It is easy for the light and supercilious to
+turn him into ridicule.  And those who will not be satisfied with
+the soundness of his matter, expounded, as he is able to expound
+it, in clear and appropriate terms, will yield him small credit,
+and listen to him with little delight.
+
+These considerations therefore bring us back again to the reasons
+of the prevalent opinion, that the majority of mankind are dull,
+and of apprehension narrow and confused.  The mass of boys in the
+process of their education appear so, because little of what is
+addressed to them by their instructors, awakens their curiosity,
+and inspires them with the desire to excel.  The concealed spark
+of ambition is not yet cleared from the crust that enveloped it
+as it first came from the hand of nature.  And in like manner the
+elder persons, who have not experienced the advantages of a
+liberal education, or by whom small profit was made by those
+advantages, being defective in exterior graces, are generally
+listened to with impatience, and therefore want the confidence
+and the inclination to tell what they know.
+
+But these latter, if they are not attended to upon the subjects
+to which their attention and ingenuity have been applied, do not
+the less possess a knowledge and skill which are intrinsically
+worthy of applause.  They therefore contentedly shut up the sum
+of their acquisitions in their own bosoms, and are satisfied with
+the consciousness that they have not been deficient in performing
+an adequate part in the generation of men among whom they live.
+
+Those persons who favour the opinion of the incessant
+improveableness of the human species, have felt strongly prompted
+to embrace the creed of Helvetius, who affirms that the minds of
+men, as they are born into the world, are in a state of equality,
+alike prepared for any kind of discipline and instruction that
+may be afforded them, and that it depends upon education only, in
+the largest sense of that word, including every impression that
+may be made upon the mind, intentional or accidental, from the
+hour of our birth, whether we shall be poets or philosophers,
+dancers or singers, chemists or mathematicians, astronomers or
+dissectors of the faculties of our common nature.
+
+But this is not true.  It has already appeared in the course of
+this Essay, that the talent, or, more accurately speaking, the
+original suitableness of the individual for the cultivation, of
+music or painting, depends upon certain peculiarities that we
+bring into the world with us.  The same thing may be affirmed of
+the poet.  As, in the infinite variety of human beings, there are
+no two faces so alike that they cannot be distinguished, nor even
+two leaves plucked from the same tree, so there are varieties in
+the senses, the organs, and the internal structure of the human
+species, however delicate, and to the touch of the bystander
+evanescent, which give to each individual a predisposition to
+rise to excellence in one particular art or attainment, rather
+than in any other.
+
+And this view of things, if well considered, is as favourable,
+nay, more so, to the hypothesis of the successive improveableness
+of the human species, as the creed of Helvetius.  According to
+that philosopher, every human creature that is born into the
+world, is capable of becoming, or being made, the equal of Homer,
+Bacon or Newton, and as easily and surely of the one as the
+other.  This creed, if sincerely embraced, no doubt affords a
+strong stimulus to both preceptor and pupil, since, if true, it
+teaches us that any thing can be made of any thing, and that,
+wherever there is mind, it is within the compass of possibility,
+not only that that mind can be raised to a high pitch of
+excellence, but even to a high pitch of that excellence, whatever
+it is, that we shall prefer to all others, and most earnestly
+desire.
+
+Still this creed will, after all, leave both preceptor and pupil
+in a state of feeling considerably unsatisfactory.  What it sets
+before us, is too vast and indefinite.  We shall be left long
+perhaps in a state of balance as to what species of excellence we
+shall choose; and, in the immense field of accessible improvement
+it offers to us, without land-mark or compass for the direction
+of our course, it is scarcely possible that we should feel that
+assured confidence and anticipation of success, which are perhaps
+indispensibly required to the completion of a truly arduous
+undertaking.
+
+But, upon the principles laid down in this Essay, the case is
+widely different.  We are here presented in every individual
+human creature with a subject better fitted for one sort of
+cultivation than another.  We are excited to an earnest study of
+the individual, that we may the more unerringly discover what
+pursuit it is for which his nature and qualifications especially
+prepare him.  We may be long in choosing.  We may be even on the
+brink of committing a considerable mistake.  Our subsequent
+observations may enable us to correct the inference we were
+disposed to make from those which went before.  Our sagacity is
+flattered by the result of the laborious scrutiny which this view
+of our common nature imposes upon us.
+
+In addition to this we reap two important advantages.
+
+In the first place, we feel assured that every child that is born
+has his suitable sphere, to which if he is devoted, he will not
+fail to make an honourable figure, or, in other words, will be
+seen to be endowed with faculties, apt, adroit, intelligent and
+acute.  This consideration may reasonably stimulate us to call up
+all our penetration for the purpose of ascertaining the proper
+destination of the child for whom we are interested.
+
+And, secondly, having arrived at this point, we shall find
+ourselves placed in a very different predicament from the
+guardian or instructor, who, having selected at random the
+pursuit which his fancy dictates, and in the choice of which he
+is encouraged by the presumptuous assertions of a wild
+metaphysical philosophy, must often, in spite of himself, feel a
+secret misgiving as to the final event.  He may succeed, and
+present to a wondering world a consummate musician, painter,
+poet, or philosopher; for even blind chance may sometimes hit the
+mark, as truly as the most perfect skill.  But he will probably
+fail.  Sudet multum, frustraque laboret.  And, if he is
+disappointed, he will not only feel that disappointment in the
+ultimate result, but also in every step of his progress.  When he
+has done his best, exerted his utmost industry, and consecrated
+every power of his soul to the energies he puts forth, he may
+close every day, sometimes with a faint shadow of success, and
+sometimes with entire and blank miscarriage.  And the latter will
+happen ten thousand times, for once that the undertaking shall be
+blessed with a prosperous event.
+
+But, when the destination that is given to a child has been
+founded upon a careful investigation of the faculties, tokens,
+and accidental aspirations which characterise his early years, it
+is then that every step that is made with him, becomes a new and
+surer source of satisfaction.  The moment the pursuit for which
+his powers are adapted is seriously proposed to him, his eyes
+sparkle, and a second existence, in addition to that which he
+received at his birth, descends upon him.  He feels that he has
+now obtained something worth living for.  He feels that he is at
+home, and in a sphere that is appropriately his own.  Every
+effort that he makes is successful.  At every resting-place in
+his race of improvement he pauses, and looks back on what he has
+done with complacency.  The master cannot teach him so fast, as
+he is prompted to acquire.
+
+What a contrast does this species of instruction exhibit, to the
+ordinary course of scholastic education! There, every lesson that
+is prescribed, is a source of indirect warfare between the
+instructor and the pupil, the one professing to aim at the
+advancement of him that is taught, in the career of knowledge,
+and the other contemplating the effect that is intended to be
+produced upon him with aversion, and longing to be engaged in any
+thing else, rather than in that which is pressed upon his
+foremost attention.  In this sense a numerous school is, to a
+degree that can scarcely be adequately described, the
+slaughter-house of mind.  It is like the undertaking, related by
+Livy, of Accius Navius, the augur, to cut a whetstone with a
+razor--with this difference, that our modern schoolmasters are
+not endowed with the gift of working miracles, and, when the
+experiment falls into their hands, the result of their efforts is
+a pitiful miscarriage.  Knowledge is scarcely in any degree
+imparted.  But, as they are inured to a dogged assiduity, and
+persist in their unavailing attempts, though the shell of
+science, so to speak, is scarcely in the smallest measure
+penetrated, yet that inestimable gift of the author of our being,
+the sharpness of human faculties, is so blunted and destroyed,
+that it can scarcely ever be usefully employed even for those
+purposes which it was originally best qualified to effect.
+
+A numerous school is that mint from which the worst and most
+flagrant libels on our nature are incessantly issued.  Hence it
+is that we are taught, by a judgment everlastingly repeated, that
+the majority of our kind are predestinated blockheads.
+
+Not that it is by any means to be recommended, that a little
+writing and arithmetic, and even the first rudiments of classical
+knowledge, so far as they can be practicably imparted, should be
+withheld from any.  The mischief is, that we persist, month after
+month, and year after year, in sowing our seed, when it has
+already been fully ascertained, that no suitable and wholsome
+crop will ever be produced.
+
+But what is perhaps worse is, that we are accustomed to
+pronounce, that that soil, which will not produce the crop of
+which we have attempted to make it fertile, is fit for nothing. 
+The majority of boys, at the very period when the buds of
+intellect begin to unfold themselves, are so accustomed to be
+told that they are dull and fit for nothing, that the most
+pernicious effects are necessarily produced.  They become half
+convinced by the ill-boding song of the raven, perpetually
+croaking in their ears; and, for the other half, though by no
+means assured that the sentence of impotence awarded against them
+is just, yet, folding up their powers in inactivity, they are
+contented partly to waste their energies in pure idleness and
+sport, and partly to wait, with minds scarcely half awake, for
+the moment when their true destination shall be opened before
+them.
+
+Not that it is by any means to be desired.  that the child in his
+earlier years should meet with no ruggednesses in his way, and
+that he should perpetually tread "the primrose path of
+dalliance." Clouds and tempests occasionally clear the atmosphere
+of intellect, not less than that of the visible world.  The road
+to the hill of science, and to the promontory of heroic virtue,
+is harsh and steep, and from time to time puts to the proof the
+energies of him who would ascend their topmost round.
+
+There are many things which every human creature should learn, so
+far as, agreeably to the constitution of civilised society, they
+can be brought within his reach.  He should be induced to learn
+them, willingly if possible, but, if that cannot be thoroughly
+effected, yet with half a will.  Such are reading, writing,
+arithmetic, and the first principles of grammar; to which shall
+be added, as far as may be, the rudiments of all the sciences
+that are in ordinary use.  The latter however should not be
+brought forward too soon; and, if wisely delayed, the tyro
+himself will to a certain degree enter into the views of his
+instructor, and be disposed to essay Quid valeant humeri, quid
+ferre recusent.  But, above all, the beginnings of those studies
+should be encouraged, which unfold the imagination, familiarise
+us with the feelings, the joys and sufferings of our
+fellow-beings, and teach us to put ourselves in their place and
+eagerly fly to their assistance.
+
+
+SECTION IV.
+
+HOW FAR OUR GENUINE PROPENSITIES AND VOCATION SHOULD BE
+FAVOURED.--SELF-REVERENCE RECOMMENDED.--CONCLUSION.
+
+I knew a man of eminent intellectual faculties[3], one of whose
+favourite topics of moral prudence was, that it is the greatest
+mistake in the world to suppose, that, when we have discovered
+the special aspiration of the youthful mind, we are bound to do
+every thing in our power to assist its progress.  He maintained
+on the contrary, that it is our true wisdom to place obstacles in
+its way, and to thwart it:  as we may be well assured that,
+unless it is a mere caprice, it will shew its strength in
+conquering difficulties, and that all the obstacles that we can
+conjure up will but inspire it with the greater earnestness to
+attain final success.
+
+[3] Henry Fuseli.
+
+
+The maxim here stated, taken to an unlimited extent, is doubtless
+a very dangerous one.  There are obstacles that scarcely any
+strength of man would be sufficient to conquer.  "Chill penury"
+will sometimes "repress the noblest rage," that almost ever
+animated a human spirit:  and our wisest course will probably be,
+secretly to favour, even when we seem most to oppose, the genuine
+bent of the youthful aspirer.
+
+But the thing of greatest importance is, that we should not teach
+him to estimate his powers at too low a rate.  One of the wisest
+of all the precepts comprised in what are called the Golden
+Verses of Pythagoras, is that, in which he enjoins his pupil to
+"reverence himself."  Ambition is the noblest root that can be
+planted in the garden of the human soul:  not the ambition to be
+applauded and admired, to be famous and looked up to, to be the
+darling theme of "stupid starers and of loud huzzas;" but the
+ambition to fill a respectable place in the theatre of society,
+to be useful and to be esteemed, to feel that we have not lived
+in vain, and that we are entitled to the most honourable of all
+dismissions, an enlightened self-approbation.  And nothing can
+more powerfully tend to place this beyond our acquisition, even
+our contemplation, than the perpetual and hourly rebuffs which
+ingenuous youth is so often doomed to sustain from the
+supercilious pedant, and the rigid decision of his unfeeling
+elders.
+
+Self-respect to be nourished in the mind of the pupil, is one of
+the most valuable results of a well conducted education.  To
+accomplish this, it is most necessary that it should never be
+inculcated into him, that he is dull.  Upon the principles of
+this Essay, any unfavourable appearances that may present
+themselves, do not arise from the dulness of the pupil, but from
+the error of those upon whose superintendence he is cast, who
+require of him the things for which he is not adapted, and
+neglect those in which he is qualified to excel.
+
+It is further necessary, if self-respect is one of the most
+desirable results of a well-conducted education, that, as we
+should not humble the pupil in his own eyes by disgraceful and
+humiliating language, so we should abstain, as much as possible,
+from personal ill-treatment, and the employing towards him the
+measures of an owner towards his purchased or indentured slave. 
+Indignity is of all things the most hostile to the best purposes
+of a liberal education.  It may be necessary occasionally to
+employ, towards a human creature in his years of nonage, the
+stimulants of exhortation and remonstrance even in the pursuits
+to which he is best adapted, for the purpose of overcoming the
+instability and fits of idleness to which all men, and most of
+all in their early years, are subject:  though in such pursuits a
+necessity of this sort can scarcely be supposed.  The bow must
+not always be bent; and it is good for us that we should
+occasionally relax and play the fool.  It may more readily be
+imagined, that some incitement may be called for in those things
+which, as has been mentioned above, it may be fit he should learn
+though with but half a will.  All freaks must not be indulged;
+admonition is salutary, and that the pupil should be awakened by
+his instructor to sober reflection and to masculine exertion. 
+Every Telemachus should have his Mentor.--But through the whole
+it is necessary that the spirit of the pupil should not be
+broken, and that he should not be treated with contumely. 
+Stripes should in all instances be regarded as the last resort,
+and as a sort of problem set up for the wisdom of the wise to
+solve, whether the urgent case can arise in which it shall be
+requisite to have recourse to them.
+
+The principles here laid down have the strongest tendency to
+prove to us how little progress has yet been made in the art of
+turning human creatures to the best account.  Every man has his
+place, in which if he can be fixed, the most fastidious judge
+cannot look upon him with disdain.  But, to effect this
+arrangement, an exact attention is required to ascertain the
+pursuit in which he will best succeed.  In India the whole mass
+of the members of the community is divided into castes; and,
+instead of a scrupulous attention being paid to the early
+intimations of individual character, it is already decided upon
+each, before he comes into the world, which child shall be a
+priest, and which a soldier, a physician, a lawyer, a merchant,
+and an artisan.  In Europe we do not carry this so far, and are
+not so elaborately wrong.  But the rudiments of the same folly
+flourish among us; and the accident of birth for the most part
+decides the method of life to which each individual with whatever
+violence shall be dedicated.  A very few only, by means of
+energies that no tyranny can subdue, escape from the operation of
+this murderous decree.
+
+Nature never made a dunce.  Imbecility of mind is as rare, as
+deformity of the animal frame.  If this position be true, we have
+only to bear it in mind, feelingly to convince ourselves, how
+wholesale the error is into which society has hitherto fallen in
+the destination of its members, and how much yet remains to be
+done, before our common nature can be vindicated from the basest
+of all libels, the most murderous of all proscriptions.
+
+There is a passage in Voltaire, in which he expresses himself to
+this effect:  "It is after all but a slight line of separation
+that divides the man of genius from the man of ordinary mould." 
+I remember the place where, and the time when, I read this
+passage.  But I have been unable to find the expression.  It is
+however but reasonable that I should refer to it on this
+occasion, that I may hereby shew so eminent a modern concurring
+with the venerable ancient in an early era of letters, whose
+dictum I have prefixed to this Essay, to vouch to a certain
+extent for the truth of the doctrine I have delivered.
+
+
+
+ESSAY III.
+OF INTELLECTUAL ABORTION.
+
+In the preceding Essay I have endeavoured to establish the
+proposition, that every human creature, idiots and extraordinary
+cases excepted, is endowed with talents, which, if rightly
+directed, would shew him to be apt, adroit, intelligent and
+acute, in the walk for which his organisation especially fitted
+him.
+
+There is however a sort of phenomenon, by no means of rare
+occurrence, which tends to place the human species under a less
+favourable point of view.  Many men, as has already appeared, are
+forced into situations and pursuits ill assorted to their
+talents, and by that means are exhibited to their contemporaries
+in a light both despicable and ludicrous.
+
+But this is not all.  Men are not only placed, by the absurd
+choice of their parents, or an imperious concurrence of
+circumstances, in destinations and employments in which they can
+never appear to advantage:  they frequently, without any external
+compulsion, select for themselves objects of their industry,
+glaringly unadapted to their powers, and in which all their
+efforts must necessarily terminate in miscarriage.
+
+I remember a young man, who had been bred a hair-dresser, but who
+experienced, as he believed, the secret visitations of the Muse,
+and became inspired.  "With sad civility, and aching head," I
+perused no fewer than six comedies from the pen of this aspiring
+genius, in no page of which I could discern any glimmering of
+poetry or wit, or in reality could form a guess what it was that
+the writer intended in his elaborate effusions.  Such are the
+persons enumerated by Pope in the Prologue to his Satires,
+
+          a parson, much bemused in beer,
+      A maudlin poetess, a rhyming peer,
+      A clerk, foredoomed his father's sou to cross,
+      Who pens a stanza, when he should engross.
+
+Every manager of a theatre, and every publishing bookseller of
+eminence, can produce you in each revolving season whole reams,
+almost cartloads, of blurred paper, testifying the frequent
+recurrence of this phenomenon.
+
+The cause however of this painful mistake does not lie in the
+circumstance, that each man has not from the hand of nature an
+appropriate destination, a sphere assigned him, in which, if life
+should be prolonged to him, he might be secure of the respect of
+his neighbours, and might write upon his tomb, "I have filled an
+honourable career; I have finished my course."
+
+One of the most glaring infirmities of our nature is discontent. 
+One of the most unquestionable characteristics of the human mind
+is the love of novelty.  Omne ignotum pro magnifico est.  We are
+satiated with those objects which make a part of our business in
+every day, and are desirous of trying something that is a
+stranger to us.  Whatever we see through a mist, or in the
+twilight, is apt to be apprehended by us as something admirable,
+for the single reason that it is seen imperfectly.  What we are
+sure that we can easily and adequately effect, we despise.  He
+that goes into battle with an adversary of more powerful muscle
+or of greater practice than himself, feels a tingling sensation,
+not unallied to delight, very different from that which would
+occur to him, when his victory was easy and secure.
+
+Each man is conscious what it is that he can certainly effect. 
+This does not therefore present itself to him as an object of
+ambition.  We have many of us internally something of the spirit
+expressed by the apostle:  "Forgetting the things that are
+behind, we press forward to those that remain."  And, so long as
+this precept is soberly applied, no conduct can be more worthy of
+praise.  Improvement is the appropriate race of man.  We cannot
+stand still.  If we do not go forward, we shall inevitably
+recede.  Shakespear, when he wrote his Hamlet, did not know that
+he could produce Macbeth and Othello.
+
+But the progress of a man of reflection will be, to a
+considerable degree, in the path he has already entered.  If he
+strikes into a new career, it will not be without deep
+premeditation.  He will attempt nothing wantonly.  He will
+carefully examine his powers, and see for what they are adapted. 
+Sudet multum.  He will be like the man, who first in a frail bark
+committed himself to the treachery of the waves.  He will keep
+near to the shore; he will tremble for the audaciousness of his
+enterprise; he will feel that it calls for all his alertness and
+vigilance.  The man of reflection will not begin, till he feels
+his mind swelling with his purposed theme, till his blood flows
+fitfully and with full pulses through his veins, till his eyes
+sparkle with the intenseness of his conceptions, and his "bosom
+labours with the God."
+
+But the fool dashes in at once.  He does not calculate the
+dangers of his enterprise.  He does not study the map of the
+country he has to traverse.  He does not measure the bias of the
+ground, the rising knolls and the descending slopes that are
+before him.  He obeys a blind and unreflecting impulse.
+
+His case bears a striking resemblance to what is related of
+Oliver Goldsmith.  Goldsmith was a man of the most felicitous
+endowments.  His prose flows with such ease, copiousness and
+grace, that it resembles the song of the sirens.  His verses are
+among the most spirited, natural and unaffected in the English
+language.  Yet he was not contented.  If he saw a consummate
+dancer, he knew no reason why he should not do as well, and
+immediately felt disposed to essay his powers.  If he heard an
+accomplished musician, he undertook to enter the lists with him. 
+His conduct was of a piece with that of the countryman, who,
+cheapening spectacles, and making experiment of them for ever in
+vain upon the book before him, was at length asked, "Could you
+ever read without spectacles?" to which he was obliged to answer,
+"I do not know; I never tried."  The vanity of Goldsmith was
+infinite; and his failure in such attempts must necessarily have
+been ludicrous.
+
+The splendour of the thing presented to our observation, awakens
+the spirit within us.  The applause and admiration excited by
+certain achievements and accomplishments infects us with desire. 
+We are like the youthful Themistocles, who complained that the
+trophies of Miltiades would not let him sleep.  We are like the
+novice Guido, who, while looking on the paintings of Michael
+Angelo, exclaimed, "I also am a painter."  Themistocles and Guido
+were right, for they were of kindred spirit to the great men they
+admired.  But the applause bestowed on others will often generate
+uneasiness and a sigh, in men least of all qualified by nature to
+acquire similar applause.  We are not contented to proceed in the
+path of obscure usefulness and worth.  We are eager to be
+admired, and thus often engage in pursuits for which perhaps we
+are of all men least adapted Each one would be the man above him.
+
+And this is the cause why we see so many individuals, who might
+have passed their lives with honour, devote themselves to
+incredible efforts, only that they may be made supremely
+ridiculous.
+
+To this let it be added, that the wisest man that ever existed,
+never yet knew himself, especially in the morning of life.  The
+person, who ultimately stamped his history with the most heroic
+achievements, was far perhaps even from suspecting, in the dawn
+of his existence, that he should realise the miracles that mark
+its maturity.  He might be ready to exclaim, with Hazael in the
+Scriptures, "Is thy servant more than man, that he should do this
+great thing?"  The sublimest poet that ever sung, was
+peradventure, while a stripling, unconscious of the treasures
+which formed a part of the fabric of his mind, and unsuspicious
+of the high destiny that in the sequel awaited him.  What wonder
+then, that, awaking from the insensibility and torpor which
+precede the activity of the soul, some men should believe in a
+fortune that shall never be theirs, and anticipate a glory they
+are fated never to sustain!  And for the same reason, when
+unanticipated failure becomes their lot, they are unwilling at
+first to be discouraged, and find a certain gallantry in
+persevering, and "against hope believing in hope."
+
+This is the explanation of a countless multitude of failures that
+occur in the career of literature.  Nor is this phenomenon
+confined to literature.  In all the various paths of human
+existence, that appear to have something in them splendid and
+alluring, there are perpetual instances of daring adventures,
+unattended with the smallest rational hope of success.  Optat
+ephippia bos piger.
+
+          All quit their sphere, and rush into the skies.
+
+But, beside these instances of perfect and glaring miscarriage,
+there are examples worthy of a deeper regret, where the juvenile
+candidate sets out in the morning of life with the highest
+promise, with colours flying, and the spirit-stirring note of
+gallant preparation, when yet his voyage of life is destined to
+terminate in total discomfiture.  I have seen such an one, whose
+early instructors regarded him with the most sanguine
+expectation, and his elders admired him, while his youthful
+competitors unreluctantly confessed his superiority, and gave way
+on either side to his triumphant career; and all this has
+terminated in nothing.
+
+In reality the splendid march of genius is beset with a thousand
+difficulties.  "The race is not always to the swift, nor the
+battle to the strong."  A multitude of unthought-of
+qualifications are required; and it depends at least as much upon
+the nicely maintained balance of these, as upon the copiousness
+and brilliancy of each, whether the result shall be auspicious. 
+The progress of genius is like the flight of an arrow; a breath
+may turn it out of its course, and cause that course to terminate
+many a degree wide of its purposed mark.  It is therefore
+scarcely possible that any sharpness of foresight can pronounce
+of the noblest beginnings whether they shall reach to an adequate
+conclusion.
+
+I have seen such a man, with the most fervent imagination, with
+the most diligent study, with the happiest powers of memory, and
+with an understanding that apparently took in every thing, and
+arranged every thing, at the same time that by its acuteness it
+seemed able to add to the accumulated stores of foregone wisdom
+and learning new treasures of its own; and yet this man shall
+pass through the successive stages of human life, in appearance
+for ever active, for ever at work, and leave nothing behind that
+shall embalm his name to posterity, certainly nothing in any
+degree adequately representing those excellencies, which a chosen
+few, admitted to his retired and his serenest hours, knew to
+reside in him.
+
+There are conceptions of the mind, that come forth like the
+coruscations of lightning.  If you could fix that flash, it would
+seem as if it would give new brightness to the sons of men, and
+almost extinguish the luminary of day.  But, ere you can say it
+is here, it is gone.  It appears to reveal to us the secrets of
+the world unknown; but the clouds congregate again, and shut in
+upon us, before we had time to apprehend its full radiance and
+splendour.
+
+To give solidity and permanence to the inspirations of genius two
+things are especially necessary.  First, that the idea to be
+communicated should be powerfully apprehended by the speaker or
+writer; and next, that he should employ words and phrases which
+might convey it in all its truth to the mind of another.  The man
+who entertains such conceptions, will not unfrequently want the
+steadiness of nerve which is required for their adequate
+transmission.  Suitable words will not always wait upon his
+thoughts.  Language is in reality a vast labyrinth, a scene like
+the Hercinian Forest of old, which, we are told, could not be
+traversed in less than sixty days.  If we do not possess the
+clue, we shall infallibly perish in the attempt, and our thoughts
+and our memory will expire with us.
+
+The sentences of this man, when he speaks, or when he writes,
+will be full of perplexity and confusion.  They will be endless,
+and never arrive at their proper termination.  They will include
+parenthesis on parenthesis.  We perceive the person who delivers
+them, to be perpetually labouring after a meaning, but never
+reaching it.  He is like one flung over into the sea, unprovided
+with the skill that should enable him to contend with the
+tumultuous element.  He flounders about in pitiable helplessness,
+without the chance of extricating himself by all his efforts.  He
+is lost in unintelligible embarrassment.  It is a delightful and
+a ravishing sight, to observe another man come after him, and
+tell, without complexity, and in the simplicity of
+self-possession, unconscious that there was any difficulty, all
+that his predecessor had fruitlessly exerted himself to unfold.
+
+There are a multitude of causes that will produce a miscarriage
+of this sort, where the richest soil, impregnated with the
+choicest seeds of learning and observation, shall entirely fail
+to present us with such a crop as might rationally have been
+anticipated.  Many such men waste their lives in indolence and
+irresolution.  They attempt many things, sketch out plans, which,
+if properly filled up, might illustrate the literature of a
+nation, and extend the empire of the human mind, but which yet
+they desert as soon as begun, affording us the promise of a
+beautiful day, that, ere it is noon, is enveloped in darkest
+tempests and the clouds of midnight.  They skim away from one
+flower in the parterre of literature to another, like the bee,
+without, like the bee, gathering sweetness from each, to increase
+the public stock, and enrich the magazine of thought.  The cause
+of this phenomenon is an unsteadiness, ever seduced by the
+newness of appearances, and never settling with firmness and
+determination upon what had been chosen.
+
+Others there are that are turned aside from the career they might
+have accomplished, by a visionary and impracticable
+fastidiousness.  They can find nothing that possesses all the
+requisites that should fix their choice, nothing so good that
+should authorise them to present it to public observation, and
+enable them to offer it to their contemporaries as something that
+we should "not willingly let die."  They begin often; but nothing
+they produce appears to them such as that they should say of it,
+"Let this stand."  Or they never begin, none of their thoughts
+being judged by them to be altogether such as to merit the being
+preserved.  They have a microscopic eye, and discern faults
+unworthy to be tolerated, in that in which the critic himself
+might perceive nothing but beauty.
+
+These phenomena have introduced a maxim which is current with
+many, that the men who write nothing, and bequeath no record of
+themselves to posterity, are not unfrequently of larger calibre,
+and more gigantic standard of soul, than such as have inscribed
+their names upon the columns of the temple of Fame.  And certain
+it is, that there are extraordinary instances which appear in
+some degree to countenance this assertion.  Many men are
+remembered as authors, who seem to have owed the permanence of
+their reputation rather to fortune than merit.  They were daring,
+and stepped into a niche that was left in the gallery of art or
+of science, where others of higher qualifications, but of
+unconquerable modesty, held back.  At the same time persons,
+whose destiny caused them to live among the elite of an age, have
+seen reason to confess that they have heard such talk, such
+glorious and unpremeditated discourse, from men whose thoughts
+melted away with the breath that uttered them, as the wisest of
+their vaunted contemporary authors would in vain have sought to
+rival.
+
+The maxim however, notwithstanding these appearances, may safely
+be pronounced to be a fallacious one.  It has been received in
+various quarters with the greater indulgence, inasmuch as the
+human mind is prone in many cases to give a more welcome
+reception to seeming truths, that present us at the first blush
+the appearance of falshood.
+
+It must however be recollected that the human mind consists in
+the first instance merely of faculties prepared to be applied to
+certain purposes, and susceptible of improvement.  It cannot
+therefore happen, that the man, who has chosen a subject towards
+which to direct the energy of his faculties, who has sought on
+all sides for the materials that should enable him to do that
+subject justice, who has employed upon it his contemplations by
+day, and his meditations during the watches of the night, should
+not by such exercise greatly invigorate his powers.  In this
+sense there was much truth in the observation of the author who
+said, "I did not write upon the subject you mention because I
+understood it; but I understood it afterward, because I had
+written upon it."
+
+The man who merely wanders through the fields of knowledge in
+search of its gayest flowers and of whatever will afford him the
+most enviable amusement, will necessarily return home at night
+with a very slender collection.  He that shall apply himself with
+self-denial and an unshrinking resolution to the improvement of
+his mind, will unquestionably be found more fortunate in the end.
+
+He is not deterred by the gulphs that yawn beneath his feet, or
+the mountains that may oppose themselves to his progress.  He
+knows that the adventurer of timid mind, and that is infirm of
+purpose, will never make himself master of those points which it
+would be most honourable to him to subdue.  But he who undertakes
+to commit to writing the result of his researches, and to
+communicate his discoveries to mankind, is the genuine hero. 
+Till he enters on this task, every thing is laid up in his memory
+in a certain confusion.  He thinks he possesses a thing whole;
+but, when he brings it to the test, he is surprised to find how
+much he was deceived.  He that would digest his thoughts and his
+principles into a regular system, is compelled in the first place
+to regard them in all their clearness and perspicuity, and in the
+next place to select the fittest words by which they may be
+communicated to others.  It is through the instrumentality of
+words that we are taught to think accurately and severely for
+ourselves; they are part and parcel of all our propositions and
+theories.  It is therefore in this way that a preceptor, by
+undertaking to enlighten the mind of his pupil, enlightens his
+own.  He becomes twice the man in the sequel, that he was when he
+entered on his task.  We admire the amateur student in his public
+essays, as we admire a jackdaw or a parrot:  he does considerably
+more than could have been expected from him.
+
+In attending to the subject of this Essay we have been led to
+observe the different ways, in which the mind of man may be
+brought into a position tending to exhibit its powers in a less
+creditable and prepossessing point of view, than that in which
+all men, idiots and extraordinary cases excepted, are by nature
+qualified to appear.  Many, not contented with those occupations,
+modest and humble in certain cases, to which their endowments and
+original bent had designed them, shew themselves immoderately set
+upon more alluring and splendid pursuits in which they are least
+qualified to excel.  Other instances there are, still more
+entitled to our regret, where the individual is seen to be gifted
+with no ordinary qualities, where his morning of life has proved
+auspicious, and the highest expectations were formed of a
+triumphant career, while yet in the final experiment he has been
+found wanting, and the "voyage of his life" has passed "in
+shallows and in miseries."
+
+But our survey of the subject of which I treat will not be
+complete, unless we add to what has been said, another striking
+truth respecting the imperfection of man collectively taken.  The
+examples of which the history of our species consists, not only
+abound in cases, where, from mistakes in the choice of life, or
+radical and irremediable imperfection in the adventurer, the most
+glaring miscarriages are found to result,--but it is also true,
+that all men, even the most illustrious, have some fatal
+weakness, obliging both them and their rational admirers to
+confess, that they partake of human frailty, and belong to a race
+of beings which has small occasion to be proud.  Each man has his
+assailable part.  He is vulnerable, though it be only like the
+fabled Achilles in his heel.  We are like the image that
+Nebuchadnezzar saw in his dream, of which though the head was of
+fine gold, and the breast and the arms were silver, yet the feet
+were partly only of iron, and partly of clay.  No man is whole
+and entire, armed at all points, and qualified for every
+undertaking, or even for any one undertaking, so as to carry it
+through, and to make the achievement he would perform, or the
+work he would produce, in all its parts equal and complete.
+
+It is a gross misapprehension in such men as, smitten with
+admiration of a certain cluster of excellencies, or series of
+heroic acts, are willing to predicate of the individual to whom
+they belong, "This man is consummate, and without alloy."  Take
+the person in his retirement, in his hours of relaxation, when he
+has no longer a part to play, and one or more spectators before
+whom he is desirous to appear to advantage, and you shall find
+him a very ordinary man.  He has "passions, dimensions, senses,
+affections, like the rest of his fellow-creatures, is fed with
+the same food, hurt with the same weapons, warmed and cooled by
+the same summer and winter."  He will therefore, when narrowly
+observed, be unquestionably found betraying human weaknesses, and
+falling into fits of ill humour, spleen, peevishness and folly. 
+No man is always a sage; no bosom at all times beats with
+sentiments lofty, self-denying and heroic.  It is enough if he
+does so, "when the matter fits his mighty mind."
+
+The literary genius, who undertakes to produce some consummate
+work, will find himself pitiably in error, if he expects to turn
+it out of his hands, entire in all its parts, and without a flaw.
+
+There are some of the essentials of which it is constituted, that
+he has mastered, and is sufficiently familiar with them; but
+there are others, especially if his work is miscellaneous and
+comprehensive, to which he is glaringly incompetent.  He must
+deny his nature, and become another man, if he would execute
+these parts, in a manner equal to that which their intrinsic
+value demands, or to the perfection he is able to give to his
+work in those places which are best suited to his powers.  There
+are points in which the wisest man that ever existed is no
+stronger than a child.  In this sense the sublimest genius will
+be found infelix operas summa, nam ponere totum nescit.  And, if
+he properly knows himself, and is aware where lies his strength,
+and where his weakness, he will look for nothing more in the
+particulars which fall under the last of these heads, than to
+escape as he can, and to pass speedily to things in which he
+finds himself at home and at his ease.
+
+Shakespear we are accustomed to call the most universal genius
+that ever existed.  He has a truly wonderful variety.  It is
+almost impossible to pronounce in which he has done best, his
+Hamlet, Macbeth, Lear, or Othello.  He is equally excellent in
+his comic vein as his tragic.  Falstaff is in his degree to the
+full as admirable and astonishing, as what he achieved that is
+noblest under the auspices of the graver muse.  His poetry and
+the fruits of his imagination are unrivalled.  His language, in
+all that comes from him when his genius is most alive, has a
+richness, an unction, and all those signs of a character which
+admits not of mortality and decay, for ever fresh as when it was
+first uttered, which we recognise, while we can hardly persuade
+ourselves that we are not in a delusion.  As Anthony Wood
+says[4], "By the writings of Shakespear and others of his time,
+the English tongue was exceedingly enriched, and made quite
+another thing than what it was before."  His versification on
+these occasions has a melody, a ripeness and variety that no
+other pen has reached.
+
+[4] Athenae Oxonienses, vol. i. p. 592.
+
+
+Yet there were things that Shakespear could not do.  He could not
+make a hero.  Familiar as he was with the evanescent touches of
+mind en dishabille, and in its innermost feelings, he could not
+sustain the tone of a character, penetrated with a divine
+enthusiasm, or fervently devoted to a generous cause, though this
+is truly within the compass of our nature, and is more than any
+other worthy to be delineated.  He could conceive such
+sentiments, for there are such in his personage of Brutus; but he
+could not fill out and perfect what he has thus sketched.  He
+seems even to have had a propensity to bring the mountain and the
+hill to a level with the plain.  Caesar is spiritless, and Cicero
+is ridiculous, in his hands.  He appears to have written his
+Troilus and Cressida partly with a view to degrade, and hold up
+to contempt, the heroes of Homer; and he has even disfigured the
+pure, heroic affection which the Greek poet has painted as
+existing between Achilles and Patroclus with the most odious
+imputations.
+
+And, as he could not sustain an heroic character throughout, so
+neither could he construct a perfect plot, in which the interest
+should be perpetually increasing, and the curiosity of the
+spectator kept alive and in suspense to the last moment.  Several
+of his plays have an unity of subject to which nothing is
+wanting; but he has not left us any production that should rival
+that boast of Ancient Greece in the conduct of a plot, the
+OEdipus Tyrannus, a piece in which each act rises upon the act
+before, like a tower that lifts its head story above story to the
+skies.  He has scarcely ever given to any of his plays a fifth
+act, worthy of those that preceded; the interest generally
+decreases after the third.
+
+Shakespear is also liable to the charge of obscurity.  The most
+sagacious critics dispute to this very hour, whether Hamlet is or
+is not mad, and whether Falstaff is a brave man or a coward. 
+This defect is perhaps partly to be imputed to the nature of
+dramatic writing.  It is next to impossible to make words, put
+into the mouth of a character, develop all those things passing
+in his mind, which it may be desirable should be known.
+
+I spoke, a short time back, of the language of Shakespear in his
+finest passages, as of unrivalled excellence and beauty; I might
+almost have called it miraculous.  O, si sic omnia!  It is to be
+lamented that this felicity often deserts him.  He is not seldom
+cramp, rigid and pedantic.  What is best in him is eternal, of
+all ages and times; but what is worst, is crusted with an
+integument, almost more cumbrous than that of any other writer,
+his contemporary, the merits of whose works continue to invite us
+to their perusal.
+
+After Shakespear, it is scarcely worth while to bring forward any
+other example, of a writer who, notwithstanding his undoubted
+claims to excellencies of the highest order, yet in his
+productions fully displays the inequality and non-universality of
+his genius.  One of the most remarkable instances may be alleged
+in Richardson, the author of Clarissa.  In his delineation of
+female delicacy, of high-souled and generous sentiments, of the
+subtlest feelings and even mental aberrations of virtuous
+distress strained beyond the power of human endurance, nothing
+ever equalled this author.  But he could not shape out the image
+of a perfect gentleman, or of that winning gaiety of soul, which
+may indeed be exemplified, but can never be defined, and never be
+resisted.  His profligate is a man without taste; and his
+coquettes are insolent and profoundly revolting.  He has no
+resemblance of the art, so conspicuous in Fletcher and Farquhar,
+of presenting to the reader or spectator an hilarity, bubbling
+and spreading forth from a perennial spring, which we love as
+surely as we feel, which communicates its own tone to the
+bystander, and makes our very hearts dance within us with a
+responsive sportiveness.  We are astonished however that the
+formal pedant has acquitted himself of his uncongenial task with
+so great a display of intellectual wealth; and, though he has not
+presented to us the genuine picture of an intellectual
+profligate, or of that lovely gaiety of the female spirit which
+we have all of us seen, but which it is scarcely possible to fix
+and to copy, we almost admire the more the astonishing talent,
+that, having undertaken a task for which it was so eminently
+unfit, yet has been able to substitute for the substance so
+amazing a mockery, and has treated with so much copiousness and
+power what it was unfit ever to have attempted.
+
+
+
+ESSAY IV.
+OF THE DURABILITY OF HUMAN ACHIEVEMENTS AND PRODUCTIONS.
+
+There is a view of the character of man, calculated more perhaps
+than any other to impress us with reverence and awe.
+
+Man is the only creature we know, that, when the term of his
+natural life is ended, leaves the memory of himself behind him.
+
+All other animals have but one object in view in their more
+considerable actions, the supply of the humbler accommodations of
+their nature.  Man has a power sufficient for the accomplishment
+of this object, and a residue of power beyond, which he is able,
+and which he not unfrequently feels himself prompted, to employ
+in consecutive efforts, and thus, first by the application and
+arrangement of material substances, and afterward by the faculty
+he is found to possess of giving a permanent record to his
+thoughts, to realise the archetypes and conceptions which
+previously existed only in his mind.
+
+One method, calculated to place this fact strongly before us, is,
+to suppose ourselves elevated, in a balloon or otherwise, so as
+to enable us to take an extensive prospect of the earth on which
+we dwell.  We shall then see the plains and the everlasting
+hills, the forests and the rivers, and all the exuberance of
+production which nature brings forth for the supply of her living
+progeny.  We shall see multitudes of animals, herds of cattle and
+of beasts of prey, and all the varieties of the winged tenants of
+the air.  But we shall also behold, in a manner almost equally
+calculated to arrest our attention, the traces and the monuments
+of human industry.  We shall see castles and churches, and
+hamlets and mighty cities.  We shall see this strange creature,
+man, subjecting all nature to his will.  He builds bridges, and
+he constructs aqueducts.  He "goes down to the sea in ships," and
+variegates the ocean with his squadrons and his fleets.  To the
+person thus mounted in the air to take a wide and magnificent
+prospect, there seems to be a sort of contest between the face of
+the earth, as it may be supposed to have been at first, and the
+ingenuity of man, which shall occupy and possess itself of the
+greatest number of acres.  We cover immense regions of the globe
+with the tokens of human cultivation.
+
+Thus the matter stands as to the exertions of the power of man in
+the application and arrangement of material substances.
+
+But there is something to a profound and contemplative mind much
+more extraordinary, in the effects produced by the faculty we
+possess of giving a permanent record to our thoughts.
+
+From the development of this faculty all human science and
+literature take their commencement.  Here it is that we most
+distinctly, and with the greatest astonishment, perceive that man
+is a miracle.  Declaimers are perpetually expatiating to us upon
+the shortness of human life.  And yet all this is performed by
+us, when the wants of our nature have already by our industry
+been supplied.  We manufacture these sublimities and everlasting
+monuments out of the bare remnants and shreds of our time.
+
+The labour of the intellect of man is endless.  How copious is
+the volume, and how extraordinary the variety, of our sciences
+and our arts!  The number of men is exceedingly great in every
+civilised state of society, that make these the sole object of
+their occupation.  And this has been more or less the condition
+of our species in all ages, ever since we left the savage and the
+pastoral modes of existence.
+
+From this view of the history of man we are led by an easy
+transition to the consideration of the nature and influence of
+the love of fame in modifying the actions of the human mind.  We
+have already stated it to be one of the characteristic
+distinctions of our species to erect monuments which outlast the
+existence of the persons that produced them.  This at first was
+accidental, and did not enter the design of the operator.  The
+man who built himself a shed to protect him from the inclemency
+of the seasons, and afterwards exchanged that shed for a somewhat
+more commodious dwelling, did not at first advert to the
+circumstance that the accommodation might last, when he was no
+longer capable to partake of it.
+
+In this way perhaps the wish to extend the memory of ourselves
+beyond the term of our mortal existence, and the idea of its
+being practicable to gratify that wish, descended upon us
+together.  In contemplating the brief duration and the
+uncertainty of human life, the idea must necessarily have
+occurred, that we might survive those we loved, or that they
+might survive us.  In the first case we inevitably wish more or
+less to cherish the memory of the being who once was an object of
+affection to us, but of whose society death has deprived us.  In
+the second case it can scarcely happen but that we desire
+ourselves to be kindly recollected by those we leave behind us. 
+So simple is the first germ of that longing after posthumous
+honour, which presents us with so memorable effects in the page
+of history.
+
+But, previously to the further consideration of posthumous fame,
+let us turn our attention for a moment to the fame, or, as in
+that sense it is more usually styled, popularity, which is the
+lot of a few favoured individuals while they live.  The attending
+to the subject in this point of view, will be found to throw
+light upon the more extensive prospect of the question to which
+we will immediately afterwards proceed.
+
+Popularity is an acquisition more level to the most ordinary
+capacities, and therefore is a subject of more general ambition,
+than posthumous fame.  It addresses itself to the senses. 
+Applause is a species of good fortune to which perhaps no mortal
+ear is indifferent.  The persons who constitute the circle in
+which we are applauded, receive us with smiles of approbation and
+sympathy.  They pay their court to us, seem to be made happy by
+our bare presence among them, and welcome us to their houses with
+congratulation and joy.  The vulgar portion of mankind scarcely
+understand the question of posthumous fame, they cannot
+comprehend how panegyric and honour can "soothe the dull, cold
+ear of death:"  but they can all conceive the gratification to be
+derived from applauding multitudes and loud huzzas.
+
+One of the most obvious features however that attends upon
+popularity, is its fugitive nature.  No man has once been
+popular, and has lived long, without experiencing neglect at
+least, if he were not also at some time subjected to the very
+intelligible disapprobation and censure of his fellows.  The good
+will and kindness of the multitude has a devouring appetite, and
+is like a wild beast that you should stable under your roof,
+which, if you do not feed with a continual supply, will turn
+about and attack its protector.      
+
+One touch of nature makes the whole world kin,--
+That all, with one consent, praise new-born gauds,
+And give to dust, that is a little gilt,
+More laud than they will give to gold o'erdusted.
+
+Cromwel well understood the nature of this topic, when he said,
+as we are told, to one of his military companions, who called his
+attention to the rapturous approbation with which they were
+received by the crowd on their return from a successful
+expedition, "Ah, my friend, they would accompany us with equal
+demonstrations of delight, if, upon no distant occasion, they
+were to see us going to be hanged!"
+
+The same thing which happens to the popularity attendant on the
+real or imaginary hero of the multitude, happens also in the race
+after posthumous fame.
+
+As has already been said, the number of men is exceedingly great
+in every civilised state of society, who make the sciences and
+arts engendered by the human mind, the sole or the principal
+objects of their occupation.
+
+This will perhaps be most strikingly illustrated by a retrospect
+of the state of European society in the middle, or, as they are
+frequently styled, the dark ages.
+
+It has been a vulgar error to imagine, that the mind of man, so
+far as relates to its active and inventive powers, was sunk into
+a profound sleep, from which it gradually recovered itself at the
+period when Constantinople was taken by the Turks, and the books
+and the teachers of the ancient Greek language were dispersed
+through Europe.  The epoch from which modern invention took its
+rise, commenced much earlier.  The feudal system, one of the most
+interesting contrivances of man in society, was introduced in the
+ninth century; and chivalry, the offspring of that system, an
+institution to which we are mainly indebted for refinement of
+sentiment, and humane and generous demeanour, in the eleventh. 
+Out of these grew the originality and the poetry of romance.
+
+These were no mean advancements.  But perhaps the greatest debt
+which after ages have contracted to this remote period, arose out
+of the system of monasteries and ecclesiastical celibacy.  Owing
+to these a numerous race of men succeeded to each other
+perpetually, who were separated from the world, cut off from the
+endearments of conjugal and parental affection, and who had a
+plenitude of leisure for solitary application.  To these men we
+are indebted for the preservation of the literature of Rome, and
+the multiplied copies of the works of the ancients.  Nor were
+they contented only with the praise of never-ending industry. 
+They forged many works, that afterwards passed for classical, and
+which have demanded all the perspicacity of comparative criticism
+to refute.  And in these pursuits the indefatigable men who were
+dedicated to them, were not even goaded by the love of fame. 
+They were satisfied with the consciousness of their own
+perseverance and ingenuity.
+
+But the most memorable body of men that adorned these ages, were
+the Schoolmen.  They may be considered as the discoverers of the
+art of logic.  The ancients possessed in an eminent degree the
+gift of genius; but they have little to boast on the score of
+arrangement, and discover little skill in the strictness of an
+accurate deduction.  They rather arrive at truth by means of a
+felicity of impulse, than in consequence of having regularly gone
+through the process which leads to it.  The schools of the middle
+ages gave birth to the Irrefragable and the Seraphic doctors, the
+subtlety of whose distinctions, and the perseverance of whose
+investigations, are among the most wonderful monuments of the
+intellectual power of man.  The thirteenth century produced
+Thomas Aquinas, and Johannes Duns Scotus, and William Occam, and
+Roger Bacon.  In the century before, Thomas a Becket drew around
+him a circle of literary men, whose correspondence has been
+handed down to us, and who deemed it their proudest distinction
+that they called each other philosophers.  The Schoolmen often
+bewildered themselves in their subtleties, and often delivered
+dogmas and systems that may astonish the common sense of
+unsophisticated understandings.  But such is man.  So great is
+his persevering labour, his invincible industry, and the
+resolution with which he sets himself, year after year, and
+lustre after lustre, to accomplish the task which his judgment
+and his zeal have commanded him to pursue.
+
+But I return to the question of literary fame.  All these men,
+and men of a hundred other classes, who laboured most commendably
+and gallantly in their day, may be considered as swept away into
+the gulph of oblivion.  As Swift humorously says in his
+Dedication to Prince Posterity, "I had prepared a copious list of
+Titles to present to your highness, as an undisputed argument of
+the prolificness of human genius in my own time:  the originals
+were posted upon all gates and corner's of streets:  but,
+returning in a very few hours to take a review, they were all
+torn down, and fresh ones put in their places.  I enquired after
+them among readers and booksellers, but in vain:  the memorial of
+them was lost among men; their place was no more to be found."
+
+It is a just remark that had been made by Hume[5]:  "Theories of
+abstract philosophy, systems of profound theology, have prevailed
+during one age.  In a successive period these have been
+universally exploded; their absurdity has been detected; other
+theories and systems have supplied their place, which again gave
+way to their successors; and nothing has been experienced more
+liable to the revolutions of chance and fashion than these
+pretended decisions of science.  The case is not the same with
+the beauties of eloquence and poetry.  Just expressions of
+passion and nature are sure, after a little time, to gain public
+applause, which they maintain for ever.  Aristotle and Plato and
+Epicurus and Descartes may successively yield to each other:  but
+Terence and Virgil maintain an universal, undisputed empire over
+the minds of men.  The abstract philosophy of Cicero has lost its
+credit:  the vehemence of his oratory is still the object of our
+admiration."
+
+[5] Essays, Part 1, Essay xxiii.
+
+
+A few examples of the instability of fame will place this
+question in the clearest light.
+
+Nicholas Peiresk was born in the year 1580.  His progress in
+knowledge was so various and unprecedented, that, from the time
+that he was twenty-one years of age, he was universally
+considered as holding the helm of learning in his hand, and
+guiding the commonwealth of letters.  He died at the age of
+fifty-seven.  The academy of the Humoristi at Rome paid the most
+extraordinary honours to his memory; many of the cardinals
+assisted at his funeral oration; and a collection of verses in
+his praise was published in more than forty languages.
+
+Salmasius was regarded as a prodigy of learning; and various
+princes and powers entered into a competition who should be so
+fortunate as to secure his residence in their states.  Christina,
+queen of Sweden, having obtained the preference, received him
+with singular reverence and attention; and, Salmasius being taken
+ill at Stockholm, and confined to his bed, the queen persisted
+with her own hand to prepare his caudles, and mend his fire. 
+Yet, but for the accident of his having had Milton for his
+adversary, his name would now be as little remembered, even by
+the generality of the learned, as that of Peiresk.
+
+Du Bartas, in the reign of Henry the Fourth of France, was one of
+the most successful poets that ever existed.  His poem on the
+Creation of the World went through upwards of thirty editions in
+the course of five or six years, was translated into most
+European languages, and its commentators promised to equal in
+copiousness and number the commentators on Homer.
+
+One of the most admired of our English poets about the close of
+the sixteenth century, was Donne.  Unlike many of those trivial
+writers of verse who succeeded him after an interval of forty or
+fifty years, and who won for themselves a brilliant reputation by
+the smoothness of their numbers, the elegance of their
+conceptions, and the politeness of their style, Donne was full of
+originality, energy and vigour.  No man can read him without
+feeling himself called upon for earnest exercise of his thinking
+powers, and, even with the most fixed attention and application,
+the student is often obliged to confess his inability to take in
+the whole of the meaning with which the poet's mind was
+perceptibly fraught.  Every sentence that Donne writes, whether
+in verse or prose, is exclusively his own.  In addition to this,
+his thoughts are often in the noblest sense of the word poetical;
+and passages may be quoted from him that no English poet may
+attempt to rival, unless it be Milton and Shakespear.  Ben Jonson
+observed of him with great truth and a prophetic spirit:  "Donne
+for not being understood will perish."  But this is not all.  If
+Waller and Suckling and Carew sacrificed every thing to the
+Graces, Donne went into the other extreme.  With a few splendid
+and admirable exceptions, his phraseology and versification are
+crabbed and repulsive.  And, as poetry is read in the first place
+for pleasure, Donne is left undisturbed on the shelf, or rather
+in the sepulchre; and not one in an hundred even among persons of
+cultivation, can give any account of him, if in reality they ever
+heard of his productions.
+
+The name of Shakespear is that before which every knee must bow. 
+But it was not always so.  When the first novelty of his pieces
+was gone, they were seldom called into requisition.  Only three
+or four of his plays were upon the acting list of the principal
+company of players during the reign of Charles the Second; and
+the productions of Beaumont and Fletcher, and of Shirley, were
+acted three times for once of his.  At length Betterton revived,
+and by his admirable representation gave popularity to, Macbeth,
+Hamlet and Lear, a popularity they have ever since retained.  But
+Macbeth was not revived (with music, and alterations by sir
+William Davenant) till 1674; and Lear a few years later, with
+love scenes and a happy catastrophe by Nahum Tate.
+
+In the latter part of the reign of Charles the Second, Dryden and
+Otway and Lee held the undisputed supremacy in the serious drama.
+
+Such was the insensibility of the English public to nature, and
+her high priest, Shakespear.  The only one of their productions
+that has survived upon the theatre, is Venice Preserved:  and why
+it has done so it is difficult to say; or rather it would be
+impossible to assign a just and honourable reason for it.  All
+the personages in this piece are of an abandoned and profligate
+character.  Pierre is a man resolved to destroy and root up the
+republic by which he was employed, because his mistress, a
+courtesan, is mercenary, and endures the amorous visits of an
+impotent old lecher.  Jaffier, without even the profession of any
+public principle, joins in the conspiracy, because he has been
+accustomed to luxury and prodigal expence and is poor.  He has
+however no sooner entered into the plot, than he betrays it, and
+turns informer to the government against his associates. 
+Belvidera instigates him to this treachery, because she cannot
+bear the thought of having her father murdered, and is absurd
+enough to imagine that she and her husband shall be tender and
+happy lovers ever after.  Their love in the latter acts of the
+play is a continued tirade of bombast and sounding nonsense,
+without one real sentiment, one just reflection, or one strong
+emotion working from the heart, and analysing the nature of man. 
+The folly of this love can only be exceeded, by the abject and
+despicable crouching and fawning of Jaffier to the man he had so
+basely betrayed, and their subsequent reconciliation.  There is
+not a production in the whole realms of fiction, that has less
+pretension to manly, or even endurable feeling, or to common
+propriety.  The total defect of a moral sense in this piece is
+strongly characteristic of the reign in which it was written.  It
+has in the mean while a richness of melody, and a picturesqueness
+of action, that enables it to delude, and that even draws tears
+from the eyes of, persons who can be won over by the eye and the
+ear, with almost no participation of the understanding.  And this
+unmeaning rant and senseless declamation sufficed for the time to
+throw into shade those exquisite delineations of character, those
+transcendent bursts of passion, and that perfect anatomy of the
+human heart, which render the master-pieces of Shakespear a
+property for all nations and all times.
+
+While Shakespear was partly forgotten, it continued to be totally
+unknown that he had contemporaries as inexpressibly superior to
+the dramatic writers that have appeared since, as these
+contemporaries were themselves below the almighty master of
+scenic composition.  It was the fashion to say, that Shakespear
+existed alone in a barbarous age, and that all his imputed
+crudities, and intermixture of what was noblest with unparalleled
+absurdity and buffoonery, were to be allowed for to him on that
+consideration.
+
+Cowley stands forward as a memorable instance of the inconstancy
+of fame.  He was a most amiable man; and the loveliness of his
+mind shines out in his productions.  He had a truly poetic frame
+of soul; and he pours out the beautiful feelings that possessed
+him unreservedly and at large.  He was a great sufferer in the
+Stuart cause, he had been a principal member of the court of the
+exiled queen; and, when the king was restored, it was a deep
+sentiment among his followers and friends to admire the verses of
+Cowley.  He was "the Poet."  The royalist rhymers were set
+lightly by in comparison with him.  Milton, the republican, who,
+by his collection published during the civil war, had shewn that
+he was entitled to the highest eminence, was unanimously
+consigned to oblivion.  Cowley died in 1667; and the duke of
+Buckingham, the author of the Rehearsal, eight years after, set
+up his tomb in the cemetery of the nation, with an inscription,
+declaring him to be at once "the Pindar, the Horace and Virgil of
+his country, the delight and the glory of his age, which by his
+death was left a perpetual mourner."--Yet--so capricious is fame
+--a century has nearly elapsed, since Pope said,
+
+Who now reads Cowley?  If he pleases yet,
+His moral pleases, not his pointed wit;
+Forgot his epic, nay, Pindaric art,
+But still I love the language of his heart.
+
+As Cowley was the great royalist poet after the Restoration,
+Cleveland stood in the same rank during the civil war.  In the
+publication of his works one edition succeeded to another, yearly
+or oftener, for more than twenty years.  His satire is eminently
+poignant; he is of a strength and energy of thinking uncommonly
+masculine; and he compresses his meaning so as to give it every
+advantage.  His imagination is full of coruscation and
+brilliancy.  His petition to Cromwel, lord protector of England,
+when the poet was under confinement for his loyal principles, is
+a singular example of manly firmness, great independence of mind,
+and a happy choice of topics to awaken feelings of forbearance
+and clemency.  It is unnecessary to say that Cleveland is now
+unknown, except to such as feel themselves impelled to search
+into things forgotten.
+
+It would be endless to adduce all the examples that might be
+found of the caprices of fame.  It has been one of the arts of
+the envious to set up a contemptible rival to eclipse the
+splendour of sterling merit.  Thus Crowne and Settle for a time
+disturbed the serenity of Dryden.  Voltaire says, the Phaedra of
+Pradon has not less passion than that of Racine, but expressed in
+rugged verse and barbarous language.  Pradon is now forgotten: 
+and the whole French poetry of the Augustan age of Louis the
+Fourteenth is threatened with the same fate.  Hayley for a few
+years was applauded as the genuine successor of Pope; and the
+poem of Sympathy by Pratt went through twelve editions.  For a
+brief period almost each successive age appears fraught with
+resplendent genius; but they go out one after another; they set,
+"like stars that fall, to rise no more."  Few indeed are endowed
+with that strength of construction, that should enable them to
+ride triumphant on the tide of ages.
+
+It is the same with conquerors.  What tremendous battles have
+been fought, what oceans of blood have been spilled, by men who
+were resolved that their achievements should be remembered for
+ever! And now even their names are scarcely preserved; and the
+very effects of the disasters they inflicted on mankind seem to
+be swept away, as of no more validity than things that never
+existed.  Warriors and poets, the authors of systems and the
+lights of philosophy, men that astonished the earth, and were
+looked up to as Gods, even like an actor on the stage, have
+strutted their hour, and then been heard of no more.
+
+Books have the advantage of all other productions of the human
+head or hand.  Copies of them may be multiplied for ever, the
+last as good as the first, except so far as some slight
+inadvertent errors may have insinuated themselves.  The Iliad
+flourishes as green now, as on the day that Pisistratus is said
+first to have stamped upon it its present order.  The songs of
+the Rhapsodists, the Scalds, and the Minstrels, which once seemed
+as fugitive as the breath of him who chaunted them, repose in
+libraries, and are embalmed in collections.  The sportive sallies
+of eminent wits, and the Table Talk of Luther and Selden, may
+live as long as there shall be men to read, and judges to
+appreciate them.
+
+But other human productions have their date.  Pictures, however
+admirable, will only last as long as the colours of which they
+are composed, and the substance on which they are painted.  Three
+or four hundred years ordinarily limit the existence of the most
+favoured.  We have scarcely any paintings of the ancients, and
+but a small portion of their statues, while of these a great part
+are mutilated, and various members supplied by later and inferior
+artists.  The library of Bufo is by Pope described,
+
+          where busts of poets dead,
+      And a true Pindar stood without a head.
+
+Monumental records, alike the slightest and the most solid, are
+subjected to the destructive operation of time, or to the being
+removed at the caprice or convenience of successive generations. 
+The pyramids of Egypt remain, but the names of him who founded
+them, and of him whose memory they seemed destined to perpetuate,
+have perished together.  Buildings for the use or habitation of
+man do not last for ever.  Mighty cities, as well as detached
+edifices, are destined to disappear.  Thebes, and Troy, and
+Persepolis, and Palmyra have vanished from the face of the earth.
+
+"Thorns and brambles have grown up in their palaces:  they are
+habitations for serpents, and a court for the owl."
+
+There are productions of man however that seem more durable than
+any of the edifices he has raised.  Such are, in the first place,
+modes of government.  The constitution of Sparta lasted for seven
+hundred years.  That of Rome for about the same period. 
+Institutions, once deeply rooted in the habits of a people, will
+operate in their effects through successive revolutions.  Modes
+of faith will sometimes be still more permanent.  Not to mention
+the systems of Moses and Christ, which we consider as delivered
+to us by divine inspiration, that of Mahomet has continued for
+twelve hundred years, and may last, for aught that appears,
+twelve hundred more.  The practices of the empire of China are
+celebrated all over the earth for their immutability.
+
+This brings us naturally to reflect upon the durability of the
+sciences.  According to Bailly, the observation of the heavens,
+and a calculation of the revolutions of the heavenly bodies, in
+other words, astronomy, subsisted in maturity in China and the
+East, for at least three thousand years before the birth of
+Christ:  and, such as it was then, it bids fair to last as long
+as civilisation shall continue.  The additions it has acquired of
+late years may fall away and perish, but the substance shall
+remain.  The circulation of the blood in man and other animals,
+is a discovery that shall never be antiquated.  And the same may
+be averred of the fundamental elements of geometry and of some
+other sciences.  Knowledge, in its most considerable branches
+shall endure, as long as books shall exist to hand it down to
+successive generations.
+
+It is just therefore, that we should regard with admiration and
+awe the nature of man, by whom these mighty things have been
+accomplished, at the same time that the perishable quality of its
+individual monuments, and the temporary character and inconstancy
+of that fame which in many instances has filled the whole earth
+with its renown, may reasonably quell the fumes of an inordinate
+vanity, and keep alive in us the sentiment of a wholsome
+diffidence and humility.
+
+
+
+ESSAY V.
+OF THE REBELLIOUSNESS OF MAN.
+
+There is a particular characteristic in the nature of the human
+mind, which is somewhat difficult to be explained.
+
+Man is a being of a rational and an irrational nature.
+
+It has often been said that we have two souls.  Araspes, in the
+Cyropedia, adopts this language to explain his inconsistency, and
+desertion of principle and honour.  The two souls of man,
+according to this hypothesis, are, first, animal, and, secondly,
+intellectual.
+
+But I am not going into any thing of this slight and every-day
+character.
+
+Man is a rational being.  It is by this particular that he is
+eminently distinguished from the brute creation.  He collects
+premises and deduces conclusions.  He enters into systems of
+thinking, and combines systems of action, which he pursues from
+day to day, and from year to year.  It is by this feature in his
+constitution that he becomes emphatically the subject of history,
+of poetry and fiction.  It is by this that he is raised above the
+other inhabitants of the globe of earth, and that the individuals
+of our race are made the partners of "gods, and men like gods."
+
+But our nature, beside this, has another section.  We start
+occasionally ten thousand miles awry.  We resign the sceptre of
+reason, and the high dignity that belongs to us as beings of a
+superior species; and, without authority derived to us from any
+system of thinking, even without the scheme of gratifying any
+vehement and uncontrolable passion, we are impelled to do, or at
+least feel ourselves excited to do, something disordinate and
+strange.  It seems as if we had a spring within us, that found
+the perpetual restraint of being wise and sober insupportable. 
+We long to be something, or to do something, sudden and
+unexpected, to throw the furniture of our apartment out at
+window, or, when we are leaving a place of worship, in which
+perhaps the most solemn feelings of our nature have been excited,
+to push the grave person that is just before us, from the top of
+the stairs to the bottom.  A thousand absurdities, wild and
+extravagant vagaries, come into our heads, and we are only
+restrained from perpetrating them by the fear, that we may be
+subjected to the treatment appropriated to the insane, or may
+perhaps be made amenable to the criminal laws of our country.
+
+A story occurs to me, which I learned from the late Dr. Parr at
+Hatton, that may not unhappily illustrate the point I am
+endeavouring to explain.
+
+Dr. Samuel Clarke, rector of St. James's, Westminster, the
+especial friend of Sir Isaac Newton, the distinguished editor of
+the poems of Homer, and author of the Demonstration of the Being
+and Attributes of God, was one day summoned from his study, to
+receive two visitors in the parlour.  When he came downstairs,
+and entered the room, he saw a foreigner, who by his air seemed
+to be a person of distinction, a professor perhaps of some
+university on the continent; and an alderman of London, a
+relation of the doctor, who had come to introduce the foreigner. 
+The alderman, a man of uncultivated mind and manners, and whom
+the doctor had been accustomed to see in sordid attire,
+surrounded with the incumbrances of his trade, was decked out for
+the occasion in a full-dress suit, with a wig of majestic and
+voluminous structure.  Clarke was, as it appears, so much struck
+with the whimsical nature of this unexpected metamorphosis, and
+the extraordinary solemnity of his kinsman's demeanour, as to
+have felt impelled, almost immediately upon entering the room, to
+snatch the wig from the alderman's head, and throw it against the
+ceiling:  after which this eminent person immediately escaped,
+and retired to his own apartment.  I was informed from the same
+authority, that Clarke, after exhausting his intellectual
+faculties by long and intense study, would not unfrequently quit
+his seat, leap upon the table, and place himself cross-legged
+like a tailor, being prompted, by these antagonist sallies, to
+relieve himself from the effect of the too severe strain he had
+previously put upon his intellectual powers.
+
+But the deviousness and aberration of our human faculties
+frequently amount to something considerably more serious than
+this.
+
+I will put a case.
+
+I will suppose myself and another human being together, in some
+spot secure from the intrusion of spectators.  A musket is
+conveniently at hand.  It is already loaded.  I say to my
+companion, "I will place myself before you; I will stand
+motionless:  take up that musket, and shoot me through the
+heart."  I want to know what passes in the mind of the man to
+whom these words are addressed.
+
+I say, that one of the thoughts that will occur to many of the
+persons who should be so invited, will be, "Shall I take him at
+his word?"
+
+There are two things that restrain us from acts of violence and
+crime.  The first is, the laws of morality.  The second is, the
+construction that will be put upon our actions by our
+fellow-creatures, and the treatment we shall receive from
+them.--I put out of the question here any particular value I may
+entertain for my challenger, or any degree of friendship and
+attachment I may feel for him.
+
+The laws of morality (setting aside the consideration of any
+documents of religion or otherwise I may have imbibed from my
+parents and instructors) are matured within us by experience.  In
+proportion as I am rendered familiar with my fellow-creatures, or
+with society at large, I come to feel the ties which bind men to
+each other, and the wisdom and necessity of governing my conduct
+by inexorable rules.  We are thus further and further removed
+from unexpected sallies of the mind, and the danger of suddenly
+starting away into acts not previously reflected on and
+considered.
+
+With respect to the censure and retaliation of other men on my
+proceeding, these, by the terms of my supposition, are left out
+of the question.
+
+It may be taken for granted, that no man but a madman, would in
+the case I have stated take the challenger at his word.  But what
+I want to ascertain is, why the bare thought of doing so takes a
+momentary hold of the mind of the person addressed?
+
+There are three principles in the nature of man which contribute
+to account for this.
+
+First, the love of novelty.
+
+Secondly, the love of enterprise and adventure.  I become
+insupportably wearied with the repetition of rotatory acts and
+every-day occurrences.  I want to be alive, to be something more
+than I commonly am, to change the scene, to cut the cable that
+binds my bark to the shore, to launch into the wide sea of
+possibilities, and to nourish my thoughts with observing a train
+of unforeseen consequences as they arise.
+
+A third principle, which discovers itself in early childhood, and
+which never entirely quits us, is the love of power.  We wish to
+be assured that we are something, and that we can produce notable
+effects upon other beings out of ourselves.  It is this
+principle, which instigates a child to destroy his playthings,
+and to torment and kill the animals around him.
+
+But, even independently of the laws of morality, and the fear of
+censure and retaliation from our fellow-creatures, there are
+other things which would obviously restrain us from taking the
+challenger in the above supposition at his word.
+
+If man were an omnipotent being, and at the same time retained
+all his present mental infirmities, it would be difficult to say
+of what extravagances he would be guilty.  It is proverbially
+affirmed that power has a tendency to corrupt the best
+dispositions.  Then what would not omnipotence effect?
+
+If, when I put an end to the life of a fellow-creature, all
+vestiges of what I had done were to disappear, this would take
+off a great part of the control upon my actions which at present
+subsists.  But, as it is, there are many consequences that "give
+us pause."  I do not like to see his blood streaming on the
+ground.  I do not like to witness the spasms and convulsions of a
+dying man.  Though wounded to the heart, he may speak.  Then what
+may he chance to say?  What looks of reproach may he cast upon
+me?  The musket may miss fire.  If I wound him, the wound may be
+less mortal than I contemplated.  Then what may I not have to
+fear?  His dead body will be an incumbrance to me.  It must be
+moved from the place where it lies.  It must be buried.  How is
+all this to be done by me?  By one precipitate act, I have
+involved myself in a long train of loathsome and heart-sickening
+consequences.
+
+If it should be said, that no one but a person of an abandoned
+character would fail, when the scene was actually before him, to
+feel an instant repugnance to the proposition, yet it will
+perhaps be admitted, that almost every reader, when he regards it
+as a supposition merely, says to himself for a moment, "Would I? 
+Could I?"
+
+But, to bring the irrationality of man more completely to the
+test, let us change the supposition.  Let us imagine him to be
+gifted with the powers of the fabled basilisk, "to monarchise, be
+feared, and kill with looks."  His present impulses, his
+passions, his modes of reasoning and choosing shall continue; but
+his "will is neighboured to his act;" whatever he has formed a
+conception of with preference, is immediately realised; his
+thought is succeeded by the effect; and no traces are left
+behind, by means of which a shadow of censure or suspicion can be
+reflected on him.
+
+Man is in truth a miracle.  The human mind is a creature of
+celestial origin, shut up and confined in a wall of flesh.  We
+feel a kind of proud impatience of the degradation to which we
+are condemned.  We beat ourselves to pieces against the wires of
+our cage, and long to escape, to shoot through the elements, and
+be as free to change at any instant the place where we dwell, as
+to change the subject to which our thoughts are applied.
+
+This, or something like this, seems to be the source of our most
+portentous follies and absurdities.  This is the original sin
+upon which St. Austin and Calvin descanted.  Certain Arabic
+writers seem to have had this in their minds, when they tell us,
+that there is a black drop of blood in the heart of every man, in
+which is contained the fomes peccati, and add that, when Mahomet
+was in the fourth year of his age, the angel Gabriel caught him
+up from among his playfellows, and taking his heart from his
+bosom, squeezed out of it this first principle of frailty, in
+consequence of which he for ever after remained inaccessible to
+the weaknesses of other men[6].
+
+[6] Life of Mahomet, by Prideaux.
+
+
+It is the observation of sir Thomas Browne:  "Man is a noble
+animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave."  One of the
+most remarkable examples of this is to he found in the pyramids
+of Egypt.  They are generally considered as having been erected
+to be the tombs of the kings of that country.  They have no
+opening by which for the light of heaven to enter, and afford no
+means for the accommodation of living man.  An hundred thousand
+men are said to have been constantly employed in the building;
+ten years to have been consumed in hewing and conveying the
+stones, and twenty more in completing the edifice.  Of the
+largest the base is a square, and the sides are triangles,
+gradually diminishing as they mount in the air.  The sides of the
+base are two hundred and twenty feet in length, and the
+perpendicular height is above one hundred and fifty-five feet. 
+The figure of the pyramid is precisely that which is most
+calculated for duration:  it cannot perish by accident; and it
+would require almost as much labour to demolish it, as it did to
+raise it at first.
+
+What a light does this fact convey into the inmost recesses of
+the human heart!  Man reflects deeply, and with feelings of a
+mortified nature, upon the perishableness of his frame, and the
+approaching close, so far as depends upon the evidence of our
+senses, of his existence.  He has indeed an irrepressible
+"longing after immortality;" and this is one of the various and
+striking modes in which he has sought to give effect to his
+desire.
+
+Various obvious causes might be selected, which should be
+calculated to give birth to the feeling of discontent.
+
+One is, the not being at home.
+
+I will here put together some of the particulars which make up
+the idea of home in the most emphatical sense of the word.
+
+Home is the place where a man is principally at his ease.  It is
+the place where he most breathes his native air:  his lungs play
+without impediment; and every respiration brings a pure element,
+and a cheerful and gay frame of mind.  Home is the place where he
+most easily accomplishes all his designs; he has his furniture
+and materials and the elements of his occupations entirely within
+his reach.  Home is the place where he can be uninterrupted.  He
+is in a castle which is his in full propriety.  No unwelcome
+guests can intrude; no harsh sounds can disturb his
+contemplations; he is the master, and can command a silence equal
+to that of the tomb, whenever he pleases.
+
+In this sense every man feels, while cribbed in a cabin of flesh,
+and shut up by the capricious and arbitrary injunctions of human
+communities, that he is not at home.
+
+Another cause of our discontent is to be traced to the disparity
+of the two parts of which we are composed, the thinking
+principle, and the body in which it acts.  The machine which
+constitutes the visible man, bears no proportion to our thoughts,
+our wishes and desires.  Hence we are never satisfied; we always
+feel the want of something we have not; and this uneasiness is
+continually pushing us on to precipitate and abortive resolves.
+
+I find in a book, entitled, Illustrations of Phrenology, by Sir
+George Mackenzie, Baronet, the following remark.  'If this
+portrait be correctly drawn, the right side does not quite agree
+with the left in the region of ideality.  This dissimilarity may
+have produced something contradictory in the feelings of the
+person it represents, which he may have felt extremely
+annoying[7]."  An observation of this sort may be urged with
+striking propriety as to the dissimilar attributes of the body
+and the thinking principle in man.
+
+
+[7] The remark thus delivered is applied to the portrait of the
+author of the present volume.
+
+
+It is perhaps thus that we are to account for a phenomenon, in
+itself sufficiently obvious, that our nature has within it a
+principle of boundless ambition, a desire to be something that we
+are not, a feeling that we are out of our place, and ought to be
+where we are not.  This feeling produces in us quick and earnest
+sallies and goings forth of the mind, a restlessness of soul, and
+an aspiration after some object that we do not find ourselves
+able to chalk out and define.
+
+Hence comes the practice of castle-building, and of engaging the
+soul in endless reveries and imaginations of something mysterious
+and unlike to what we behold in the scenes of sublunary life. 
+Many writers, having remarked this, have endeavoured to explain
+it from the doctrine of a preexistent state, and have said that,
+though we have no clear and distinct recollection of what
+happened to us previously to our being launched in our present
+condition, yet we have certain broken and imperfect conceptions,
+as if, when the tablet of the memory was cleared for the most
+part of the traces of what we had passed through in some other
+mode of being, there were a few characters that had escaped the
+diligence of the hand by which the rest had been obliterated.
+
+It is this that, in less enlightened ages of the world, led men
+to engage so much of their thoughts upon supposed existences,
+which, though they might never become subject to our organs of
+vision, were yet conceived to be perpetually near us, fairies,
+ghosts, witches, demons and angels.  Our ancestors often derived
+suggestions from these, were informed of things beyond the ken of
+ordinary faculties, were tempted to the commission of forbidden
+acts, or encouraged to proceed in the paths of virtue.
+
+The most remarkable of these phenomena was that of necromancy,
+sorcery and magic.  There were men who devoted themselves to
+"curious arts," and had books fraught with hidden knowledge. 
+They could "bedim
+
+ The noon-tide sun, call forth the mutinous winds,
+And 'twixt the green sea and the azured vault
+Set roaring war:  to the dread, rattling thunder
+They could give fire, and rift even Jove's stout oak
+With his own bolt--graves at their command
+Have waked their sleepers, oped and let them forth.
+
+
+And of these things the actors in them were so certain, that many
+witches were led to the stake, their guilt being principally
+established on their own confessions.  But the most memorable
+matters in the history of the black art, were the contracts which
+those who practised it not unfrequently entered into with the
+devil, that he should assist them by his supernatural power for
+ten or twenty years, and, in consideration of this aid, they
+consented to resign their souls into his possession, when the
+period of the contract was expired.
+
+In the animal creation there are some species that may be tamed,
+and others whose wildness is irreclaimable.  Horace says, that
+all men are mad:  and no doubt mankind in general has one of the
+features of madness.  In the ordinary current of our existence we
+are to a considerable degree rational and tractable.  But we are
+not altogether safe.  I may converse with a maniac for hours; he
+shall talk as soberly, and conduct himself with as much
+propriety, as any other of the species who has never been
+afflicted with his disease; but touch upon a particular string,
+and, before you are aware of it, he shall fly out into the
+wildest and most terrifying extravagances.  Such, though in a
+greatly inferior degree, are the majority of human beings.
+
+The original impulse of man is uncontrolableness.  When the
+spirit of life first descends upon us, we desire and attempt to
+be as free as air.  We are impatient of restraint.  This is the
+period of the empire of will.  There is a power within us that
+wars against the restraint of another.  We are eager to follow
+our own impulses and caprices, and are with difficulty subjected
+to those who believe they best know how to control inexperienced
+youth in a way that shall tend to his ultimate advantage.
+
+The most moderate and auspicious method in which the old may
+endeavour to guide and control the pursuits of the young,
+undoubtedly is by the conviction of the understanding.  But this
+is not always easy.  It is not at all times practicable fully to
+explain to the apprehension of a very young person the advantage,
+which at a period a little more advanced he would be able clearly
+to recognise.
+
+There is a further evil appertaining to this view of the subject.
+
+A young man even, in the early season of life, is not always
+disposed to obey the convictions of his understanding.  He has
+prescribed to himself a task which returns with the returning
+day; but he is often not disposed to apply.  The very sense that
+it is what he conceives to be an incumbent duty, inspires him
+with reluctance.
+
+An obvious source of this reluctance is, that the convictions of
+our understanding are not always equally present to us.  I have
+entered into a deduction of premises, and arrived at a
+conclusion; but some of the steps of the chain are scarcely
+obvious to me, at the time that I am called upon to act upon the
+conclusion I have drawn.  Beside which, there was a freshness in
+the first conception of the reasons on which my conduct was to be
+framed, which, by successive rehearsals, and by process of time,
+is no longer in any degree spirit-stirring and pregnant.
+
+This restiveness and impracticability are principally incident to
+us in the period of youth.  By degrees the novelties of life wear
+out, and we become sober.  We are like soldiers at drill, and in
+a review.  At first we perform our exercise from necessity, and
+with an ill grace.  We had rather be doing almost any thing else.
+
+By degrees we are reconciled to our occupation.  We are like
+horses in a manege, or oxen or dogs taught to draw the plough, or
+be harnessed to a carriage.  Our stubbornness is subdued; we no
+longer exhaust our strength in vain efforts to free ourselves
+from the yoke.
+
+Conviction at first is strong.  Having arrived at years of
+discretion, I revolve with a sobered mind the different
+occupations to which my efforts and my time may be devoted, and
+determine at length upon that which under all the circumstances
+displays the most cogent recommendations.  Having done so, I
+rouse my faculties and direct my energies to the performance of
+my task.  By degrees however my resolution grows less vigorous,
+and my exertions relax.  I accept any pretence to be let off, and
+fly into a thousand episodes and eccentricities.
+
+But, as the newness of life subsides, the power of temptation
+becomes less.  That conviction, which was at first strong, and
+gradually became fainter and less impressive, is made by
+incessant repetitions a part of my nature.  I no more think of
+doubting its truth, than of my own existence.  Practice has
+rendered the pursuits that engage me more easy, till at length I
+grow disturbed and uncomfortable if I am withheld from them. 
+They are like my daily bread.  If they are not afforded me, I
+grow sick and attenuated, and my life verges to a close.  The sun
+is not surer to rise, than I am to feel the want of my stated
+employment.
+
+It is the business of education to tame the wild ass, the restive
+and rebellious principle, in our nature.  The judicious parent or
+instructor essays a thousand methods to accomplish his end.  The
+considerate elder tempts the child with inticements and caresses,
+that he may win his attention to the first rudiments of learning.
+
+He sets before him, as he grows older, all the considerations and
+reasons he can devise, to make him apprehend the advantage of
+improvement and literature.  He does his utmost to make his
+progress easy, and to remove all impediments.  He smooths the
+path by which he is to proceed, and endeavours to root out all
+its thorns.  He exerts his eloquence to inspire his pupil with a
+love for the studies in which he is engaged.  He opens to him the
+beauties and genius of the authors he reads, and endeavours to
+proceed with him hand in hand, and step by step.  He persuades,
+he exhorts, and occasionally he reproves.  He awakens in him the
+love of excellence, the fear of disgrace, and an ambition to
+accomplish that which "the excellent of the earth" accomplished
+before him.
+
+At a certain period the young man is delivered into his own
+hands, and becomes an instructor to himself.  And, if he is
+blessed with an ingenuous disposition, he will enter on his task
+with an earnest desire and a devoted spirit.  No person of a
+sober and enlarged mind can for a moment delude himself into the
+opinion that, when he is delivered into his own hands, his
+education is ended.  In a sense to which no one is a stranger,
+the education of man and his life terminate together.  We should
+at no period of our existence be backward to receive information,
+and should at all times preserve our minds open to conviction. 
+We should through every day of our lives seek to add to the
+stores of our knowledge and refinement.  But, independently of
+this more extended sense of the word, a great portion of the
+education of the young man is left to the direction of the man
+himself.  The epoch of entire liberty is a dangerous period, and
+calls upon him for all his discretion, that he may not make an
+ill use of that, which is in itself perhaps the first of
+sublunary blessings.  The season of puberty also, and all the
+excitements from this source, "that flesh is heir to," demand the
+utmost vigilance and the strictest restraint.  In a word, if we
+would counteract the innate rebelliousness of man, that
+indocility of mind which is at all times at hand to plunge us
+into folly, we must never slumber at our post, but govern
+ourselves with steady severity, and by the dictates of an
+enlightened understanding.  We must be like a skilful pilot in a
+perilous sea, and be thoroughly aware of all the rocks and
+quicksands, and the multiplied and hourly dangers that beset our
+navigation.
+
+In this Essay I have treated of nothing more than the inherent
+restiveness and indocility of man, which accompany him at least
+through all the earlier sections and divisions of his life.  I
+have not treated of those temptations calculated to lead him into
+a thousand excesses and miseries, which originate in our lower
+nature, and are connected with what we call the passion of love. 
+Nor have I entered upon the still more copious chapter, of the
+incentives and provocations which are administered to us by those
+wants which at all times beset us as living creatures, and by the
+unequal distribution of property generally in civil society.  I
+have not considered those attributes of man which may serve
+indifferently for good or for ill, as he may happen to be or not
+to be the subject of those fiercer excitements, that will oft
+times corrupt the most ingenuous nature, and have a tendency to
+inspire into us subtle schemes and a deep contrivance.  I have
+confined myself to the consideration of man, as yet untamed to
+the modes of civilised community, and unbroken to the steps which
+are not only prescribed by the interests of our social existence,
+but which are even in some degree indispensible to the
+improvement and welfare of the individual.  I have considered
+him, not as he is often acted upon by causes and motives which
+seem almost to compel him to vice, but merely as he is restless,
+and impatient, and disdainful both of the control of others, and
+the shackles of system.
+
+For the same reason I have not taken notice of another species of
+irrationality, and which seems to answer more exactly to the
+Arabic notion of the fomes peccati, the black drop of blood at
+the bottom of the heart.  We act from motives apprehended by the
+judgment; but we do not stop at them.  Once set in motion, it
+will not seldom happen that we proceed beyond our original mark. 
+We are like Othello in the play:
+
+Our blood begins our safer guides to rule;  
+And passion, having our best judgment quelled,  
+Assays to lead the way.
+
+
+This is the explanation of the greatest enormities that have been
+perpetrated by man, and the inhuman deeds of Nero and Caligula. 
+We proceed from bad to worse.  The reins of our discretion drop
+from our hands.  It fortunately happens however, that we do not
+in the majority of cases, like Phaeton in the fable, set the
+world on fire; but that, with ordinary men, the fiercest excesses
+of passion extend to no greater distance than can be reached by
+the sound of their voice.
+
+
+ESSAY VI.
+OF HUMAN INNOCENCE.
+
+One of the most obvious views which are presented to us by man in
+society is the inoffensiveness and innocence that ordinarily
+characterise him.
+
+Society for the greater part carries on its own organization. 
+Each man pursues his proper occupation, and there are few
+individuals that feel the propensity to interrupt the pursuits of
+their neighbours by personal violence.  When we observe the quiet
+manner in which the inhabitants of a great city, and, in the
+country, the frequenters of the fields, the high roads, and the
+heaths, pass along, each engrossed by his private contemplations,
+feeling no disposition to molest the strangers he encounters, but
+on the contrary prepared to afford them every courteous
+assistance, we cannot in equity do less than admire the innocence
+of our species, and fancy that, like the patriarchs of old, we
+have fallen in with "angels unawares."
+
+There are a few men in every community, that are sons of riot and
+plunder, and for the sake of these the satirical and censorious
+throw a general slur and aspersion upon the whole species.
+
+When we look at human society with kind and complacent survey, we
+are more than half tempted to imagine that men might subsist very
+well in clusters and congregated bodies without the coercion of
+law; and in truth criminal laws were only made to prevent the
+ill-disposed few from interrupting the regular and inoffensive
+proceedings of the vast majority.
+
+From what disposition in human nature is it that all this
+accommodation and concurrence proceed?
+
+It is not primarily love.  We feel in a very slight degree
+excited to good will towards the stranger whom we accidentally
+light upon in our path.
+
+Neither is it fear.
+
+It is principally forecast and prudence.  We have a
+sensitiveness, that forbids us for a slight cause to expose
+ourselves to we know not what.  We are unwilling to bc disturbed.
+
+We have a mental vis inertiae, analogous to that quality in
+material substances, by means of which, being at rest, they
+resist being put into a state of motion.  We love our security;
+we love our respectability; and both of these may be put to
+hazard by our rashly and unadvisedly thrusting ourselves upon the
+course of another.  We like to act for ourselves.  We like to act
+with others, when we think we can foresee the way in which the
+proposed transaction will proceed, and that it will proceed to
+our wish.
+
+Let us put the case, that I am passing along the highway,
+destitute and pennyless, and without foresight of any means by
+which I am to procure the next meal that my nature requires.
+
+The vagrant, who revolves in his mind the thought of extorting
+from another the supply of which he is urgently in need, surveys
+the person upon whom he meditates this violence with a
+scrutinising eye.  He considers, Will this man submit to my
+summons without resistance, or in what manner will he repel my
+trespass?  He watches his eye, he measures his limbs, his
+strength, and his agility.  Though they have met in the deserts
+of Africa, where there is no law to punish the violator, he knows
+that he exposes himself to a fearful hazard; and he enters upon
+his purpose with desperate resolve.  All this and more must occur
+to the man of violence, within the pale of a civilised community.
+
+Begging is the mildest form in which a man can obtain from the
+stranger he meets, the means of supplying his urgent necessities.
+
+But, even here, the beggar knows that he exposes himself not only
+to refusal, but to the harsh and opprobrious terms in which that
+refusal may be conveyed.  In this city there are laws against
+begging; and the man that asks alms of me, is an offender against
+the state.  In country-towns it is usual to remark a notice upon
+entering, to say, Whoever shall be found begging in this place,
+shall be set in the stocks.
+
+There are modes however in which I may accost a stranger, with
+small apprehension that I shall be made to repent of it.  I may
+enquire of him my way to the place towards which my business or
+my pleasure invites me.  Ennius of old has observed, that lumen
+de lumine, to light my candle at my neighbour's lamp, is one of
+the privileges that the practices of civil society concede.
+
+But it is not merely from forecast and prudence that we refrain
+from interrupting the stranger in his way.  We have all of us a
+certain degree of kindness for a being of our own species.  A
+multitude of men feel this kindness for every thing that has
+animal life.  We would not willingly molest the stranger who has
+done us no injury.  On the contrary we would all of us to a
+certain extent assist him, under any unforeseen casualty and
+tribulation.  A part therefore of the innocence that
+characterises our species is to be attributed to philanthropy.
+
+Childhood is diffident.  Children for the most part are averse to
+the addressing themselves to strangers, unless in cases where,
+from the mere want of anticipation and reflection, they proceed
+as if they were wholly without the faculty of making calculations
+and deducing conclusions.  The child neither knows himself nor
+the stranger he meets in his path.  He has not measured either
+the one or the other.  He does not know what the stranger may be
+able, or may likely be prompted to do to him, nor what are his
+own means of defence or escape.  He takes refuge therefore in a
+wary, sometimes an obstinate silence.  It is for this reason that
+a boy at school often appears duller and more inept, than would
+be the amount of a fair proportion to what he is found to be when
+grown up to a man.
+
+As we improve in judgment and strength, we know better ourselves
+and others, and in a majority of instances take our due place in
+the ranks of society.  We acquire a modest and cautious firmness,
+yield what belongs to another, and assert what is due to
+ourselves.  To the last however, we for the most part retain the
+inoffensiveness described in the beginning of this Essay.
+
+How comes it then that our nature labours under so bitter an
+aspersion?  We have been described as cunning, malicious and
+treacherous.  Other animals herd together for mutual convenience;
+and their intercourse with their species is for the most part a
+reciprocation of social feeling and kindness.  But community
+among men, we are told, is that condition of human existence,
+which brings out all our evil qualities to the face of day.  We
+lie in wait for, and circumvent each other by multiplied
+artifices.  We cannot depend upon each other for the truth of
+what is stated to us; and promises and the most solemn
+engagements often seem as if they were made only to mislead.  We
+are violent and deadly in our animosities, easily worked up to
+ferocity, and satisfied with scarcely any thing short of
+mutilation and blood.  We are revengeful:  we lay up an injury,
+real or imaginary, in the store-house of an undecaying memory,
+waiting only till we can repay the evil we have sustained
+tenfold, at a time when our adversary shall be lulled in
+unsuspecting security.  We are rapacious, with no symptom that
+the appetite for gain within us will ever be appeased; and we
+practise a thousand deceits, that it may be the sooner, and to
+the greater degree glutted.  The ambition of man is unbounded;
+and he hesitates at no means in the course it prompts him to
+pursue.  In short, man is to man ever the most fearful and
+dangerous foe:  and it is in this view of his nature that the
+king of Brobdingnag says to Gulliver, "I cannot but conclude the
+bulk of your race to be the most pernicious generation of little,
+odious vermin, that were ever suffered to crawl upon the surface
+of the earth."  The comprehensive faculties of man therefore, and
+the refinements and subtlety of his intellect, serve only to
+render him the more formidable companion, and to hold us up as a
+species to merited condemnation.
+
+It is obvious however that the picture thus drawn is greatly
+overcharged, that it describes a very small part of our race, and
+that even as to them it sets before us a few features only, and a
+partial representation
+
+History--the successive scenes of the drama in which individuals
+play their part--is a labyrinth, of which no man has as yet
+exactly seized the clue.
+
+It has long since been observed, that the history of the four
+great monarchies, of tyrannies and free states, of chivalry and
+clanship, of Mahometanism and the Christian church, of the
+balance of Europe and the revolution of empires, is little else
+than a tissue of crimes, exhibiting nations as if they were so
+many herds of ferocious animals, whose genuine occupation was to
+tear each other to pieces, and to deform their mother-earth with
+mangled carcases and seas of blood.
+
+But it is not just that we should establish our opinion of human
+nature purely from the records of history.  Man is alternately
+devoted to tranquillity and to violence.  But the latter only
+affords the proper materials of narration.  When he is wrought
+upon by some powerful impulse, our curiosity is most roused to
+observe him.  We remark his emotions, his energies, his tempest. 
+It is then that he becomes the person of a drama.  And, where
+this disquietude is not the affair of a single individual, but of
+several persons together, of nations, it is there that history
+finds her harvest.  She goes into the field with all the
+implements of her industry, and fills her storehouses and
+magazines with the abundance of her crop.  But times of
+tranquillity and peace furnish her with no materials.  They are
+dismissed in a few slight sentences, and leave no memory  behind.
+
+Let us divide this spacious earth into equal compartments, and
+see in which violence, and in which tranquillity prevails.  Let
+us look through the various ranks and occupations of human
+society, and endeavour to arrive at a conclusion of a similar
+sort.  The soldier by occupation, and the officer who commands
+him, would seem, when they are employed in their express
+functions, to be men of strife.  Kings and ministers of state
+have in a multitude of instances fallen under this description. 
+Conquerors, the firebrands of the earth, have sufficiently
+displayed their noxious propensities.
+
+But these are but a small part of the tenantry of the
+many-peopled globe.  Man lives by the sweat of his brow.  The
+teeming earth is given him, that by his labour he may raise from
+it the means of his subsistence.  Agriculture is, at least among
+civilised nations, the first, and certainly the most
+indispensible of professions.  The profession itself is the
+emblem of peace.  All its occupations, from seed-time to harvest,
+are tranquil; and there is nothing which belongs to it, that can
+obviously be applied to rouse the angry passions, and place men
+in a frame of hostility to each other.  Next to the cultivator,
+come the manufacturer, the artificer, the carpenter, the mason,
+the joiner, the cabinet-maker, all those numerous classes of
+persons, who are employed in forming garments for us to wear,
+houses to live in, and moveables and instruments for the
+accommodation of the species.  All these persons are, of
+necessity, of a peaceable demeanour.  So are those who are not
+employed in producing the conveniencies of life, but in
+conducting the affairs of barter and exchange.  Add to these,
+such as are engaged in literature, either in the study of what
+has already been produced, or in adding to the stock, in science
+or the liberal arts, in the instructing mankind in religion and
+their duties, or in the education of youth.  "Civility," "civil,"
+are indeed terms which express a state of peaceable occupation,
+in opposition to what is military, and imply a tranquil frame of
+mind, and the absence of contention, uproar and violence.  It is
+therefore clear, that the majority of mankind are civil, devoted
+to the arts of peace, and so far as relates to acts of violence
+innocent, and that the sons of rapine constitute the exception to
+the general character.
+
+We come into the world under a hard and unpalatable law, "In the
+sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread."  It is a bitter decree
+that is promulgated against us, "He that will not work, neither
+shall he eat."  We all of us love to do our own will, and to be
+free from the manacles of restraint.  What our hearts "find us to
+do," that we are disposed to execute "with all our might."  Some
+men are lovers of strenuous occupation.  They build and they
+plant; they raise splendid edifices, and lay out pleasure-grounds
+of mighty extent.  Or they devote their minds to the acquisition
+of knowledge; they
+
+          ----outwatch the bear,
+With thrice great Hermes, or unsphere
+The spirit of Plato, to unfold
+What worlds, or what vast regions hold
+The immortal mind.
+
+Others again would waste perhaps their whole lives in reverie and
+idleness.  They are constituted of materials so kindly and
+serene, that their spirits never flag from want of occupation and
+external excitement.  They could lie for ever on a sunny bank, in
+a condition divided between thinking and no thinking, refreshed
+by the fanning breeze, viewing the undulations of the soil, and
+the rippling of the brook, admiring the azure heavens, and the
+vast, the bold, and the sublime figure of the clouds, yielding
+themselves occasionally to "thick-coming fancies," and
+day-dreams, and the endless romances of an undisciplined mind;
+
+     And find no end, in wandering mazes lost.
+
+But all men, alike the busy of constitution and the idle, would
+desire to follow the impulses of their own minds, unbroken in
+upon by harsh necessity, or the imperious commands of their
+fellows.
+
+We cannot however, by the resistless law of our existence, live,
+except the few who by the accident of their birth are privileged
+to draw their supplies from the labour of others, without
+exerting ourselves to procure by our efforts or ingenuity the
+necessaries of food, lodging and attire.  He that would obtain
+them for himself in an uninhabited island, would find that this
+amounted to a severe tax upon that freedom of motion and thought
+which would otherwise be his inheritance.  And he who has his lot
+cast in a populous community, exists in a condition somewhat
+analogous to that of a negro slave, except that he may to a
+limited extent select the occupation to which he shall addict
+himself, or may at least starve, in part or in whole,
+uncontroled, and at his choice.  Such is, as it were, the
+universal lot.
+
+     'Tis destiny unshunnable like death:
+      Even then this dire necessity falls on us,
+      When we do quicken.
+
+
+I go forth in the streets, and observe the occupations of other
+men.  I remark the shops that on every side beset my path.  It is
+curious and striking, how vast are the ingenuity and contrivance
+of human beings, to wring from their fellow-creatures, "from the
+hard hands of peasants" and artisans, a part of their earnings,
+that they also may live.  We soon become feelingly convinced,
+that we also must enter into the vast procession of industry,
+upon pain that otherwise,
+
+     Like to an entered tide, they all rush by,
+     And leave you hindmost:  there you lie,
+     For pavement to the abject rear, o'errun
+     And trampled on.
+
+
+It is through the effect of this necessity, that civilised
+communities become what they are.  We all fall into our ranks. 
+Each one is member of a certain company or squadron.  We know our
+respective places, and are marshaled and disciplined with an
+exactness scarcely less than that of the individuals of a mighty
+army.  We are therefore little disposed to interrupt the
+occupations of each other.  We are intent upon the peculiar
+employment to which we have become devoted.  We "rise up early,
+and lie down late," and have no leisure to trouble ourselves with
+the pursuits of others.  Hence of necessity it happens in a
+civilised community, that a vast majority of the species are
+innocent, and have no inclination to molest or interrupt each
+other's avocations.
+
+But, as this condition of human society preserves us in
+comparative innocence, and renders the social arrangement in the
+midst of which we exist, to a certain degree a soothing and
+agreeable spectacle, so on the other hand it is not less true
+that its immediate tendency is, to clip the wings of the thinking
+principle within us, and plunge the members of the community in
+which we live into a barren and ungratifying mediocrity.  Hence
+it should be the aim of those persons, who from their situation
+have more or less the means of looking through the vast
+assemblage of their countrymen, of penetrating "into the seeds"
+of character, and determining "which grain will grow, and which
+will not," to apply themselves to the redeeming such as are
+worthy of their care from the oblivious gulph into which the mass
+of the species is of necessity plunged.  It is therefore an ill
+saying, when applied in the most rigorous extent, "Let every man
+maintain himself, and be his own provider:  why should we help
+him?"
+
+The help however that we should afford to our fellow-men requires
+of us great discernment in its administration.  The deceitfulness
+of appearances is endless.  And nothing can well be at the same
+time more lamentable and more ludicrous, than the spectacle of
+those persons, the weaver, the thresher, and the mechanic, who by
+injudicious patronage are drawn from their proper sphere, only to
+exhibit upon a larger stage their imbecility and inanity, to shew
+those moderate powers, which in their proper application would
+have carried their possessors through life with respect,
+distorted into absurdity, and used in the attempt to make us look
+upon a dwarf, as if he were one of the Titans who in the
+commencement of recorded time astonished the earth.
+
+It is also true to a great degree, that those efforts of the
+human mind are most healthful and vigorous, in which the
+possessor of talents "administers to himself," and contends with
+the different obstacles that arise,
+
+               --------throwing them aside,
+              And stemming them with hearts of controversy.
+
+
+Many illustrious examples however may be found in the annals of
+literature, of patronage judiciously and generously applied,
+where men have been raised by the kindness of others from the
+obscurest situations, and placed on high, like beacons, to
+illuminate the world.  And, independently of all examples, a
+sound application of the common sense of the human mind would
+teach us, that the worthies of the earth, though miracles, are
+not omnipotent, and that a certain aid, from those who by counsel
+or opulence are enabled to afford it, have oft times produced the
+noblest effects, have carried on the generous impulse that works
+within us, and prompted us manfully to proceed, when the weakness
+of our nature was ready to give in from despair.
+
+But the thing that in this place it was most appropriate to say,
+is, that we ought not quietly to affirm, of the man whose mind
+nature or education has enriched with extraordinary powers, "Let
+him maintain himself, and be his own provider:  why should we
+help him?"  It is a thing deeply to be regretted, that such a man
+will frequently be compelled to devote himself to pursuits
+comparatively vulgar and inglorious, because he must live.  Much
+of this is certainly inevitable.  But what glorious things might
+a man with extraordinary powers effect, were he not hurried
+unnumbered miles awry by the unconquerable power of
+circumstances? The life of such a man is divided between the
+things which his internal monitor strongly prompts him to do, and
+those which the external power of nature and circumstances
+compels him to submit to.  The struggle on the part of his better
+self is noble and admirable.  The less he gives way, provided he
+can accomplish the purpose to which he has vowed himself, the
+more he is worthy of the admiration of the world.  If, in
+consequence of listening too much to the loftier aspirations of
+his nature, he fails, it is deeply to be regretted--it is a man
+to a certain degree lost--but surely, if his miscarriage be not
+caused by undue presumption, or the clouds and unhealthful
+atmosphere of self-conceit, he is entitled to the affectionate
+sympathy and sorrow of every generous mind.
+
+
+
+ESSAY VII.
+OF THE DURATION OF HUMAN LIFE.
+
+The active and industrious portion of the human species in
+civilised countries, is composed of those who are occupied in the
+labour of the hand, and in the labour of the head.
+
+The following remarks expressly apply only to the latter of these
+classes, principally to such as are occupied in productive
+literature.  They may however have their use to all persons a
+considerable portion of whose time is employed in study and
+contemplation, as, if well founded, they will form no unimportant
+chapter in the science of the human mind.
+
+In relation to all the members of the second class then, I should
+say, that human life is made up of term and vacation, in other
+words, of hours that may be intellectually employed, and of hours
+that cannot be so employed.
+
+Human life consists of years, months and days:  each day contains
+twenty-four hours.  Of these hours how many belong to the
+province of intellect?
+
+"There is," as Solomon says, "a time for all things."  There must
+be a time for sleep, a time for recreation, a time for exercise,
+a time for supplying the machine with nourishment, and a time for
+digestion.  When all these demands have been supplied, how many
+hours will be left for intellectual occupation?
+
+These remarks, as I have said, are intended principally to apply
+to the subject of productive literature.  Now, of the hours that
+remain when all the necessary demands of human life have been
+supplied, it is but a portion, perhaps a small portion, that can
+be beneficially, judiciously, employed in productive literature,
+or literary composition.
+
+It is true, that there are many men who will occupy eight, ten,
+or twelve hours in a day, in the labour of composition.  But it
+may be doubted whether they are wisely so occupied.
+
+It is the duty of an author, inasmuch as he is an author, to
+consider, that he is to employ his pen in putting down that which
+shall be fit for other men to read.  He is not writing a letter
+of business, a letter of amusement, or a letter of sentiment, to
+his private friend.  He is writing that which shall be perused by
+as many men as can be prevailed on to become his readers.  If he
+is an author of spirit and ambition, he wishes his productions to
+be read, not only by the idle, but by the busy, by those who
+cannot spare time to peruse them but at the expence of some
+occupations which ought not to be suspended without an adequate
+occasion.  He wishes to be read not only by the frivolous and the
+lounger, but by the wise, the elegant, and the fair, by those who
+are qualified to appreciate the merit of a work, who are endowed
+with a quick sensibility and a discriminating taste, and are able
+to pass a sound judgment on its beauties and defects.  He
+advances his claim to permanent honours, and desires that his
+lucubrations should be considered by generations yet unborn.
+
+A person, so occupied, and with such aims, must not attempt to
+pass his crudities upon the public.  If I may parody a celebrated
+aphorism of Quintilian, I would say, "Magna debetur hominibus
+reverentia[8]:" in other words, we should carefully examine what
+it is that we propose to deliver in a permanent form to the taste
+and understanding of our species.  An author ought only to commit
+to the press the first fruits of his field, his best and choicest
+thoughts.  He ought not to take up the pen, till he has brought
+his mind into a fitting tone, and ought to lay it down, the
+instant his intellect becomes in any degree clouded, and his
+vital spirits abate of their elasticity.
+
+[8] Mankind is to be considered with reverence.
+
+
+There are extraordinary cases.  A man may have so thoroughly
+prepared himself by long meditation and study, he may have his
+mind so charged with an abundance of thought, that it may employ
+him for ten or twelve hours consecutively, merely to put down or
+to unravel the conceptions already matured in his soul.  It was
+in some such way, that Dryden, we are told, occupied a whole
+night, and to a late hour in the next morning, in penning his
+Alexander's Feast.  But these are the exceptions.  In most
+instances two or three hours are as much as an author can spend
+at a time in delivering the first fruits of his field, his
+choicest thoughts, before his intellect becomes in some degree
+clouded, and his vital spirits abate of their elasticity.
+
+Nor is this all.  He might go on perhaps for some time longer
+with a reasonable degree of clearness.  But the fertility which
+ought to be his boast, is exhausted.  He no longer sports in the
+meadows of thought, or revels in the exuberance of imagination,
+but becomes barren and unsatisfactory.  Repose is necessary, and
+that the soil should be refreshed with the dews of another
+evening, the sleep of a night, and the freshness and revivifying
+influence of another morning.
+
+These observations lead, by a natural transition, to the question
+of the true estimate and value of human life, considered as the
+means of the operations of intellect.
+
+A primary enquiry under this head is as to the duration of life: 
+Is it long, or short?
+
+The instant this question is proposed, I hear myself replied to
+from all quarters:  What is there so well known as the brevity of
+human life?  "Life is but a span."  It is "as a tale that is
+told."  "Man cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down:  he
+fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not."  We are "as a
+sleep; or as grass:  in the morning it flourisheth, and groweth
+up; in the evening it is cut down, and withereth."
+
+The foundation of this sentiment is obvious.  Men do not live for
+ever.  The longest duration of human existence has an end:  and
+whatever it is of which that may be affirmed, may in some sense
+be pronounced to be short.  The estimation of our existence
+depends upon the point of view from which we behold it.  Hope is
+one of our greatest enjoyments.  Possession is something.  But
+the past is as nothing.  Remorse may give it a certain solidity;
+the recollection of a life spent in acts of virtue may be
+refreshing.  But fruition, and honours, and fame, and even pain,
+and privations, and torment, when they ere departed, are but like
+a feather; we regard them as of no account.  Taken in this sense,
+Dryden's celebrated verses are but a maniac's rant:
+
+     To-morrow, do thy worst, for I have lived to-day:
+         Be fair, or foul, or rain, or shine,
+     The joys I have possessed, in spite of fate are mine.
+        Not heaven itself upon the past has power,
+     But what has been has been, and I have had my hour.
+
+
+But this way of removing the picture of human life to a certain
+distance from us, and considering those things which were once in
+a high degree interesting as frivolous and unworthy of regard, is
+not the way by which we shall arrive at a true and just
+estimation of life.  Whatever is now past, and is of little
+value, was once present:  and he who would form a sound judgment,
+must look upon every part of our lives as present in its turn,
+and not suffer his opinion to be warped by the consideration of
+the nearness or remoteness of the object he contemplates.
+
+One sentence, which has grown into a maxim for ever repeated, is
+remarkable for the grossest fallacy:  Ars longa, vita brevis[9]. 
+I would fain know, what art, compared with the natural duration
+of human life from puberty to old age, is long.
+
+[9] Art is long; life is short.
+
+
+If it is intended to say, that no one man can be expected to
+master all possible arts, or all arts that have at one time or
+another been the subject of human industry, this indeed is true. 
+But the cause of this does not lie in the limited duration of
+human life, but in the nature of the faculties of the mind. 
+Human understanding and human industry cannot embrace every
+thing.  When we take hold of one thing, we must let go another. 
+Science and art, if we would pursue them to the furthest extent
+of which we are capable, must be pursued without interruption. 
+It would therefore be more to the purpose to say, Man cannot be
+for ever young.  In the stream of human existence, different
+things have their appropriate period.  The knowledge of languages
+can perhaps be most effectually acquired in the season of nonage.
+
+At riper years one man devotes himself to one science or art, and
+another man to another.  This man is a mathematician; a second
+studies music; a third painting.  This man is a logician; and
+that man an orator.  The same person cannot be expected to excel
+in the abstruseness of metaphysical science, and in the ravishing
+effusions of poetical genius.  When a man, who has arrived at
+great excellence in one department of art or science, would
+engage himself in another, he will be apt to find the freshness
+of his mind gone, and his faculties no longer distinguished by
+the same degree of tenacity and vigour that they formerly
+displayed.  It is with the organs of the brain, as it is with the
+organs of speech, in the latter of which we find the tender
+fibres of the child easily accommodating themselves to the
+minuter inflections and variations of sound, which the more rigid
+muscles of the adult will for the most part attempt in vain.
+
+If again, by the maxim, Ars longa, vita brevis, it is intended to
+signify, that we cannot in any art arrive at perfection; that in
+reality all the progress we can make is insignificant; and that,
+as St. Paul says, we must "not count ourselves to have already
+attained; but that, forgetting the things that are behind, it
+becomes us to press forward to the prize of our calling,"--this
+also is true.  But this is only ascribable to the limitation of
+our faculties, and that even the shadow of perfection which man
+is capable to reach, can only be attained by the labour of
+successive generations.  The cause does not lie in the shortness
+of human life, unless we would include in its protracted duration
+the privilege of being for ever young; to which we ought perhaps
+to add, that our activity should never be exhausted, the
+freshness of our minds never abate, and our faculties for ever
+retain the same degree of tenacity and vigour, as they had in the
+morning of life, when every thing was new, when all that allured
+or delighted us was seen accompanied with charms inexpressible,
+and, as Dryden expresses it[10], "the first sprightly running" of
+the wine of life afforded a zest never after to be hoped for.
+
+[10] Aurengzebe.
+
+
+I return then to the consideration of the alleged shortness of
+life.  I mentioned in the beginning of this Essay, that "human
+life consists of years, months and days; each day containing
+twenty-four hours."  But, when I said this, I by no means carried
+on the division so far as it might be carried.  It has been
+calculated that the human mind is capable of being impressed with
+three hundred and twenty sensations in a second of time.[11]
+
+[11] See Watson on Time, Chapter II.
+
+
+"How infinitely rapid is the succession of thought!  While I am
+speaking, perhaps no two ideas are in my mind at the same time,
+and yet with what facility do I slide from one to another! If my
+discourse be argumentative, how often do I pass in review the
+topics of which it consists, before I utter them; and, even while
+I am speaking, continue the review at intervals, without
+producing any pause in my discourse!  How many other sensations
+are experienced by me during this period, without so much as
+interrupting, that is, without materially diverting, the train of
+my ideas!  My eye successively remarks a thousand objects that
+present themselves.  My mind wanders to the different parts of my
+body, and receives a sensation from the chair on which I sit, or
+the table on which I lean.  It reverts to a variety of things
+that occurred in the course of the morning, in the course of
+yesterday, the most remote from, the most unconnected with, the
+subject that might seem wholly to engross me.  I see the window,
+the opening of a door, the snuffing of a candle.  When these most
+perceptibly occur, my mind passes from one to the other, without
+feeling the minutest obstacle, or being in any degree distracted
+by their multiplicity[12]."
+
+[12] Political Justice, Book IV, Chapter ix.
+
+
+If this statement should appear to some persons too subtle, it
+may however prepare us to form a due estimate of the following
+remarks.
+
+"Art is long."  No, certainly, no art is long, compared with the
+natural duration of human life from puberty to old age.  There is
+perhaps no art that may not with reasonable diligence be acquired
+in three years, that is, as to its essential members and its
+skilful exercise.  We may improve afterwards, but it will be only
+in minute particulars, and only by fits.  Our subsequent
+advancement less depends upon the continuance of our application,
+than upon the improvement of the mind generally, the refining of
+our taste, the strengthening our judgment, and the accumulation
+of our experience.
+
+The idea which prevails among the vulgar of mankind is, that we
+must make haste to be wise.  The erroneousness of this notion
+however has from time to time been detected by moralists and
+philosophers; and it has been felt that he who proceeds in a
+hurry towards the goal, exposes himself to the imminent risk of
+never reaching it.
+
+The consciousness of this danger has led to the adoption of the
+modified maxim, Festina lente, Hasten, but with steps deliberate
+and cautious.
+
+It would however be a more correct advice to the aspirant, to
+say, Be earnest in your application, but let your march be
+vigilant and slow.
+
+There is a doggrel couplet which I have met with in a book on
+elocution:
+
+     Learn to speak slow:  all other graces
+     Will follow in their proper places.
+
+I could wish to recommend a similar process to the student in the
+course of his reading.
+
+Toplady, a celebrated methodist preacher of the last age,
+somewhere relates a story of a coxcomb, who told him that he had
+read over Euclid's Elements of Geometry one afternoon at his tea,
+only leaving out the A's and B's and crooked lines, which seemed
+to be intruded merely to retard his progress.
+
+Nothing is more easy than to gabble through a work replete with
+the profoundest elements of thinking, and to carry away almost
+nothing, when we have finished.
+
+The book does not deserve even to be read, which does not impose
+on us the duty of frequent pauses, much reflecting and inward
+debate, or require that we should often go back, compare one
+observation and statement with another, and does not call upon us
+to combine and knit together the disjecta membra.
+
+It is an observation which has often been repeated, that, when we
+come to read an excellent author a second and a third time, we
+find in him a multitude of things, that we did not in the
+slightest degree perceive in a first reading.  A careful first
+reading would have a tendency in a considerable degree to
+anticipate this following crop.
+
+Nothing is more certain than that a schoolboy gathers much of his
+most valuable instruction when his lesson is not absolutely
+before him.  In the same sense the more mature student will
+receive most important benefit, when he shuts his book, and goes
+forth in the field, and ruminates on what he has read.  It is
+with the intellectual, as with the corporeal eye:  we must retire
+to a certain distance from the object we would examine, before we
+can truly take in the whole.  We must view it in every direction,
+"survey it," as Sterne says, "transversely, then foreright, then
+this way, and then that, in all its possible directions and
+foreshortenings[13];" and thus only can it be expected that we
+should adequately comprehend it.
+
+[13] Tristram Shandy, Vol. IV, Chap. ii.
+
+
+But the thing it was principally in my purpose to say is, that it
+is one of the great desiderata of human life, not to accomplish
+our purposes in the briefest time, to consider "life as short,
+and art as long," and therefore to master our ends in the
+smallest number of days or of years, but rather to consider it as
+an ample field that is spread before us, and to examine how it is
+to be filled with pleasure, with advantage, and with usefulness. 
+Life is like a lordly garden, which it calls forth all the skill
+of the artist to adorn with exhaustless variety and beauty; or
+like a spacious park or pleasure-ground, all of whose
+inequalities are to be embellished, and whose various capacities
+of fertilisation, sublimity or grace, are to be turned to
+account, so that we may wander in it for ever, and never be
+wearied.
+
+We shall perhaps understand this best, if we take up the subject
+on a limited scale, and, before we consider life in its assigned
+period of seventy years, first confine our attention to the space
+of a single day.  And we will consider that day, not as it
+relates to the man who earns his subsistence by the labour of his
+hands, or to him who is immersed in the endless details of
+commerce.  But we will take the case of the man, the whole of
+whose day is to be disposed of at his own discretion.
+
+The attention of the curious observer has often been called to
+the tediousness of existence, how our time hangs upon our hands,
+and in how high estimation the art is held, of giving wings to
+our hours, and making them pass rapidly and cheerfully away.  And
+moralists of a cynical disposition have poured forth many a
+sorrowful ditty upon the inconsistency of man, who complains of
+the shortness of life, at the same time that he is put to the
+greatest straits how to give an agreeable and pleasant occupation
+to its separate portions.  "Let us hear no more," say these
+moralists, "of the transitoriness of human existence, from men to
+whom life is a burthen, and who are willing to assign a reward to
+him that shall suggest to them an occupation or an amusement
+untried before."
+
+But this inconsistency, if it merits the name, is not an affair
+of artificial and supersubtle refinement, but is based in the
+fundamental principles of our nature.  It is unavoidable that,
+when we have reached the close of any great epoch of our
+existence, and still more when we have arrived at its final term,
+we should regret its transitory nature, and lament that we have
+made no more effectual use of it.  And yet the periods and
+portions of the stream of time, as they pass by us, will often be
+felt by us as insufferably slow in their progress, and we would
+give no inconsiderable sum to procure that the present section of
+our lives might come to an end, and that we might turn over a new
+leaf in the volume of existence.
+
+I have heard various men profess that they never knew the minutes
+that hung upon their hands, and were totally unacquainted with
+what, borrowing a term from the French language, we call ennui. 
+I own I have listened to these persons with a certain degree of
+incredulity, always excepting such as earn their subsistence by
+constant labour, or as, being placed in a situation of active
+engagement, have not the leisure to feel apathy and disgust.
+
+But we are talking here of that numerous class of human beings,
+who are their own masters, and spend every hour of the day at the
+choice of their discretion.  To these we may add the persons who
+are partially so, and who, having occupied three or four hours of
+every day in discharge of some function necessarily imposed on
+them, at the striking of a given hour go out of school, and
+employ themselves in a certain industry or sport purely of their
+own election.
+
+To go back then to the consideration of the single day of a man,
+all of whose hours are at his disposal to spend them well or ill,
+at the bidding of his own judgment, or the impulse of his own
+caprice.
+
+We will suppose that, when he rises from his bed, he has sixteen
+hours before him, to be employed in whatever mode his will shall
+decide.  I bar the case of travelling, or any of those schemes
+for passing the day, which by their very nature take the election
+out of his hands, and fill up his time with a perpetual motion,
+the nature of which is ascertained from the beginning.
+
+With such a man then it is in the first place indispensibly
+necessary, that he should have various successive occupations. 
+There is no one study or intellectual enquiry to which a man can
+apply sixteen hours consecutively, unless in some extraordinary
+instances which can occur but seldom in the course of a life. 
+And even then the attention will from time to time relax, and the
+freshness of mental zeal and activity give way, though perhaps,
+after the lapse of a few minutes they may be revived and brought
+into action again.
+
+In the ordinary series of human existence it is desirable that,
+in the course of the same day, a man should have various
+successive occupations.  I myself for the most part read in one
+language at one part of the day, and in another at another.  I am
+then in the best health and tone of spirits, when I employ two or
+three hours, and no more, in the act of writing and composition. 
+There must also in the sixteen hours be a time for meals.  There
+should be a time for fresh air and bodily exercise.  It is in the
+nature of man, that we should spend a part of every day in the
+society of our fellows, either at public spectacles and places of
+concourse, or in the familiar interchange of conversation with
+one, two, or more persons with whom we can give ourselves up to
+unrestrained communication.  All human life, as I have said,
+every day of our existence, consists of term and vacation; and
+the perfection of practical wisdom is to interpose these one with
+another, so as to produce a perpetual change, a well-chosen
+relief, and a freshness and elastic tone which may bid defiance
+to weariness.
+
+Taken then in this point of view, what an empire does the man of
+leisure possess in each single day of his life!  He disposes of
+his hours much in the same manner, as the commander of a company
+of men whom it is his business to train in the discipline of war.
+
+This officer directs one party of his men to climb a mountain,
+and another to ford or swim a stream which rushes along the
+valley.  He orders this set to rush forward with headlong course,
+and the other to wheel, and approach by circuitous progress
+perhaps to the very same point.  He marches them to the right and
+the left.  He then dismisses them from the scene of exercise, to
+furbish their arms, to attend to their accoutrements, or to
+partake of necessary refection.  Not inferior to this is the
+authority of the man of leisure in disposing of the hours of one
+single day of his existence.  And human life consists of many
+such days, there being three hundred and sixty-five in each year
+that we live.
+
+How infinitely various may be the occupations of the life of man
+from puberty to old age!  We may acquire languages; we may devote
+ourselves to arts; we may give ourselves up to the profoundness
+of science.  Nor is any one of these objects incompatible with
+the others, nor is there any reason why the same man should not
+embrace many.  We may devote one portion of the year to
+travelling, and another to all the abstractions of study.  I
+remember when I was a boy, looking forward with terror to the
+ample field of human life, and saying, When I have read through
+all the books that have been written, what shall I do afterwards?
+And there is infinitely more sense in this, than in the ludicrous
+exclamations of men who complain of the want of time, and say
+that life affords them no space in which to act their imaginings.
+
+On the contrary, when a man has got to the end of one art or
+course of study, he is compelled to consider what he shall do
+next.  And, when we have gone through a cycle of as many
+acquisitions, as, from the limitation of human faculties, are not
+destructive of each other, we shall find ourselves frequently
+reduced to the beginning some of them over again.  Nor is this
+the least agreeable occupation of human leisure.  The book that I
+read when I was a boy, presents quite a new face to me as I
+advance in the vale of years.  The same words and phrases suggest
+to me a new train of ideas.  And it is no mean pleasure that I
+derive from the singular sensation of finding the same author and
+the same book, old and yet not old, presenting to me cherished
+and inestimable recollections, and at the same time communicating
+mines of wealth, the shaft of which was till now unexplored.
+
+The result then of these various observations is to persuade the
+candid and ingenuous man, to consider life as an important and
+ample possession, to resolve that it shall he administered with
+as much judgment and deliberation as a person of true
+philanthropy and wisdom would administer a splendid income, and
+upon no occasion so much to think upon the point of in how short
+a time an interesting pursuit is to be accomplished, as by what
+means it shall be accomplished in a consummate and masterly
+style.  Let us hear no more, from those who have to a
+considerable degree the command of their hours, the querulous and
+pitiful complaint that they have no time to do what they ought to
+do and would wish to do; but let them feel that they have a
+gigantic store of minutes and hours and days and months,
+abundantly sufficient to enable them to effect what it is
+especially worthy of a noble mind to perform!
+
+
+
+ESSAY VIII.
+OF HUMAN VEGETATION.
+
+There is another point of view from which we may look at the
+subject of time as it is concerned with the business of human
+life, that will lead us to conclusions of a very different sort
+from those which are set down in the preceding Essay.
+
+Man has two states of existence in a striking degree
+distinguished from each other:  the state in which he is found
+during his waking hours; and the state in which he is during
+sleep.
+
+The question has been agitated by Locke and other philosophers,
+"whether the soul always thinks," in other words, whether the
+mind, during those hours in which our limbs lie for the most part
+in a state of inactivity, is or is not engaged by a perpetual
+succession of images and impressions.  This is a point that can
+perhaps never be settled.  When the empire of sleep ceases, or
+when we are roused from sleep, we are often conscious that we
+have been to that moment busily employed with that sort of
+conceptions and scenes which we call dreams.  And at times when,
+on waking, we have no such consciousness, we can never perhaps be
+sure that the shock that waked us, had not the effect of driving
+away these fugitive and unsubstantial images.  There are men who
+are accustomed to say, they never dream.  If in reality the mind
+of man, from the hour of his birth, must by the law of its nature
+be constantly occupied with sensations or images (and of the
+contrary we can never be sure), then these men are all their
+lives in the state of persons, upon whom the shock that wakes
+them, has the effect of driving away such fugitive and
+unsubstantial images.--Add to which, there may be sensations in
+the human subject, of a species confused and unpronounced, which
+never arrive at that degree of distinctness as to take the shape
+of what we call dreaming.
+
+So much for man in the state of sleep.
+
+But during our waking hours, our minds are very differently
+occupied at different periods of the day.  I would particularly
+distinguish the two dissimilar states of the waking man, when the
+mind is indolent, and when it is on the alert.
+
+While I am writing this Essay, my mind may be said to be on the
+alert.  It is on the alert, so long as I am attentively reading a
+book of philosophy, of argumentation, of eloquence, or of poetry.
+
+It is on the alert, so long as I am addressing a smaller or a
+greater audience, and endeavouring either to amuse or instruct
+them.  It is on the alert, while in silence and solitude I
+endeavour to follow a train of reasoning, to marshal and arrange
+a connected set of ideas, or in any other way to improve my mind,
+to purify my conceptions, and to advance myself in any of the
+thousand kinds of intellectual process.  It is on the alert, when
+I am engaged in animated conversation, whether my cue be to take
+a part in the reciprocation of alternate facts and remarks in
+society, or merely to sit an attentive listener to the facts and
+remarks of others.
+
+This state of the human mind may emphatically be called the state
+of activity and attention.
+
+So long as I am engaged in any of the ways here enumerated, or in
+any other equally stirring mental occupations which are not here
+set down, my mind is in a frame of activity.
+
+But there is another state in which men pass their minutes and
+hours, that is strongly contrasted with this.  It depends in some
+men upon constitution, and in others upon accident, how their
+time shall be divided, how much shall be given to the state of
+activity, and how much to the state of indolence.
+
+In an Essay I published many years ago there is this passage.
+
+"The chief point of difference between the man of talent and the
+man without, consists in the different ways in which their minds
+are employed during the same interval.  They are obliged, let us
+suppose, to walk from Temple-Bar to Hyde-Park-Corner.  The dull
+man goes straight forward; he has so many furlongs to traverse. 
+He observes if he meets any of his acquaintance; he enquires
+respecting their health and their family.  He glances perhaps the
+shops as he passes; he admires the fashion of a buckle, and the
+metal of a tea-urn.  If he experiences any flights of fancy, they
+are of a short extent; of the same nature as the flights of a
+forest-bird, clipped of his wings, and condemned to pass the rest
+of his life in a farm-yard.  On the other hand the man of talent
+gives full scope to his imagination.  He laughs and cries. 
+Unindebted to the suggestions of surrounding objects, his whole
+soul is employed.  He enters into nice calculations; he digests
+sagacious reasonings.  In imagination he declaims or describes,
+impressed with the deepest sympathy, or elevated to the loftiest
+rapture.  He makes a thousand new and admirable combinations.  He
+passes through a thousand imaginary scenes, tries his courage,
+tasks his ingenuity, and thus becomes gradually prepared to meet
+almost any of the many-coloured events of human life.  He
+consults by the aid of memory the books he has read, and projects
+others for the future instruction and delight of mankind.  If he
+observe the passengers, he reads their countenances, conjectures
+their past history, and forms a superficial notion of their
+wisdom or folly, their virtue or vice, their satisfaction or
+misery.  If he observe the scenes that occur, it is with the eye
+of a connoisseur or an artist.  Every object is capable of
+suggesting to him a volume of reflections.  The time of these two
+persons in one respect resembles; it has brought them both to
+Hyde-Park-Corner.  In almost every other respect it is
+dissimilar;[14]."
+
+[14] Enquirer, Part 1, Essay V.
+
+
+This passage undoubtedly contains a true description of what may
+happen, and has happened.
+
+But there lurks in this statement a considerable error.
+
+It has appeared in the second Essay of this volume, that there is
+not that broad and strong line of distinction between the wise
+man and the dull that has often been supposed.  We are all of us
+by turns both the one and the other.  Or, at least, the wisest
+man that ever existed spends a portion of his time in vacancy and
+dulness; and the man, whose faculties are seemingly the most
+obtuse, might, under proper management from the hour of his
+birth, barring those rare exceptions from the ordinary standard
+of mind which do not deserve to be taken into the account, have
+proved apt, adroit, intelligent and acute, in the walk for which
+his organisation especially fitted him[15].
+
+[15] See above, Essay 3.
+
+
+Many men without question, in a walk of the same duration as that
+above described between Temple-Bar and Hyde-Park-Corner, have
+passed their time in as much activity, and amidst as strong and
+various excitements, as those enumerated in the passage above
+quoted.
+
+But the lives of all men, the wise, and those whom by way of
+contrast we are accustomed to call the dull, are divided between
+animation and comparative vacancy; and many a man, who by the
+bursts of his genius has astonished the world, and commanded the
+veneration of successive ages, has spent a period of time equal
+to that occupied by a walk from Temple-Bar to Hyde-Park-Corner,
+in a state of mind as idle, and as little affording materials for
+recollection, as the dullest man that ever breathed the vital
+air.
+
+The two states of man which are here attempted to be
+distinguished, are, first, that in which reason is said to fill
+her throne, in which will prevails, and directs the powers of
+mind or of bodily action in one channel or another; and,
+secondly, that in which these faculties, tired of for ever
+exercising their prerogatives, or, being awakened as it were from
+sleep, and having not yet assumed them, abandon the helm, even as
+a mariner might be supposed to do, in a wide sea, and in a time
+when no disaster could be apprehended, and leave the vessel of
+the mind to drift, exactly as chance might direct.
+
+To describe this last state of mind I know not a better term that
+can be chosen, than that of reverie.  It is of the nature of what
+I have seen denominated BROWN STUDY[16] a species of dozing and
+drowsiness, in which all men spend a portion of the waking part
+of every day of their lives.  Every man must be conscious of
+passing minutes, perhaps hours of the day, particularly when
+engaged in exercise in the open air, in this species of
+neutrality and eviration.  It is often not unpleasant at the
+time, and leaves no sinking of the spirits behind.  It is
+probably of a salutary nature, and may be among the means, in a
+certain degree beneficial like sleep, by which the machine is
+restored, and the man comes forth from its discipline
+reinvigorated, and afresh capable of his active duties.
+
+[16] Norris, and Johnson, Dictionary of the English Language.
+
+
+This condition of our nature has considerably less vitality in
+it, than we experience in a complete and perfect dream.  In
+dreaming we are often conscious of lively impressions, of a busy
+scene, and of objects and feelings succeeding each other with
+rapidity.  We sometimes imagine ourselves earnestly speaking: 
+and the topics we treat, and the words we employ, are supplied to
+us with extraordinary fluency.  But the sort of vacancy and
+inoccupation of which I here treat, has a greater resemblance to
+the state of mind, without distinct and clearly unfolded ideas,
+which we experience before we sink into sleep.  The mind is in
+reality in a condition, more properly accessible to feeling and
+capable of thought, than actually in the exercise of either the
+one or the other.  We are conscious of existence and of little
+more.  We move our legs, and continue in a peripatetic state; for
+the man who has gone out of his house with a purpose to walk,
+exercises the power of volition when he sets out, but proceeds in
+his motion by a semi-voluntary act, by a sort of vis inertiae,
+which will not cease to operate without an express reason for
+doing so, and advances a thousand steps without distinctly
+willing any but the first.  When it is necessary to turn to the
+right or the left, or to choose between any two directions on
+which he is called upon to decide, his mind is so far brought
+into action as the case may expressly require, and no further.
+
+I have here instanced in the case of the peripatetic:  but of how
+many classes and occupations of human life may not the same thing
+be affirmed?  It happens to the equestrian, as well as to him
+that walks on foot.  It occurs to him who cultivates the fruits
+of the earth, and to him who is occupied in any of the thousand
+manufactures which are the result of human ingenuity.  It happens
+to the soldier in his march, and to the mariner on board his
+vessel.  It attends the individuals of the female sex through all
+their diversified modes of industry, the laundress, the
+housemaid, the sempstress, the netter of purses, the knotter of
+fringe, and the worker in tambour, tapestry and embroidery.  In
+all, the limbs or the fingers are employed mechanically; the
+attention of the mind is only required at intervals; and the
+thoughts remain for the most part in a state of non-excitation
+and repose.
+
+It is a curious question, but extremely difficult of solution,
+what portion of the day of every human creature must necessarily
+be spent in this sort of intellectual indolence.  In the lower
+classes of society its empire is certainly very great; its
+influence is extensive over a large portion of the opulent and
+luxurious; it is least among those who are intrusted in the more
+serious affairs of mankind, and among the literary and the
+learned, those who waste their lives, and consume the
+midnight-oil, in the search after knowledge.
+
+It appeared with sufficient clearness in the immediately
+preceding Essay, that the intellect cannot be always on the
+stretch, nor the bow of the mind for ever bent.  In the act of
+composition, unless where the province is of a very inferior
+kind, it is likely that not more than two or three hours at a
+time can be advantageously occupied.  But in literary labour it
+will often occur, that, in addition to the hours expressly
+engaged in composition, much time may be required for the
+collecting materials, the collating of authorities, and the
+bringing together a variety of particulars, so as to sift from
+the mass those circumstances which may best conduce to the
+purpose of the writer.  In all these preliminary and inferior
+enquiries it is less necessary that the mind should be
+perpetually awake and on the alert, than in the direct office of
+composition.  The situation is considerably similar of the
+experimental philosopher, the man who by obstinate and
+unconquerable application resolves to wrest from nature her
+secrets, and apply them to the improvement of social life, or to
+the giving to the human mind a wider range or a more elevated
+sphere.  A great portion of this employment consists more in the
+motion of the hands and the opportune glance of the eye, than in
+the labour of the head, and allows to the operator from time to
+time an interval of rest from the momentous efforts of invention
+and discovery, and the careful deduction of consequences in the
+points to be elucidated.
+
+There is a distinction, sufficiently familiar to all persons who
+occupy a portion of their time in reading, that is made between
+books of instruction, and books of amusement.  From the student
+of mathematics or any of the higher departments of science, from
+the reader of books of investigation and argument, an active
+attention is demanded.  Even in the perusal of the history of
+kingdoms and nations, or of certain memorable periods of public
+affairs, we can scarcely proceed with any satisfaction, unless in
+so far as we collect our thoughts, compare one part of the
+narrative with another, and hold the mind in a state of activity.
+
+We are obliged to reason while we read, and in some degree to
+construct a discourse of our own, at the same time that we follow
+the statements of the author before us.  Unless we do this, the
+sense and spirit of what we read will be apt to slip from under
+our observation, and we shall by and by discover that we are
+putting together words and sounds only, when we purposed to store
+our minds with facts and reflections.  We apprehended not the
+sense of the writer even when his pages were under our eye, and
+of consequence have nothing laid up in the memory after the hour
+of reading is completed.
+
+In works of amusement it is otherwise, and most especially in
+writings of fiction.  These are sought after with avidity by the
+idle, because for the most part they are found to have the virtue
+of communicating impressions to the reader, even while his mind
+remains in a state of passiveness.  He finds himself agreeably
+affected with fits of mirth or of sorrow, and carries away the
+facts of the tale, at the same time that he is not called upon
+for the act of attention.  This is therefore one of the modes of
+luxury especially cultivated in a highly civilized state of
+society.
+
+The same considerations will also explain to us the principal
+part of the pleasure that is experienced by mankind in all states
+of society from public shews and exhibitions.  The spectator is
+not called upon to exert himself; the amusement and pleasure come
+to him, while he remains voluptuously at his ease; and it is
+certain that the exertion we make when we are compelled to
+contribute to, and become in part the cause of our own
+entertainment, is more than the human mind is willing to sustain,
+except at seasons in which we are specially on the alert and
+awake.
+
+This is further one of the causes why men in general feel
+prompted to seek the society of their fellows.  We are in part no
+doubt called upon in select society to bring our own information
+along with us, and a certain vein of wit, humour or narrative,
+that we may contribute our proportion to the general stock.  We
+read the newspapers, the newest publications, and repair to
+places of fashionable amusement and resort; partly that we may at
+least be upon a par with the majority of the persons we are
+likely to meet.  But many do not thus prepare themselves, nor
+does perhaps any one upon all occasions.
+
+There is another state of human existence in which we expressly
+dismiss from our hands the reins of the mind, and suffer our
+minutes and our hours to glide by us undisciplined and at random.
+
+This is, generally speaking, the case in a period of sickness. 
+We have no longer the courage to be on the alert, and to
+superintend the march of our thoughts.  It is the same with us
+for the most part when at any time we lie awake in our beds.  To
+speak from my own experience, I am in a restless and uneasy state
+while I am alone in my sitting-room, unless I have some
+occupation of my own choice, writing or reading, or any of those
+employments the pursuit of which was chosen at first, and which
+is more or less under the direction of the will afterwards.  But
+when awake in my bed, either in health or sickness, I am
+reasonably content to let my thoughts flow on agreeably to those
+laws of association by which I find them directed, without giving
+myself the trouble to direct them into one channel rather than
+another, or to marshal and actively to prescribe the various
+turns and mutations they may be impelled to pursue.
+
+It is thus that we are sick; and it is thus that we die.  The man
+that guides the operations of his own mind, is either to a
+certain degree in bodily health, or in that health of mind which
+shall for a longer or shorter time stand forward as the
+substitute of the health of the body.  When we die, we give up
+the game, and are not disposed to contend any further.  It is a
+very usual thing to talk of the struggles of a man in articulo
+mortis.  But this is probably, like so many other things that
+occur to us in this sublunary stage, a delusion.  The bystander
+mistakes for a spontaneous contention and unwillingness to die,
+what is in reality nothing more than an involuntary contraction
+and convulsion of the nerves, to which the mind is no party, and
+is even very probably unconscious.--But enough of this, the final
+and most humiliating state through which mortal men may be called
+on to pass.
+
+I find then in the history of almost every human creature four
+different states or modes of existence.  First, there is sleep. 
+In the strongest degree of contrast to this there is the frame in
+which we find ourselves, when we write!  or invent and steadily
+pursue a consecutive train of thinking unattended with the
+implements of writing, or read in some book of science or
+otherwise which calls upon us for a fixed attention, or address
+ourselves to a smaller or greater audience, or are engaged in
+animated conversation.  In each of these occupations the mind may
+emphatically be said to be on the alert.
+
+But there are further two distinct states or kinds of mental
+indolence.  The first is that which we frequently experience
+during a walk or any other species of bodily exercise, where,
+when the whole is at an end, we scarcely recollect any thing in
+which the mind has been employed, but have been in what I may
+call a healthful torpor, where our limbs have been sufficiently
+in action to continue our exercise, we have felt the fresh breeze
+playing on our cheeks, and have been in other respects in a frame
+of no unpleasing neutrality.  This may be supposed greatly to
+contribute to our bodily health.  It is the holiday of the
+faculties:  and, as the bow, when it has been for a considerable
+time unbent, is said to recover its elasticity, so the mind,
+after a holiday of this sort, comes fresh, and with an increased
+alacrity, to those occupations which advance man most highly in
+the scale of being.
+
+But there is a second state of mental indolence, not so complete
+as this, but which is still indolence, inasmuch as in it the mind
+is passive, and does not assume the reins of empire.  Such is the
+state in which we are during our sleepless hours in bed; and in
+this state our ideas, and the topics that successively occur,
+appear to go forward without remission, while it seems that it is
+this busy condition of the mind, and the involuntary activity of
+our thoughts, that prevent us from sleeping.
+
+The distinction then between these two sorts of indolence is,
+that in the latter our ideas are perfectly distinct, are attended
+with consciousness, and can, as we please, be called up to
+recollection.  This therefore is not what we understand by
+reverie.  In these waking hours which are spent by us in bed, the
+mind is no less busy, than it is in sleep during a dream.  The
+other and more perfect sort of mental indolence, is that which we
+often experience during our exercise in the open air.  This is of
+the same nature as the condition of thought which seems to be the
+necessary precursor of sleep, and is attended with no precise
+consciousness.
+
+By the whole of the above statement we are led to a new and a
+modified estimate of the duration of human life.
+
+If by life we understand mere susceptibility, a state of
+existence in which we are accessible at any moment to the onset
+of sensation, for example, of pain--in this sense our life is
+commensurate, or nearly commensurate, to the entire period, from
+the quickening of the child in the womb, to the minute at which
+sense deserts the dying man, and his body becomes an inanimate
+mass.
+
+But life, in the emphatical sense, and par excellence, is reduced
+to much narrower limits.  From this species of life it is
+unavoidable that we should strike off the whole of the interval
+that is spent in sleep; and thus, as a general rule, the natural
+day of twenty-four hours is immediately reduced to sixteen.
+
+Of these sixteen hours again, there is a portion that falls under
+the direction of will and attention, and a portion that is passed
+by us in a state of mental indolence.  By the ordinary and least
+cultivated class of mankind, the husbandman, the manufacturer,
+the soldier, the sailor, and the main body of the female sex,
+much the greater part of every day is resigned to a state of
+mental indolence.  The will does not actively interfere, and the
+attention is not roused.  Even the most intellectual beings of
+our species pass no inconsiderable portion of every day in a
+similar condition.  Such is our state for the most part during
+the time that is given to bodily exercise, and during the time in
+which we read books of amusement merely, or are employed in
+witnessing public shews and exhibitions.
+
+That portion of every day of our existence which is occupied by
+us with a mind attentive and on the alert, I would call life in a
+transcendant sense.  The rest is scarcely better than a state of
+vegetation.
+
+And yet not so either.  The happiest and most valuable thoughts
+of the human mind will sometimes come when they are least sought
+for, and we least anticipated any such thing.  In reading a
+romance, in witnessing a performance at a theatre, in our idlest
+and most sportive moods, a vein in the soil of intellect will
+sometimes unexpectedly be broken up, "richer than all the tribe"
+of contemporaneous thoughts, that shall raise him to whom it
+occurs, to a rank among his species altogether different from any
+thing he had looked for.  Newton was led to the doctrine of
+gravitation by the fall of an apple, as he indolently reclined
+under the tree on which it grew.  "A verse may find him, who a
+sermon flies."  Polemon, when intoxicated, entered the school of
+Xenocrates, and was so struck with the energy displayed by the
+master, and the thoughts he delivered, that from that moment he
+renounced the life of dissipation he had previously led, and
+applied himself entirely to the study of philosophy.  --But these
+instances are comparatively of rare occurrence, and do not
+require to be taken into the account.
+
+It is still true therefore for the most part, that not more than
+eight hours in the day are passed by the wisest and most
+energetic, with a mind attentive and on the alert.  The remainder
+is a period of vegetation only.  In the mean time we have all of
+us undoubtedly to a certain degree the power of enlarging the
+extent of the period of transcendant life in each day of our
+healthful existence, and causing it to encroach upon the period
+either of mental indolence or of sleep.--With the greater part of
+the human species the whole of their lives while awake, with the
+exception of a few brief and insulated intervals, is spent in a
+passive state of the intellectual powers.  Thoughts come and go,
+as chance, or some undefined power in nature may direct,
+uninterfered with by the sovereign will, the steersman of the
+mind.  And often the understanding appears to be a blank, upon
+which if any impressions are then made, they are like figures
+drawn in the sand which the next tide obliterates, or are even
+lighter and more evanescent than this.
+
+Let me add, that the existence of the child for two or three
+years from the period of his birth, is almost entirely a state of
+vegetation.  The impressions that are made upon his sensorium
+come and go, without either their advent or departure being
+anticipated, and without the interference of the will.  It is
+only under some express excitement, that the faculty of will
+mounts its throne, and exercises its empire.  When the child
+smiles, that act is involuntary; but, when he cries, will
+presently comes to mix itself with the phenomenon.  Wilfulness,
+impatience and rebellion are infallible symptoms of a mind on the
+alert.  And, as the child in the first stages of its existence
+puts forth the faculty of will only at intervals, so for a
+similar reason this period is but rarely accompanied with memory,
+or leaves any traces of recollection for our after-life.
+
+There are other memorable states of the intellectual powers,
+which if I did not mention, the survey here taken would seem to
+be glaringly imperfect.  The first of these is madness.  In this
+humiliating condition of our nature the sovereignty of reason is
+deposed:
+
+               Chaos umpire sits,
+               And by decision more embroils the fray.
+
+The mind is in a state of turbulence and tempest in one instant,
+and in another subsides into the deepest imbecility; and, even
+when the will is occasionally roused, the link which preserved
+its union with good sense and sobriety is dissolved, and the
+views by which it has the appearance of being regulated, are all
+based in misconstruction and delusion.
+
+Next to madness occur the different stages of spleen, dejection
+and listlessness.  The essence of these lies in the passiveness
+and neutrality of the intellectual powers.  In as far as the
+unhappy sufferer could be roused to act, the disease would be
+essentially diminished, and might finally be expelled.  But long
+days and months are spent by the patient in the midst of all
+harassing imaginations, and an everlasting nightmare seems to sit
+on the soul, and lock up its powers in interminable inactivity. 
+Almost the only interruption to this, is when the demands of
+nature require our attention, or we pay a slight and uncertain
+attention to the decencies of cleanliness and attire.
+
+In all these considerations then we find abundant occasion to
+humble the pride and vain-glory of man.  But they do not overturn
+the principles delivered in the preceding Essay respecting the
+duration of human life, though they certainly interpose
+additional boundaries to limit the prospects of individual
+improvement.
+
+
+
+ESSAY IX.
+OF LEISURE.
+
+The river of human life is divided into two streams; occupation
+and leisure--or, to express the thing more accurately, that
+occupation, which is prescribed, and may be called the business
+of life, and that occupation, which arises contingently, and not
+so much of absolute and set purpose, not being prescribed:  such
+being the more exact description of these two divisions of human
+life, inasmuch as the latter is often not less earnest and intent
+in its pursuits than the former.
+
+It would be a curious question to ascertain which of these is of
+the highest value.
+
+To this enquiry I hear myself loudly and vehemently answered from
+all hands in favour of the first.  "This," I am told by unanimous
+acclamation, "is the business of life."
+
+The decision in favour of what we primarily called occupation,
+above what we called leisure, may in a mitigated sense be
+entertained as true.  Man can live with little or no leisure, for
+millions of human beings do so live:  but the species to which we
+belong, and of consequence the individuals of that species,
+cannot exist as they ought to exist, without occupation.
+
+Granting however the paramount claims that occupation has to our
+regard, let us endeavour to arrive at a just estimate of the
+value of leisure.
+
+It has been said by some one, with great appearance of truth,
+that schoolboys learn as much, perhaps more, of beneficial
+knowledge in their hours of play, as in their hours of study.
+
+The wisdom of ages has been applied to ascertain what are the
+most desirable topics for the study of the schoolboy.  They are
+selected for the most part by the parent.  There are few parents
+that do not feel a sincere and disinterested desire for the
+welfare of their children.  It is an unquestionable maxim, that
+we are the best judges of that of which we have ourselves had
+experience; and all parents have been children.  It is therefore
+idle and ridiculous to suppose that those studies which have for
+centuries been chosen by the enlightened mature for the
+occupation of the young, have not for the most part been well
+chosen.  Of these studies the earliest consist in the arts of
+reading and writing.  Next follows arithmetic, with perhaps some
+rudiments of algebra and geometry.  Afterward comes in due order
+the acquisition of languages, particularly the dead languages; a
+most fortunate occupation for those years of man, in which the
+memory is most retentive, and the reasoning powers have yet
+acquired neither solidity nor enlargement.  Such are the
+occupations of the schoolboy in his prescribed hours of study.
+
+But the schoolboy is cooped up in an apartment, it may be with a
+number of his fellows.  He is seated at a desk, diligently
+conning the portion of learning that is doled out to him, or,
+when he has mastered his lesson, reciting it with anxious brow
+and unassured lips to the senior, who is to correct his errors,
+and pronounce upon the sufficiency of his industry.  All this may
+be well:  but it is a new and more exhilarating spectacle that
+presents itself to our observation, when he is dismissed from his
+temporary labours, and rushes impetuously out to the open air,
+and gives free scope to his limbs and his voice, and is no longer
+under the eye of a censor that shall make him feel his
+subordination and dependence.
+
+Meanwhile the question under consideration was, not in which
+state he experienced the most happiness, but which was productive
+of the greatest improvement.
+
+The review of the human subject is conveniently divided under the
+heads of body and mind.
+
+There can be no doubt that the health of the body is most
+promoted by those exercises in which the schoolboy is engaged
+during the hours of play.  And it is further to be considered
+that health is required, not only that we may be serene,
+contented and happy, but that we may be enabled effectually to
+exert the faculties of the mind.
+
+But there is another way, in which we are called upon to consider
+the division of the human subject under the heads of body and
+mind.
+
+The body is the implement and instrument of the mind, the tool by
+which most of its purposes are to be effected.  We live in the
+midst of a material world, or of what we call such.  The greater
+part of the pursuits in which we engage, are achieved by the
+action of the limbs and members of the body upon external matter.
+
+Our communications with our fellow-men are all of them carried on
+by means of the body.
+
+Now the action of the limbs and members of the body is infinitely
+improved by those exercises in which the schoolboy becomes
+engaged during his hours of play.  In the first place it is to be
+considered that we do those things most thoroughly and in the
+shortest time, which are spontaneous, the result of our own
+volition; and such are the exercises in which the schoolboy
+engages during this period.  His heart and soul are in what he
+does.  The man or the boy must be a poor creature indeed, who
+never does any thing but as he is bid by another.  It is in his
+voluntary acts and his sports, that he learns the skilful and
+effective use of his eye and his limbs.  He selects his mark, and
+he hits it.  He tries again and again, effort after effort, and
+day after day, till he has surmounted the difficulty of the
+attempt, and the rebellion of his members.  Every articulation
+and muscle of his frame is called into action, till all are
+obedient to the master-will; and his limbs are lubricated and
+rendered pliant by exercise, as the limbs of the Grecian athleta
+were lubricated with oil.
+
+Thus he acquires, first dexterity of motion, and next, which is
+of no less importance, a confidence in his own powers, a
+consciousness that he is able to effect what he purposes, a
+calmness and serenity which resemble the sweeping of the area,
+and scattering of the saw-dust, upon which the dancer or the
+athlete is to exhibit with grace, strength and effect.
+
+So much for the advantages reaped by the schoolboy during his
+hours of play as to the maturing his bodily powers, and the
+improvement of those faculties of his mind which more immediately
+apply to the exercise of his bodily powers.
+
+But, beside this, it is indispensible to the well-being and
+advantage of the individual, that he should employ the faculties
+of his mind in spontaneous exertions.  I do not object,
+especially during the period of nonage, to a considerable degree
+of dependence and control.  But his greatest advancement, even
+then, seems to arise from the interior impulses of his mind.  The
+schoolboy exercises his wit, and indulges in sallies of the
+thinking principle.  This is wholsome; this is fresh; it has
+twice the quickness, clearness and decision in it, that are to be
+found in those acts of the mind which are employed about the
+lessons prescribed to him.
+
+In school our youth are employed about the thoughts, the acts and
+suggestions of other men.  This is all mimicry, and a sort of
+second-hand business.  It resembles the proceeding of the
+fresh-listed soldier at drill; he has ever his eye on his
+right-hand man, and does not raise his arm, nor advance his foot,
+nor move his finger, but as he sees another perform the same
+motion before him.  It is when the schoolboy proceeds to the
+playground, that he engages in real action and real discussion. 
+It is then that he is an absolute human being and a genuine
+individual.
+
+The debates of schoolboys, their discussions what they shall do,
+and how it shall be done, are anticipations of the scenes of
+maturer life.  They are the dawnings of committees, and vestries,
+and hundred-courts, and ward-motes, and folk-motes, and
+parliaments.  When boys consult when and where their next
+cricket-match shall be played, it may be regarded as the embryo
+representation of a consult respecting a grave enterprise to be
+formed, or a colony to be planted.  And, when they enquire
+respecting poetry and prose, and figures and tropes, and the
+dictates of taste, this happily prepares them for the
+investigations of prudence, and morals, and religious principles,
+and what is science, and what is truth.
+
+It is thus that the wit of man, to use the word in the old Saxon
+sense, begins to be cultivated.  One boy gives utterance to an
+assertion; and another joins issue with him, and retorts.  The
+wheels of the engine of the brain are set in motion, and, without
+force, perform their healthful revolutions.  The stripling feels
+himself called upon to exert his presence of mind, and becomes
+conscious of the necessity of an immediate reply.  Like the
+unfledged bird, he spreads his wings, and essays their powers. 
+He does not answer, like a boy in his class, who tasks his
+understanding or not, as the whim of the moment shall prompt him,
+where one boy honestly performs to the extent of his ability, and
+others disdain the empire assumed over them, and get off as
+cheaply as they can.  He is no longer under review, but is
+engaged in real action.  The debate of the schoolboy is the
+combat of the intellectual gladiator, where he fences and parries
+and thrusts with all the skill and judgment he possesses.
+
+There is another way in which the schoolboy exercises his powers
+during his periods of leisure.  He is often in society; but he is
+ever and anon in solitude.  At no period of human life are our
+reveries so free and untrammeled, as at the period here spoken
+of.  He climbs the mountain-cliff; and penetrates into the depths
+of the woods.  His joints are well strung; he is a stranger to
+fatigue.  He rushes down the precipice, and mounts again with
+ease, as though he had the wings of a bird.  He ruminates, and
+pursues his own trains of reflection and discovery, "exhausting
+worlds," as it appears to him, "and then imagining new."  He
+hovers on the brink of the deepest philosophy, enquiring how came
+I here, and to what end.  He becomes a castle-builder,
+constructing imaginary colleges and states, and searching out the
+businesses in which they are to be employed, and the schemes by
+which they are to be regulated.  He thinks what he would do, if
+he possessed uncontrolable strength, if he could fly, if he could
+make himself invisible.  In this train of mind he cons his first
+lessons of liberty and independence.  He learns self-reverence,
+and says to himself, I also am an artist, and a maker.  He
+ruffles himself under the yoke, and feels that he suffers foul
+tyranny when he is driven, and when brute force is exercised upon
+him, to compel him to a certain course, or to chastise his
+faults, imputed or real.
+
+Such are the benefits of leisure to the schoolboy:  and they are
+not less to man when arrived at years of discretion.  It is good
+for us to have some regular and stated occupation.  Man may be
+practically too free; this is frequently the case with those who
+have been nurtured in the lap of opulence and luxury.  We were
+sent into the world under the condition, "In the sweat of thy
+brow shalt thou eat bread."  And those who, by the artificial
+institutions of society, are discharged from this necessity, are
+placed in a critical and perilous situation.  They are bound, if
+they would consult their own well-being, to contrive for
+themselves a factitious necessity, that may stand them in the
+place of that necessity which is imposed without appeal on the
+vast majority of their brethren.
+
+But, if it is desirable that every man should have some regular
+and stated occupation, so it is certainly not less desirable,
+that every man should have his seasons of relaxation and leisure.
+
+Unhappy is the wretch, whose condition it is to be perpetually
+bound to the oar, and who is condemned to labour in one certain
+mode, during all the hours that are not claimed by sleep, or as
+long as the muscles of his frame, or the fibres of his fingers
+will enable him to persevere.  "Apollo himself," says the poet,
+"does not always bend the bow."  There should be a season, when
+the mind is free as air, when not only we should follow without
+restraint any train of thinking or action, within the bounds of
+sobriety, and that is not attended with injury to others, that
+our own minds may suggest to us, but should sacrifice at the
+shrine of intellectual liberty, and spread our wings, and take
+our flight into untried regions.  It is good for man that he
+should feel himself at some time unshackled and autocratical,
+that he should say, This I do, because it is prescribed to me by
+the conditions without which I cannot exist, or by the election
+which in past time I deliberately made; and this, because it is
+dictated by the present frame of my spirit, and is therefore that
+in which the powers my nature has entailed upon me may be most
+fully manifested.  In addition to which we are to consider, that
+a certain variety and mutation of employments is best adapted to
+humanity.  When my mind or my body seems to be overwrought by one
+species of occupation, the substitution of another will often
+impart to me new life, and make me feel as fresh as if no labour
+had before engaged me.  For all these reasons it is to be
+desired, that we should possess the inestimable privilege of
+leisure, that in the revolving hours of every day a period should
+arrive, at which we should lay down the weapons of our labour,
+and engage in a sport that may be no less active and strenuous
+than the occupation which preceded it.
+
+A question, which deserves our attention in this place, is, how
+much of every day it behoves us to give to regular and stated
+occupation, and how much is the just and legitimate province of
+leisure.  It has been remarked in a preceding Essay[17], that, if
+my main and leading pursuit is literary composition, two or three
+hours in the twenty-four will often be as much as can
+advantageously and effectually be so employed.  But this will
+unavoidably vary according to the nature of the occupation:  the
+period above named may be taken as the MINIMUM.
+
+[17]  See above, Essay 7.
+
+
+Such, let us say, is the portion of time which the man of letters
+is called on to devote to literary composition.
+
+It may next be fitting to enquire as to the humbler classes of
+society, and those persons who are engaged in the labour of the
+hands, how much time they ought to be expected to consume in
+their regular and stated occupations, and how much would remain
+to them for relaxation and leisure.  It has been said[18], that
+half an hour in the day given by every member of the community to
+manual labour, might be sufficient for supplying the whole with
+the absolute necessaries of life.  But there are various
+considerations that would inevitably lengthen this period.  In a
+community which has made any considerable advance in the race of
+civilisation, many individuals must be expected to be excused
+from any portion of manual labour.  It is not desirable that any
+community should be contented to supply itself with necessaries
+only.  There are many refinements in life, and many advances in
+literature and the arts, which indispensibly conduce to the
+rendering man in society a nobler and more exalted creature than
+he could otherwise be; and these ought not to be consigned to
+neglect.
+
+[18] Political Justice, Book VIII, Chap. VI.
+
+
+On the other hand however it is certain, that much of the
+ostentation and a multitude of the luxuries which subsist in
+European and Asiatic society are just topics of regret, and that,
+if ever those improvements in civilisation take place which
+philosophy has essayed to delineate, there would be a great
+abridgment of the manual labour that we now see around us, and
+the humbler classes of the community would enter into the
+inheritance of a more considerable portion of leisure than at
+present falls to their lot.
+
+But it has been much the habit, for persons not belonging to the
+humbler classes of the community, and who profess to speculate
+upon the genuine interests of human society, to suppose, however
+certain intervals of leisure may conduce to the benefit of men
+whose tastes have been cultivated and refined, and who from
+education have many resources of literature and reflection at all
+times at their beck, yet that leisure might prove rather
+pernicious than otherwise to the uneducated and the ignorant. 
+Let us enquire then how these persons would be likely to employ
+the remainder of their time, if they had a greater portion of
+leisure than they at present enjoy.--I would add, that the
+individuals of the humbler classes of the community need not for
+ever to merit the appellation of the uneducated and ignorant.
+
+In the first place, they would engage, like the schoolboy, in
+active sports, thereby giving to their limbs, which, in rural
+occupation and mechanical labour, are somewhat too monotonously
+employed, and contract the stiffness and experience the waste of
+a premature old age, the activity and freedom of an athlete, a
+cricketer, or a hunter.  Nor do these occupations only conduce to
+the health of the body, they also impart a spirit and a juvenile
+earnestness to the mind.
+
+In the next place, they may be expected to devote a part of the
+day, more than they do at present, to their wives and families,
+cultivating the domestic affections, watching the expanding
+bodies and minds of their children, leading them on in the road
+of improvement, warning them against the perils with which they
+are surrounded, and observing with somewhat of a more jealous and
+parental care, what it is for which by their individual qualities
+they are best adapted, and in what particular walk of life they
+may most advantageously be engaged.  The father and the son would
+grow in a much greater degree friends, anticipating each other's
+wishes, and sympathising in each other's pleasures and pains.
+
+Thirdly, one infallible consequence of a greater degree of
+leisure in the lower classes would be that reading would become a
+more common propensity and amusement.  It is the aphorism of one
+of the most enlightened of my contemporaries, "The schoolmaster
+is abroad:" and many more than at present would desire to store
+up in their little hoard a certain portion of the general
+improvement.  We should no longer have occasion to say,
+
+     But knowledge to their eyes her ample page,      
+      Rich with the spoils of time, did ne'er unrol.
+
+Nor should we be incited to fear that ever wakeful anticipation
+of the illiberal, that, by the too great diffusion of the wisdom
+of the wise, we might cease to have a race of men adapted to the
+ordinary pursuits of life.  Our ploughmen and artificers, who
+obtained the improvements of intellect through the medium of
+leisure, would have already received their destination, and
+formed their habits, and would be disposed to consider the new
+lights that were opened upon them, as the ornament of existence,
+not its substance.  Add to which, as leisure became more
+abundant, and the opportunities of intellectual improvement
+increased, they would have less motive to repine at their lot. 
+It is principally while knowledge and information are new, that
+they are likely to intoxicate the brain of those to whose share
+they have fallen; and, when they are made a common stock upon
+which all men may draw, sound thinking and sobriety may be
+expected to be the general result.
+
+One of the scenes to which the leisure of the laborious classes
+is seen to induce them to resort, is the public-house; and it is
+inferred that, if their leisure were greater, a greater degree of
+drunkenness, dissipation and riot would inevitably prevail.
+
+In answer to this anticipation, I would in the first place
+assert, that the merits and demerits of the public-house are very
+unjustly rated by the fastidious among the more favoured orders
+of society.
+
+We ought to consider that the opportunities and amusements of the
+lower orders of society are few.  They do not frequent
+coffee-houses; theatres and places of public exhibition are
+ordinarily too expensive for them; and they cannot engage in
+rounds of visiting, thus cultivating a private and familiar
+intercourse with the few whose conversation might be most
+congenial to them.  We certainly bear hard upon persons in this
+rank of society, if we expect that they should take all the
+severer labour, and have no periods of unbending and amusement.
+
+But in reality what occurs in the public-house we are too much in
+the habit of calumniating.  If we would visit this scene, we
+should find it pretty extensively a theatre of eager and earnest
+discussion.  It is here that the ardent and "unwashed artificer,"
+and the sturdy husbandman, compare notes and measure wits with
+each other.  It is their arena of intellectual combat, the ludus
+literarius of their unrefined university.  It is here they learn
+to think.  Their minds are awakened from the sleep of ignorance;
+and their attention is turned into a thousand channels of
+improvement.  They study the art of speaking, of question,
+allegation and rejoinder.  They fix their thought steadily on the
+statement that is made, acknowledge its force, or detect its
+insufficiency.  They examine the most interesting topics, and
+form opinions the result of that examination.  They learn maxims
+of life, and become politicians.  They canvas the civil and
+criminal laws of their country, and learn the value of political
+liberty.  They talk over measures of state, judge of the
+intentions, sagacity and sincerity of public men, and are likely
+in time to become in no contemptible degree capable of estimating
+what modes of conducting national affairs, whether for the
+preservation of the rights of all, or for the vindication and
+assertion of justice between man and man, may be expected to be
+crowned with the greatest success:  in a word, they thus become,
+in the best sense of the word, citizens.
+
+As to excess in drinking, the same thing may be expected to occur
+here, as has been remarked of late years in better company in
+England.  In proportion as the understanding is cultivated, men
+are found to be less the victims of drinking and the grosser
+provocatives of sense.  The king of Persia of old made it his
+boast that he could drink large quantities of liquor with greater
+impunity than any of his subjects.  Such was not the case with
+the more polished Greeks.  In the dark ages the most glaring
+enormities of that kind prevailed.  Under our Charles the Second
+coarse dissipation and riot characterised the highest circles. 
+Rochester, the most accomplished man and the greatest wit of our
+island, related of himself that, for five years together, he
+could not affirm that for any one day he had been thoroughly
+sober.  In Ireland, a country less refined than our own, the
+period is not long past, when on convivial occasions the master
+of the house took the key from his door, that no one of his
+guests might escape without having had his dose.  No small number
+of the contemporaries of my youth fell premature victims to the
+intemperance which was then practised.  Now wine is merely used
+to excite a gayer and livelier tone of the spirits; and inebriety
+is scarcely known in the higher circles.  In like manner, it may
+readily be believed that, as men in the lower classes of society
+become less ignorant and obtuse, as their thoughts are less
+gross, as they wear off the vestigia ruris, the remains of a
+barbarous state, they will find less need to set their spirits
+afloat by this animal excitement, and will devote themselves to
+those thoughts and that intercourse which shall inspire them with
+better and more honourable thoughts of our common nature.
+
+
+
+ESSAY X.
+OF IMITATION AND INVENTION.
+
+Of the sayings of the wise men of former times none has been
+oftener repeated than that of Solomon, "The thing that hath been,
+is that which is; and that which is done, is that which shall be
+done; and there is no new thing under the sun."
+
+The books of the Old Testament are apparently a collection of the
+whole literary remains of an ancient and memorable people, whose
+wisdom may furnish instruction to us, and whose poetry abounds in
+lofty flights and sublime imagery.  How this collection came
+indiscriminately to be considered as written by divine
+inspiration, it is difficult to pronounce.  The history of the
+Jews, as contained in the Books of Kings and of Chronicles,
+certainly did not require the interposition of the Almighty for
+its production; and the pieces we receive as the compositions of
+Solomon have conspicuously the air of having emanated from a
+conception entirely human.
+
+In the book of Ecclesiastes, from which the above sentence is
+taken, are many sentiments not in accordance with the religion of
+Christ.  For example; "That which befalleth the sons of men,
+befalleth beasts; as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they
+have all one breath, so that a man hath no preeminence above a
+beast:  all go to one place; all are of the dust, and turn to
+dust again.  Wherefore I perceive that there is nothing better,
+than that a man should rejoice in his works."  And again, "The
+living know that they shall die; but the dead know not any thing;
+their love, and their hatred, and their envy are perished;
+neither have they any more a reward."  Add to this, "Wherefore I
+praise the dead which are already dead, more than the living
+which are yet alive:  yea, better is he than both they, which
+hath not yet been."  There can therefore be no just exception
+taken against our allowing ourselves freely to canvas the maxim
+cited at the head of this Essay.
+
+It certainly contains a sufficient quantity of unquestionable
+truth, to induce us to regard it as springing from profound
+observation, and comprehensive views of what is acted "under the
+sun."
+
+A wise man would look at the labours of his own species, in much
+the same spirit as he would view an ant-hill through a
+microscope.  He would see them tugging a grain of corn up a
+declivity; he would see the tracks that are made by those who go,
+and who return; their incessant activity; and would find one day
+the copy of that which went before; and their labours ending in
+nothing:  I mean, in nothing that shall carry forward the
+improvement of the head and the heart, either in the individual
+or society, or that shall add to the conveniences of life, or the
+better providing for the welfare of communities of men.  He would
+smile at their earnestness and zeal, all spent in supplying the
+necessaries of the day, or, at most, providing for the revolution
+of the seasons, or for that ephemeral thing we call the life of
+man.
+
+Few things can appear more singular, when duly analysed, than
+that articulated air, which we denominate speech.  It is not to
+be wondered at that we are proud of the prerogative, which so
+eminently distinguishes us from the rest of the animal creation. 
+The dog, the cat, the horse, the bear, the lion, all of them have
+voice.  But we may almost consider this as their reproach.  They
+can utter for the greater part but one monotonous, eternal sound.
+
+The lips, the teeth, the palate, the throat, which in man are
+instruments of modifying the voice in such endless variety, are
+in this respect given to them in vain:  while all the thoughts
+that occur, at least to the bulk of mankind, we are able to
+express in words, to communicate facts, feelings, passions,
+sentiments, to discuss, to argue, to agree, to issue commands on
+the one part, and report the execution on the other, to inspire
+lofty conceptions, to excite the deepest feeling of
+commiseration, and to thrill the soul with extacy, almost too
+mighty to be endured.
+
+Yet what is human speech for the most part but mere imitation? 
+In the most obvious sense this stands out on the surface.  We
+learn the same words, we speak the same language, as our elders. 
+Not only our words, but our phrases are the same.  We are like
+players, who come out as if they were real persons, but only
+utter what is set down for them.  We represent the same drama
+every day; and, however stale is the eternal repetition, pass it
+off upon others, and even upon ourselves, as if it were the
+suggestion of the moment.  In reality, in rural or vulgar life,
+the invention of a new phrase ought to be marked down among the
+memorable things in the calendar.  We afford too much honour to
+ordinary conversation, when we compare it to the exhibition of
+the recognised theatres, since men ought for the most part to be
+considered as no more than puppets.  They perform the
+gesticulations; but the words come from some one else, who is hid
+from the sight of the general observer.  And not only the words,
+but the cadence:  they have not even so much honour as players
+have, to choose the manner they may deem fittest by which to
+convey the sense and the passion of what they speak.  The
+pronunciation, the dialect, all, are supplied to them, and are
+but a servile repetition.  Our tempers are merely the work of the
+transcriber.  We are angry, where we saw that others were angry;
+and we are pleased, because it is the tone to be pleased.  We
+pretend to have each of us a judgment of our own:  but in truth
+we wait with the most patient docility, till he whom we regard as
+the leader of the chorus gives us the signal, Here you are to
+applaud, and Here you are to condemn.
+
+What is it that constitutes the manners of nations, by which the
+people of one country are so eminently distinguished from the
+people of another, so that you cannot cross the channel from
+Dover to Calais, twenty-one miles, without finding yourself in a
+new world?  Nay, I need not go among the subjects of another
+government to find examples of this; if I pass into Ireland,
+Scotland or Wales, I see myself surrounded with a new people, all
+of whose characters are in a manner cast in one mould, and all
+different from the citizens of the principal state and from one
+another.  We may go further than this.  Not only nations, but
+classes of men, are contrasted with each other.  What can be more
+different than the gentry of the west end of this metropolis, and
+the money-making dwellers in the east?  From them I will pass to
+Billingsgate and Wapping.  What more unlike than a soldier and a
+sailor?  the children of fashion that stroll in St. James's and
+Hyde Park, and the care-worn hirelings, that recreate themselves,
+with their wives and their brats, with a little fresh air on a
+Sunday near Islington?  The houses of lords and commons have each
+their characteristic manners.  Each profession has its own, the
+lawyer, the divine, and the man of medicine.  We are all apes,
+fixing our eyes upon a model, and copying him, gesture by
+gesture.  We are sheep, rushing headlong through the gap, when
+the bell-wether shews us the way.  We are choristers,
+mechanically singing in a certain key, and giving breath to a
+certain tone.
+
+Our religion, our civil practices, our political creed, are all
+imitation.  How many men are there, that have examined the
+evidences of their religious belief, and can give a sound "reason
+of the faith that is in them?"  When I was a child, I was taught
+that there were four religions in the world, the Popish, the
+Protestant, the Mahometan, the Pagan.  It is a phenomenon to find
+the man, who has held the balance steadily, and rendered full and
+exact justice to the pretensions of each of these.  No:  tell me
+the longitude and latitude in which a man is born, and I will
+tell you his religion.
+
+      By education most have been misled;
+      So they believe, because they so were bred:
+      The priest continues what the nurse began,
+      And thus the child imposes on the man.
+
+And, if this happens, where we are told our everlasting salvation
+is at issue, we may easily judge of the rest.
+
+The author, with one of whose dicta I began this Essay, has
+observed, "One generation passeth away, and another generation
+cometh; but the earth abideth for ever."  It is a maxim of the
+English constitution, that "the king never dies;" and the same
+may with nearly equal propriety be observed of every private man,
+especially if he have children.  "Death," say the writers of
+natural history, "is the generator of life:" and what is thus
+true of animal corruption, may with small variation be affirmed
+of human mortality.  I turn off my footman, and hire another; and
+he puts on the livery of his predecessor:  he thinks himself
+somebody; but he is only a tenant.  The same thing is true, when
+a country-gentleman, a noble, a bishop, or a king dies.  He puts
+off his garments, and another puts them on.  Every one knows the
+story of the Tartarian dervise, who mistook the royal palace for
+a caravansera, and who proved to his majesty by genealogical
+deduction, that he was only a lodger.  In this sense the
+mutability, which so eminently characterises every thing
+sublunary, is immutability under another name.
+
+The most calamitous, and the most stupendous scenes are nothing
+but an eternal and wearisome repetition:  executions, murders,
+plagues, famine and battle.  Military execution, the demolition
+of cities, the conquest of nations, have been acted a hundred
+times before.  The mighty conqueror, who "smote the people in
+wrath with a continual stroke," who "sat in the seat of God,
+shewing himself that he was God," and assuredly persuaded himself
+that he was doing something to be had in everlasting remembrance,
+only did that which a hundred other vulgar conquerors had done in
+successive ages of the world, whose very names have long since
+perished from the records of mankind.
+
+Thus it is that the human species is for ever engaged in
+laborious idleness.  We put our shoulder to the wheel, and raise
+the vehicle out of the mire in which it was swallowed, and we
+say, I have done something; but the same feat under the same
+circumstances has been performed a thousand times before.  We
+make what strikes us as a profound observation; and, when fairly
+analysed, it turns out to be about as sagacious, as if we told
+what's o'clock, or whether it is rain or sunshine.  Nothing can
+be more delightfully ludicrous, than the important and emphatical
+air with which the herd of mankind enunciate the most trifling
+observations.  With much labour we are delivered of what is to us
+a new thought; and, after a time, we find the same in a musty
+volume, thrown by in a corner, and covered with cobwebs and dust.
+
+This is pleasantly ridiculed in the well known exclamation,
+"Deuce take the old fellows who gave utterance to our wit, before
+we ever thought of it!"
+
+The greater part of the life of the mightiest genius that ever
+existed is spent in doing nothing, and saying nothing.  Pope has
+observed of Shakespear's plays, that, "had all the speeches been
+printed without the names of the persons, we might have applied
+them with certainty to every speaker."  To which another critic
+has rejoined, that that was impossible, since the greater part of
+what every man says is unstamped with peculiarity.  We have all
+more in us of what belongs to the common nature of man, than of
+what is peculiar to the individual.
+
+It is from this beaten, turnpike road, that the favoured few of
+mankind are for ever exerting themselves to escape.  The
+multitude grow up, and are carried away, as grass is carried away
+by the mower.  The parish-register tells when they were born, and
+when they died:  "known by the ends of being to have been."  We
+pass away, and leave nothing behind.  Kings, at whose very glance
+thousands have trembled, for the most part serve for nothing when
+their breath has ceased, but as a sort of distance-posts in the
+race of chronology.  "The dull swain treads on" their relics
+"with his clouted shoon."  Our monuments are as perishable as
+ourselves; and it is the most hopeless of all problems for the
+most part, to tell where the mighty ones of the earth repose.
+
+All men are aware of the frailty of life, and how short is the
+span assigned us.  Hence every one, who feels, or thinks he feels
+the power to do so, is desirous to embalm his memory, and to be
+thought of by a late posterity, to whom his personal presence
+shall be unknown.  Mighty are the struggles; everlasting the
+efforts.  The greater part of these we well know are in vain.  It
+is Aesop's mountain in labour:  "Dire was the tossing, deep the
+groans:" and the result is a mouse.  But is it always so?
+
+This brings us back to the question:  "Is there indeed nothing
+new under the sun?"
+
+Most certainly there is something that is new.  If, as the beast
+dies, so died man, then indeed we should be without hope.  But it
+is his distinguishing faculty, that he can leave something
+behind, to testify that he has lived.  And this is not only true
+of the pyramids of Egypt, and certain other works of human
+industry, that time seems to have no force to destroy.  It is
+often true of a single sentence, a single word, which the
+multitudinous sea is incapable of washing away:
+
+      Quod non imber edax, non Aquilo impotens
+      Possit diruere, aut innumerabilis
+      Annorum series, et fuga temporum.
+
+
+It is the characteristic of the mind and the heart of man, that
+they are progressive.  One word, happily interposed, reaching to
+the inmost soul, may "take away the heart of stone, and introduce
+a heart of flesh."  And, if an individual may be thus changed,
+then his children, and his connections, to the latest page of
+unborn history.
+
+This is the true glory of man, that "one generation doth not pass
+away, and another come, velut unda supervenit undam; but that we
+leave our improvements behind us.  What infinite ages of
+refinement on refinement, and ingenuity on ingenuity, seem each
+to have contributed its quota, to make up the accommodations of
+every day of civilised man; his table, his chair, the bed he lies
+on, the food he eats, the garments that cover him!  It has often
+been said, that the four quarters of the world are put under
+contribution, to provide the most moderate table.  To this what
+mills, what looms, what machinery of a thousand denominations,
+what ship-building, what navigation, what fleets are required!
+Man seems to have been sent into the world a naked, forked,
+helpless animal, on purpose to call forth his ingenuity to supply
+the accommodations that may conduce to his well-being.  The
+saying, that "there is nothing new under the sun," could never
+have been struck out, but in one of the two extreme states of
+man, by the naked savage, or by the highly civilised beings among
+whom the perfection of refinement has produced an artificial
+feeling of uniformity.
+
+The thing most obviously calculated to impress us with a sense of
+the power, and the comparative sublimity of man, is, if we could
+make a voyage of some duration in a balloon, over a considerable
+tract of the cultivated and the desert parts of the earth.  A
+brute can scarcely move a stone out of his way, if it has fallen
+upon the couch where he would repose.  But man cultivates fields,
+and plants gardens; he constructs parks and canals; he turns the
+course of rivers, and stretches vast artificial moles into the
+sea; he levels mountains, and builds a bridge, joining in giddy
+height one segment of the Alps to another; lastly, he founds
+castles, and churches, and towers, and distributes mighty cities
+at his pleasure over the face of the globe.  "The first earth has
+passed away, and another earth has come; and all things are made
+new."
+
+It is true, that the basest treacheries, the most atrocious
+cruelties, butcheries, massacres, violations of all the
+restraints of decency, and all the ties of nature, fields covered
+with dead bodies, and flooded with human gore, are all of them
+vulgar repetitions of what had been acted countless times
+already.  If Nero or Caligula thought to perpetrate that which
+should stand unparalleled, they fell into the grossest error. 
+The conqueror, who should lay waste vast portions of the globe,
+and destroy mighty cities, so that "thorns should come up in the
+palaces, and nettles in the fortresses thereof, and they should
+be a habitation of serpents, and a court for owls, and the wild
+beasts of the desert should meet there," would only do what
+Tamerlane, and Aurengzebe, and Zingis, and a hundred other
+conquerors, in every age and quarter of the world, had done
+before.  The splendour of triumphs, and the magnificence of
+courts, are so essentially vulgar, that history almost disdains
+to record them.
+
+And yet there is something that is new, and that by the reader of
+discernment is immediately felt to be so.
+
+We read of Moses, that he was a child of ordinary birth, and,
+when he was born, was presently marked, as well as all the male
+children of his race, for destruction.  He was unexpectedly
+preserved; and his first act, when he grew up, was to slay an
+Egyptian, one of the race to whom all his countrymen were slaves,
+and to fly into exile.  This man, thus friendless and alone, in
+due time returned, and by the mere energy of his character
+prevailed upon his whole race to make common cause with him, and
+to migrate to a region, in which they should become sovereign and
+independent.  He had no soldiers, but what were made so by the
+ascendancy of his spirit no counsellors but such as he taught to
+be wise, no friends but those who were moved by the sentiment
+they caught from him.  The Jews he commanded were sordid and low
+of disposition, perpetually murmuring against his rule, and at
+every unfavourable accident calling to remembrance "the land of
+Egypt, where they had sat by the fleshpots, and were full."  Yet
+over this race he retained a constant mastery, and finally made
+of them a nation whose customs and habits and ways of thinking no
+time has availed to destroy.  This was a man then, that possessed
+the true secret to make other men his creatures, and lead them
+with an irresistible power wherever he pleased.  This history,
+taken entire, has probably no parallel in the annals of the
+world.
+
+The invasion of Greece by the Persians, and its result, seem to
+constitute an event that stands alone among men.  Xerxes led
+against this little territory an army of 5,280,000 men.  They
+drank up rivers, and cut their way through giant-mountains.  They
+were first stopped at Thermopylae by Leonidas and his three
+hundred Spartans.  They fought for a country too narrow to
+contain the army by which the question was to be tried.  The
+contest was here to be decided between despotism and liberty,
+whether there is a principle in man, by which a handful of
+individuals, pervaded with lofty sentiments, and a conviction of
+what is of most worth in our nature, can defy the brute force,
+and put to flight the attack, of bones, joints and sinews, though
+congregated in multitudes, numberless as the waves of the sea, or
+the sands on its shore.  The flood finally rolled back:  and in
+process of time Alexander, with these Greeks whom the ignorance
+of the East affected to despise, founded another universal
+monarchy on the ruins of Persia.  This is certainly no vulgar
+history.
+
+Christianity is another of those memorable chapters in the annals
+of mankind, to which there is probably no second.  The son of a
+carpenter in a little, rocky country, among a nation despised and
+enslaved, undertook to reform the manners of the people of whom
+he was a citizen.  The reformation he preached was unpalatable to
+the leaders of the state; he was persecuted; and finally suffered
+the death reserved for the lowest malefactors, being nailed to a
+cross.  He was cut off in the very beginning of his career,
+before he had time to form a sect.  His immediate representatives
+and successors were tax-gatherers and fishermen.  What could be
+more incredible, till proved by the event, than that a religion
+thus begun, should have embraced in a manner the whole civilised
+world, and that of its kingdom there should be no visible end? 
+This is a novelty in the history of the world, equally if we
+consider it as brought about by the immediate interposition of
+the author of all things, or regard it, as some pretend to do, as
+happening in the course of mere human events.
+
+Rome, "the eternal city," is likewise a subject that stands out
+from the vulgar history of the human race.  Three times, in three
+successive forms, has she been the mistress of the world.  First,
+by the purity, the simplicity, the single-heartedness, the
+fervour and perseverance of her original character she qualified
+herself to subdue all the nations of mankind.  Next, having
+conquered the earth by her virtue and by the spirit of liberty,
+she was able to maintain her ascendancy for centuries under the
+emperors, notwithstanding all her astonishing profligacy and
+anarchy.  And, lastly, after her secular ascendancy had been
+destroyed by the inroads of the northern barbarians, she rose
+like the phoenix from her ashes, and, though powerless in
+material force, held mankind in subjection by the chains of the
+mind, and the consummateness of her policy.  Never was any thing
+so admirably contrived as the Catholic religion, to subdue the
+souls of men by the power of its worship over the senses, and, by
+its contrivances in auricular confession, purgatory, masses for
+the dead, and its claim magisterially to determine controversies,
+to hold the subjects it had gained in everlasting submission.
+
+The great principle of originality is in the soul of man.  And
+here again we may recur to Greece, the parent of all that is
+excellent in art.  Painting, statuary, architecture, poetry, in
+their most exquisite and ravishing forms, originated in this
+little province.  Is not the Iliad a thing new, and that will for
+ever remain new?  Whether it was written by one man, as I
+believe, or, as the levellers of human glory would have us think,
+by many, there it stands:  all the ages of the world present us
+nothing that can come in competition with it.
+
+Shakespear is another example of unrivalled originality.  His
+fame is like the giant-rivers of the world:  the further it
+flows, the wider it spreads out its stream, and the more
+marvellous is the power with which it sweeps along.
+
+But, in reality, all poetry and all art, that have a genuine
+claim to originality, are new, the smallest, as well as the
+greatest.
+
+It is the mistake of dull minds only, to suppose that every thing
+has been said, that human wit is exhausted, and that we, who have
+unfortunately fallen upon the dregs of time, have no alternative
+left, but either to be silent, or to say over and over again,
+what has been well said already.
+
+There remain yet immense tracts of invention, the mines of which
+have been untouched.  We perceive nothing of the strata of earth,
+and the hidden fountains of water, that we travel over,
+unconscious of the treasures that are immediately within our
+reach, till some person, endowed with the gift of a superior
+sagacity, comes into the country, who appears to see through the
+opake and solid mass, as we see through the translucent air, and
+tells us of things yet undiscovered, and enriches us with
+treasures, of which we had been hitherto entirely ignorant.  The
+nature of the human mind, and the capabilities of our species are
+in like manner a magazine of undiscovered things, till some
+mighty genius comes to break the surface, and shew us the
+wonderful treasures that lay beneath uncalled for and idle.
+
+Human character is like the contents of an ample cabinet, brought
+together by the untired zeal of some curious collector, who
+tickets his rarities with numbers, and has a catalogue in many
+volumes, in which are recorded the description and qualities of
+the things presented to our view.  Among the most splendid
+examples of character which the genius of man has brought to
+light, are Don Quixote and his trusty squire, sir Roger de
+Coverley, Parson Adams, Walter Shandy and his brother Toby.  Who
+shall set bounds to the everlasting variety of nature, as she has
+recorded her creations in the heart of man?  Most of these
+instances are recent, and sufficiently shew that the enterprising
+adventurer, who would aspire to emulate the illustrious men from
+whose writings these examples are drawn, has no cause to despair.
+
+Vulgar observers pass carelessly by a thousand figures in the
+crowded masquerade of human society, which, when inscribed on the
+tablet by the pencil of a master, would prove not less wondrous
+in the power of affording pleasure, nor less rich as themes for
+inexhaustible reflection, than the most admirable of these.  The
+things are there, and all that is wanting is an eye to perceive,
+and a pen to record them.
+
+As to a great degree we may subscribe to the saying of the wise
+man, that "there is nothing new under the sun," so in a certain
+sense it may also be affirmed that nothing is old.  Both of these
+maxims may be equally true.  The prima materia, the atoms of
+which the universe is composed, is of a date beyond all record;
+and the figures which have yet been introduced into the most
+fantastic chronology, may perhaps be incompetent to represent the
+period of its birth.  But the ways in which they may be
+compounded are exhaustless.  It is like what the writers on the
+Doctrine of Chances tell us of the throwing of dice.  How many
+men now exist on the face of the earth?  Yet, if all these were
+brought together, and if, in addition to this, we could call up
+all the men that ever lived, it may be doubted, whether any two
+would be found so much alike, that a clear-sighted and acute
+observer might not surely distinguish the one from the other. 
+Leibnitz informs us, that no two leaves of a tree exist in the
+most spacious garden, that, upon examination, could be pronounced
+perfectly similar[19].
+
+[19] See above, Essay 2.
+
+
+The true question is not, whether any thing can be found that is
+new, but whether the particulars in which any thing is new may
+not be so minute  and trifling, as scarcely to enter for any
+thing, into that grand and comprehensive view of the whole, in
+which matters of obvious insignificance are of no account.
+
+But, if art and the invention of the human mind are exhaustless,
+science is even more notoriously so.  We stand but on the
+threshold of the knowledge of nature, and of the various ways in
+which physical power may be brought to operate for the
+accommodation of man.  This is a business that seems to be
+perpetually in progress; and, like the fall of bodies by the
+power of gravitation, appears to gain in momentum, in proportion
+as it advances to a greater distance from the point at which the
+impulse was given.  The discoveries which at no remote period
+have been made, would, if prophesied of, have been laughed to
+scorn by the ignorant sluggishness of former generations; and we
+are equally ready to regard with incredulity the discoveries yet
+unmade, which will be familiar to our posterity.  Indeed every
+man of a capacious and liberal mind is willing to admit, that the
+progress of human understanding in science, which is now going
+on, is altogether without any limits that by the most penetrating
+genius can be assigned.  It is like a mighty river, that flows on
+for ever and for ever, as far as the words, "for ever," can have
+a meaning to the comprehension of mortals.  The question that
+remains is, our practicable improvement in literature and morals,
+and here those persons who entertain a mean opinion of human
+nature, are constantly ready to tell us that it will be found to
+amount to nothing.  However we may be continually improving in
+mechanical knowledge and ingenuity, we are assured by this party,
+that we shall never surpass what has already been done in poetry
+and literature, and, which is still worse, that, however
+marvellous may be our future acquisitions in science and the
+application of science, we shall be, as much as ever, the
+creatures of that vanity, ostentation, opulence and the spirit of
+exclusive accumulation, which has hitherto, in most countries
+(not in all countries), generated the glaring inequality of
+property, and the oppression of the many for the sake of
+pampering the folly of the few.
+
+There is another circumstance that may be mentioned, which,
+particularly as regards the question of repetition and novelty
+that is now under consideration, may seem to operate in an
+eminent degree in favour of science, while it casts a most
+discouraging veil over poetry and the pure growth of human fancy
+and invention.  Poetry is, after all, nothing more than new
+combinations of old materials.  Nihil est in intellectu, quod non
+fuit prius in sensu.  The poet has perhaps in all languages been
+called a maker, a creator:  but this seems to be a vain-glorious
+and an empty boast.  He is a collector of materials only, which
+he afterwards uses as best he may be able.  He answers to the
+description I have heard given of a tailor, a man who cuts to
+pieces whatever is delivered to him from the loom, that he may
+afterwards sew it together again.  The poet therefore, we may be
+told, adds nothing to the stock of ideas and conceptions already
+laid up in the storehouse of mind.  But the man who is employed
+upon the secrets of nature, is eternally in progress; day after
+day he delivers in to the magazine of materials for thinking and
+acting, what was not there before; he increases the stock, upon
+which human ingenuity and the arts of life are destined to
+operate.  He does not, as the poet may be affirmed by his
+censurers to do, travel for ever in a circle, but continues to
+hasten towards a goal, while at every interval we may mark how
+much further he has proceeded from the point at which his race
+began.
+
+Much may be said in answer to this, and in vindication and honour
+of the poet and the artist.  All that is here alleged to their
+disadvantage, is in reality little better than a sophism.  The
+consideration of the articles he makes use of, does not in sound
+estimate detract from the glories of which he is the artificer. 
+Materiem superat opus.  He changes the nature of what he handles;
+all that he touches is turned into gold.  The manufacture he
+delivers to us is so new, that the thing it previously was, is no
+longer recognisable.  The impression that he makes upon the
+imagination and the heart, the impulses that he communicates to
+the understanding and the moral feeling, are all his own; and,
+"if there is any thing lovely and of good report, if there is any
+virtue and any praise," he may well claim our applauses and our
+thankfulness for what he has effected.
+
+There is a still further advantage that belongs to the poet and
+the votarist of polite literature, which ought to be mentioned,
+as strongly calculated to repress the arrogance of the men of
+science, and the supercilious contempt they are apt to express
+for those who are engrossed by the pursuits of imagination and
+taste.  They are for ever talking of the reality and
+progressiveness of their pursuits, and telling us that every step
+they take is a point gained, and gained for the latest posterity,
+while the poet merely suits himself to the taste of the men among
+whom he lives, writes up to the fashion of the day, and, as our
+manners turn, is sure to be swept away to the gulph of oblivion. 
+But how does the matter really stand?  It is to a great degree
+the very reverse of this.
+
+The natural and experimental philosopher has nothing sacred and
+indestructible in the language and form in which he delivers
+truths.  New discoveries and experiments come, and his individual
+terms and phrases and theories perish.  One race of natural
+philosophers does but prepare the way for another race, which is
+to succeed.  They "blow the trumpet, and give out the play."  And
+they must be contented to perish before the brighter knowledge,
+of which their efforts were but the harbingers.  The Ptolemaic
+system gave way to Tycho Brahe, and his to that of Copernicus. 
+The vortices of Descartes perished before the discoveries of
+Newton; and the philosophy of Newton already begins to grow old,
+and is found to have weak and decaying parts mixed with those
+which are immortal and divine.  In the science of mind Aristotle
+and Plato are set aside; the depth of Malebranche, and the
+patient investigation of Locke have had their day; more
+penetrating, and concise, and lynx-eyed reasoners of our own
+country have succeeded; the German metaphysicians seem to have
+thrust these aside; and it perhaps needs no great degree of
+sagacity to foresee, that Kant and Fichte will at last fare no
+better than those that went before them.
+
+But the poet is immortal.  The verses of Homer are of workmanship
+no less divine, than the armour of his own Achilles.  His poems
+are as fresh and consummate to us now, as they were to the
+Greeks, when the old man of Chios wandered in person through the
+different cities, rehearsing his rhapsodies to the accompaniment
+of his lute.  The language and the thoughts of the poet are
+inextricably woven together; and the first is no more exposed to
+decay and to perish than the last.  Presumptuous innovators have
+attempted to modernise Chaucer, and Spenser, and other authors,
+whose style was supposed to have grown obsolete.  But true taste
+cannot endure the impious mockery.  The very words that occurred
+to these men, when the God descended, and a fire from heaven
+tingled in all their veins, are sacred, are part of themselves;
+and you may as well attempt to preserve the man when you have
+deprived him of all his members, as think to preserve the poet
+when you have taken away the words that he spoke.  No part of his
+glorious effusions must perish; and "the hairs of his head are
+all numbered."
+
+
+
+ESSAY XI.
+OF SELF-LOVE AND BENEVOLENCE.
+
+NO question has more memorably exercised the ingenuity of men who
+have speculated upon the structure of the human mind, than that
+of the motives by which we are actuated in our intercourse with
+our fellow-creatures.  The dictates of a plain and
+unsophisticated understanding on the subject are manifest; and
+they have been asserted in the broadest way by the authors of
+religion, the reformers of mankind, and all persons who have been
+penetrated with zeal and enthusiasm for the true interests of the
+race to which they belong.
+
+"The end of the commandment," say the authors of the New
+Testament, "is love."  "This is the great commandment of the law,
+Thou shalt love thy maker with all thy heart; and the second is
+like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself."  "Though
+I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and give my body to be
+burned, and have not love, it profiteth me nothing."  "For none
+of us liveth to himself; and no man dieth to himself."
+
+The sentiments of the ancient Greeks and Romans, for so many
+centuries as their institutions retained their original purity,
+were cast in a mould of a similar nature.  A Spartan was seldom
+alone; they were always in society with each other.  The love of
+their country and of the public good was their predominant
+passion, they did not imagine that they belonged to themselves,
+but to the state.  After the battle of Leuctra, in which the
+Spartans were defeated by the Thebans, the mothers of those who
+were slain congratulated one another, and went to the temples to
+thank the Gods, that their children had done their duty; while
+the relations of those who survived the defeat were inconsolable.
+
+The Romans were not less distinguished by their self-denying
+patriotism.  It was in this spirit that Brutus put his two sons
+to death for conspiring against their country.  It was in this
+spirit that the Fabii perished at their fort on the Cremera, and
+the Decii devoted themselves for the public.  The rigour of
+self-denial in a true Roman approached to a temper which moderns
+are inclined to denominate savage.
+
+In the times of the ancient republics the impulse of the citizens
+was to merge their own individuality in the interests of the
+state.  They held it their duty to live but for their country. 
+In this spirit they were educated; and the lessons of their early
+youth regulated the conduct of their riper years.
+
+In a more recent period we have learned to model our characters
+by a different standard.  We seldom recollect the society of
+which we are politically members, as a whole, but are broken into
+detached parties, thinking only for the most part of ourselves
+and our immediate connections and attachments.
+
+This change in the sentiments and manners of modern times has
+among its other consequences given birth to a new species of
+philosophy.  We have been taught to affirm, that we can have no
+express and pure regard for our fellow-creatures, but that all
+our benevolence and affection come to us through the strainers of
+a gross or a refined self-love.  The coarser adherents of this
+doctrine maintain, that mankind are in all cases guided by views
+of the narrowest self-interest, and that those who advance the
+highest claims to philanthropy, patriotism, generosity and
+self-sacrifice, are all the time deceiving others, or deceiving
+themselves, and use a plausible and high-sounding language
+merely, that serves no other purpose than to veil from
+observation "that hideous sight, a naked human heart."
+
+The more delicate and fastidious supporters of the doctrine of
+universal self-love, take a different ground.  They affirm that
+"such persons as talk to us of disinterestedness and pure
+benevolence, have not considered with sufficient accuracy the
+nature of mind, feeling and will.  To understand," they say, "is
+one thing, and to choose another.  The clearest proposition that
+ever was stated, has, in itself, no tendency to produce voluntary
+action on the part of the percipient.  It can be only something
+apprehended as agreeable or disagreeable to us, that can operate
+so as to determine the will.  Such is the law of universal
+nature.  We act from the impulse of our own desires and
+aversions; and we seek to effect or avert a thing, merely because
+it is viewed by us as an object of gratification or the contrary.
+
+The virtuous man and the vicious are alike governed by the same
+principle; and it is therefore the proper business of a wise
+instructor of youth, and of a man who would bring his own
+sentiments and feelings into the most praise-worthy frame, to
+teach us to find our interest and gratification in that which
+shall be most beneficial to others."
+
+When we proceed to examine the truth of these statements, it
+certainly is not strictly an argument to say, that the advocate
+of self-love on either of these hypotheses cannot consistently be
+a believer in Christianity, or even a theist, as theism is
+ordinarily understood.  The commandments of the author of the
+Christian religion are, as we have seen, purely disinterested: 
+and, especially if we admit the latter of the two explanations of
+self-love, we shall be obliged to confess, on the hypothesis of
+this new philosophy, that the almighty author of the universe
+never acts in any of his designs either of creation or
+providence, but from a principle of self-love.  In the mean time,
+if this is not strictly an argument, it is however but fair to
+warn the adherents of the doctrine I oppose, of the consequences
+to which their theory leads.  It is my purpose to subvert that
+doctrine by means of the severest demonstration; but I am not
+unwilling, before I begin, to conciliate, as far as may be, the
+good-will of my readers to the propositions I proceed to
+establish.
+
+I will therefore further venture to add, that, upon the
+hypothesis of self-love, there can be no such thing as virtue. 
+There are two circumstances required, to entitle an action to be
+denominated virtuous.  It must have a tendency to produce good
+rather than evil to the race of man, and it must have been
+generated by an intention to produce such good.  The most
+beneficent action that ever was performed, if it did not spring
+from the intention of good to others, is not of the nature of
+virtue.  Virtue, where it exists in any eminence, is a species of
+conduct, modelled upon a true estimate of the good intended to be
+produced.  He that makes a false estimate, and prefers a trivial
+and partial good to an important and comprehensive one, is
+vicious[20].
+
+[20] Political Justice, Book 11, Chap. IV.
+
+
+It is admitted on all hands, that it is possible for a man to
+sacrifice his own existence to that of twenty others.  But the
+advocates of the doctrine of self-love must say, that he does
+this that he may escape from uneasiness, and because he could not
+bear to encounter the inward upbraiding with which he would be
+visited, if he acted otherwise.  This in reality would change his
+action from an act of virtue to an act of vice.  So far as
+belongs to the real merits of the case, his own advantage or
+pleasure is a very insignificant consideration, and the benefit
+to be produced, suppose to a world, is inestimable.  Yet he
+falsely and unjustly prefers the first, and views the latter as
+trivial; nay, separately taken, as not entitled to the smallest
+regard.  If the dictates of impartial justice be taken into the
+account, then, according to the system of self-love, the best
+action that ever was performed, may, for any thing we know, have
+been the action, in the whole world, of the most exquisite and
+deliberate injustice.  Nay, it could not have been otherwise,
+since it produced the greatest good, and therefore was the
+individual instance, in which the greatest good was most directly
+postponed to personal gratification[21].  Such is the spirit of
+the doctrine I undertake to refute.
+
+[21] Political Justice, Book IV, Chap. X.
+
+
+But man is not in truth so poor and pusillanimous a creature as
+this system would represent.
+
+It is time however to proceed to the real merits of the question,
+to examine what in fact is the motive which induces a good man to
+elect a generous mode of proceeding.
+
+Locke is the philosopher, who, in writing on Human Understanding,
+has specially delivered the doctrine, that uneasiness is the
+cause which determines the will, and urges us to act.  He
+says[22], "The motive we have for continuing in the same state,
+is only the present satisfaction we feel in it; the motive to
+change is always some uneasiness:  nothing setting us upon the
+change of state, or upon any new action, but some uneasiness. 
+This is the great motive that works on the mind."
+
+[22] Book II, Chap. XXI, Sect. 29.
+
+
+It is not my concern to enquire, whether Locke by this statement
+meant to assert that self-love is the only principle of human
+action.  It has at any rate been taken to express the doctrine
+which I here propose to refute.
+
+And, in the first place, I say, that, if our business is to
+discover the consideration entertained by the mind which induces
+us to act, this tells us nothing.  It is like the case of the
+Indian philosopher[23], who, being asked what it was that kept
+the earth in its place, answered, that it was supported by an
+elephant, and that elephant again rested on a tortoise.  He must
+be endowed with a slender portion of curiosity, who, being told
+that uneasiness is that which spurs on the mind to act, shall
+rest satisfied with this explanation, and does not proceed to
+enquire, what makes us uneasy?
+
+[23] Locke on Understanding, Book 11, Chap. XIII, Sect. 19.
+
+
+An explanation like this is no more instructive, than it would
+be, if, when we saw a man walking, or grasping a sword or a
+bludgeon, and we enquired into the cause of this phenomenon, any
+one should inform us that he walks, because he has feet, and he
+grasps, because he has hands.
+
+I could not commodiously give to my thoughts their present form,
+unless I had been previously furnished with pens and paper.  But
+it would be absurd to say, that my being furnished with pens and
+paper, is the cause of my writing this Essay on Self-love and
+Benevolence.
+
+The advocates of self-love have, very inartificially and
+unjustly, substituted the abstract definition of a voluntary
+agent, and made that stand for the motive by which he is prompted
+to act.  It is true, that we cannot act without the impulse of
+desire or uneasiness; but we do not think of that desire and
+uneasiness; and it is the thing upon which the mind is fixed that
+constitutes our motive.  In the boundless variety of the acts,
+passions and pursuits of human beings, it is absurd on the face
+of it to say that we are all governed by one motive, and that,
+however dissimilar are the ends we pursue, all this dissimilarity
+is the fruit of a single cause.
+
+One man chooses travelling, another ambition, a third study, a
+fourth voluptuousness and a mistress.  Why do these men take so
+different courses?
+
+Because one is partial to new scenes, new buildings, new manners,
+and the study of character.  Because a second is attracted by the
+contemplation of wealth and power.  Because a third feels a
+decided preference for the works of Homer, or Shakespear, or
+Bacon, or Euclid.  Because a fourth finds nothing calculated to
+stir his mind in comparison with female beauty, female
+allurements, or expensive living.
+
+Each of these finds the qualities he likes, intrinsically in the
+thing he chooses.  One man feels himself strongly moved, and
+raised to extacy, by the beauties of nature, or the magnificence
+of architecture.  Another is ravished with the divine
+excellencies of Homer, or of some other of the heroes of
+literature.  A third finds nothing delights him so much as the
+happiness of others, the beholding that happiness increased, and
+seeing pain and oppression and sorrow put to flight.  The cause
+of these differences is, that each man has an individual internal
+structure, directing his partialities, one man to one thing, and
+another to another.
+
+Few things can exceed the characters of human beings in variety. 
+There must be something abstractedly in the nature of mind, which
+renders it accessible to these varieties.  For the present we
+will call it taste.  One man feels his spirits regaled  with the
+sight of those things which constitute wealth, another in
+meditating the triumphs of Alexander or Caesar, and a third in
+viewing the galleries of the Louvre.  Not one of these thinks in
+the outset of appropriating these objects to himself; not one of
+them begins with aspiring to be the possessor of vast opulence,
+or emulating the triumphs of Caesar, or obtaining in property the
+pictures and statues the sight of which affords him so exquisite
+delight.  Even the admirer of female beauty, does not at first
+think of converting this attractive object into a mistress, but
+on the contrary desires, like Pygmalion, that the figure he
+beholds might become his solace and companion, because he had
+previously admired it for itself.
+
+Just so the benevolent man is an individual who finds a peculiar
+delight in contemplating the contentment, the peace and heart's
+ease of other men, and sympathises in no ordinary degree with
+their sufferings.  He rejoices in the existence and diffusion of
+human happiness, though he should not have had the smallest share
+in giving birth to the thing he loves.  It is because such are
+his tastes, and what above all things he prefers, that he
+afterwards becomes distinguished by the benevolence of his
+conduct.
+
+The reflex act of the mind, which these new philosophers put
+forward as the solution of all human pursuits, rarely presents
+itself but to the speculative enquirer in his closet.  The savage
+never dreams of it.  The active man, engaged in the busy scenes
+of life, thinks little, and on rare occasions of himself, but
+much, and in a manner for ever, of the objects of his pursuit.
+
+Some men are uniform in their character, and from the cradle to
+the grave prefer the same objects that first awakened their
+partialities.  Other men are inconsistent and given to change,
+are "every thing by starts, and nothing long."  Still it is
+probable that, in most cases, he who performs an act of
+benevolence, feels for the time that he has a peculiar delight in
+contemplating the good of his fellow-man.
+
+The doctrine of the modern philosophers on this point, is in many
+ways imbecil and unsound.  It is inauspicious to their creed,
+that the reflex act of the mind is purely the affair of
+experience.  Why did the liberal-minded man perform his first act
+of benevolence?  The answer of these persons ought to be, because
+the recollection of a generous deed is a source of the truest
+delight.  But there is an absurdity on the face of this solution.
+
+We do not experimentally know the delight which attends the
+recollection of a generous deed, till a generous deed has been
+performed by us.  We do not learn these things from books.  And
+least of all is this solution to the purpose, when the business
+is to find a solution that suits the human mind universally, the
+unlearned as well as the learned, the savage as well as the sage.
+
+And surely it is inconsistent with all sound reasoning, to
+represent that as the sole spring of our benevolent actions,
+which by the very terms will not fit the first benevolent act in
+which any man engaged.
+
+The advocates of the doctrine of "self-love the source of all our
+actions," are still more puzzled, when the case set before them
+is that of the man, who flies, at an instant's warning, to save
+the life of the child who has fallen into the river, or the
+unfortunate whom he beholds in the upper story of a house in
+flames.  This man, as might be illustrated in a thousand
+instances, treats his own existence as unworthy of notice, and
+exposes it to multiplied risks to effect the object to which he
+devotes himself.
+
+They are obliged to say, that this man anticipates the joy he
+will feel in the recollection of a noble act, and the cutting and
+intolerable pain he will experience in the consciousness that a
+human being has perished, whom it was in his power to save.  It
+is in vain that we tell them that, without a moment's
+consideration, he tore off his clothes, or plunged into the
+stream with his clothes on, or rushed up a flaming stair-case. 
+Still they tell us, that he recollected what compunctious
+visitings would be his lot if he remained supine--he felt the
+sharpest uneasiness at sight of the accident before him, and it
+was to get rid of that uneasiness, and not for the smallest
+regard to the unhappy being he has been the means to save, that
+he entered on the hazardous undertaking.
+
+Uneasiness, the knowledge of what inwardly passes in the mind, is
+a thing not in the slightest degree adverted to but in an
+interval of leisure.  No; the man here spoken of thinks of
+nothing but the object immediately before his eyes; he adverts
+not at all to himself; he acts only with an undeveloped, confused
+and hurried consciousness that he may be of some use, and may
+avert the instantly impending calamity.  He has scarcely even so
+much reflection as amounts to this.
+
+The history of man, whether national or individual, and
+consequently the acts of human creatures which it describes, are
+cast in another mould than that which the philosophy of self-love
+sets before us.  A topic that from the earliest accounts
+perpetually presents itself in the records of mankind, is
+self-sacrifice, parents sacrificing themselves for their
+children, and children for their parents.  Cimon, the Athenian,
+yet in the flower of his youth, voluntarily became the inmate of
+a prison, that the body of his father might receive the honours
+of sepulture.  Various and unquestionable are the examples of
+persons who have exposed themselves to destruction, and even
+petitioned to die, that so they might save the lives of those,
+whose lives they held dearer than their own.  Life is indeed a
+thing, that is notoriously set at nothing by generous souls, who
+have fervently devoted themselves to an overwhelming purpose. 
+There have been instances of persons, exposed to all the horrors
+of famine, where one has determined to perish by that slowest and
+most humiliating of all the modes of animal destruction, that
+another, dearer to him than life itself, might, if possible, be
+preserved.
+
+What is the true explanation of these determinations of the human
+will?  Is it, that the person, thus consigning himself to death,
+loved nothing but himself, regarded only the pleasure he might
+reap, or the uneasiness he was eager to avoid?  Or, is it, that
+he had arrived at the exalted point of self-oblivion, and that
+his whole soul was penetrated and ingrossed with the love of
+those for whom he conceived so exalted a partiality?
+
+This sentiment so truly forms a part of our nature, that a
+multitude of absurd practices, and a multitude of heart-rending
+fables, have been founded upon the consciousness of man in
+different ages and nations, that these modes of thinking form a
+constituent part of our common existence.  In India there was
+found a woman, whose love to the deceased partner of her soul was
+so overwhelming, that she resolved voluntarily to perish on his
+funeral pile.  And this example became so fascinating and
+admirable, that, by insensible degrees, it grew into a national
+custom with the Hindoos, that, by a sort of voluntary constraint,
+the widows of all men of a certain caste, should consign
+themselves to the flames with the dead bodies of their husbands. 
+The story of Zopyrus cutting off his nose and ears, and of
+Curtius leaping into the gulph, may be fictitious:  but it was
+the consciousness of those by whom these narratives were written
+that they drew their materials from the mighty store-house of the
+heart of man, that prompted them to record them.  The
+institutions of clientship and clans, so extensively diffused in
+different ages of the world, rests upon this characteristic of
+our nature, that multitudes of men may be trained and educated
+so, as to hold their existence at no price, when the life of the
+individual they were taught unlimitedly to reverence might be
+preserved, or might be defended at the risk of their destruction.
+
+The principal circumstance that divides our feelings for others
+from our feelings for ourselves, and that gives, to satirical
+observers, and superficial thinkers, an air of exclusive
+selfishness to the human mind, lies in this, that we can fly from
+others, but cannot fly from ourselves.  While I am sitting by the
+bed-side of the sufferer, while I am listening to the tale of his
+woes, there is comparatively but a slight line of demarcation,
+whether they are his sorrows or my own.  My sympathy is
+vehemently excited towards him, and I feel his twinges and
+anguish in a most painful degree.  But I can quit his apartment
+and the house in which he dwells, can go out in the fields, and
+feel the fresh air of heaven fanning my hair, and playing upon my
+cheeks.  This is at first but a very imperfect relief.  His image
+follows me; I cannot forget what I have heard and seen; I even
+reproach myself for the mitigation I involuntarily experience. 
+But man is the creature of his senses.  I am every moment further
+removed, both in time and place, from the object that distressed
+me.  There he still lies upon the bed of agony:  but the sound of
+his complaint, and the sight of all that expresses his suffering,
+are no longer before me.  A short experience of human life
+convinces us that we have this remedy always at hand ["I am
+unhappy, only while I please"[24]; and we soon come therefore to
+anticipate the cure, and so, even while we are in the presence of
+the sufferer, to feel that he and ourselves are not perfectly
+one.
+
+[24] Douglas.
+
+
+But with our own distempers and adversities it is altogether
+different.  It is this that barbs the arrow.  We may change the
+place of our local existence; but we cannot go away from
+ourselves.  With chariots, and embarking ourselves on board of
+ships, we may seek to escape from the enemy.  But grief and
+apprehension enter the vessel along with us; and, when we mount
+on horseback, the discontent that specially annoyed us, gets up
+behind, and clings to our sides with a hold never to be
+loosened[25].
+
+[25] Horace.
+
+
+Is it then indeed a proof of selfishness, that we are in a
+greater or less degree relieved from the anguish we endured for
+our friend, when other objects occupy us, and we are no longer
+the witnesses of his sufferings?  If this were true, the same
+argument would irresistibly prove, that we are the most generous
+of imaginable beings, the most disregardful of whatever relates
+to ourselves.  Is it not the first ejaculation of the miserable,
+"Oh, that I could fly from myself?  Oh, for a thick, substantial
+sleep!" What the desperate man hates is his own identity.  But he
+knows that, if for a few moments he loses himself in
+forgetfulness, he will presently awake to all that distracted
+him.  He knows that he must act his part to the end, and drink
+the bitter cup to the dregs.  He can do none of these things by
+proxy.  It is the consciousness of the indubitable future, from
+which we can never be divorced, that gives to our present
+calamity its most fearful empire.  Were it not for this great
+line of distinction, there are many that would feel not less for
+their friend than for themselves.  But they are aware, that his
+ruin will not make them beggars, his mortal disease will not
+bring them to the tomb, and that, when he is dead, they may yet
+be reserved for many years of health, of consciousness and
+vigour.
+
+The language of the hypothesis of self-love was well adapted to
+the courtiers of the reign of Louis the Fourteenth.  The language
+of disinterestedness was adapted to the ancient republicans in
+the purest times of Sparta and Rome.
+
+But these ancients were not always disinterested; and the moderns
+are not always narrow, self-centred and cold.  The ancients paid,
+though with comparative infrequency, the tax imposed upon
+mortals, and thought of their own gratification and ease; and the
+moderns are not utterly disqualified for acts of heroic
+affection.
+
+It is of great consequence that men should come to think
+correctly on this subject.  The most snail-blooded man that
+exists, is not so selfish as he pretends to be.  In spite of all
+the indifference he professes towards the good of others, he will
+sometimes be detected in a very heretical state of sensibility
+towards his wife, his child or his friend; he will shed tears at
+a tale of distress, and make considerable sacrifices of his own
+gratification for the relief of others.
+
+But his creed is a pernicious one.  He who for ever thinks, that
+his "charity must begin at home," is in great danger of becoming
+an indifferent citizen, and of withering those feelings of
+philanthropy, which in all sound estimation constitute the
+crowning glory of man.  He will perhaps have a reasonable
+affection towards what he calls his own flesh and blood, and may
+assist even a stranger in a case of urgent distress.--But it is
+dangerous to trifle with the first principles and sentiments of
+morality.  And this man will scarcely in any case have his mind
+prepared to hail the first dawnings of human improvement, and to
+regard all that belongs to the welfare of his kind as parcel of
+his own particular estate.
+
+The creed of self-love will always have a tendency to make us
+Frenchmen in the frivolous part of that character, and Dutchmen
+in the plodding and shopkeeping spirit of barter and sale.  There
+is no need that we should beat down the impulse of heroism in the
+human character, and be upon our guard against the effervescences
+and excess of a generous sentiment.  One of the instructors of my
+youth was accustomed to say to his pupils, "Do not be afraid to
+commit your thoughts to paper in all the fervour and glow of your
+first conception:  when you come to look at them the next day,
+you will find this gone off to a surprising degree."  As this was
+no ill precept for literary composition, even so in our actions
+and moral conduct we shall be in small danger of being too
+warm-hearted and too generous.
+
+Modern improvements in education are earnest in recommending to
+us the study of facts, and that we should not waste the time of
+young persons upon the flights of imagination.  But it is to
+imagination that we are indebted for our highest enjoyments; it
+tames the ruggedness of uncivilised nature, and is the
+never-failing associate of all the considerable advances of
+social man, whether in throwing down the strong fences of
+intellectual slavery, or in giving firmness and duration to the
+edifice of political freedom.
+
+And who does not feel that every thing depends upon the creed we
+embrace, and the discipline we exercise over our own souls?
+
+The disciple of the theory of self-love, if of a liberal
+disposition, will perpetually whip himself forward "with loose
+reins," upon a spiritless Pegasus, and say, "I will do generous
+things; I will not bring into contempt the master I serve--though
+I am conscious all the while that this is but a delusion, and
+that, however I brag of generosity, I do not set a step forward,
+but singly for my own ends, and my own gratification." 
+Meanwhile, this is all a forced condition of thought; and the man
+who cherishes it, will be perpetually falling back into the cold,
+heartless convictions he inwardly retains.  Self-love is the
+unwholesome, infectious atmosphere in which he dwells; and,
+however he may seek to rise, the wings of his soul will eternally
+be drawn downwards, and he cannot be pervaded, as he might have
+been, with the free spirit of genuine philanthropy.  To be
+consistent, he ought continually to grow colder and colder; and
+the romance, which fired his youth, and made him forget the
+venomous potion he had swallowed, will fade away in age,
+rendering him careless of all but himself, and indifferent to the
+adversity and sufferings of all of whom he hears, and all with
+whom he is connected.
+
+On the other hand, the man who has embraced the creed of
+disinterested benevolence, will know that it is not his fitting
+element to "live for himself, or to die for himself."  Whether he
+is under the dominion of family-affection, friendship,
+patriotism, or a zeal for his brethren of mankind, he will feel
+that he is at home.  The generous man therefore looks forward to
+the time when the chilling and wretched philosophy of the reign
+of Louis the Fourteenth shall be forgotten, and a fervent desire
+for the happiness and improvement of the human species shall
+reign in all hearts.
+
+I am not especially desirous of sheltering my opinions under the
+authority of great names:  but, in a question of such vital
+importance to the true welfare of men in society, no fair
+advantage should be neglected.  The author of the system of
+"self-love the source of all our actions" was La Rochefoucault;
+and the whole herd of the French philosophers have not been
+ashamed to follow in the train of their vaunted master.  I am
+grieved to say, that, as I think, the majority of my refining and
+subtilising countrymen of the present day have enlisted under his
+banner.  But the more noble and generous view of the subject has
+been powerfully supported by Shaftesbury, Butler, Hutcheson and
+Hume.  On the last of these I particularly pique myself; inasmuch
+as, though he became naturalised as a Frenchman in a vast variety
+of topics, the greatness of his intellectual powers exempted him
+from degradation in this.
+
+That however which I would chiefly urge in the way of authority,
+is the thing mentioned in the beginning of this Essay, I mean,
+the sentiments that have animated the authors of religion, that
+characterise the best ages of Greece and Rome, and that in all
+cases display themselves when the loftiest and most generous
+sentiments of the heart are called into action.  The opposite
+creed could only have been engendered in the dregs of a corrupt
+and emasculated court; and human nature will never shew itself
+what it is capable of being, till the last remains of a doctrine,
+invented in the latter part of the seventeenth century, shall
+have been consigned to the execration they deserve.
+
+
+
+ESSAY XII.
+OF THE LIBERTY OF HUMAN ACTIONS.
+
+The question, which has been attended with so long and obstinate
+debates, concerning the metaphysical doctrines of liberty and
+necessity, and the freedom of human actions, is not even yet
+finally and satisfactorily settled.
+
+The negative is made out by an argument which seems to amount to
+demonstration, that every event requires a cause, a cause why it
+is as it is and not otherwise, that the human will is guided by
+motives, and is consequently always ruled by the strongest
+motive, and that we can never choose any thing, either without a
+motive of preference, or in the way of following the weaker, and
+deserting the stronger motive[26].
+
+[26] Political Justice, Book IV, Chap. VII.
+
+
+Why is it then that disbelief or doubt should still subsist in a
+question so fully decided?
+
+For the same reason that compels us to reject many other
+demonstrations.  The human mind is so constituted as to oblige
+us, if not theoretically, at least practically, to reject
+demonstration, and adhere to our senses.
+
+The case is thus in the great question of the non-existence of an
+external world, or of matter.  How ever much the understanding
+may be satisfied of the truth of the proposition by the arguments
+of Berkeley and others, we no sooner go out into actual life,
+than we become convinced, in spite of our previous scepticism or
+unbelief, of the real existence of the table, the chair, and the
+objects around us, and of the permanence and reality of the
+persons, both body and mind, with whom we have intercourse.  If
+we were not, we should soon become indifferent to their pleasure
+and pain, and in no long time reason ourselves into the opinion
+that the one was not more desirable than the other, and conduct
+ourselves accordingly.
+
+But there is a great difference between the question of a
+material world, and the question of liberty and necessity.  The
+most strenuous Berkleian can never say, that there is any
+contradiction or impossibility in the existence of matter.  All
+that he can consistently and soberly maintain is, that, if the
+material world exists, we can never perceive it, and that our
+sensations, and trains of impressions and thinking go on wholly
+independent of that existence.
+
+But the question of the freedom of human actions is totally of
+another class.  To say that in our choice we reject the stronger
+motive, and that we choose a thing merely because we choose it,
+is sheer nonsense and absurdity; and whoever with a sound
+understanding will fix his mind upon the state of the question
+will perceive its impossibility.
+
+In the mean time it is not less true, that every man, the
+necessarian as well as his opponent, acts on the assumption of
+human liberty, and can never for a moment, when he enters into
+the scenes of real life, divest himself of this persuasion.
+
+Let us take separately into our consideration the laws of matter
+and of mind.  We acknowledge generally in both an established
+order of antecedents and consequents, or of causes and effects. 
+This is the sole foundation of human prudence and of all
+morality.  It is because we foresee that certain effects will
+follow from a certain mode of conduct, that we act in one way
+rather than another.  It is because we foresee that, if the soil
+is prepared in a certain way, and if seed is properly scattered
+and covered up in the soil thus prepared, a crop will follow,
+that we engage in the labours of agriculture.  In the same
+manner, it is because we foresee that, if lessons are properly
+given, and a young person has them clearly explained to him,
+certain benefits will result, and because we are apprised of the
+operation of persuasion, admonition, remonstrance, menace,
+punishment and reward, that we engage in the labours of
+education.  All the studies of the natural philosopher and the
+chemist, all our journeys by land and our voyages by sea, and all
+the systems and science of government, are built upon this
+principle, that from a certain method of proceeding, regulated by
+the precepts of wisdom and experience, certain effects may be
+expected to follow.
+
+Yet, at the same time that we admit of a regular series of cause
+and effect in the operations both of matter and mind, we never
+fail, in our reflections upon each, to ascribe to them an
+essential difference.  In the laws by which a falling body
+descends to the earth, and by which the planets are retained in
+their orbits, in a word, in all that relates to inanimate nature,
+we readily assent to the existence of absolute laws, so that,
+when we have once ascertained the fundamental principles of
+astronomy and physics, we rely with perfect assurance upon the
+invariable operation of these laws, yesterday, to-day, and for
+ever.  As long as the system of things, of which we are
+spectators, and in which we act our several parts, shall remain,
+so long have the general phenomena of nature gone on unchanged
+for more years of past ages than we can define, and will in all
+probability continue to operate for as many ages to come.  We
+admit of no variation, but firmly believe that, if we were
+perfectly acquainted with all the causes, we could, without
+danger of error, predict all the effects.  We are satisfied that,
+since first the machine of the universe was set going, every
+thing in inanimate nature has taken place in a regular course,
+and nothing has happened and can happen, otherwise than as it
+actually has been and will be.
+
+But we believe, or, more accurately speaking, we feel, that it is
+otherwise in the universe of mind.  Whoever attentively observes
+the phenomena of thinking and sentient beings, will be convinced,
+that men and animals are under the influence of motives, that we
+are subject to the predominance of the passions, of love and
+hatred, of desire and aversion, of sorrow and joy, and that the
+elections we make are regulated by impressions supplied to us by
+these passions.  But we are fully penetrated with the notion,
+that mind is an arbiter, that it sits on its throne, and decides,
+as an absolute prince, this may or that; in short, that, while
+inanimate nature proceeds passively in an eternal chain of cause
+and effect, mind is endowed with an initiating power, and forms
+its determinations by an inherent and indefeasible prerogative.
+
+Hence arises the idea of contingency relative to the acts of
+living and sentient beings, and the opinion that, while, in the
+universe of matter, every thing proceeds in regular course, and
+nothing has happened or can happen, otherwise than as it actually
+has been or will be, in the determinations and acts of living
+beings each occurrence may be or not be, and waits the mastery of
+mind to decide whether the event shall be one way or the other,
+both issues being equally possible till that decision has been
+made.
+
+Thus, as was said in the beginning, we have demonstration, all
+the powers of our reasoning faculty, on one side, and the
+feeling, of our minds, an inward persuasion of which with all our
+efforts we can never divest ourselves, on the other.  This
+phenomenon in the history of every human creature, had aptly
+enough been denominated, the "delusive sense of liberty[27]."
+
+[27] The first writer, by whom this proposition was distinctly
+enunciated, seems to have been Lord Kaimes, in his Essays on the
+Principles of Morality and Natural Religion, published in 1751. 
+But this ingenious author was afterwards frightened with the
+boldness of his own conclusions, and in the subsequent editions
+of his work endeavoured ineffectually to explain away what he had
+said.
+
+
+And, though the philosopher in his closet will for the most part
+fully assent to the doctrine of the necessity of human actions,
+yet this indestructible feeling of liberty, which accompanies us
+from the cradle to the grave, is entitled to our serious
+attention, and has never obtained that consideration from the
+speculative part of mankind, which must by no means be withheld,
+if we would properly enter into the mysteries of our nature.  The
+necessarian has paid it very imperfect attention to the impulses
+which form the character of man, if he omits this chapter in the
+history of mind, while on the other hand the advocate of free
+will, if he would follow up his doctrine rigorously into all its
+consequences, would render all speculations on human character
+and conduct superfluous, put an end to the system of persuasion,
+admonition, remonstrance, menace, punishment and reward,
+annihilate the very essence of civil government, and bring to a
+close all distinction between the sane person and the maniac.
+
+With the disciples of the latter of these doctrines I am by no
+means specially concerned.  I am fully persuaded, as far as the
+powers of my understanding can carry me, that the phenomena of
+mind are governed by laws altogether as inevitable as the
+phenomena of matter, and that the decisions of our will are
+always in obedience to the impulse of the strongest motive.
+
+The consequences of the principle implanted in our nature, by
+which men of every creed, when they descend into the scene of
+busy life, pronounce themselves and their fellow-mortals to be
+free agents, are sufficiently memorable.
+
+From hence there springs what we call conscience in man, and a
+sense of praise or blame due to ourselves and others for the
+actions we perform.
+
+How poor, listless and unenergetic would all our performances be,
+but for this sentiment!  It is in vain that I should talk to
+myself or others, of the necessity of human actions, of the
+connection between cause and effect, that all industry, study and
+mental discipline will turn to account, and this with infinitely
+more security on the principle of necessity, than on the opposite
+doctrine, every thing I did would be without a soul.  I should
+still say, Whatever I may do, whether it be right or wrong, I
+cannot help it; wherefore then should I trouble the master-spirit
+within me?  It is either the calm feeling of self-approbation, or
+the more animated swell of the soul, the quick beatings of the
+pulse, the enlargement of the heart, the glory sparkling in the
+eye, and the blood flushing into the cheek, that sustains me in
+all my labours.  This turns the man into what we conceive of a
+God, arms him with prowess, gives him a more than human courage,
+and inspires him with a resolution and perseverance that nothing
+can subdue.
+
+In the same manner the love or hatred, affection or alienation,
+we entertain for our fellow-men, is mainly referable for its
+foundation to the "delusive sense of liberty."  "We approve of a
+sharp knife rather than a blunt one, because its capacity is
+greater.  We approve of its being employed in carving food,
+rather than in maiming men or other animals, because that
+application of its capacity is preferable.  But all approbation
+or preference is relative to utility or general good.  A knife is
+as capable as a man, of being employed in purposes of utility;
+and the one is no more free than the other as to its employment. 
+The mode in which a knife is made subservient to these purposes,
+is by material impulse.  The mode in which a man is made
+subservient, is by inducement and persuasion.  But both are
+equally the affair of necessity[28]."  These are the sentiments
+dictated to us by the doctrine of the necessity of human actions.
+
+[28] Political Justice, Book IV, Chap. VIII.
+
+
+But how different are the feelings that arise within us, as soon
+as we enter into the society of our fellow-creatures!  "The end
+of the commandment is love."  It is the going forth of the heart
+towards those to whom we are bound by the ties of a common
+nature, affinity, sympathy or worth, that is the luminary of the
+moral world.  Without it there would have been "a huge eclipse of
+sun and moon;" or at best, as a well-known writer[29] expresses
+it in reference to another subject, we should have lived in "a
+silent and drab-coloured creation."  We are prepared by the power
+that made us for feelings and emotions; and, unless these come to
+diversify and elevate our existence, we should waste our days in
+melancholy, and scarcely be able to sustain ourselves.  The
+affection we entertain for those towards whom our partiality and
+kindness are excited, is the life of our life.  It is to this we
+are indebted for all our refinement, and, in the noblest sense of
+the word, for all our humanity.  Without it we should have had no
+sentiment (a word, however abused, which, when properly defined,
+comprises every thing that is the crown of our nature), and no
+poetry.--Love and hatred, as they regard our fellow-creatures, in
+contradistinction to the complacency, or the feeling of an
+opposite nature, which is excited in us towards inanimate
+objects, arc entirely the offspring of the delusive sense of
+liberty.
+
+[29] Thomas Paine.
+
+
+The terms, praise and blame, express to a great degree the same
+sentiments as those of love and hatred, with this difference,
+that praise and blame in their simplest sense apply to single
+actions, whereas love and hatred are produced in us by the sum of
+those actions or tendencies, which constitute what we call
+character.  There is also another difference, that love and
+hatred are engendered in us by other causes as well as moral
+qualities; but praise and blame, in the sense in which they are
+peculiarly applied to our fellow-mortals, are founded on moral
+qualities only.  In love and hatred however, when they are
+intense or are lasting, some reference to moral qualities is
+perhaps necessarily implied.  The love between the sexes, unless
+in cases where it is of a peculiarly transient nature, always
+comprises in it a belief that the party who is the object of our
+love, is distinguished by tendencies of an amiable nature, which
+we expect to see manifesting themselves in affectionate
+attentions and acts of kindness.  Even the admiration we
+entertain for the features, the figure, and personal graces of
+the object of our regard, is mixed with and heightened by our
+expectation of actions and tones that generate approbation, and,
+if divested of this, would be of small signification or
+permanence.  In like manner in the ties of affinity, or in cases
+where we are impelled by the consideration, "He also is a man as
+well as I," the excitement will carry us but a little way, unless
+we discover in the being towards whom we are moved some
+peculiarities which may beget a moral partiality and regard.
+
+And, as towards our fellow-creatures, so in relation to
+ourselves, our moral sentiments are all involved with, and take
+their rise in, the delusive sense of liberty.  It is in this that
+is contained the peculiar force of the terms virtue, duty, guilt
+and desert.  We never pronounce these words without thinking of
+the action to which they refer, as that which might or might not
+be done, and therefore unequivocally approve or disapprove in
+ourselves and others.  A virtuous man, as the term is understood
+by all, as soon as we are led to observe upon those qualities,
+and the exhibition of those qualities in actual life, which
+constitute our nature, is a man who, being in full possession of
+the freedom of human action, is engaged in doing those things
+which a sound judgment of the tendencies of what we do pronounces
+to be good.
+
+Duty is a term that can scarcely be said to have a meaning,
+except that which it derives from the delusive sense of liberty. 
+According to the creed of the necessarian, it expresses that mode
+of action on the part of the individual, which constitutes the
+best possible application of his capacity to the general
+benefit[30].  In the mean time, if we confine ourselves to this
+definition, it may as well be taken to describe the best
+application of a knife, or any other implement proceeding from
+the hands of the manufacturer, as of the powers of a human being.
+
+But we surely have a very different idea in our minds, when we
+employ the term duty.  It is not agreeable to the use of language
+that we should use this term, except we speak of a being in the
+exercise of volition.
+
+[30] Political Justice, Book II, Chap. IV.
+
+
+Duty then means that which may justly be required of a human
+creature in the possession of liberty of action.  It includes in
+its proper sense the conception of the empire of will, the notion
+that mind is an arbiter, that it sits on its throne, and decides,
+as an absolute prince, this way or that.
+
+Duty is the performance of what is due, the discharge of a debt
+(debitum).  But a knife owes nothing, and can in no sense be said
+to be held to one sort of application rather than another; the
+debt can only belong to a human being in possession of his
+liberty, by whom the knife may be applied laudably or otherwise.
+
+A multitude of terms instantly occur to us, the application of
+which is limited in the same manner as the term duty is limited: 
+such are, to owe, obligation, debt, bond, right, claim, sin,
+crime, guilt, merit and desert.  Even reward and punishment,
+however they may be intelligible when used merely in the sense of
+motives employed, have in general acceptation a sense peculiarly
+derived from the supposed freedom of the human will.
+
+The mode therefore in which the advocates of the doctrine of
+necessity have universally talked and written, is one of the most
+memorable examples of the hallucination of the human intellect. 
+They have at all times recommended that we should translate the
+phrases in which we usually express ourselves on the hypothesis
+of liberty, into the phraseology of necessity, that we should
+talk no other language than that which is in correspondence with
+the severest philosophy, and that we should exert ourselves to
+expel all fallacious notions and delusions so much as from our
+recollection.  They did not perceive what a wide devastation and
+destruction they were proposing of all the terms and phrases that
+are in use in the communications between man and man in actual
+life.--They might as well have recommended that we should
+rigorously bear in mind on the ordinary occasions of life, that
+there is no such thing as colour, that which we ordinary call by
+that name having no existence in external objects, but belonging
+only to our way of perceiving them.
+
+The language which is suggested to us by the conception of the
+freedom of human actions, moulds the very first articulations of
+a child, "I will," and "I will not;" and is even distinctly
+conveyed by his gestures, before he arrives at the power of
+articulation.  This is the explanation and key to his vehement
+and ungovernable movements, and his rebellion.  The petulance of
+the stripling, the fervent and energetic exertions of the
+warrior, and the calm and unalterable resolution of the sage, all
+imply the same thing.  Will, and a confidence in its efficiency,
+"travel through, nor quit us till we die."  It is this which
+inspires us with invincible perseverance, and heroic energies,
+while without it we should be the most inert and soulless of
+blocks, the shadows of what history records and poetry
+immortalises, and not men.
+
+Free will is an integral part of the science of man, and may be
+said to constitute its most important chapter.  We might with as
+much propriety overlook the intelligence of the senses, that
+medium which acquaints us with an external world or what we call
+such, we might as well overlook the consideration of man's
+reason, his imagination or taste, as fail to dwell with earnest
+reflection and exposition upon that principle which lies at the
+foundation of our moral energies, fills us with a moral
+enthusiasm, prompts all our animated exertions on the theatre of
+the world, whether upon a wide or a narrow scale, and penetrates
+us with the most lively and fervent approbation or disapprobation
+of the acts of ourselves and others in which the forwarding or
+obstructing human happiness is involved.
+
+But, though the language of the necessarian is at war with the
+indestructible feelings of the human mind, and though his
+demonstrations will for ever crumble into dust, when brought to
+the test of the activity of real life, yet his doctrines, to the
+reflecting and enlightened, will by no means be without their
+use.  In the sobriety of the closet, we inevitably assent to his
+conclusions; nor is it easy to conceive how a rational man and a
+philosopher abstractedly can entertain a doubt of the necessity
+of human actions.  And the number of these persons is perpetually
+increasing; enlarged and dispassionate views of the nature of man
+and the laws of the universe are rapidly spreading in the world. 
+We cannot indeed divest ourselves of love and hatred, of the
+sentiments of praise and blame, and the ideas of virtue, duty,
+obligation, debt, bond, right, claim, sin, crime, guilt, merit
+and desert.  And, if we could do so, the effects would be most
+pernicious, and the world be rendered a blank.  We shall however
+unquestionably, as our minds grow enlarged, be brought to the
+entire and unreserved conviction, that man is a machine, that he
+is governed by external impulses, and is to be regarded as the
+medium only through the intervention of which previously existing
+causes are enabled to produce certain effects.  We shall see,
+according to an expressive phrase, that he "could not help it,"
+and, of consequence, while we look down from the high tower of
+philosophy upon the scene of human affairs, our prevailing
+emotion will be pity, even towards the criminal, who, from the
+qualities he brought into the world, and the various
+circumstances which act upon him from infancy, and form his
+character, is impelled to be the means of the evils, which we
+view with so profound disapprobation, and the existence of which
+we so entirely regret.
+
+There is an old axiom of philosophy, which counsels us to "think
+with the learned, and talk with the vulgar;" and the practical
+application of this axiom runs through the whole scene of human
+affairs.  Thus the most learned astronomer talks of the rising
+and setting of the sun, and forgets in his ordinary discourse
+that the earth is not for ever at rest, and does not constitute
+the centre of the universe.  Thus, however we reason respecting
+the attributes of inanimate matter and the nature of sensation,
+it never occurs to us, when occupied with the affairs of actual
+life, that there is no heat in fire, and no colour in the
+rainbow.
+
+In like manner, when we contemplate the acts of ourselves and our
+neighbours, we can never divest ourselves of the delusive sense
+of the liberty of human actions, of the sentiment of conscience,
+of the feelings of love and hatred, the impulses of praise and
+blame, and the notions of virtue, duty, obligation, right, claim,
+guilt, merit and desert.  And it has sufficiently appeared in the
+course of this Essay, that it is not desirable that we should do
+so.  They are these ideas to which the world we live in is
+indebted for its crowning glory and greatest lustre.  They form
+the highest distinction between men and other animals, and are
+the genuine basis of self-reverence, and the conceptions of true
+nobility and greatness, and the reverse of these attributes, in
+the men with whom we live, and the men whose deeds are recorded
+in the never-dying page of history.
+
+But, though the doctrine of the necessity of human actions can
+never form the rule of our intercourse with others, it will still
+have its use.  It will moderate our excesses, and point out to us
+that middle path of judgment which the soundest philosophy
+inculcates.  We shall learn, according to the apostolic precept,
+to "be angry, and sin not, neither let the sun go down upon our
+wrath."  We shall make of our fellow-men neither idols to
+worship, nor demons to be regarded with horror and execration. 
+We shall think of them, as of players, "that strut and fret their
+hour upon the stage, and then are heard no more."  We shall
+"weep, as though we wept not, and rejoice, as though we rejoiced
+not, seeing that the fashion of this world passeth away."  And,
+most of all, we shall view with pity, even with sympathy, the men
+whose frailties we behold, or by whom crimes are perpetrated,
+satisfied that they are parts of one great machine, and, like
+ourselves, are driven forward by impulses over which they have no
+real control.
+
+
+
+ESSAY XIII.
+OF BELIEF.
+
+One of the prerogatives by which man is eminently distinguished
+from all other living beings inhabiting this globe of earth,
+consists in the gift of reason.
+
+Beasts reason.  They are instructed by experience; and, guided by
+what they have already known of the series of events, they infer
+from the sense of what has gone before, an assured expectation of
+what is to follow.  Hence, "beast walks with man, joint tenant of
+the shade;" and their sagacity is in many instances more unerring
+than ours, because they have no affectation to mislead them; they
+follow no false lights, no glimmering intimation of something
+half-anticipating a result, but trust to the plain, blunt and
+obvious dictates of their simple apprehension.  This however is
+but the first step in the scale of reason, and is in strictness
+scarcely entitled to the name.
+
+We set off from the same point from which they commence their
+career.  But the faculty of articulate speech comes in, enabling
+us to form the crude elements of reason and inference into a
+code.  We digest explanations of things, assigning the
+particulars in which they resemble other classes, and the
+particulars by which they are distinguished from whatever other
+classes have fallen under our notice.  We frame propositions,
+and, detaching ourselves from the immediate impressions of sense,
+proceed to generalities, which exist only, in a way confused, and
+not distinctly adverted to, in the conceptions of the animal
+creation.
+
+It is thus that we arrive at science, and go forward to those
+subtleties, and that perspicuity of explanation, which place man
+in a distinct order of being, leaving all the other inhabitants
+of earth at an immeasurable distance below him.  It is thus that
+we communicate our discoveries to each other, and hand down the
+knowledge we have acquired, unimpaired and entire, through
+successive ages, and to generations yet unborn.
+
+But in certain respects we pay a very high price for this
+distinction.  It is to it that we must impute all the follies,
+extravagances and hallucinations of human intellect.  There is
+nothing so absurd that some man has not affirmed, rendering
+himself the scorn and laughing-stock of persons of sounder
+understanding.  And, which is worst, the more ridiculous and
+unintelligible is the proposition he has embraced, the more
+pertinaciously does he cling to it; so that creeds the most
+outrageous and contradictory have served as the occasion or
+pretext for the most impassioned debates, bloody wars, inhuman
+executions, and all that most deeply blots and dishonours the
+name of man--while often, the more evanescent and frivolous are
+the distinctions, the more furious and inexpiable have been the
+contentions they have produced.
+
+The result of the whole, in the vast combinations of men into
+tribes and nations, is, that thousands and millions believe, or
+imagine they believe, propositions and systems, the terms of
+which they do not fully understand, and the evidence of which
+they have not considered.  They believe, because so their fathers
+believed before them.  No phrase is more commonly heard than, "I
+was born a Christian;" "I was born a Catholic, or a Protestant."
+
+     The priest continues what the nurse began,
+     And thus the child imposes on the man.
+
+
+But this sort of belief forms no part of the subject of the
+present Essay.  My purpose is to confine myself to the
+consideration of those persons, who in some degree, more or less,
+exercise the reasoning faculty in the pursuit of truth, and,
+having attempted to examine the evidence of an interesting and
+weighty proposition, satisfy themselves that they have arrived at
+a sound conclusion.
+
+It is however the rarest thing in the world, for any one to found
+his opinion, simply upon the evidence that presents itself to him
+of the truth of the proposition which comes before him to be
+examined.  Where is the man that breaks loose from all the
+shackles that in his youth had been imposed upon hills, and says
+to Truth, "Go on; whithersoever thou leadest, I am prepared to
+follow?"  To weigh the evidence for and against a proposition, in
+scales so balanced, that the "division of the twentieth part of
+one poor scruple, the estimation of a hair," shall be recognised
+and submitted to, is the privilege of a mind of no ordinary
+fairness and firmness.
+
+The Scriptures say "The heart of man is deceitful above all
+things."  The thinking principle within us is so subtle, has
+passed through so many forms of instruction, and is under the
+influence and direction of such a variety of causes, that no man
+can accurately pronounce by what impulse he has been led to the
+conclusion in which he finally reposes.  Every ingenuous person,
+who is invited to embrace a certain profession, that of the
+church for example, will desire, preparatorily to his final
+determination, to examine the evidences and the merits of the
+religion he embraces, that he may enter upon his profession under
+the influence of a sincere conviction, and be inspired with that
+zeal, in singleness of heart, which can alone prevent his
+vocation from being disgraceful to him.  Yet how many motives are
+there, constraining him to abide in an affirmative conclusion? 
+His friends expect this from him.  Perhaps his own inclination
+leads him to select this destination rather than any other. 
+Perhaps preferment and opulence wait upon his decision.  If the
+final result of his enquiries lead him to an opposite judgment,
+to how much obloquy will he be exposed!   Where is the man who
+can say that no unconscious bias has influenced him in the
+progress of his investigation?  Who shall pronounce that, under
+very different circumstances, his conclusions would not have been
+essentially other than they are?
+
+But the enquiry of an active and a searching mind does not
+terminate on a certain day.  He will be for ever revising and
+reconsidering his first determinations.  It is one of the leading
+maxims of an honourable mind, that we must be, at all times, and
+to the last hour of our existence, accessible to conviction built
+upon new evidence, or upon evidence presented in a light in which
+it had not before been viewed.  If then the probationer for the
+clerical profession was under some bias in his first
+investigation, how must it be expected to be with him, when he
+has already taken the vow, and received ordination?  Can he with
+a calm and unaltered spirit contemplate the possibility, that the
+ground shall be cut away from under him, and that, by dint of
+irrefragable argument, he shall be stripped of his occupation,
+and turned out naked and friendless into the world?
+
+But this is only one of the broadest and most glaring instances. 
+In every question of paramount importance there is ever a secret
+influence urging me earnestly to desire to find one side of the
+question right and the other wrong.  Shall I be a whig or a tory,
+believe a republic or a mixed monarchy most conducive to the
+improvement and happiness of mankind, embrace the creed of free
+will or necessity? There is in all cases a "strong temptation
+that waketh in the heart."  Cowardice urges me to become the
+adherent of that creed, which is espoused by my nearest friends,
+or those who are most qualified to serve me.  Enterprise and a
+courageous spirit on the contrary bid me embrace the tenet, the
+embracing of which shall most conduce to my reputation for
+extraordinary perspicuity and acuteness, and gain me the
+character of an intrepid adventurer, a man who dares commit
+himself to an unknown voyage.
+
+In the question of religion, even when the consideration of the
+profession of an ecclesiastic does not occur, yet we are taught
+to believe that there is only one set of tenets that will lead us
+in the way of salvation.  Faith is represented as the first of
+all qualifications.  "If I had not come and spoken unto them,
+they had not had sin."  With what heart then does a man set
+himself to examine, and scrupulously weigh the evidence on one
+side and the other, when some undiscerned frailty, some secret
+bias that all his care cannot detect, may lurk within, and insure
+for him the "greater condemnation?"  I well remember in early
+life, with what tingling sensation and unknown horror I looked
+into the books of the infidels and the repositories of unlawful
+tenets, lest I should be seduced.  I held it my duty to "prove
+all things;" but I knew not how far it might be my fate; to
+sustain the penalty attendant even upon an honourable and
+virtuous curiousity.
+
+It is one of the most received arguments of the present day
+against religious persecution, that the judgments we form are not
+under the authority of our will, and that, for what it is not in
+our power to change, it is unjust we should be punished:  and
+there is much truth in this.  But it is not true to the fullest
+extent.  The sentiments we shall entertain, are to a considerable
+degree at the disposal of inticements on the one side, and of
+menaces and apprehension on the other.  That which we wish to
+believe, we are already greatly in progress to embrace; and that
+which will bring upon us disgrace and calamity, we are more than
+half prepared to reject.  Persecution however is of very
+equivocal power:  we cannot embrace one faith and reject another
+at the word of command.
+
+It is a curious question to decide how far punishments and
+rewards may be made effectual to determine the religion of
+nations and generations of men.  They are often unsuccessful. 
+There is a feeling in the human heart, that prompts us to reject
+with indignation this species of tyranny.  We become more
+obstinate in clinging to that which we are commanded to discard. 
+We place our honour and our pride in the firmness of our
+resistance.  "The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the
+church."  Yet there is often great efficacy in persecution.  It
+was the policy of the court of Versailles that brought almost to
+nothing the Huguenots of France.  And there is a degree of
+persecution, if the persecuting party has the strength and the
+inexorableness to employ it, that it is perhaps beyond the
+prowess of human nature to stand up against.
+
+The mind of the enquiring man is engaged in a course of perpetual
+research; and ingenuousness prompts us never to be satisfied with
+the efforts that we have made, but to press forward.  But mind,
+as well as body, has a certain vis inertiae, and moves only as it
+is acted upon by impulses from without.  With respect to the
+adopting new opinions, and the discovery of new truths, we must
+be indebted in the last resort, either to books, or the oral
+communications of our fellow-men, or to ideas immediately
+suggested to us by the phenomena of man or nature.  The two
+former are the ordinary causes of a change of judgment to men: 
+they are for the most part minds of a superior class only, that
+are susceptible of hints derived straight from the external
+world, without the understandings of other men intervening, and
+serving as a conduit to the new conceptions introduced.  The two
+former serve, so to express it, for the education of man, and
+enable us to master, in our own persons, the points already
+secured, and the wisdom laid up in the great magazine of human
+knowledge; the last imparts to us the power of adding to the
+stock, and carrying forward by one step and another the
+improvements of which our nature is susceptible.
+
+It is much that books, the unchanging records of the thoughts of
+men in former ages, are able to impart to us.  For many of the
+happiest moments of our lives, for many of the purest and most
+exalted feelings of the human heart, we are indebted to them. 
+Education is their province; we derive from them civilization and
+refinement; and we may affirm of literature, what Otway has said
+of woman, "We had been brutes without you."  It is thus that the
+acquisitions of the wise are handed down from age to age, and
+that we are enabled to mount step after step on the ladder of
+paradise, till we reach the skies.
+
+But, inestimable as is the benefit we derive from books, there is
+something more searching and soul-stirring in the impulse of oral
+communication.  We cannot shut our ears, as we shut our books; we
+cannot escape from the appeal of the man who addresses us with
+earnest speech and living conviction.  It is thus, we are told,
+that, when Cicero pleaded before Caesar for the life of Ligarius,
+the conqueror of the world was troubled, and changed colour again
+and again, till at length the scroll prepared for the
+condemnation of the patriot fell from his hand.  Sudden and
+irresistible conviction is chiefly the offspring of living
+speech.  We may arm ourselves against the arguments of an author;
+but the strength of reasoning in him who addresses us, takes us
+at unawares.  It is in the reciprocation of answer and rejoinder
+that the power of conversion specially lies.  A book is an
+abstraction.  It is but imperfectly that we feel, that a real man
+addresses us in it, and that what he delivers is the entire and
+deep-wrought sentiment of a being of flesh and blood like
+ourselves, a being who claims our attention, and is entitled to
+our deference.  The living human voice, with a countenance and
+manner corresponding, constrains us to weigh what is said, shoots
+through us like a stroke of electricity, will not away from our
+memory, and haunts our very dreams.  It is by means of this
+peculiarity in the nature of mind, that it has been often
+observed that there is from time to time an Augustan age in the
+intellect of nations, that men of superior powers shock with each
+other, and that light is struck from the collision, which most
+probably no one of these men would have given birth to, if they
+had not been thrown into mutual society and communion.  And even
+so, upon a narrower scale, he that would aspire to do the most of
+which his faculties are susceptible, should seek the intercourse
+of his fellows, that his powers may be strengthened, and he may
+be kept free from that torpor and indolence of soul, which,
+without external excitement, are ever apt to take possession of
+us.
+
+The man, who lives in solitude, and seldom communicates with
+minds of the same class as his own, works out his opinions with
+patient scrutiny, returns to the investigation again and again,
+imagines that he had examined the question on all sides, and at
+length arrives at what is to him a satisfactory conclusion.  He
+resumes the view of this conclusion day after day; he finds in it
+an unalterable validity; he says in his heart, "Thus much I have
+gained; this is a real advance in the search after truth; I have
+added in a defined and palpable degree to what I knew before." 
+And yet it has sometimes happened, that this person, after having
+been shut up for weeks, or for a longer period, in his sanctuary,
+living, so far as related to an exchange of oral disquisitions
+with his fellow-men, like Robinson Crusoe in the desolate island,
+shall come into the presence of one, equally clear-sighted,
+curious and indefatigable with himself, and shall hear from him
+an obvious and palpable statement, which in a moment shivers his
+sightly and glittering fabric into atoms.  The statement was
+palpable and near at hand; it was a thin, an almost imperceptible
+partition that hid it from him; he wonders in his heart that it
+never occurred to his meditations.  And yet so it is:  it was hid
+from him for weeks, or perhaps for a longer period:  it might
+have been hid from him for twenty years, if it had not been for
+the accident that supplied it.  And he no sooner sees it, than he
+instantly perceives that the discovery upon which he plumed
+himself, was an absurdity, of which even a schoolboy might be
+ashamed.
+
+A circumstance not less curious, among the phenomena which belong
+to this subject of belief, is the repugnance incident to the most
+ingenuous minds, which we harbour against the suddenly discarding
+an opinion we have previously entertained, and the adopting one
+which comes recommended to us with almost the force of
+demonstration.  Nothing can be better founded than this
+repugnance.  The mind of man is of a peculiar nature.  It has
+been disputed whether we can entertain more than one idea at a
+time.  But certain it is, that the views of the mind at any one
+time are considerably narrowed.  The mind is like the slate of a
+schoolboy, which can contain only a certain number of characters
+of a given size, or like a moveable panorama, which places a
+given scene or landscape before me, and the space assigned, and
+which comes within the limits marked out to my perception, is
+full.  Many things are therefore almost inevitably shut out,
+which, had it not been so, might have essentially changed the
+view of the case, and have taught me that it was a very different
+conclusion at which I ought to have arrived.
+
+At first sight nothing can appear more unreasonable, than that I
+should hesitate to admit the seemingly irresistible force of the
+argument presented to me.  An ingenuous disposition would appear
+to require that, the moment the truth, or what seems to be the
+truth, is set before me, I should pay to it the allegiance to
+which truth is entitled.  If I do otherwise, it would appear to
+argue a pusillanimous disposition, a mind not prompt and
+disengaged to receive the impression of evidence, a temper that
+loves something else better than the lustre which all men are
+bound to recognise, and that has a reserve in favour of ancient
+prejudice, and of an opinion no longer supported by reason.
+
+In fact however I shall act most wisely, and in the way most
+honourable to my character, if I resolve to adjourn the debate. 
+No matter how complete the view may seem which is now presented
+to my consideration, or how irresistible the arguments:  truth is
+too majestic a divinity, and it is of too much importance that I
+should not follow a delusive semblance that may shew like truth,
+not to make it in the highest degree proper that I should examine
+again and again, before I come to the conclusion to which I mean
+to affix my seal, and annex my sanction, "This is the truth." 
+The ancient Goths of Germany, we are told, had a custom of
+debating every thing of importance to their state twice, once in
+the high animation of a convivial meeting, and once in the serene
+stillness of a morning consultation.  Philip of Macedon having
+decided a cause precipitately, the party condemned by him
+immediately declared his resolution to appeal from the sentence. 
+And to whom, said the king, wilt thou appeal?  To Philip, was the
+answer, in the entire possession of his understanding.
+
+Such is the nature of the human mind--at least, such I find to he
+the nature of my own--that many trains of thinking, many chains
+of evidence, the result of accumulated facts, will often not
+present themselves, at the time when their presence would be of
+the highest importance.  The view which now comes before me is of
+a substance so close and well-woven, and of colours so brilliant
+and dazzling, that other matters in a certain degree remote,
+though of no less intrinsic importance, and equally entitled to
+influence my judgment in the question in hand, shall be entirely
+shut out, shall be killed, and fail to offer themselves to my
+perceptions.
+
+It is a curious circumstance which Pope, a man of eminent logical
+power and acuteness, relates, that, having at his command in his
+youth a collection of all the tracts that had been written on
+both sides in the reign of James the Second, he applied himself
+with great assiduity to their perusal, and the consequence was,
+that he was a Papist and Protestant by turns, according to the
+last book he read[31].
+
+[31] Correspondence with Atterbury, Letter IV.
+
+
+This circumstance in the structure of the human understanding is
+well known, and is the foundation of many provisions that occur
+in the constitution of political society.  How each man shall
+form his creed, and arrange those opinions by which his conduct
+shall be regulated, is of course a matter exclusively subjected
+to his own discretion.  But, when he is called upon to act in the
+name of a community, and to decide upon a question in which the
+public is interested, he of necessity feels himself called upon
+to proceed with the utmost caution.  A judge on the bench, a
+chancellor, is not contented with that sudden ray of mental
+illumination to which an ingenuous individual is often disposed
+to yield in an affair of abstract speculation.  He feels that he
+is obliged to wait for evidence, the nature of which he does not
+yet anticipate, and to adjourn his decision.  A deliberative
+council or assembly is aware of the necessity of examining a
+question again and again.  It is upon this principle that the two
+houses of the English parliament are required to give a first, a
+second and a third reading, together with various other forms and
+technicalities, to the provision that is brought before them,
+previously to its passing into a law.  And there is many a
+fundamental dogma and corner-stone of the sentiments that I shall
+emphatically call my own, that is of more genuine importance to
+the individual, than to a nation is a number of those
+regulations, which by courtesy we call acts of parliament.
+
+Nothing can have a more glaring tendency to subvert the authority
+of my opinion among my fellow-men, than instability.  "What went
+ye out into the wilderness to see" said Jesus Christ:  "a reed
+shaken with the wind?"  We ought at all times to be open to
+conviction.  We ought to be ever ready to listen to evidence. 
+But, conscious of our human frailty, it is seldom that we ought
+immediately to subscribe to the propositions, however specious,
+that are now for the first time presented to us.  It is our duty
+to lay up in our memory the suggestions offered upon any
+momentous question, and not to suffer them to lose their inherent
+weight and impressiveness; but it is only through the medium of
+consideration and reconsideration, that they can become entitled
+to our full and unreserved assent.
+
+The nature of belief, or opinion, has been well illustrated by
+Lord Shaftesbury[32].  There are many notions or judgments
+floating in the mind of every man, which are mutually destructive
+of each other.  In this sense men's opinions are governed by high
+and low spirits, by the state of the solids and fluids of the
+human body, and by the state of the weather.  But in a paramount
+sense that only can be said to be a man's opinion which he
+entertains in his clearest moments, and from which, when he is
+most himself, he is least subject to vary.  In this emphatical
+sense, I should say, a man does not always know what is his real
+opinion.  We cannot strictly be said to believe any thing, in
+cases where we afterwards change our opinion without the
+introduction of some evidence that was unknown to us before.  But
+how many are the instances in which we can be affirmed to be in
+the adequate recollection of all the evidences and reasonings
+which have at some time occurred to us, and of the opinions,
+together with the grounds on which they rested, which we
+conceived we had justly and rationally entertained?
+
+The considerations here stated however should by no means be
+allowed to inspire us with indifference in matters of opinion. 
+It is the glory and lustre of our nature, that we are capable of
+receiving evidence, and weighing the reasons for and against any
+important proposition in the balance of an impartial and
+enlightened understanding.  The only effect that should be
+produced in us, by the reflection that we can at last by no means
+be secure that we have attained to a perfect result, should be to
+teach us a wholsome diffidence and humility, and induce us to
+confess that, when we have done all, we are ignorant, dim-sighted
+and fallible, that our best reasonings may betray, and our wisest
+conclusions deceive us.
+
+[32] Enquiry concerning Virtue, Book 1, Part 1, Section ii.
+
+
+
+ESSAY XIV.
+OF YOUTH AND AGE.
+
+Magna debetur pueris reverentia.                                 
+
+                                Quintilian.
+
+I am more doubtful in writing the following Essay than in any of
+those which precede, how far I am treating of human nature
+generally, or to a certain degree merely recording my own
+feelings as an individual.  I am guided however in composing it,
+by the principle laid down in my Preface, that the purpose of my
+book in each instance should be to expand some new and
+interesting truth, or some old truth viewed under a new aspect,
+which had never by any preceding writer been laid before the
+public.
+
+Education, in the conception of those whose office it is to
+direct it, has various engines by means of which it is to be made
+effective, and among these are reprehension and chastisement.
+
+The philosophy of the wisest man that ever existed, is mainly
+derived from the act of introspection.  We look into our own
+bosoms, observe attentively every thing that passes there,
+anatomise our motives, trace step by step the operations of
+thought, and diligently remark the effects of external impulses
+upon our feelings and conduct.  Philosophers, ever since the time
+in which Socrates flourished, to carry back our recollections no
+further, have found that the minds of men in the most essential
+particulars are framed so far upon the same model, that the
+analysis of the individual may stand in general consideration for
+the analysis of the species.  Where this principle fails, it is
+not easy to suggest a proceeding that shall supply the
+deficiency.  I look into my own breast; I observe steadily and
+with diligence what passes there; and with all the parade of the
+philosophy of the human mind I can do little more than this.
+
+In treating therefore of education in the point of view in which
+it has just been proposed, I turn my observation upon myself, and
+I proceed thus.--If I do not stand as a competent representative
+for the whole of my species, I suppose I may at least assume to
+be the representative of no inconsiderable number of them.
+
+I find then in myself, for as long a time as I can trace backward
+the records of memory, a prominent vein of docility.  Whatever it
+was proposed to teach me, that was in any degree accordant with
+my constitution and capacity, I was willing to learn.  And this
+limit is sufficient for the topic I am proposing to treat.  I do
+not intend to consider education of any other sort, than that
+which has something in it of a liberal and ingenuous nature.  I
+am not here discussing the education of a peasant, an artisan, or
+a slave.
+
+In addition to this vein of docility, which easily prompted me to
+learn whatever was proposed for my instruction and improvement, I
+felt in myself a sentiment of ambition, a desire to possess the
+qualifications which I found to be productive of esteem, and that
+should enable me to excel among my contemporaries.  I was
+ambitious to be a leader, and to be regarded by others with
+feelings of complacency.  I had no wish to rule by brute force
+and compulsion; but I was desirous to govern by love, and honour,
+and "the cords of a man."
+
+I do not imagine that, when I aver thus much of myself, I am
+bringing forward any thing unprecedented, or that multitudes of
+my fellow-men do not largely participate with me.
+
+The question therefore I am considering is, through what agency,
+and with what engines, a youth thus disposed, and with these
+qualifications, is to be initiated in all liberal arts.
+
+I will go back no further than to the commencement of the
+learning of Latin.  All before was so easy to me, as never to
+have presented the idea of a task.  I was immediately put into
+the accidence.  No explanation was attempted to be given why
+Latin was to be of use to me, or why it was necessary to commit
+to memory the cases of nouns and the tenses of verbs.  I know not
+whether this was owing to the unwillingness of my instructor to
+give himself the trouble, or to my supposed incapacity to
+apprehend the explanation.  The last of these I do not admit.  My
+docility however came to my aid, and I did not for a moment
+harbour any repugnance to the doing what was required of me.  At
+first, and unassisted in the enquiry, I felt a difficulty in
+supposing that the English language, all the books in my father's
+library, did not contain every thing that it would be necessary
+for me to know.  In no long time however I came to experience a
+pleasure in turning the thoughts expressed in an unknown tongue
+into my own; and I speedily understood that I could never be on a
+level with those eminent scholars whom it was my ambition to
+rival, without the study of the classics.
+
+What then were the obstacles, that should in any degree
+counteract my smooth and rapid progress in the studies suggested
+to me?  I can conceive only two.
+
+First, the versatility and fickleness which in a greater or less
+degree beset all human minds, particularly in the season of early
+youth.  However docile we may be, and willing to learn, there
+will be periods, when either some other object powerfully
+solicits us, or satiety creeps in, and makes us wish to occupy
+our attention with any thing else rather than with the task
+prescribed us.  But this is no powerful obstacle.  The authority
+of the instructor, a grave look, and the exercise of a moderate
+degree of patience will easily remove it in such a probationer as
+we are here considering.
+
+Another obstacle is presumption.  The scholar is willing to
+conceive well of his own capacity.  He has a vanity in
+accomplishing the task prescribed him in the shortest practicable
+time.  He is impatient to go away from the business imposed upon
+him, to things of his own election, and occupations which his
+partialities and his temper prompt him to pursue.  He has a pride
+in saying to himself, "This, which was a business given to occupy
+me for several hours, I can accomplish in less than one."  But
+the presumption arising out of these views is easily subdued.  If
+the pupil is wrong in his calculation, the actual experiment will
+speedily convince him of his error.  He is humbled by and ashamed
+of his mistake.  The merely being sent back to study his lesson
+afresh, is on the face of the thing punishment enough.
+
+It follows from this view of the matter, that an ingenuous youth,
+endowed with sufficient capacity for the business prescribed him,
+may be led on in the path of intellectual acquisition and
+improvement with a silken cord.  It will demand a certain degree
+of patience on the part of the instructor.  But Heaven knows,
+that this patience is sufficiently called into requisition when
+the instructor shall be the greatest disciplinarian that ever
+existed.  Kind tones and encouragement will animate the learner
+amidst many a difficult pass.  A grave remark may perhaps
+sometimes be called for.  And, if the preceptor and the pupil
+have gone on like friends, a grave remark, a look expressive of
+rebuke, will be found a very powerful engine.  The instructor
+should smooth the business of instruction to his pupil, by
+appealing to his understanding, developing his taste, and
+assisting him to remark the beauties of the composition on which
+he is occupied.
+
+I come now then to the consideration of the two engines mentioned
+in the commencement of this Essay, reprehension and chastisement.
+
+And here, as in what went before, I am reduced to the referring
+to my own experience, and looking back into the history of my own
+mind.
+
+I say then, that reprehension and reprimand can scarcely ever be
+necessary.  The pupil should undoubtedly be informed when he is
+wrong.  He should be told what it is that he ought to have
+omitted, and that he ought to have done.  There should be no
+reserve in this.  It will be worthy of the highest censure, if on
+these points the instructor should be mealy-mouthed, or hesitate
+to tell the pupil in the plainest terms, of his faults, his bad
+habits, and the dangers that beset his onward and honourable
+path.
+
+But this may be best, and most beneficially done, and in a way
+most suitable to the exigence, and to the party to be corrected,
+in a few words.  The rest is all an unwholsome tumour, the
+disease of speech, and not the sound and healthful substance
+through which its circulation and life are conveyed.
+
+There is always danger of this excrescence of speech, where the
+speaker is the umpire, and feels himself at liberty, unreproved,
+to say what he pleases.  He is charmed with the sound of his own
+voice.  The periods flow numerous from his tongue, and he gets on
+at his ease.  There is in all this an image of empire; and the
+human mind is ever prone to be delighted in the exercise of
+unrestricted authority.  The pupil in this case stands before his
+instructor in an attitude humble, submissive, and bowing to the
+admonition that is communicated to him.  The speaker says more
+than it was in his purpose to say; and he knows not how to arrest
+himself in his triumphant career.  He believes that he is in no
+danger of excess, and recollects the old proverb that "words
+break no bones."
+
+But a syllable more than is necessary and justly measured, is
+materially of evil operation to ingenuous youth.  The mind of
+such a youth is tender and flexible, and easily swayed one way or
+the other.  He believes almost every thing that he is bid to
+believe; and the admonition that is given him with all the
+symptoms of friendliness and sincerity he is prompt to subscribe
+to.  If this is wantonly aggravated to him, he feels the
+oppression, and is galled with the injustice.  He knows himself
+guiltless of premeditated wrong.  He has not yet learned that his
+condition is that of a slave; and he feels a certain impatience
+at his being considered as such, though he probably does not
+venture to express it.  He shuts up the sense of this despotism
+in his own bosom; and it is his first lesson of independence and
+rebellion and original sin.
+
+It is one of the grossest mistakes of which we can be guilty, if
+we confound different offences and offenders together.  The great
+and the small alike appear before us in the many-coloured scene
+of human society, and, if we reprehend bitterly and rate a
+juvenile sinner for the fault, which he scarcely understood, and
+assuredly had not premeditated, we break down at once a thousand
+salutary boundaries, and reduce the ideas of right and wrong in
+his mind to a portentous and terrible chaos.  The communicator of
+liberal knowledge assuredly ought not to confound his office with
+that of a magistrate at a quarter-sessions, who though he does
+not sit in judgment upon transgressions of the deepest and most
+atrocious character, yet has brought before him in many cases
+defaulters of a somewhat hardened disposition, whose lot has been
+cast among the loose and the profligate, and who have been
+carefully trained to a certain audacity of temper, taught to look
+upon the paraphernalia of justice with scorn, and to place a sort
+of honour in sustaining hard words and the lesser visitations of
+punishment with unflinching nerve.
+
+If this is the judgment we ought to pass upon the bitter and
+galling and humiliating terms of reprehension apt to be made use
+of by the instructor to his pupil, it is unnecessary to say a
+word on the subject of chastisement.  If such an expedient is
+ever to be had recourse to, it can only be in cases of
+contumaciousness and rebellion; and then the instructor cannot
+too unreservedly say to himself, "This is matter of deep
+humiliation to me:  I ought to have succeeded by an appeal to the
+understanding and ingenuous feelings of youth; but I am reduced
+to a confession of my impotence."
+
+But the topic which, most of all, I was desirous to bring forward
+in this Essay, is that of the language so customarily employed by
+the impatient and irritated preceptor, "Hereafter, in a state of
+mature and ripened judgment, you will thank me for the severity I
+now exercise towards you."
+
+No; it may safely be answered:  that time will never arrive.
+
+As, in one of my earlier Essays[33], I undertook to shew that
+there is not so much difference between the talents of one man
+and another as has often been apprehended, so we are guilty of a
+gross error in the way in which we divide the child from the man,
+and consider him as if he belonged to a distinct species of
+beings.
+
+[33] Essay II.
+
+
+I go back to the recollections of my youth, and can scarcely find
+where to draw the line between ineptness and maturity.  The
+thoughts that occurred to me, as far back as I can recollect
+them, were often shrewd; the suggestions ingenious; the judgments
+not seldom acute.  I feel myself the same individual all through.
+
+Sometimes I was unreasonably presumptuous, and sometimes
+unnecessarily distrustful.  Experience has taught me in various
+instances a sober confidence in my decisions; but that is all the
+difference.  So to express it, I had then the same tools to work
+with as now; but the magazine of materials upon which I had to
+operate was scantily supplied.  Like the apothecary in Romeo and
+Juliet, the faculty, such as it was, was within me; but my
+shelves contained but a small amount of furniture:
+
+      A beggarly account of empty boxes,
+      Remnants of packthread, and old cakes of roses,
+      Which, thinly scattered, served to make a shew.
+
+
+In speaking thus of the intellectual powers of my youth, I am
+however conceding too much.  It is true, "Practice maketh
+perfect."  But it is surprising, in apt and towardly youth, how
+much there is to commend in the first essays.  The novice, who
+has his faculties lively and on the alert, will strike with his
+hammer almost exactly where the blow ought to be placed, and give
+nearly the precisely right force to the act.  He will seize the
+thread it was fitting to seize; and, though he fail again and
+again, will shew an adroitness upon the whole that we scarcely
+know how to account for.  The man whose career shall ultimately
+be crowned with success, will demonstrate in the beginning that
+he was destined to succeed.
+
+There is therefore no radical difference between the child and
+the man.  His flesh becomes more firm and sinewy; his bones grow
+more solid and powerful; his joints are more completely strung. 
+But he is still essentially the same being that he was.  When a
+genuine philosopher holds a new-born child in his arms, and
+carefully examines it, he perceives in it various indications of
+temper and seeds of character.  It was all there, though folded
+up and confused, and not obtruding itself upon the remark of
+every careless spectator.  It continues with the child through
+life, grows with his growth, and never leaves him till he is at
+last consigned to the tomb.  How absurd then by artful rules and
+positive institutions to undertake to separate what can never be
+divided!  The child is occasionally grave and reflecting, and
+deduces well-founded inferences; he draws on the past, and
+plunges into the wide ocean of the future.  In proportion as the
+child advances into the youth, his intervals of gravity increase,
+and he builds up theories and judgments, some of which no future
+time shall suffice to overturn.  It is idle to suppose that the
+first activity of our faculties, when every thing is new and
+produces an unbated impression, when the mind is uncumbered, and
+every interest and every feeling bid us be observing and awake,
+should pass for nothing.  We lay up stores then, which shall
+never be exhausted.  Our minds are the reverse of worn and
+obtuse.  We bring faculties into the world with us fresh from the
+hands of the all-bounteous giver; they are not yet moulded to a
+senseless routine; they are not yet corrupted by the ill lessons
+of effrontery, impudence and vice.  Childhood is beautiful; youth
+is ingenuous; and it can be nothing but a principle which is
+hostile to all that most adorns this sublunary scene, that would
+with violence and despotic rule mar the fairest flower that
+creation has to boast.
+
+It happens therefore almost unavoidably that, when the man mature
+looks back upon the little incidents of his youth, he sees them
+to a surprising degree in the same light, and forms the same
+conclusions respecting them, as he did when they were actually
+passing.  "The forgeries of opinion," says Cicero, "speedily pass
+away; but the rules and decisions of nature are strengthened." 
+Bitter reproaches and acts of violence are the offspring of
+perturbation engendered upon imbecility, and therefore can never
+be approved upon a sober and impartial revision.  And, if they
+are to be impeached in the judgment of an equal and indifferent
+observer, we may be sure they will be emphatically condemned by
+the grave and enlightened censor who looks back upon the years of
+his own nonage, and recollects that he was himself the victim of
+the intemperance to be pronounced upon.  The interest that he
+must necessarily take in the scenes in which he once had an
+engrossing concern, will supply peculiar luminousness to his
+views.  He taxes himself to be just.  The transaction is over
+now, and is passed to the events that preceded the universal
+deluge.  He holds the balance with a steadiness, which sets at
+defiance all attempts to give it a false direction one way or the
+other.  But the judgment he made on the case at the time, and
+immediately after the humiliation he suffered, remains with him. 
+It was the sentiment of his ripening youth; it was the opinion of
+his opening manhood; and it still attends him, when he is already
+fast yielding to the incroachments and irresistible assaults of
+declining years.
+
+
+
+ESSAY XV.
+OF LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP.
+
+Who is it that says, "There is no love but among equals?"  Be it
+who it may, it is a saying universally known, and that is in
+every one's mouth.  The contrary is precisely the truth, and is
+the great secret of every thing that is admirable in our moral
+nature.
+
+By love it is my intention here to understand, not a calm,
+tranquil, and, as it were, half-pronounced feeling, but a passion
+of the mind.  We may doubtless entertain an approbation of other
+men, without adverting to the question how they stand in relation
+to ourselves, as equals or otherwise.  But the sentiment I am
+here considering, is that where the person in whom it resides
+most strongly sympathises with the joys and sorrows of another,
+desires his gratification, hopes for his welfare, and shrinks
+from the anticipation of his being injured; in a word, is the
+sentiment which has most the spirit of sacrifice in it, and
+prepares the person in whom it dwells, to postpone his own
+advantage to the advantage of him who is the object of it.
+
+Having placed love among the passions, which is no vehement
+assumption, I then say, there can be no passion, and by
+consequence no love, where there is not imagination.  In cases
+where every thing is understood, and measured, and reduced to
+rule, love is out of the question.  Whenever this sentiment
+prevails, I must have my attention fixed more on the absent than
+the present, more upon what I do not see than on what I do see. 
+My thoughts will be taken up with the future or the past, with
+what is to come or what has been.  Of the present there is
+necessarily no image.  Sentiment is nothing, till you have
+arrived at a mystery and a veil, something that is seen
+obscurely, that is just hinted at in the distance, that has
+neither certain outline nor colour, but that is left for the mind
+to fill up according to its pleasure and in the best manner it is
+able.
+
+The great model of the affection of love in human beings, is the
+sentiment which subsists between parents and children.
+
+Let not this appear a paradox.  There is another relation in
+human society to which this epithet has more emphatically been
+given:  but, if we analyse the matter strictly, we shall find
+that all that is most sacred and beautiful in the passion between
+the sexes, has relation to offspring.  What Milton calls, "The
+rites mysterious of connubial love," would have little charm in
+them in reflection, to a mind one degree above the brutes, were
+it not for the mystery they include, of their tendency to give
+existence to a new human creature like ourselves.  Were it not
+for this circumstance, a man and a woman would hardly ever have
+learned to live together; there scarcely could have been such a
+thing as domestic society; but every intercourse of this sort
+would have been "casual, joyless, unendeared;" and the propensity
+would have brought along with it nothing more of beauty, lustre
+and grace, than the pure animal appetites of hunger and thirst. 
+Bearing in mind these considerations, I do not therefore hesitate
+to say, that the great model of the affection of love in human
+beings, is the sentiment which subsists between parents and
+children.
+
+The original feature in this sentiment is the conscious feeling
+of the protector and the protected.  Our passions cannot subsist
+in lazy indolence; passion and action must operate on each other;
+passion must produce action, and action give strength to the tide
+of passion.  We do not vehemently desire, where we can do
+nothing.  It is in a very faint way that I entertain a wish to
+possess the faculty of flying; and an ordinary man can scarcely
+be said to desire to be a king or an emperor.  None but a madman,
+of plebeian rank, falls in love with a princess.  But shew me a
+good thing within my reach; convince me that it is in my power to
+attain it; demonstrate to me that it is fit for me, and I am fit
+for it; then begins the career of passion.  In the same manner, I
+cannot love a person vehemently, and strongly interest myself in
+his miscarriages or success, till I feel that I can be something
+to him.  Love cannot dwell in a state of impotence.  To affect
+and be affected, this is the common nature I require; this is the
+being that is like unto myself; all other likeness resides in the
+logic and the definition, but has nothing to do with feeling or
+with practice.
+
+What can be more clear and sound in explanation, than the love of
+a parent to his child?  The affection he bears and its
+counterpart are the ornaments of the world, and the spring of
+every thing that makes life worth having.  Whatever besides has a
+tendency to illustrate and honour our nature, descends from
+these, or is copied from these, grows out of them as the branches
+of a tree from the trunk, or is formed upon them as a model, and
+derives from them its shape, its character, and its soul.  Yet
+there are men so industrious and expert to strip the world we
+live in of all that adorns it, that they can see nothing glorious
+in these affections, but find the one to be all selfishness, and
+the other all prejudice and superstition.
+
+The love of the parent to his child is nursed and fostered by two
+plain considerations; first, that the subject is capable of
+receiving much, and secondly, that my power concerning it is
+great and extensive.
+
+When an infant is presented to my observation, what a wide field
+of sentiment and reflection is opened to me!  Few minds are
+industrious and ductile enough completely to compass this field,
+if the infant is only accidentally brought under their view. 
+But, if it is an infant with which I begin to be acquainted
+to-day, and my acquaintance with which shall not end perhaps till
+one of us ceases to exist, how is it possible that the view of
+its little figure should not lead me to the meditation of its
+future history, the successive stages of human life, and the
+various scenes and mutations and vicissitudes and fortunes
+through which it is destined to pass?  The Book of Fate lies open
+before me.  This infant, powerless and almost impassive now, is
+reserved for many sorrows and many joys, and will one day possess
+a power, formidable and fearful to afflict those within its
+reach, or calculated to diffuse blessings, wisdom, virtue,
+happiness, to all around.  I conceive all the various
+destinations of which man is susceptible; my fancy at least is
+free to select that which pleases me best; I unfold and pursue it
+in all its directions, observe the thorns and difficulties with
+which it is beset, and conjure up to my thoughts all that it can
+boast of inviting, delightful and honourable.
+
+But if the infant that is near to me lays hold of my imagination
+and affections at the moment in which he falls under my
+observation, how much more do I become interested in him, as he
+advances from year to year!  At first, I have the blessing of the
+gospel upon me, in that, "having not seen, yet I believe."  But,
+as his powers expand, I understand him better.  His little eye
+begins to sparkle with meaning; his tongue tells a tale that may
+be understood; his very tones, and gestures, and attitudes, all
+inform me concerning what he shall be.  I am like a florist, who
+has received a strange plant from a distant country.  At first he
+sees only the stalk, and the leaves, and the bud having yet no
+other colour than that of the leaves.  But as he watches his
+plant from day to day, and from hour to hour, the case which
+contains the flower divides, and betrays first one colour and
+then another, till the shell gradually subsides more and more
+towards the stalk, and the figure of the flower begins now to be
+seen, and its radiance and its pride to expand itself to the
+ravished observer.--Every lesson that the child leans, every
+comment that he makes upon it, every sport that he pursues, every
+choice that he exerts, the demeanour that he adopts to his
+playfellows, the modifications and character of his little fits
+of authority or submission, all make him more and more an
+individual to me, and open a wider field for my sagacity or my
+prophecy, as to what he promises to be, and what he may be made.
+
+But what gives, as has already been observed, the point and the
+finish to all the interest I take respecting him, lies in the
+vast power I possess to influence and direct his character and
+his fortune.  At first it is abstract power, but, when it has
+already been exerted (as the writers on politics as a science
+have observed of property), the sweat of my brow becomes mingled
+with the apple I have gathered, and my interest is greater.  No
+one understands my views and projects entirely but myself, and
+the scheme I have conceived will suffer, if I do not complete it
+as I began.
+
+And there are men that say, that all this mystery, the most
+beautiful attitude of human nature, and the crown of its glory,
+is pure selfishness!
+
+Let us now turn from the view of the parental, to that of the
+filial affection.
+
+The great mistake that has been made on this subject, arises from
+the taking it nakedly and as a mere abstraction.  It has been
+sagely remarked, that when my father did that which occasioned me
+to come into existence, he intended me no benefit, and therefore
+I owe him no thanks.  And the inference which has been made from
+this wise position is, that the duty of children to parents is a
+mere imposture, a trick, employed by the old to defraud the young
+out of their services.
+
+I grant most readily, that the mere material ligament that binds
+together the father and the child, by itself is worthless, and
+that he who owes nothing more than this to his father, owes him
+nothing.  The natural, unanimated relationship is like the grain
+of mustard-seed in the discourses of Jesus Christ, "which indeed
+is the least of all seeds; but, when it is unfolded and grows up,
+it becomes a mighty tree, so that the birds of the air may come
+and lodge in its branches."
+
+The hard and insensible man may know little of the debt he owes
+to his father; but he that is capable of calling up the past, and
+beholding the things that are not as if they now were, will see
+the matter in a very different light.  Incalculable are the
+privations (in a great majority of instances), the toils, the
+pains, the anxieties, that every child imposes on his father from
+the first hour of his existence.  If he could know the ceaseless
+cares, the tender and ardent feelings, the almost incredible
+efforts and exertions, that have accompanied him in his father's
+breast through the whole period of his growth, instead of
+thinking that he owed his parent nothing, he would stand still
+and wonder that one human creature could do so much for another.
+
+I grant that all this may be done for a child by a stranger, and
+that then in one sense the obligation would be greater.  It is
+however barely possible that all this should be done.  The
+stranger wants the first exciting cause, the consideration, "This
+creature by the great scheme of nature belongs to me, and is cast
+upon my care."  And, as the tie in the case of the stranger was
+not complete in the beginning, so neither can it be made so in
+the sequel.  The little straggler is like the duckling hatched in
+the nest of a hen; there is danger every day, that as the
+nursling begins to be acquainted with its own qualities, it may
+plunge itself into another element, and swim away from its
+benefactor.
+
+Even if we put all these considerations out of the question,
+still the affection of the child to its parent of adoption, wants
+the kernel, and, if I may so speak, the soul, of the connection
+which has been formed and modelled by the great hand of nature. 
+If the mere circumstance of filiation and descent creates no
+debt, it however is the principle of a very close connection. 
+One of the most memorable mysteries of nature, is how, out of the
+slightest of all connections (for such, literally speaking, is
+that between father and child), so many coincidences should
+arise.  The child resembles his parent in feature, in
+temperament, in turn of mind, and in class of disposition, while
+at the same time in many particulars, in these same respects, he
+is a new and individual creature.  In one view therefore the
+child is merely the father multiplied and repeated.  Now one of
+the indefeasible principles of affection is the partaking of a
+common nature; and as man is a species by himself, so to a
+certain degree is every nation and every family; and this
+consideration, when added to the moral and spiritual ties already
+treated of, undoubtedly has a tendency to give them their zest
+and perfection.
+
+But even this is not the most agreeable point of view in which we
+may consider the filial affection.  I come back to my first
+position, that where there is no imagination, there can be no
+passion, and by consequence no love.  No parent ever understood
+his child, and no child ever understood his parent.  We have seen
+that the affectionate parent considers his child like a flower in
+the bud, as a mine of power that is to be unfolded, as a creature
+that is to act and to pass through he knows not what, as a canvas
+that "gives ample room and verge enough," for his prophetic soul
+to hang over in endless visions, and his intellectual pencil to
+fill up with various scenes and fortunes.  And, if the parent
+does not understand his child, certainly as little does the child
+understand his parent.  Wherever this relation subsists in its
+fairest form, the parent is as a God, a being qualified with
+supernatural powers, to his offspring.  The child consults his
+father as an oracle; to him he proposes all his little questions;
+from him he learns his natural philosophy, his morals, his rules
+of conduct, his religion, and his creed.  The boy is uninformed
+on every point; and the father is a vast Encyclopedia, not merely
+of sciences, but of feelings, of sagacity, of practical wisdom,
+and of justice, which the son consults on all occasions, and
+never consults in vain.  Senseless and inexpert is that parent,
+who endeavours to govern the mind by authority, and to lay down
+rugged and peremptory dogmas to his child; the child is fully and
+unavoidably prepared to receive every thing with unbounded
+deference, and to place total reliance in the oracle which nature
+has assigned him.  Habits, how beautiful!  Inestimable benefit of
+nature, that has given me a prop against which to sustain my
+unripened strength, and has not turned me loose to wander with
+tottering steps amidst the vast desert of society!
+
+But it is not merely for contemplative wisdom that the child
+honours his parent; he sees in him a vast fund of love,
+attachment and sympathy.  That he cannot mistake; and it is all a
+mystery to him.  He says, What am I, that I should be the object
+of this?  and whence comes it?  He sees neither the fountain from
+which it springs, nor the banks that confine it.  To him it is an
+ocean, unfathomable, and without a shore.
+
+To the bounty of its operations he trusts implicitly.  The stores
+of judgment and knowledge he finds in his father, prompt him to
+trust it.  In many instances where it appeared at first obscure
+and enigmatical, the event has taught him to acknowledge its
+soundness.  The mutinousness of passion will sometimes excite a
+child to question the decrees of his parent; it is very long
+before his understanding, as such, comes to set up a separate
+system, and teaches him to controvert the decisions of his
+father.
+
+Perhaps I ought earlier to have stated, that the filial
+connection we have here to consider, does not include those
+melancholy instances where some woful defect or utter
+worthlessness in the parent counteracts the natural course of the
+affections, but refers only to cases, where the character of
+father is on the whole sustained with honour, and the principle
+of the connection is left to its true operation.  In such cases
+the child not only observes for himself the manifestations of
+wisdom and goodness in his parent, but is also accustomed to hear
+well of him from all around.  There is a generous conspiracy in
+human nature, not to counteract the honour borne by the offspring
+to him from whom he sprung, and the wholsome principle of
+superiority and dependence which is almost indispensible between
+persons of different ages dwelling under the same roof.  And,
+exclusively of this consideration, the men who are chiefly seen
+by the son are his father's friends and associates; and it is the
+very bent, and, as it were, law of our nature, that we do not
+associate much, but with persons whom we favour, and who are
+prepared to mention us with kindness and honour.
+
+Thus every way the child is deeply imbued with veneration for his
+parent, and forms the habit of regarding him as his book of
+wisdom, his philosopher and guide.  He is accustomed to hear him
+spoken of as a true friend, an active ally, and a pattern of
+justice and honour; and he finds him so.  Now these are the true
+objects of affection,--wisdom and beneficence; and the human
+heart loves this beneficence better when it is exercised towards
+him who loves, first, because inevitably in almost all instances
+we are best pleased with the good that is done to ourselves, and
+secondly, because it can scarcely happen but that we in that case
+understand it best, both in its operation and its effects.
+
+The active principles of religion are all moulded upon this
+familiar and sensible relation of father and child:  and to
+understand whet the human heart is capable to conceive on this
+subject, we have only to refer to the many eloquent and glowing
+treatises that have been written upon the love of God to his
+creatures, and the love that the creature in return owes to his
+God.  I am not now considering religion in a speculative point of
+view, or enquiring among the different sects and systems of
+religion what it is that is true; but merely producing religion
+as an example of what have been the conceptions of the human mind
+in successive ages of the world on the subject of love.
+
+This All that we behold, the immensity of the universe, the
+admirable harmony and subtlety of its structure, as they appear
+in the vastest and the minutest bodies, is considered by
+religion, as the emanation of pure love, a mighty impulse and
+ardour in its great author to realise the idea existing in his
+mind, and to produce happiness.  The Providence that watches over
+us, so that not a sparrow dies unmarked, and that "the great
+Sensorium of the world vibrates, if a hair of our head but falls
+to the ground in the remotest desert of his creation," is still
+unremitted, never-satiated love.  And, to go from this to the
+peculiarities of the Christian doctrine, "Greater love hath no
+man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends:  God
+so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son to suffer,
+to be treated contumeliously, and to die with ignominy, that we
+might live."
+
+If on the other hand we consider the love which the creature must
+naturally pay to his creator, we shall find that the affection we
+can suppose the most ingenuous child to bear to the worthiest
+parent, is a very faint image of the passion which may be
+expected to grow out of this relation.  In God, as he is
+represented to us in the books of the worthiest divines, is every
+thing that can command love; wisdom to conceive, power to
+execute, and beneficence actually to carry into effect, whatever
+is excellent and admirable.  We are lost in contemplating the
+depth and immensity of his perfections.  "Every good and every
+perfect gift is from the universal Father, with whom is no
+variableness, neither shadow of turning."  The most soothing and
+gratifying of all sentiments, is that of entire confidence in the
+divine goodness, a reliance which no adversity can shake, and
+which supports him that entertains it under every calamity, that
+sees the finger of God in every thing that comes to pass, that
+says, "It is good for me to be afflicted," believes, that "all
+things work together for blessings" to the pious and the just,
+and is intimately persuaded that "our light affliction, which is
+but for a moment, is the means and the earnest of a far more
+exceeding and eternal weight of glory."
+
+If we descend from these great archetypes, the love between
+parent and child, and between the creator and his creature, we
+shall still find the same inequality the inseparable attendant
+upon the most perfect ties of affection.  The ancients seem to
+have conceived the truest and most exalted ideas on the subject
+of friendship.  Among the most celebrated instances are the
+friendship of Achilles and Patroclus, Orestes and Pylades, Aeneas
+and Achates, Cyrus and Araspes, Alexander and Hephaestion, Scipio
+and Laelius.  In each of these the parties are, the true hero,
+the man of lofty ambition, the magnificent personage in whom is
+concentred every thing that the historian or the poet was able to
+realise of excellence, and the modest and unpretending individual
+in whom his confidence was reposed.  The grand secret of the
+connection is unfolded in the saying of the Macedonian conqueror,
+"Craterus loves the king, but Hephaestion loves Alexander." 
+Friendship is to the loftier mind the repose, the unbending of
+the soul.  The great man (whatever may be the department in which
+his excellence consists) has enough of his greatness, when he
+stands before the world, and receives the homage that is paid to
+his merits.  Ever and anon he is anxious to throw aside this
+incumbrance, and be as a man merely to a man.  He wishes to
+forget the "pride, pomp, and circumstance" of greatness, and to
+be that only which he is himself.  He desires at length to be
+sure, that he receives no adulation, that he is accosted with no
+insincerity, and that the individual to whose society he has
+thought proper to withdraw, has no by-ends, no sinister purposes
+in all his thoughts.  What he seeks for, is a true friend, a
+being who sincerely loves, one who is attached to him, not for
+the accidents that attend him, hut for what most strictly belongs
+to him, and of which he cannot be divested.  In this friend there
+is neither interested intention nor rivalry.
+
+Such are the characteristic features of the superior party in
+these exemplars of friendship among the ancients.  Of the
+unpretending, unassuming party Homer, the great master of the
+affections and emotions in remoter ages, has given us the fullest
+portrait in the character of Patroclus.  The distinguishing
+feature of his disposition is a melting and affectionate spirit,
+the concentred essence of tenderness and humanity.  When
+Patroclus comes from witnessing the disasters of the Greeks, to
+collect a report of which he had been sent by Achilles, he is
+"overwhelmed with floods of tears, like a spring which pours down
+its waters from the steep edge of a precipice."  It is thus that
+Jupiter characterises him when he lies dead in the field of
+battle:
+
+Thou [addressing himself in his thoughts to Hector] hast slain
+the friend of Achilles, not less memorable for the blandness of
+his temper, than the bravery of his deeds.
+
+It is thus that Menelaus undertakes to excite the Grecian chiefs
+to rescue his body:  
+
+Let each man recollect the sweetness of his disposition for, as
+long as he lived, he was unremitted in kindness to all.  When
+Achilles proposes the games at the funeral, he says, "On any
+other occasion my horses should have started for the prize, but
+now it cannot be.  They have lost their incomparable groom, who
+was accustomed to refresh their limbs with water, and anoint
+their flowing manes; and they are inconsolable."  Briseis also
+makes her appearance among the mourners, avowing that, "when her
+husband had been slain in battle, and her native city laid in
+ashes, this generous man prevented her tears, averring to her,
+that she should be the wife of her conqueror, and that he would
+himself spread the nuptial banquet for her in the hero's native
+kingdom of Phthia."
+
+The reciprocity which belongs to a friendship between unequals
+may well be expected to give a higher zest to their union.  Each
+party is necessary to the other.  The superior considers him
+towards whom he pours out his affection, as a part of himself.
+
+     The head is not more native to the heart,
+     The hand more instrumental to the mouth.
+
+He cannot separate himself from him, but at the cost of a fearful
+maim.  When the world is shut out by him, when he retires into
+solitude, and falls back upon himself, then his unpretending
+friend is most of all necessary to him.  He is his consolation
+and his pleasure, the safe coffer in which he reposits all his
+anxieties and sorrows.  If the principal, instead of being a
+public man, is a man of science, this kind of unbending becomes
+certainly not the less welcome to him.  He wishes occasionally to
+forget the severity of his investigations, neither to have his
+mind any longer wound up and stretched to the height of
+meditation, nor to feel that he needs to be any way on his guard,
+or not completely to give the rein to all his sallies and the
+sportiveness of his soul.  Having been for a considerable time
+shut up in sequestered reflection, he wishes, it may be, to have
+the world, the busy impassioned world, brought to his ears,
+without his being obliged to enter into its formalities and
+mummeries.  If he desires to speak of the topics which had so
+deeply engaged him, he can keep as near the edge as he pleases,
+and drop or resume them as his fancy may prompt.  And it seems
+useless to say, how much his modest and unassuming friend will be
+gratified in being instrumental to relieve the labours of his
+principal, in feeling that he is necessary to him, and in
+meditating on the delight he receives in being made the chosen
+companion and confident of him whom he so ardently admires.  It
+was precisely in this spirit, that Fulke Greville, two hundred
+years ago, directed that it should be inscribed on his tomb,
+"Here lies the friend of Sir Philip Sidney."  Tenderness on the
+one part, and a deep feeling of honour and respect on the other,
+give a completeness to the union which it must otherwise for ever
+want.  "There is no limit, none," to the fervour with which the
+stronger goes forward to protect the weak; while in return the
+less powerful would encounter a thousand deaths rather than
+injury should befall the being to whom in generosity and
+affection he owes so much.
+
+In the mean time, though inequality is necessary to give this
+completeness to friendship, the inequality must not be too great.
+
+The inferior party must be able to understand and appreciate the
+sense and the merits of him to whom he is thus bound.  There must
+be no impediment to hinder the communications of the principal
+from being fully comprehended, and his sentiments entirely
+participated.  There must be a boundless confidence, without
+apprehension that the power of the stronger party can by the
+remotest possibility be put forth ungenerously.  "Perfect love
+casteth out fear."  The evangelist applies this aphorism even to
+the love of the creature to his creator.  "The Lord spake unto
+Moses, face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend."  In the
+union of which I am treating the demonstrative and ordinary
+appearance will be that of entire equality, which is heightened
+by the inner, and for the greater part unexplained and
+undeveloped, impression of a contrary nature.  There is in either
+party a perfect reliance, an idea of inequality with the most
+entire assurance that it can never operate unworthily in the
+stronger party, or produce insincerity or servility in the
+weaker.  There will in reality always be some reserve, some
+shadow of fear between equals, which in the friendship of
+unequals, if happily assorted, can find no place.  There is a
+pouring out of the heart on the one side, and a cordial
+acceptance on the other, which words are inadequate to describe.
+
+To proceed.  If from friendship we go forward to that which in
+all languages is emphatically called love, we shall still find
+ourselves dogged and attended by inequality.  Nothing can be more
+certain, however we may seek to modify and abate it, than the
+inequality of the sexes.  Let us attend to it as it stands in
+Milton:
+
+      For contemplation he and velour formed
+      For softness she and sweet attractive grace;
+      He for God only, she for God in him.
+
+Thus it is painted to us as having been in Paradise; and with
+similar inequality have the sexes subsisted in all ages and
+nations since.  If it were possible to take from the fair sex its
+softness and attractive grace, and endow it instead with
+audacious, masculine and military qualities, there is scarcely
+any one that does not perceive, with whatever advantages it might
+be attended in other respects, that it would be far from tending
+to cherish and increase the passion of love.
+
+It is in reality obvious, that man and woman, as they come from
+the hands of nature, are so much upon a par with each other, as
+not to afford the best subjects between whom to graft a habit of
+entire, unalterable affection.  In the scenes of vulgar and
+ordinary society, a permanent connection between persons of
+opposite sexes is too apt to degenerate into a scene of warfare,
+where each party is for ever engaged in a struggle for
+superiority, and neither will give way.  A penetrating observer,
+with whom in former days I used intimately to converse, was
+accustomed to say, that there was generally more jarring and ill
+blood between the two parties in the first year of their
+marriage, than during all the remainder of their lives.  It is at
+length found necessary, as between equally matched belligerents
+on the theatre of history, that they should come to terms, make a
+treaty of peace, or at least settle certain laws of warfare, that
+they may not waste their strength in idle hostilities.
+
+The nations of antiquity had a way of settling this question in a
+very summary mode.  As certain Oriental tribes have determined
+that women have no souls, and that nothing can be more proper
+than to shut them up, like singing birds in cages, so the Greeks
+and Romans for the most part excluded their females from the
+society of the more martial sex.  Marriage with them was a
+convenience merely; and the husband and wife were in reality
+nothing more than the master and the slave.  This point once
+settled as a matter of national law, there was certainly in most
+cases little danger of any vexatious rivalship and struggle for
+power.
+
+But there is nothing in which the superiority of modern times
+over the ancient has been more conspicuous, than in our
+sentiments and practices on this subject.  This superiority, as
+well as several other of our most valuable acquisitions, took its
+rise in what we call the dark ages.  Chivalry was for the most
+part the invention of the eleventh century.  Its principle was
+built upon a theory of the sexes, giving to each a relative
+importance, and assigning to both functions full of honour and
+grace.  The knights (and every gentleman during that period in
+due time became a knight) were taught, as the main features of
+their vocation, the "love of God and the ladies."  The ladies in
+return were regarded as the genuine censors of the deeds of
+knighthood.  From these principles arose a thousand lessons of
+humanity.  The ladies regarded it as their glory to assist their
+champions to arm and to disarm, to perform for them even menial
+services, to attend them in sickness, and to dress their wounds. 
+They bestowed on them their colours, and sent them forth to the
+field hallowed with their benedictions.  The knights on the other
+hand considered any slight towards the fair sex as an indelible
+stain to their order; they contemplated the graceful patronesses
+of their valour with a feeling that partook of religious homage
+and veneration, and esteemed it as perhaps the first duty of
+their profession, to relieve the wrongs, and avenge the injuries
+of the less powerful sex.
+
+This simple outline as to the relative position of the one sex
+and the other, gave a new face to the whole scheme and
+arrangements of civil society.   It is like those admirable
+principles in the order of the material universe, or those grand
+discoveries brought to light from time to time by superior
+genius, so obvious and simple, that we wonder the most common
+understanding could have missed them, yet so pregnant with
+results, that they seem at once to put a new life and inspire a
+new character into every part of a mighty and all-comprehensive
+mass.
+
+The passion between the sexes, in its grosser sense, is a
+momentary impulse merely; and there was danger that, when the fit
+and violence of the passion was over, the whole would subside
+into inconstancy and a roving disposition, or at least into
+indifference and almost brutal neglect.  But the institutions of
+chivalry immediately gave a new face to this.  Either sex
+conceived a deep and permanent interest in the other.  In the
+unsettled state of society which characterised the period when
+these institutions arose, the defenceless were liable to assaults
+of multiplied kinds, and the fair perpetually stood in need of a
+protector and a champion.  The knights on the other hand were
+taught to derive their fame and their honour from the suffrages
+of the ladies.  Each sex stood in need of the other; and the
+basis of their union was mutual esteem.
+
+The effect of this was to give a hue of imagination to all their
+intercourse.  A man was no longer merely a man, nor a woman
+merely a woman.  They were taught mutual deference.  The woman
+regarded her protector as something illustrious and admirable;
+and the man considered the smiles and approbation of beauty as
+the adequate reward of his toils and his dangers.  These modes of
+thinking introduced a nameless grace into all the commerce of
+society.  It was the poetry of life.  Hence originated the
+delightful narratives and fictions of romance; and human
+existence was no longer the bare, naked train of vulgar
+incidents, which for so many ages of the world it had been
+accustomed to be.  It was clothed in resplendent hues, and wore
+all the tints of the rainbow.  Equality fled and was no more; and
+love, almighty, perdurable love, came to supply its place.
+
+By means of this state of things the vulgar impulse of the sexes
+towards each other, which alone was known to the former ages of
+the world, was transformed into somewhat of a totally different
+nature.  It became a kind of worship.  The fair sex looked upon
+their protectors, their fathers, their husbands, and the whole
+train of their chivalry, as something more than human.  There was
+a grace in their motions, a gallantry in their bearing, and a
+generosity in their spirit of enterprise, that the softness of
+the female heart found irresistible.  Nor less on the other hand
+did the knights regard the sex to whose service and defence they
+were sworn, as the objects of their perpetual deference.  They
+approached them with a sort of gallant timidity, listened to
+their behests with submission, and thought the longest courtship
+and devotion nobly recompensed by the final acceptance of the
+fair.
+
+The romance and exaggeration characteristic of these modes of
+thinking have gradually worn away in modern times; but much of
+what was most valuable in them has remained.  Love has in later
+ages never been divested of the tenderness and consideration,
+which were thus rendered some of its most estimable features.  A
+certain desire in each party to exalt the other, and regard it as
+worthy of admiration, became inextricably interwoven with the
+simple passion.  A sense of the honour that was borne by the one
+to the other, had the happiest effect in qualifying the
+familiarity and unreserve in the communion of feelings and
+sentiments, without which the attachment of the sexes cannot
+subsist.  It is something like what the mystic divines describe
+of the beatific vision, where entire wonder and adoration are not
+judged to be incompatible with the most ardent affection, and all
+meaner and selfish regards are annihilated.
+
+From what has been thus drawn together and recapitulated it seems
+clearly to follow, as was stated in the beginning, that love
+cannot exist in its purest form and with a genuine ardour, where
+the parties are, and are felt by each other to be, on an
+equality; but that in all cases it is requisite there should be a
+mutual deference and submission, agreeably to the apostolic
+precept, "Likewise all of you be subject one to the other." 
+There must be room for the imagination to exercise its powers; we
+must conceive and apprehend a thousand things which we do not
+actually witness; each party must feel that it stands in need of
+the other, and without the other cannot be complete; each party
+must be alike conscious of the power of receiving and conferring
+benefit; and there must be the anticipation of a distant future,
+that may every day enhance the good to be imparted and enjoyed,
+and cause the individuals thus united perpetually to become more
+sensible of the fortunate event which gave them to each other,
+and has thus entailed upon each a thousand advantages in which
+they could otherwise never have shared.
+
+
+
+ESSAY XVI.
+OF FRANKNESS AND RESERVE.
+
+Animals are divided into the solitary and the are gregarious: 
+the former being only occasionally associated with its mate, and
+perhaps engaged in the care of its offspring; the latter spending
+their lives in herds and communities.  Man is of this last class
+or division.
+
+Where the animals of any particular species live much in society,
+it seems requisite that in some degree they should be able to
+understand each other's purposes, and to act with a certain
+portion of concert.
+
+All other animals are exceedingly limited in their powers of
+communication.  But speech renders that being whom we justly
+entitle the lord of the creation, capable of a boundless
+interchange of ideas and intentions.  Not only can we communicate
+to each other substantively our elections and preferences:  we
+can also exhort and persuade, and employ reasons and arguments to
+convince our fellows, that the choice we have made is also worthy
+of their adoption.  We can express our thoughts, and the various
+lights and shades, the bleedings, of our thoughts.  Language is
+an instrument capable of being perpetually advanced in
+copiousness, perspicuity and power.
+
+No principle of morality can be more just, than that which
+teaches us to regard every faculty we possess as a power
+intrusted to us for the benefit of others as well as of
+ourselves, and which therefore we are bound to employ in the way
+which shall best conduce to the general advantage.
+
+"Speech was given us, that by it we might express our
+thoughts[34];" in other words, our impressions, ideas and
+conceptions.  We then therefore best fulfil the scope of our
+nature, when we sincerely and unreservedly communicate to each
+other our feelings and apprehensions.  Speech should be to man in
+the nature of a fair complexion, the transparent medium through
+which the workings of the mind should be made legible.
+
+[34] Moliere.
+
+
+I think I have somewhere read of Socrates, that certain of his
+friends expostulated with him, that the windows of his house were
+so constructed that every one who went by could discover all that
+passed within.  "And wherefore not?"  said the sage.  "I do
+nothing that I would wish to have concealed from any human eye. 
+If I knew that all the world observed every thing I did, I should
+feel no inducement to change my conduct in the minutest
+particular."
+
+It is not however practicable that frankness should be carried to
+the extent above mentioned.  It has been calculated that the
+human mind is capable of being impressed with three hundred and
+twenty sensations in a second of time.  At all events we well
+know that, even "while I am speaking, a variety of sensations are
+experienced by me, without so much as interrupting, that is,
+without materially diverting, the train of my ideas.  My eye
+successively remarks a thousand objects that present themselves,
+and my mind wanders to the different parts of my body, without
+occasioning the minutest obstacle to my discourse, or my being in
+any degree distracted by the multiplicity of these objects[35]." 
+It is therefore beyond the reach of the faculty of speech, for me
+to communicate all the sensations I experience; and I am of
+necessity reduced to a selection.
+
+[35] See above, Essay 7.
+
+
+Nor is this the whole.  We do not communicate all that we feel,
+and all that we think; for this would be impertinent.  We owe a
+certain deference and consideration to our fellow-men; we owe it
+in reality to ourselves.  We do not communicate indiscriminately
+all that passes within us.  The time would fail us; and "the
+world would not contain the books that might be written."  We do
+not speak merely for the sake of speaking; otherwise the
+communication of man with his fellow would be but one eternal
+babble.  Speech is to be employed for some useful purpose; nor
+ought we to give utterance to any thing that shall not promise to
+be in some way productive of benefit or amusement.
+
+Frankness has its limits, beyond which it would cease to be
+either advantageous or virtuous.  We are not to tell every thing:
+
+but we are not to conceal any thing, that it would be useful or
+becoming in us to utter.  Our first duty regarding the faculty of
+speech is, not to keep back what it would be beneficial to our
+neighbour to know.  But this is a negative sincerity only.  If we
+would acquire a character for frankness, we must be careful that
+our conversation is such, as to excite in him the idea that we
+are open, ingenuous and fearless.  We must appear forward to
+speak all that will give him pleasure, and contribute to maintain
+in him an agreeable state of being.  It must be obvious that we
+are not artificial and on our guard.--After all, it is difficult
+to lay down rules on this subject:  the spring of whatever is
+desirable respecting it, must be in the temper of the man with
+whom others have intercourse.  He must be benevolent, sympathetic
+and affectionate.  His heart must overflow with good-will; and he
+must be anxious to relieve every little pain, and to contribute
+to the enjoyment and complacent feelings, of those with whom he
+is permanently or accidentally connected.  "Out of the abundance
+of the heart the mouth speaketh."
+
+There are two considerations by which we ought to be directed in
+the exercise of the faculty of speech.
+
+The first is, that we should tell our neighbour all that it would
+be useful to him to know.  We must have no sinister or bye ends. 
+"No man liveth to himself."  We are all of us members of the
+great congregation of mankind.  The same blood should circulate
+through every limb and every muscle.  Our pulses should beat time
+to each other; and we should have one common sensorium, vibrating
+throughout, upon every material accident that occurs, and when
+any object is at stake essentially affecting the welfare of our
+fellow-beings.  We should forget ourselves in the interest that
+we feel for the happiness of others; and, if this were universal,
+each man would be a gainer, inasmuch as he lost himself, and was
+cared and watched for by many.
+
+In all these respects we must have no reserve.  We should only
+consider what it is that it would be beneficial to have declared.
+
+We must not look back to ourselves, and consult the dictates of a
+narrow and self-interested prudence.  The whole essence of
+communication is adulterated, if, instead of attending to the
+direct effects of what suggests itself to our tongue, we are to
+consider how by a circuitous route it may react upon our own
+pleasures and advantage.
+
+Nor only are we bound to communicate to our neighbour all that it
+will be useful to him to know.  We have many neighbours, beside
+those to whom we immediately address ourselves.  To these our
+absent fellow-beings, we owe a thousand duties.  We are bound to
+defend those whom we hear aspersed, and who are spoken unworthily
+of by the persons whom we incidentally encounter.  We should be
+the forward and spontaneous advocates of merit in every shape and
+in every individual in whom we know it to exist.  What a
+character would that man make for himself, of whom it was
+notorious that he consecrated his faculty of speech to the
+refuting unjust imputations against whomsoever they were
+directed, to the contradicting all false and malicious reports,
+and to the bringing forth obscure and unrecognised worth from the
+shades in which it lay hid! What a world should we live in, if
+all men were thus prompt and fearless to do justice to all the
+worth they knew or apprehended to exist!  Justice, simple
+justice, if it extended no farther than barely to the faculty of
+speech, would in no long time put down all misrepresentation and
+calumny, bring all that is good and meritorious into honour, and,
+so to speak, set every man in his true and rightful position. 
+But whoever would attempt this, must do it in all honour, without
+parade, and with no ever-and-anon looking back upon his
+achievement, and saying, See to how much credit I am
+entitled!--as if he laid more stress upon himself, the doer of
+this justice, than upon justice in its intrinsic nature and
+claims.
+
+But we not only owe something to the advantage and interest of
+our neighbours, but something also to the sacred divinity of
+Truth.  I am not only to tell my neighbour whatever I know that
+may be beneficial to him, respecting his position in society, his
+faults, what other men appear to contemplate that may conduce to
+his advantage or injury, and to advise him how the one may best
+be forwarded, or the other defeated and brought to nothing:  I am
+bound also to consider in what way it may be in my power so to
+act on his mind, as shall most enlarge his views, confirm and
+animate his good resolutions, and meliorate his dispositions and
+temper.  We are all members of one great community:  and we shall
+never sufficiently discharge our duty in that respect, till, like
+the ancient Spartans, the love of the whole becomes our
+predominant passion, and we cease to imagine that we belong to
+ourselves, so much as to the entire body of which we are a part. 
+There are certain views in morality, in politics, and various
+other important subjects, the general prevalence of which will be
+of the highest benefit to the society of which we are members;
+and it becomes us in this respect, with proper temperance and
+moderation, to conform ourselves to the zealous and fervent
+precept of the apostle, to "promulgate the truth and be instant,
+in season and out of season," that we may by all means leave some
+monument of our good intentions behind us, and feel that we have
+not lived in vain.
+
+There is a maxim extremely in vogue in the ordinary intercourses
+of society, which deserves to be noticed here, for the purpose of
+exposing it to merited condemnation.  It is very common between
+friends, or persons calling themselves such, to say, "Do not ask
+my advice in a certain crisis of your life; I will not give it;
+hereafter, if the thing turns out wrong, you will reflect on me,
+and say that it was at my suggestion that you were involved in
+calamity." This is a dastardly excuse, and shews a pitiful
+selfishness in the man that urges it.
+
+It is true, that we ought ever to be on the alert, that we may
+not induce our friend into evil.  We should be upon our guard,
+that we may not from overweening arrogance and self-conceit
+dictate to another, overpower his more sober judgment, and assume
+a rashness for him, in which perhaps we would not dare to indulge
+for ourselves.  We should be modest in our suggestions, and
+rather supply him with materials for decision, than with a
+decision absolutely made.  There may however be cases where an
+opposite proceeding is necessary.  We must arrest our friend,
+nay, even him who is merely our fellow-creature, with a strong
+arm, when we see him hovering on the brink of a precipice, or the
+danger is so obvious, that nothing but absolute blindness could
+conceal it from an impartial bystander.
+
+But in all cases our best judgment should always be at the
+service of our brethren of mankind.  "Give to him that asketh
+thee; and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away."
+
+This may not always be practicable or just, when applied to the
+goods of fortune:  but the case of advice, information, and laws
+of conduct, comes within that of Ennius, to suffer our neighbour
+to light his candle at our lamp.  To do so will enrich him,
+without making us a jot the poorer.  We should indeed respect the
+right of private judgment, and scarcely in any case allow our
+will to supersede his will in his own proper province.  But we
+should on no account suffer any cowardly fears for ourselves, to
+induce us to withhold from him any assistance that our wider
+information or our sounder judgment might supply to him.
+
+The next consideration by which we should be directed in the
+exercise of the faculty of speech, is that we should employ it so
+as should best conduce to the pleasure of our neighbour.  Man is
+a different creature in the savage and the civilised state.  It
+has been affirmed, and it may be true, that the savage man is a
+stranger to that disagreeable frame of mind, known by the name of
+ennui.  He can pore upon the babbling stream, or stretch himself
+upon a sunny bank, from the rising to the setting of the sun, and
+be satisfied.  He is scarcely roused from this torpid state but
+by the cravings of nature.  If they can be supplied without
+effort, he immediately relapses into his former supineness; and,
+if it requires search, industry and exertion to procure their
+gratification, he still more eagerly embraces the repose, which
+previous fatigue renders doubly welcome.
+
+But, when the mind has once been wakened up from its original
+lethargy, when we have overstepped the boundary which divides the
+man from the beast, and are made desirous of improvement, while
+at the same moment the tumultuous passions that draw us in
+infinitely diversified directions are called into act, the case
+becomes exceedingly different.  It might be difficult at first to
+rouse man from his original lethargy:  it is next to impossible
+that he should ever again be restored to it.  The appetite of the
+mind being once thoroughly awakened in society, the human species
+are found to be perpetually craving after new intellectual food. 
+We read, we write, we discourse, we ford rivers, and scale
+mountains, and engage in various pursuits, for the pure pleasure
+that the activity and earnestness of the pursuit afford us.  The
+day of the savage and the civilised man are still called by the
+same name.  They may be measured by a pendulum, and will be found
+to be of the same duration.  But in all other points of view they
+are inexpressibly different.
+
+Hence therefore arises another duty that is incumbent upon us as
+to the exercise of the faculty of speech.  This duty will be more
+or less urgent according to the situation in which we are placed.
+
+If I sit down in a numerous assembly, if I become one of a
+convivial party of ten or twelve persons, I may unblamed be for
+the greater part, or entirely silent, if I please.  I must appear
+to enter into their sentiments and pleasures, or, if I do not, I
+shall be an unwelcome guest; but it may scarcely be required for
+me to clothe my feelings with articulate speech.
+
+But, when my society shall be that of a few friends only, and
+still more if the question is of spending hours or days in the
+society of a single friend, my duty becomes altered, and a
+greater degree of activity will be required from me.  There are
+cases, where the minor morals of the species will be of more
+importance than those which in their own nature are cardinal. 
+Duties of the highest magnitude will perhaps only be brought into
+requisition upon extraordinary occasions; but the opportunities
+we have of lessening the inconveniences of our neighbour, or of
+adding to his accommodations and the amount of his agreeable
+feelings, are innumerable.  An acceptable and welcome member of
+society therefore will not talk, only when he has something
+important to communicate.  He will also study how he may amuse
+his friend with agreeable narratives, lively remarks, sallies of
+wit, or any of those thousand nothings, which' set off with a
+wish to please and a benevolent temper, will often entertain more
+and win the entire good will of the person to whom they are
+addressed, than the wisest discourse, or the vein of conversation
+which may exhibit the powers and genius of the speaker to the
+greatest advantage.
+
+Men of a dull and saturnine complexion will soon get to an end of
+all they felt it incumbent on them to say to their comrades.  But
+the same thing will probably happen, though at a much later
+period, between friends of an active mind, of the largest stores
+of information, and whose powers have been exercised upon the
+greatest variety of sentiments, principles, and original veins of
+thinking.  When two such men first fall into society, each will
+feel as if he had found a treasure.  Their communications are
+without end; their garrulity is excited, and converts into a
+perennial spring.  The topics upon which they are prompted to
+converse are so numerous, that one seems to jostle out the other.
+
+It may proceed thus from day to day, from month to month, and
+perhaps from year to year.  But, according to the old proverb,
+"It is a long lane that has no turning."  The persons here
+described will have a vast variety of topics upon which they are
+incited to compare their opinions, and will lay down these topics
+and take them up again times without number.  Upon some, one of
+the parties will feel himself entirely at home while the other is
+comparatively a novice, and, in others, the advantage will be
+with the other; so that the gain of both, in this free and
+unrestrained opening of the soul, will be incalculable.  But the
+time will come, like as in perusing an author of the most
+extraordinary genius and the most versatile powers, that the
+reading of each other's minds will be exhausted.  They know so
+much of each other's tone of thinking, that all that can be said
+will be anticipated.  The living voice, the sparkling eye, and
+the beaming countenance will do much to put off the evil day,
+when we shall say, I have had enough.  But the time will come in
+which we shall feel that this after all is but little, and we
+shall become sluggish, ourselves to communicate, or to excite the
+dormant faculties of our friend, when the spring, the waters of
+which so long afforded us the most exquisite delight, is at
+length drawn dry.
+
+I remember in my childish years being greatly struck with that
+passage in the Bible, where it is written, "But I say unto you,
+that, for every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give
+an account in the day of judgment:" and, as I was very desirous
+of conforming myself to the directions of the sacred volume, I
+was upon the point of forming a sort of resolution, that I would
+on no account open my mouth to speak, without having a weighty
+reason for uttering the thing I felt myself prompted to say.
+
+But practical directions of this sort are almost in all cases of
+ambiguous interpretation.  From the context of this passage it is
+clear, that by "idle words" we are to understand vicious words,
+words tending to instil into the mind unauthorised impulses, that
+shew in the man who speaks "a will most rank, foul disproportion,
+thoughts unnatural,' and are calculated to render him by whom
+they are listened to, light and frivolous of temper, and unstrung
+for the graver duties of human life.
+
+But idle words, in the sense of innocent amusement, are not
+vicious.  "There is a time for all things."  Amusement must not
+encroach upon or thrust aside the real business, the important
+engagements, and the animated pursuits of man.  But it is
+entitled to take its turn unreproved.  Human life is so various,
+and the disposition and temper of the mind of so different tones
+and capacity, that a wise man will "frame his face to all
+occasions." Playfulness, if not carried to too great an extreme,
+is an additional perfection in human nature.  We become relieved
+from our more serious cares, and better fitted to enter on them
+again after an interval.  To fill up the days of our lives with
+various engagements, to make one occupation succeed to another,
+so as to liberate us from the pains of ennui, and the dangers of
+what may in an emphatical sense be called idleness, is no small
+desideratum.  That king may in this sense be admitted to have
+formed no superficial estimate of our common nature, who is said
+to have proclaimed a reward to the individual that should invent
+a new amusement.
+
+And, to consider the question as it stands in relation to the
+subject of the present Essay, a perpetual gravity and a vigilant
+watch to be placed on the door of our lips, would be eminently
+hostile to that frankness which is to be regarded as one of the
+greatest ornaments of our nature.  "It is meet, that we should
+make merry and be glad."  A formal countenance, a demure, careful
+and unaltered cast of features, is one of the most
+disadvantageous aspects under which human nature can exhibit
+itself.  The temper must be enterprising and fearless, the manner
+firm and assured, and the correspondence between the heart and
+the tongue prompt and instantaneous, if we desire to have that
+view of man that shall do him the most credit, and induce us to
+form the most honourable opinion respecting him.  On our front
+should sit fearless confidence and unsubdued hilarity.  Our limbs
+should be free and unfettered, a state of the animal which
+imparts a grace infinitely more winning than that of the most
+skilful dancer.  The very sound of our voice should be full,
+firm, mellow, and fraught with life and sensibility; of that
+nature, at the hearing of which every bosom rises, and every eye
+is lighted up.  It is thus that men come to understand and
+confide in each other.  This is the only frame that can perfectly
+conduce to our moral improvement, the awakening of our faculties,
+the diffusion of science, and the establishment of the purest
+notions and principles of civil and political liberty.
+
+
+
+ESSAY XVII.
+OF BALLOT.
+
+The subject of the preceding Essay leads by an obvious transition
+to the examination of a topic, which at present occupies to a
+considerable extent the attention of those who are anxious for
+the progress of public improvement, and the placing the liberties
+of mankind on the securest basis:  I mean, the topic of the vote
+by ballot.
+
+It is admitted that the most beneficial scheme for the government
+of nations, is a government by representation:  that is, that
+there shall be in every nation, or large collection of men, a
+paramount legislative assembly, composed of deputies chosen by
+the people in their respective counties, cities, towns, or
+departments.  In what manner then shall these deputies be
+elected?
+
+The argument in favour of the election by ballot is obvious.
+
+In nearly all civilised countries there exists more or less an
+inequality of rank and property:  we will confine our attention
+principally to the latter.
+
+Property necessarily involves influence.  Mankind are but too
+prone to pay a superior deference to those who wear better
+clothes, live in larger houses, and command superior
+accommodations to those which fall to the lot of the majority.
+
+One of the main sources of wealth in civilised nations is the
+possession of land.  Those who have a considerable allotment of
+land in property, for the most part let it out in farms on lease
+or otherwise to persons of an inferior rank, by whom it is
+cultivated.  In this case a reciprocal relation is created
+between the landlord and the tenant:  and, if the landlord
+conducts himself towards his tenant agreeably to the principles
+of honour and liberality, it is impossible that the tenant should
+not feel disposed to gratify his landlord, so far as shall be
+compatible with his own notions of moral rectitude, or the
+paramount interests of the society of which he is a member.
+
+If the proprietor of any extensive allotment of land does not let
+it out in farms, but retains it under his own direction, he must
+employ a great number of husbandmen and labourers; and over them
+he must be expected to exercise the same sort of influence, as
+under the former statement we supposed him to exercise over his
+tenants.
+
+The same principle will still operate wherever any one man in
+society is engaged in the expenditure of a considerable capital. 
+The manufacturer will possess the same influence over his
+workmen, as the landed proprietor over his tenants or labourers. 
+Even the person who possesses considerable opulence, and has no
+intention to engage in the pursuits of profit or accumulation,
+will have an ample retinue, and will be enabled to use the same
+species of influence over his retainers and trades-people, as the
+landlord exercises over his tenants and labourers, and the
+manufacturer over his workmen.
+
+A certain degree of this species of influence in society, is
+perhaps not to be excepted against.  The possessor of opulence in
+whatever form, may be expected to have received a superior
+education, and, being placed at a certain distance from the
+minuter details and the lesser wheels in the machine of society,
+to have larger and more expansive views as to the interests of
+the whole.  It is good that men in different ranks of society
+should be brought into intercourse with each other; it will
+subtract something from the prejudices of both, and enable each
+to obtain some of the advantages of the other.  The division of
+rank is too much calculated to split society into parties having
+a certain hostility to each other.  In a free state we are all
+citizens:  it is desirable that we should all be friends.
+
+But this species of influence may be carried too far.  To a
+certain extent it is good.  Inasmuch as it implies the
+enlightening one human understanding by the sparks struck out
+from another, or even the communication of feelings between man
+and man, this is not to be deprecated.  Some degree of courteous
+compliance and deference of the ignorant to the better informed,
+is inseparable from the existence of political society as we
+behold it; such a deference as we may conceive the candid and
+conscientious layman to pay to the suggestions of his honest and
+disinterested pastor.
+
+Every thing however that is more than this, is evil.  There
+should be no peremptory mandates, and no threat or apprehension
+of retaliation and mischief to follow, if the man of inferior
+station or opulence should finally differ in opinion from his
+wealthier neighbour.  We may admit of a moral influence; but
+there must be nothing, that should in the smallest degree border
+on compulsion.
+
+But it is unfortunately in the very nature of weak, erring and
+fallible mortals, to make an ill use of the powers that are
+confided to their discretion.  The rich man in the wantonness of
+his authority will not stop at moral influence, but, if he is
+disappointed of his expectation by what he will call my
+wilfulness and obstinacy, will speedily find himself impelled to
+vindicate his prerogative, and to punish my resistance.  In every
+such disappointment he will discern a dangerous precedent, and
+will apprehend that, if I escape with impunity, the whole of that
+ascendancy, which he has regarded as one of the valuable
+privileges contingent to his station, will be undermined.
+
+Opulence has two ways of this grosser sort, by which it may
+enable its possessor to command the man below him,--punishment
+and reward.  As the holder, for example, of a large landed
+estate, or the administrator of an ample income, may punish the
+man who shews himself refractory to his will, so he may also
+reward the individual who yields to his suggestions.  This, in
+whatever form it presents itself, may be classed under the
+general head of bribery.
+
+The remedy for all this therefore, real or potential, mischief,
+is said to lie in the vote by ballot, a contrivance, by means of
+which every man shall be enabled to give his vote in favour of or
+against any candidate that shall be nominated, in absolute
+secrecy, without it being possible for any one to discover on
+which side the elector decided,--nay, a contrivance, by which the
+elector is invited to practise mystery and concealment, inasmuch
+as it would seem an impertinence in him to speak out, when the
+law is expressly constructed to bid him act and be silent.  If he
+speaks, he is guilty of a sort of libel on his brother-electors,
+who are hereby implicitly reproached by him for their
+impenetrableness and cowardice.
+
+We are told that the institution of the ballot is indispensible
+to the existence of a free state, in a country where the goods of
+fortune are unequally distributed.  In England, as the right of
+sending members to parliament is apportioned at the time I am
+writing, the power of electing is bestowed with such glaring
+inequality, and the number of electors in many cases is so
+insignificant, as inevitably to give to the noble and the rich
+the means of appointing almost any representatives they think
+fit, so that the house of commons may more justly be styled the
+nominees of the upper house, than the deputies of the nation. 
+And it is further said, Remedy this inequality as much as you
+please, and reform the state of the representation to whatever
+degree, still, so long as the votes at elections are required to
+be given openly, the reform will be unavailing, and the essential
+part of the mischief will remain.  The right of giving our votes
+in secrecy, is the only remedy that can cut off the ascendancy of
+the more opulent members of the community over the rest, and give
+us the substance of liberty, instead of cheating us with the
+shadow.
+
+On the other side I would beg the reader to consider, that the
+vote by ballot, in its obvious construction, is not the symbol of
+liberty, but of slavery.  What is it, that presents to every eye
+the image of liberty, and compels every heart to confess, This is
+the temple where she resides?  An open front, a steady and
+assured look, an habitual and uninterrupted commerce between the
+heart and the tongue.  The free man communicates with his
+neighbour, not in corners and concealed places, but in
+market-places and scenes of public resort; and it is thus that
+the sacred spark is caught from man to man, till all are inspired
+with a common flame.  Communication and publicity are of the
+essence of liberty; it is the air they breathe; and without it
+they die.
+
+If on the contrary I would characterise a despotism, I should
+say, It implied a certain circumference of soil, through whose
+divisions and districts every man suspected his neighbour, where
+every man was haunted with the terror that "walls have ears," and
+only whispered his discontent, his hopes and his fears, to the
+trees of the forest and the silent streams.  If the dwellers on
+this soil consulted together, it would be in secret cabals and
+with closed doors; engaging in the sacred cause of public welfare
+and happiness, as if it were a thing of guilt, which the
+conspirator scarcely ventured to confess to his own heart.
+
+A shrewd person of my acquaintance the other day, to whom I
+unadvisedly proposed a question as to what he thought of some
+public transaction, instantly replied with symptoms of alarm, "I
+beg to say that I never disclose my opinions upon matters either
+of religion or politics to any one."  What did this answer imply
+as to the political government of the country where it was given?
+
+Is it characteristic of a free state or a tyranny?
+
+One of the first and highest duties that falls to the lot of a
+human creature, is that which he owes to the aggregate of
+reasonable beings inhabiting what he calls his country.  Our
+duties are then most solemn and elevating, when they are
+calculated to affect the well being of the greatest number of
+men; and of consequence what a patriot owes to his native soil is
+the noblest theatre for his moral faculties.  And shall we teach
+men to discharge this debt in the dark?  Surely every man ought
+to be able to "render a reason of the hope that is in him," and
+give a modest, but an assured, account of his political conduct. 
+When he approaches the hustings at the period of a public
+election, this is his altar, where he sacrifices in the face of
+men to that deity, which is most worth his adoration of all the
+powers whose single province is our sublunary state.
+
+But the principle of the institution of ballot is to teach men to
+perform their best actions under the cloke of concealment.  When
+I return from giving my vote in the choice of a legislative
+representative, I ought, if my mode of proceeding were regulated
+by the undebauched feelings of our nature, to feel somewhat proud
+that I had discharged this duty, uninfluenced, uncorrupted, in
+the sincere frame of a conscientious spirit.  But the institution
+of ballot instigates me carefully to conceal what I have done. 
+If I am questioned respecting it, the proper reply which is as it
+were put into my mouth is, "You have no right to ask me; and I
+shall not tell." But, as every man does not recollect the proper
+reply at the moment it is wanted, and most men feel abashed, when
+a direct question is put to them to which they know they are not
+to return a direct answer, many will stammer and feel confused,
+will perhaps insinuate a falshood, while at the same time their
+manner to a discerning eye will, in spite of all their
+precautions, disclose the very truth.
+
+The institution of ballot not only teaches us that our best
+actions are those which we ought most steadily to disavow, but
+carries distrust and suspicion into all our most familiar
+relations.  The man I want to deceive, and throw out in the
+keenness of his hunting, is my landlord.  But how shall I most
+effectually conceal the truth from him?  May I be allowed to tell
+it to my wife or my child?  I had better not.  It is a known
+maxim of worldly prudence, that the truth which may be a source
+of serious injury to me, is safest, when it is shut up in my own
+bosom.  If I once let it out, there is no saying where the
+communication may stop.  "Day unto day uttereth speech; and night
+unto night sheweth forth knowledge."
+
+And is this the proud attitude of liberty, to which we are so
+eager to aspire?  After all, there will be some ingenuous men in
+the community, who will not know how for ever to suppress what is
+dearest to their hearts.  But at any rate this institution holds
+out a prize to him that shall be most secret and untraceable in
+his proceedings, that shall "shoe his horses with felt," and
+proceed in all his courses with silence and suspicion.
+
+The first principle of morality to social man is, that we act
+under the eye of our fellows.  The truly virtuous man would do as
+he ought, though no eye observed him.  Persons, it is true, who
+deport themselves merely as "men-pleasers," for ever considering
+how the by-standers will pronounce of their conduct, are entitled
+to small commendation.  The good man, it is certain, will see
+
+     To do what virtue would, though sun and moon
+     Were in the flat sea sunk.
+
+But, imperfect creatures as we mortals usually are, these things
+act and react upon each other.  A man of honourable intentions
+will demean himself justly, from the love of right.  But he is
+confirmed in his just dealing by the approbation of his fellows;
+and, if he were tempted to step awry, he would be checked by the
+anticipation of their censure.  Such is the nature of our moral
+education.  It is with virtue, as it is with literary fame.  If I
+write well, I can scarcely feel secure that I do so, till I
+obtain the suffrage of some competent judges, confirming the
+verdict which I was before tempted to pronounce in my own favour.
+
+This acting as in a theatre, where men and Gods are judges of my
+conduct, is the true destination of man; and we cannot violate
+the universal law under which we were born, without having reason
+to fear the most injurious effects.
+
+And is this mysterious and concealed way of proceeding one of the
+forms through which we are to pass in the school of liberty?  The
+great end of all liberal institutions is, to make a man fearless,
+frank as the day, acting from a lively and earnest impulse, which
+will not be restrained, disdains all half-measures, and prompts
+us, as it were, to carry our hearts in our hands, for all men to
+challenge, and all men to comment on.  It is true, that the
+devisers of liberal institutions will have foremost in their
+thoughts, how men shall be secure in their personal liberty,
+unrestrained in the execution of what their thoughts prompt them
+to do, and uncontrolled in the administration of the fruits of
+their industry.  But the moral end of all is, that a man shall be
+worthy of the name, erect, independent of mind, spontaneous of
+decision, intrepid, overflowing with all good feelings, and open
+in the expression of the sentiments they inspire.  If man is
+double in his weightiest purposes, full of ambiguity and
+concealment, and not daring to give words to the impulses of his
+soul, what matters it that he is free?  We may pronounce of this
+man, that he is unworthy of the blessing that has fallen to his
+lot, and will never produce the fruits that should be engendered
+in the lap of liberty.
+
+There is however, it should seem, a short answer to all this.  It
+is in vain to expatiate to us upon the mischiefs of lying,
+hypocrisy and concealment, since it is only through them, as the
+way by which we are to march, that nations can be made free.
+
+This certainly is a fearful judgment awarded upon our species: 
+but is it true?
+
+We are to begin, it seems, with concealing from our landlord, or
+our opulent neighbour, our political determinations; and so his
+corrupt influence will be broken, and the humblest individual
+will be safe in doing that which his honest and unbiased feelings
+may prompt him to do.
+
+No:  this is not the way in which the enemy of the souls of men
+is to be defeated.  We must not begin with the confession of our
+faint-heartedness and our cowardice.  A quiet, sober, unaltered
+frame of judgment, that insults no one, that has in it nothing
+violent, brutal and defying, is the frame that becomes us.  If I
+would teach another man, my superior in rank, how he ought to
+construe and decide upon the conduct I hold, I must begin by
+making that conduct explicit.
+
+It is not in morals, as it is in war.  There stratagem is
+allowable, and to take the enemy by surprise.  "Who enquires of
+an enemy, whether it is by fraud or heroic enterprise that he has
+gained the day?" But it is not so that the cause of liberty is to
+be vindicated in the civil career of life.
+
+The question is of reducing the higher ranks of society to admit
+the just immunities of their inferiors.  I will not allow that
+they shall be cheated into it.  No:  no man was ever yet
+recovered to his senses in a question of morals, but by plain,
+honest, soul-commanding speech.  Truth is omnipotent, if we do
+not violate its majesty by surrendering its outworks, and giving
+up that vantage-ground, of which if we deprive it, it ceases to
+be truth.  It finds a responsive chord in every human bosom. 
+Whoever hears its voice, at the same time recognises its power. 
+However corrupt he may be, however steeped in the habits of vice,
+and hardened in the practices of tyranny, if it be mildly,
+distinctly, emphatically enunciated, the colour will forsake his
+cheek, his speech will alter and be broken, and he will feel
+himself unable to turn it off lightly, as a thing of no
+impression and validity.  In this way the erroneous man, the man
+nursed in the house of luxury, a stranger to the genuine,
+unvarnished state of things, stands a fair chance of being
+corrected.
+
+But, if an opposite, and a truer way of thinking than that to
+which he is accustomed, is only brought to his observation by the
+reserve of him who entertains it, and who, while he entertains
+it, is reluctant to hold communion with his wealthier neighbour,
+who regards him as his adversary, and hardly admits him to be of
+the same common nature, there will be no general improvement. 
+Under this discipline the two ranks of society will be
+perpetually more estranged, view each other with eye askance, and
+will be as two separate and hostile states, though inhabiting the
+same territory.  Is this the picture we desire to see of genuine
+liberty, philanthropic, desirous of good to all, and overflowing
+with all generous emotions?
+
+     I hate where vice can bolt her arguments,
+     And virtue has no tongue to check her pride.
+
+The man who interests himself for his country and its cause, who
+acts bravely and independently, and knows that he runs some risk
+in doing so, must have a strange opinion of the sacredness of
+truth, if the very consciousness of having done nobly does not
+supply him with courage, and give him that simple, unostentatious
+firmness, which shall carry immediate conviction to the heart. 
+It is a bitter lesson that the institution of ballot teaches,
+while it says, "You have done well; therefore be silent; whisper
+it not to the winds; disclose it not to those who are most nearly
+allied to you; adopt the same conduct which would suggest itself
+to you, if you had perpetrated an atrocious crime."
+
+In no long time after the commencement of the war of the allies
+against France, certain acts were introduced into the English
+parliament, declaring it penal by word or writing to utter any
+thing that should tend to bring the government into contempt; and
+these acts, by the mass of the adversaries of despotic power,
+were in way of contempt called the Gagging Acts.  Little did I
+and my contemporaries of 1795 imagine, when we protested against
+these acts in the triumphant reign of William Pitt, that the
+soi-disant friends of liberty and radical reformers, when their
+turn of triumph came, would propose their Gagging Acts,
+recommending to the people to vote agreeably to their
+consciences, but forbidding them to give publicity to the
+honourable conduct they had been prevailed on to adopt!
+
+But all this reasoning is founded in an erroneous, and
+groundlessly degrading, opinion of human nature.  The improvement
+of the general institutions of society, the correction of the
+gross inequalities of our representation, will operate towards
+the improvement of all the members of the community.  While
+ninety-nine in an hundred of the inhabitants of England are
+carried forward in the scale of intellect and virtue, it would be
+absurd to suppose that the hundredth man will stand still, merely
+because he is rich.  Patriotism is a liberal and a social
+impulse; its influence is irresistible; it is contagious, and is
+propagated by the touch; it is infectious, and mixes itself with
+the air that we breathe.
+
+Men are governed in their conduct in a surprising degree by the
+opinion of others.  It was all very well, when noblemen were each
+of them satisfied of the equity and irresistible principle of
+their ascendancy, when the vulgar population felt convinced that
+passive obedience was entailed on them from their birth, when we
+were in a manner but just emancipated (illusorily emancipated!)
+from the state of serfs and villains.  But a memorable
+melioration of the state of man will carry some degree of
+conviction to the hearts of all.  The most corrupt will be made
+doubtful:  many who had not gone so far in ill, will desert the
+banners of oppression.
+
+We see this already.  What a shock was propagated through the
+island, when, the other day, a large proprietor, turning a
+considerable cluster of his tenants out of the houses and lands
+they occupied, because they refused to vote for a representative
+in parliament implicitly as he bade them, urged in his own
+justification, "Shall I not do what I will with my own?"  This
+was all sound morals and divinity perhaps at the period of his
+birth.  Nobody disputed it; or, if any one did, he was set down
+by the oracles of the vicinage as a crackbrained visionary.  This
+man, so confident in his own prerogatives, had slept for the last
+twenty years, and awoke totally unconscious of what had been
+going on in almost every corner of Europe in the interval.  A few
+more such examples; and so broad and sweeping an assumption will
+no more be heard of, and it will remain in the records of
+history, as a thing for the reality of which we have sufficient
+evidence, but which common sense repudiates, and which seems to
+demand from us a certain degree of credulity to induce us to
+admit that it had ever been.
+
+The manners of society are by no means so unchanged and
+unalterable as many men suppose.  It is here, as in the case of
+excessive drinking, which I had lately occasion to mention[36]. 
+In rude and barbarous times men of the highest circles piqued
+themselves upon their power of swallowing excessive potations,
+and found pleasure in it.  It is in this as in so many other
+vices, we follow implicitly where our elders lead the way.  But
+the rage of drinking is now gone by; and you will with difficulty
+find a company of persons of respectable appearance, who assemble
+round a table for the purpose of making beasts of themselves. 
+Formerly it was their glory; now, if any man unhappily retains
+the weakness, he hides it from his equals, as he would a
+loathsome disease.  The same thing will happen as to
+parliamentary corruption, and the absolute authority that was
+exercised by landlords over the consciences of their tenants.  He
+that shall attempt to put into act what is then universally
+condemned, will be a marked man, and will be generally shunned by
+his fellows.  The eye of the world will be upon him, as the
+murderer fancies himself followed by the eye of omnipotence; and
+he will obey the general voice of the community, that he may be
+at peace with himself.
+
+[36] See above, Essay 9.
+
+
+Let us not then disgrace a period of memorable improvement, by
+combining it with an institution that should mark that we, the
+great body of the people, regard the more opulent members of the
+community as our foes.  Let us hold out to them the right hand of
+fellowship; and they will meet us.  They will be influenced,
+partly by ingenuous shame for the unworthy conduct which they and
+their fathers had so long pursued, and partly by sympathy for the
+genuine joy and expansion of heart that is spreading itself
+through the land.  Scarcely any one can restrain himself from
+participating in the happiness of the great body of his
+countrymen; and, if they see that we treat them with generous
+confidence, and are unwilling to recur to the memory of former
+grievances, and that a spirit of philanthropy and unlimited
+good-will is the sentiment of the day, it can scarcely happen but
+that their conversion will be complete, and the harmony be made
+entire[37].
+
+[37] The subject of this Essay is resumed in the close of the
+following.  
+
+
+
+ESSAY XVIII.
+OF DIFFIDENCE.
+
+The following Essay will be to a considerable degree in the
+nature of confession, like the Confessions of St.  Augustine or
+of Jean Jacques Rousseau.  It may therefore at first sight appear
+of small intrinsic value, and scarcely worthy of a place in the
+present series.  But, as I have had occasion more than once to
+remark, we are all of us framed in a great measure on the same
+model, and the analysis of the individual may often stand for the
+analysis of a species.  While I describe myself therefore, I
+shall probably at the same time be describing no inconsiderable
+number of my fellow-beings.
+
+It is true, that the duty of man under the head of Frankness, is
+of a very comprehensive nature.  We ought all of us to tell to
+our neighbour whatever it may be of advantage to him to know, we
+ought to be the sincere and zealous advocates of absent merit and
+worth, and we are bound by every means in our power to contribute
+to the improvement of others, and to the diffusion of salutary
+truths through the world.
+
+From the universality of these precepts many readers might be apt
+to infer, that I am in my own person the bold and unsparing
+preacher of truth, resolutely giving to every man his due, and,
+agreeably to the apostle's direction, "instant in season, and out
+of season."  The individual who answers to this description will
+often be deemed troublesome, often annoying; he will produce a
+considerable sensation in the circle of those who know him; and
+it will depend upon various collateral circumstances, whether he
+shall ultimately be judged a rash and intemperate disturber of
+the contemplations of his neighbours, or a disinterested and
+heroic suggester of new veins of thinking, by which his
+contemporaries and their posterity shall be essentially the
+gainers.
+
+I have no desire to pass myself upon those who may have any
+curiosity respecting me for better than I am; and I will
+therefore here put down a few particulars, which may tend to
+enable them to form an equitable judgment.
+
+One of the earliest passions of my mind was the love of truth and
+sound opinion.  "Why should I," such was the language of my
+solitary meditations, "because I was born in a certain degree of
+latitude, in a certain century, in a country where certain
+institutions prevail, and of parents professing a certain faith,
+take it for granted that all this is right?--This is matter of
+accident.  "Time and chance happeneth to all:" and I, the
+thinking principle within me, might, if such had been the order
+of events, have been born under circumstances the very reverse of
+those under which I was born.  I will not, if I can help it, be
+the creature of accident; I will not, like a shuttle-cock, be at
+the disposal of every impulse that is given me."  I felt a
+certain disdain for the being thus directed; I could not endure
+the idea of being made a fool of, and of taking every ignis
+fatuus for a guide, and every stray notion, the meteor of the
+day, for everlasting truth.  I am the person, spoken of in a
+preceding Essay[38], who early said to Truth, "Go on: 
+whithersoever thou leadest, I am prepared to follow."
+
+[38] See above, Essay XIII.
+
+
+During my college-life therefore, I read all sorts of books, on
+every side of any important question, that were thrown in my way,
+or that I could hear of.  But the very passion that determined me
+to this mode of proceeding, made me wary and circumspect in
+coming to a conclusion.  I knew that it would, if any thing, be a
+more censurable and contemptible act, to yield to every seducing
+novelty, than to adhere obstinately to a prejudice because it had
+been instilled into me in youth.  I was therefore slow of
+conviction, and by no means "given to change."  I never willingly
+parted with a suggestion that was unexpectedly furnished to me;
+but I examined it again and again, before I consented that it
+should enter into the set of my principles.
+
+In proportion however as I became acquainted with truth, or what
+appeared to me to be truth, I was like what I have read of
+Melancthon, who, when he was first converted to the tenets of
+Luther, became eager to go into all companies, that he might make
+them partakers of the same inestimable treasures, and set before
+them evidence that was to him irresistible.  It is needless to
+say, that he often encountered the most mortifying
+disappointment.
+
+Young and eager as I was in my mission, I received in this way
+many a bitter lesson.  But the peculiarity of my temper rendered
+this doubly impressive to me.  I could not pass over a hint, let
+it come from what quarter it would, without taking it into some
+consideration, and endeavouring to ascertain the precise weight
+that was to be attributed to it.  It would however often happen,
+particularly in the question of the claims of a given individual
+to honour and respect, that I could see nothing but the most
+glaring injustice in the opposition I experienced.  In canvassing
+the character of an individual, it is not for the most part
+general, abstract or moral, principles that are called into
+question:  I am left in possession of the premises which taught
+me to admire the man whose character is contested; and
+conformably to those premises I see that his claim to the honour
+I have paid him is fully made out.
+
+In my communications with others, in the endeavour to impart what
+I deemed to be truth, I began with boldness:  but I often found
+that the evidence that was to me irresistible, was made small
+account of by others; and it not seldom happened, as candour was
+my principle, and a determination to receive what could be strewn
+to be truth, let it come from what quarter it would, that
+suggestions were presented to me, materially calculated to
+stagger the confidence with which I had set out.  If I had been
+divinely inspired, if I had been secured by an omniscient spirit
+against the danger of error, my case would have been different. 
+But I was not inspired.  I often encountered an opposition I had
+not anticipated, and was often presented with objections, or had
+pointed out to me flaws and deficiencies in my reasonings, which,
+till they were so pointed out, I had not apprehended.  I had not
+lungs enabling me to drown all contradiction; and, which was
+still more material, I had not a frame of mind, which should
+determine me to regard whatever could be urged against me as of
+no value.  I therefore became cautious.  As a human creature, I
+did not relish the being held up to others' or to myself, as
+rash, inconsiderate and headlong, unaware of difficulties the
+most obvious, embracing propositions the most untenable, and
+"against hope believing in hope."  And, as an apostle of truth, I
+distinctly perceived that a reputation for perspicacity and sound
+judgment was essential to my mission.  I therefore often became
+less a speaker, than a listener, and by no means made it a law
+with myself to defend principles and characters I honoured, on
+every occasion on which I might hear them attacked.
+
+A new epoch occurred in my character, when I published, and at
+the time I was writing, my Enquiry concerning Political Justice. 
+My mind was wrought up to a certain elevation of tone; the
+speculations in which I was engaged, tending to embrace all that
+was most important to man in society, and the frame to which I
+had assiduously bent myself, of giving quarter to nothing because
+it was old, and shrinking from nothing because it was startling
+and astounding, gave a new bias to my character.  The habit which
+I thus formed put me more on the alert even in the scenes of
+ordinary life, and gave me a boldness and an eloquence more than
+was natural to me.  I then reverted to the principle which I
+stated in the beginning, of being ready to tell my neighbour
+whatever it might be of advantage to him to know, to shew myself
+the sincere and zealous advocate of absent merit and worth, and
+to contribute by every means in my power to the improvement of
+others and to the diffusion of salutary truth through the world. 
+I desired that every hour that I lived should be turned to the
+best account, and was bent each day to examine whether I had
+conformed myself to this rule.  I held on this course with
+tolerable constancy for five or six years:  and, even when that
+constancy abated, it failed not to leave a beneficial effect on
+my subsequent conduct.
+
+But, in pursuing this scheme of practice, I was acting a part
+somewhat foreign to my constitution.  I was by nature more of a
+speculative than an active character, more inclined to reason
+within myself upon what I heard and saw, than to declaim
+concerning it.  I loved to sit by unobserved, and to meditate
+upon the panorama before me.  At first I associated chiefly with
+those who were more or less admirers of my work; and, as I had
+risen (to speak in the slang phrase) like "a star" upon my
+contemporaries without being expected, I was treated generally
+with a certain degree of deference, or, where not with deference
+and submission, yet as a person whose opinions and view of things
+were to be taken into the account.  The individuals who most
+strenuously opposed me, acted with a consciousness that, if they
+affected to despise me, they must not expect that all the
+bystanders would participate in that feeling.
+
+But this was to a considerable degree the effect of novelty.  My
+lungs, as I have already said, were not of iron; my manner was
+not overbearing and despotic; there was nothing in it to deter
+him who differed from me from entering the field in turn, and
+telling the tale of his views and judgments in contradiction to
+mine.  I descended into the arena, and stood on a level with the
+rest.  Beyond this, it occasionally happened that, if I had not
+the stentorian lungs, and the petty artifices of rhetoric and
+conciliation, that should carry a cause independently of its
+merits, my antagonists were not deficient in these respects.  I
+had nothing in my favour to balance this, but a sort of
+constitutional equanimity and imperturbableness of temper, which,
+if I was at any time silenced, made me not look like a captive to
+be dragged at the chariot-wheels of my adversary.
+
+All this however had a tendency to subtract from my vocation as a
+missionary.  I was no longer a knight-errant, prepared on all
+occasions by dint of arms to vindicate the cause of every
+principle that was unjustly handled, and every character that was
+wrongfully assailed.  Meanwhile I returned to the field,
+occasionally and uncertainly.  It required some provocation and
+incitement to call me out:  but there was the lion, or whatever
+combative animal may more justly prefigure me, sleeping, and that
+might be awakened.
+
+There is another feature necessary to be mentioned, in order to
+make this a faithful representation.  There are persons, it
+should seem, of whom it may be predicated, that they are semper
+parati.  This has by no means been my case.  My genius often
+deserted me.  I was far from having the thought, the argument, or
+the illustration at all times ready, when it was required.  I
+resembled to a certain degree the persons we read of, who are
+said to be struck as if with a divine judgment.  I was for a
+moment changed into one of the mere herd, de grege porcus.  My
+powers therefore were precarious, and I could not always be the
+intrepid and qualified advocate of truth, if I vehemently desired
+it.  I have often, a few minutes afterwards, or on my return to
+my chambers, recollected the train of thinking, which world have
+strewn me off to advantage, and memorably done me honour, if I
+could have had it at my command the moment it was wanted.
+
+And so much for confession.  I am by no means vindicating myself.
+
+I honour much more the man who is at all times ready to tell his
+neighbour whatever it may be of advantage to him to know, to shew
+himself the sincere and untemporising advocate of absent merit
+and worth, and to contribute by every means in his power to the
+improvement of others, and to the diffusion of salutary truths
+through the world.
+
+This is what every man ought to be, and what the best devised
+scheme of republican institutions would have a tendency to make
+us all.
+
+But, though the man here described is to a certain degree a
+deserter of his true place in society, and cannot be admitted to
+have played his part in all things well, we are by no means to
+pronounce upon him a more unfavourable judgment than he merits. 
+Diffidence, though, where it disqualifies us in any way from
+doing justice to truth, either as it respects general principle
+or individual character, a defect, yet is on no account to be
+confounded in demerit with that suppression of truth, or
+misrepresentation, which grows out of actual craft and design.
+
+The diffident man, in some cases seldomer, and in some oftener
+and in a more glaring manner, deserts the cause of truth, and by
+that means is the cause of misrepresentation, and indirectly the
+propagator of falshood.  But he is constant and sincere as far as
+he goes; he never lends his voice to falshood, or intentionally
+to sophistry; he never for an instant goes over to the enemy's
+standard, or disgraces his honest front by strewing it in the
+ranks of tyranny or imposture.  He may undoubtedly be accused, to
+a certain degree, of dissimulation, or throwing into shade the
+thing that is, but never of simulation, or the pretending the
+thing to be that is not.  He is plain and uniform in every thing
+that he professes, or to which he gives utterance; but, from
+timidity or irresolution, he keeps back in part the offering
+which he owes at the shrine where it is most honourable and
+glorious for man to worship.
+
+And this brings me back again to the subject of the immediately
+preceding Essay, the propriety of voting by ballot.
+
+The very essence of this scheme is silence.  And this silence is
+not merely like that which is prompted by a diffident temper,
+which by fits is practiced by the modest and irresolute man, and
+by fits disappears before the sun of truth and through the
+energies of a temporary fortitude.  It is uniform.  It is not
+brought into act only, when the individual unhappily does not
+find in himself the firmness to play the adventurer.  It becomes
+matter of system, and is felt as being recommended to us for a
+duty
+
+Nor does the evil stop there.  In the course of my ordinary
+communications with my fellow-men, I speak when I please, and I
+am silent when I please, and there is nothing specially to be
+remarked either way.  If I speak, I am perhaps listened to; and,
+if I am silent, it is likely enough concluded that it is because
+I have nothing of importance to say.  But in the question of
+ballot the case is far otherwise.  There it is known that the
+voter has his secret.  When I am silent upon a matter occurring
+in the usual intercourses of life where I might speak, nay, where
+we will suppose I ought to speak, I am at least guilty of
+dissimulation only.  But the voter by ballot is strongly impelled
+to the practice of the more enormous sin of simulation.  It is
+known, as I have said, that he has his secret.  And he will often
+be driven to have recourse to various stratagems, that he may
+elude the enquirer, or that he may set at fault the sagacity of
+the silent observer.  He has something that he might tell if he
+would, and he distorts himself in a thousand ways, that he may
+not betray the hoard which he is known to have in his custody. 
+The institution of ballot is the fruitful parent of ambiguities,
+equivocations and lies without number.
+
+
+
+ESSAY XIX.
+OF SELF-COMPLACENCY.
+
+The subject of this Essay is intimately connected with those of
+Essays XI and XII, perhaps the most important of the series.
+
+It has been established in the latter, that human creatures are
+constantly accompanied in their voluntary actions with the
+delusive sense of liberty, and that our character, our energies,
+and our conscience of moral right and wrong, are mainly dependent
+upon this feature in our constitution.
+
+The subject of my present disquisition relates to the feeling of
+self-approbation or self-complacency, which will be found
+inseparable from the most honourable efforts and exertions in
+which mortal men can be engaged.
+
+One of the most striking of the precepts contained in what are
+called the Golden Verses of Pythagoras, is couched in the words,
+"Reverence thyself."
+
+The duties which are incumbent on man are of two sorts, negative
+and positive.  We are bound to set right our mistakes, and to
+correct the evil habits to which we are prone; and we are bound
+also to be generously ambitious, to aspire after excellence, and
+to undertake such things as may reflect honour on ourselves, and
+be useful to others.
+
+To the practice of the former of these classes of duties we may
+be instigated by prohibitions, menaces and fear, the fear of
+mischiefs that may fall upon us conformably to the known series
+of antecedents and consequents in the course of nature, or of
+mischiefs that may be inflicted on us by the laws of the country
+in which we live, or as results of the ill will and
+disapprobation felt towards us by individuals.  There is nothing
+that is necessarily generous or invigorating in the practice of
+our negative duties.  They amount merely to a scheme for keeping
+us within bounds, and restraining us from those sallies and
+escapes, which human nature, undisciplined and left to itself,
+might betray us into.  But positive enterprise, and great actual
+improvement cannot be expected by us in this way.  All this is
+what the apostle refers to, when he speaks of "the law as a
+schoolmaster to bring us to liberty," after which he advises us
+"not to be again entangled with the yoke of bondage."
+
+On the other hand, if we would enter ourselves in the race of
+positive improvement, if we would become familiar with generous
+sentiments, and the train of conduct which such sentiments
+inspire, we must provide ourselves with the soil in which such
+things grow, and engage in the species of husbandry by which they
+are matured; in other words, we must be no strangers to
+self-esteem and self-complacency.
+
+The truth of this statement may perhaps be most strikingly
+illustrated, if we take for our example the progress of
+schoolboys under a preceptor.  A considerable proportion of these
+are apt, diligent, and desirous to perform the tasks in which
+they are engaged, so as to satisfy the demands of their masters
+and parents, and to advance honourably in the path that is
+recommended to them.  And a considerable proportion put
+themselves on the defensive, and propose to their own minds to
+perform exactly as much as shall exempt them from censure and
+punishment, and no more.
+
+Now I say of the former, that they cannot accomplish the purpose
+they have conceived, unless so far as they are aided by a
+sentiment of self-reverence.
+
+The difference of the two parties is, that the latter proceed, so
+far as their studies are concerned, as feeling themselves under
+the law of necessity, and as if they were machines merely, and
+the former as if they were under what the apostle calls "the law
+of liberty."
+
+We cannot perform our tasks to the best of our power, unless we
+think well of our own capacity.
+
+But this is the smallest part of what is necessary.  We must also
+be in good humour with ourselves.  We must say, I can do that
+which I shall have just occasion to look back upon with
+satisfaction.  It is the anticipation of this result, that
+stimulates our efforts, and carries us forward.  Perseverance is
+an active principle, and cannot continue to operate but under the
+influence of desire.  It is incompatible with languor and
+neutrality.  It implies the love of glory, perhaps of that glory
+which shall be attributed to us by others, or perhaps only of
+that glory which shall be reaped by us in the silent chambers of
+the mind.  The diligent scholar is he that loves himself, and
+desires to have reason to applaud and love himself.  He sits down
+to his task with resolution, he approves of what he does in each
+step of the process, and in each enquires, Is this the thing I
+purposed to effect?
+
+And, as it is with the unfledged schoolboy, after the same manner
+it is with the man mature.  He must have to a certain extent a
+good opinion of himself, he must feel a kind of internal harmony,
+giving to the circulations of his frame animation and
+cheerfulness, or he can never undertake and execute considerable
+things.
+
+The execution of any thing considerable implies in the first
+place previous persevering meditation.  He that undertakes any
+great achievement will, according to the vulgar phrase, "think
+twice," before he buckles up his resolution, and plunges into the
+ocean, which he has already surveyed with anxious glance while he
+remained on shore.  Let our illustration be the case of Columbus,
+who, from the figure of the earth, inferred that there must be a
+way of arriving at the Indies by a voyage directly west, in
+distinction from the very complicated way hitherto practiced, by
+sailing up the Mediterranean, crossing the isthmus of Suez, and
+so falling down the Red Sea into the Indian Ocean.  He weighed
+all the circumstances attendant on such an undertaking in his
+mind.  He enquired into his own powers and resources, imaged to
+himself the various obstacles that might thwart his undertaking,
+and finally resolved to engage in it.  If Columbus had not
+entertained a very good opinion of himself, it is impossible that
+he should have announced such a project, or should have achieved
+it.
+
+Again.  Let our illustration be, of Homer undertaking to compose
+the Iliad.  If he had not believed himself to be a man of very
+superior powers to the majority of the persons around him, he
+would most assuredly never have attempted it.  What an
+enterprise! To describe in twenty-four books, and sixteen
+thousand verses, the perpetual warfare and contention of two
+great nations, all Greece being armed for the attack, and all the
+western division of Asia Minor for the defence:  the war carried
+on by two vast confederacies, under numerous chiefs, all
+sovereign and essentially independent of each other.  To conceive
+the various characters of the different leaders, and their mutual
+rivalship.  To engage all heaven, such as it was then understood,
+as well as what was most respectable on earth, in the struggle. 
+To form the idea, through twenty-four books, of varying the
+incidents perpetually, and keeping alive the attention of the
+reader or hearer without satiety or weariness.  For this purpose,
+and to answer to his conception of a great poem, Homer appears to
+have thought it necessary that the action should be one; and he
+therefore took the incidental quarrel of Achilles and the
+commander in chief, the resentment of Achilles, and his
+consequent defection from the cause, till, by the death of
+Patroclus, and then of Hector, all traces of the misunderstanding
+first, and then of its consequences, should be fully obliterated.
+
+There is further an essential difference between the undertaking
+of Columbus and that of Homer.  Once fairly engaged, there was
+for Columbus no drawing back.  Being already at sea on the great
+Atlantic Ocean, he could not retrace his steps.  Even when he had
+presented his project to the sovereigns of Spain, and they had
+accepted it, and still more when the ships were engaged, and the
+crews mustered, he must go forward, or submit to indelible
+disgrace.
+
+It is not so in writing a poem.  The author of the latter may
+stop whenever he pleases.  Of consequence, during every day of
+its execution, he requires a fresh stimulus.  He must look back
+on the past, and forward on what is to come, and feel that he has
+considerable reason to be satisfied.  The great naval discoverer
+may have his intervals of misgiving and discouragement, and may,
+as Pope expresses it, "wish that any one would hang him." He goes
+forward; for he has no longer the liberty to choose.  But the
+author of a mighty poem is not in the same manner entangled, and
+therefore to a great degree returns to his work each day,
+"screwing his courage to the sticking-place."  He must feel the
+same fortitude and elasticity, and be as entirely the same man of
+heroic energy, as when he first arrived at the resolution to
+engage.  How much then of self-complacency and self-confidence do
+his undertaking and performance imply!
+
+I have taken two of the most memorable examples in the catalogue
+of human achievements:  the discovery of a New World, and the
+production of the Iliad.  But all those voluntary actions, or
+rather series and chains of actions, which comprise energy in the
+first determination, and honour in the execution, each in its
+degree rests upon self-complacency as the pillar upon which its
+weight is sustained, and without which it must sink into nothing.
+
+Self-complacency then being the indispensible condition of all
+that is honourable in human achievements, hence we may derive a
+multitude of duties, and those of the most delicate nature,
+incumbent on the preceptor, as well as a peculiar discipline to
+be observed by the candidate, both while he is "under a
+schoolmaster," and afterwards when he is emancipated, and his
+plan of conduct is to he regulated by his own discretion.
+
+The first duty of the preceptor is encouragement.
+
+Not that his face is to be for ever dressed in smiles, and that
+his tone is to be at all times that of invitation and courtship. 
+The great theatre of the world is of a mingled constitution, made
+up of advantages and sufferings; and it is perhaps best that so
+should be the different scenes of the drama as they pass.  The
+young adventurer is not to expect to have every difficulty
+smoothed for him by the hand of another.  This were to teach him
+a lesson of effeminacy and cowardice.  On the contrary it is
+necessary that he should learn that human life is a state of
+hardship, that the adversary we have to encounter does not always
+present himself with his fangs sheathed in the woolly softness
+which occasionally renders them harmless, and that nothing great
+or eminently honourable was ever achieved but through the dint of
+resolution, energy and struggle.  It is good that the winds of
+heaven should blow upon him, that he should encounter the tempest
+of the elements, and occasionally sustain the inclemency of the
+summer's heat and winter's cold, both literally and
+metaphorically.
+
+But the preceptor, however he conducts himself in other respects,
+ought never to allow his pupil to despise himself, or to hold
+himself as of no account.  Self-contempt can never be a
+discipline favourable to energy or to virtue.  The pupil ought at
+all times to judge himself in some degree worthy, worthy and
+competent now to attempt, and hereafter to accomplish, things
+deserving of commendation.  The preceptor must never degrade his
+pupil in his own eyes, but on the contrary must teach him that
+nothing but resolution and perseverance are necessary, to enable
+him to effect all that the judicious director can expect from
+him.  He should be encouraged through every step of his progress,
+and specially encouraged when he has gained a certain point, and
+arrived at an important resting-place.  It is thus we are taught
+the whole circle of what are called accomplishments, dancing,
+music, fencing, and the rest; and it is surely a strange anomaly,
+if those things which are most essential in raising the mind to
+its true standard, cannot be communicated with equal suavity and
+kindness, be surrounded with allurements, and regarded as sources
+of pleasure and genuine hilarity.
+
+In the mean time it is to be admitted that every human creature,
+especially in the season of youth, and not being the victim of
+some depressing disease either of body or mind, has in him a good
+obstinate sort of self-complacency, which cannot without much
+difficulty be eradicated.  "Though he falleth seven times, yet
+will he rise again."  And, when we have encountered various
+mortifications, and have been many times rebuked and inveighed
+against, we nevertheless recover our own good opinion, and are
+ready to enter into a fresh contention for the prize, if not in
+one kind, then in another.
+
+It is in allusion to this feature in the human character, that we
+have an expressive phrase in the English language,--"to break the
+spirit."  The preceptor may occasionally perhaps prescribe to the
+pupil a severe task; and the young adventurer may say, Can I be
+expected to accomplish this?  But all must be done in kindness. 
+The generous attempter must be reminded of the powers he has
+within him, perhaps yet unexercised; with cheering sounds his
+progress must be encouraged; and, above all, the director of the
+course must take care not to tax him beyond his strength.  And,
+be it observed, that the strength of a human creature is to be
+ascertained by two things; first, the abstract capacity, that the
+thing required is not beyond the power of a being so constituted
+to perform; and, secondly, we must take into the account his past
+achievements, the things he has already accomplished, and not
+expect that he is at once to overleap a thousand obstacles.
+
+For there is such a thing as a broken spirit.  I remember a boy
+who was my schoolfellow, that, having been treated with uncalled
+for severity, never appeared afterwards in the scene of
+instruction, but with a neglected appearance, and the articles of
+his dress scarcely half put on.  I was very young at the time,
+and viewed only the outside of things.  I cannot tell whether he
+had any true ambition previously to his disgrace, but I am sure
+he never had afterwards.
+
+How melancholy an object is the man, who, "for the privilege to
+breathe, bears up and down the city
+
+     A discontented and repining spirit
+     Burthensome to itself,"
+
+incapable of enterprise, listless, with no courage to undertake,
+and no anticipation of the practicability of success and honour! 
+And this spectacle is still more affecting, when the subject
+shall be a human creature in the dawn of youth, when nature opens
+to him a vista of beauty and fruition on every side, and all is
+encouraging, redolent of energy and enterprise!
+
+To break the spirit of a man, bears a considerable resemblance to
+the breaking the main spring, or principal movement, of a
+complicated and ingeniously constructed machine.  We cannot tell
+when it is to happen; and it comes at last perhaps at the time
+that it is least expected.  A judicious superintendent therefore
+will be far from trying consequences in his office, and will,
+like a man walking on a cliff whose extremes are ever and anon
+crumbling away and falling into the ocean, keep much within the
+edge, and at a safe distance from the line of danger.
+
+But this consideration has led me much beyond the true subject of
+this Essay.  The instructor of youth, as I have already said, is
+called upon to use all his skill, to animate the courage, and
+maintain the cheerfulness and self-complacency of his pupil. 
+And, as such is the discipline to be observed to the candidate,
+while he is "under a schoolmaster," so, when he is emancipated,
+and his plan of conduct is to be regulated by his own discretion,
+it is necessary that he should carry forward the same scheme, and
+cultivate that tone of feeling, which should best reconcile him
+to himself, and, by teaching him to esteem himself and bear in
+mind his own value, enable him to achieve things honourable to
+his character, and memorably useful to others.  Melancholy, and a
+disposition anticipating evil are carefully to be guarded
+against, by him who is desirous to perform his part well on the
+theatre of society.  He should habitually meditate all cheerful
+things, and sing the song of battle which has a thousand times
+spurred on his predecessors to victory.  He should contemplate
+the crown that awaits him, and say to himself, I also will do my
+part, and endeavour to enrol myself in the select number of those
+champions, of whom it has been predicated that they were men, of
+whom, compared with the herd of ordinary mortals, "the world,"
+the species among whom they were rated, "was not worthy."
+
+Another consideration is to be recollected here.  Without
+self-complacency in the agent no generous enterprise is to be
+expected, and no train of voluntary actions, such as may purchase
+honour to the person engaged in them.
+
+But, beside this, there is no true and substantial happiness but
+for the self-complacent.  "The good man," as Solomon says, "is
+satisfied from himself." The reflex act is inseparable from the
+constitution of the human mind.  How can any one have genuine
+happiness, unless in proportion as he looks round, and, "behold! 
+every thing is very good?" This is the sunshine of the soul, the
+true joy, that gives cheerfulness to all our circulations, and
+makes us feel ourselves entire and complete.  What indeed is
+life, unless so far as it is enjoyed?  It does not merit the
+name.  If I go into a school, and look round on a number of young
+faces, the scene is destitute of its true charm, unless so far as
+I see inward peace and contentment on all sides.  And, if we
+require this eminently in the young, neither can it be less
+essential, when in growing manhood we have the real cares of the
+world to contend with, or when in declining age we need every
+auxiliary to enable us to sustain our infirmities.
+
+But, before I conclude my remarks on this subject, it is
+necessary that I should carefully distinguish between the thesis,
+that self-complacency is the indispensible condition of all that
+is honourable in human achievements, and the proposition
+contended against in Essay XI, that "self-love is the source of
+all our actions."  Self-complacency is indeed the feeling without
+which we cannot proceed in an honourable course; but is far from
+being the motive that impels us to act.  The motive is in the
+real nature and absolute properties of the good thing that is
+proposed to our choice:  we seek the happiness of another,
+because his happiness is the object of our desire. 
+Self-complacency may be likened to the bottle-holder in one of
+those contentions for bodily prowess, so characteristic of our
+old English manners.  The bottle-holder is necessary to supply
+the combatant with refreshment, and to encourage him to persist;
+but it would be most unnatural to regard him as the cause of the
+contest.  No:  the parties have found reason for competition,
+they apprehend a misunderstanding or a rivalry impossible to be
+settled but by open contention, and the putting forth of mental
+and corporeal energy; and the bottle-holder is an auxiliary
+called in afterwards, his interference implying that the parties
+have already a motive to act, and have thrown down the gauntlet
+in token of the earnest good-will which animates them to engage.
+
+
+
+ESSAY XX.
+OF PHRENOLOGY.
+
+The following remarks can pretend to he nothing more than a few
+loose and undigested thoughts upon a subject, which has recently
+occupied the attention of many men, and obtained an extraordinary
+vogue in the world.  It were to be wished, that the task had
+fallen into the hands of a writer whose studies were more
+familiar with all the sciences which bear more or less on the
+topic I propose to consider:  but, if abler and more competent
+men pass it by, I feel disposed to plant myself in the breach,
+and to offer suggestions which may have the fortune to lead
+others, better fitted for the office than myself, to engage in
+the investigation.  One advantage I may claim, growing out of my
+partial deficiency.  It is known not to be uncommon for a man to
+stand too near to the subject of his survey, to allow him to
+obtain a large view of it in all its bearings.  I am no
+anatomist:  I simply take my stand upon the broad ground of the
+general philosophy of man.
+
+It is a very usual thing for fanciful theories to have their turn
+amidst the eccentricities of the human mind, and then to be heard
+of no more.  But it is perhaps no ill occupation, now and then,
+for an impartial observer, to analyse these theories, and attempt
+to blow away the dust which will occasionally settle on the
+surface of science.  If phrenology, as taught by Gall and
+Spurzheim, be a truth, I shall probably render a service to that
+truth, by endeavouring to shew where the edifice stands in need
+of more solid supports than have yet been assigned to it.  If it
+be a falshood, the sooner it is swept away to the gulph of
+oblivion the better.  Let the inquisitive and the studious fix
+their minds on more substantial topics, instead of being led away
+by gaudy and deceitful appearances.  The human head, that
+crowning capital of the column of man, is too interesting a
+subject, to be the proper theme of every dabbler.  And it is
+obvious, that the professors of this so called discovery, if they
+be rash and groundless in their assertions, will be in danger of
+producing momentous errors, of exciting false hopes never
+destined to be realised, and of visiting with pernicious blasts
+the opening buds of excellence, at the time when they are most
+exposed to the chance of destruction.
+
+I shall set out with acknowledging, that there is, as I
+apprehend, a science in relation to the human head, something
+like what Plato predicates of the statue hid in a block of
+marble.  It is really contained in the block; but it is only the
+most consummate sculptor, that can bring it to the eyes of men,
+and free it from all the incumbrances, which, till he makes
+application of his art to it, surround the statue, and load it
+with obscurities and disfigurement.  The man, who, without long
+study and premeditation, rushes in at once, and expects to
+withdraw the curtain, will only find himself disgraced by the
+attempt.
+
+There is a passage in an acute writer[39], whose talents
+singularly fitted him, even when he appeared totally immerged in
+mummery and trifles, to illustrate the most important truths,
+that is applicable to the point I am considering.
+
+[39] Sterne, Tristram Shandy, Vol. 1.
+
+
+"Pray, what was that man's name,--for I write in such a hurry, I
+have no time to recollect or look for it,--who first made the
+observation, 'That there was great inconstancy in our air and
+climate?' Whoever he was, it was a just and good observation in
+him.  But the corollary drawn from it, namely, 'That it is this
+which has furnished us with such a variety of odd and whimsical
+characters;'--that was not his;--it was found out by another man,
+at least a century and a half after him.  Then again, that this
+copious storehouse of original materials is the true and natural
+cause that our comedies are so much better than those of France,
+or any others that have or can be wrote upon the continent;--
+that discovery was not fully made till about the middle of king
+William's reign, when the great Dryden, in writing one of his
+long prefaces (if I mistake not), most fortunately hit upon it. 
+Then, fourthly and lastly, that this strange irregularity in our
+climate, producing so strange an irregularity in our characters,
+cloth thereby in some sort make us amends, by giving us somewhat
+to make us merry with, when the weather will not suffer us to go
+out of doors,--that observation is my own; and was struck out by
+me this very rainy day, March 26, 1759, and betwixt the hour of
+nine and ten in the morning.
+
+"Thus--thus, my fellow-labourers and associates in this great
+harvest of our learning, now ripening before our eyes; thus it
+is, by slow steps of casual increase, that our knowledge
+physical, metaphysical, physiological, polemical, nautical,
+mathematical, aenigmatical, technical, biographical, romantical,
+chemical, and obstetrical, with fifty other branches of it, (most
+of them ending, as these do, in ical,) has, for these two last
+centuries and more, gradually been creeping upwards towards that
+acme of their perfections, from which, if we may form a
+conjecture from the advantages of these last seven years, we
+cannot possibly be far off."
+
+Nothing can be more true, than the proposition ludicrously
+illustrated in this passage, that real science is in most
+instances of slow growth, and that the discoveries which are
+brought to perfection at once, are greatly exposed to the
+suspicion of quackery.  Like the ephemeron fly, they are born
+suddenly, and may be expected to die as soon.
+
+Lavater, the well known author of Essays on Physiognomy, appears
+to have been born seventeen years before the birth of Gall.  He
+attempted to reduce into a system the indications of human
+character that are to be found in the countenance.  Physiognomy,
+as a subject of ingenious and probable conjecture, was well known
+to the ancients.  But the test, how far any observations that
+have been made on the subject are worthy the name of a science,
+will lie in its application by the professor to a person
+respecting whom he has had no opportunity of previous
+information.  Nothing is more easy, when a great warrior,
+statesman, poet, philosopher or philanthropist is explicitly
+placed before us, than for the credulous inspector or fond
+visionary to examine the lines of his countenance, and to point
+at the marks which should plainly shew us that he ought to have
+been the very thing that he is.  This is the very trick of
+gipsies and fortune-tellers.  But who ever pointed to an utter
+stranger in the street, and said, I perceive by that man's
+countenance that he is one of the great luminaries of the world? 
+Newton, or Bacon, or Shakespear would probably have passed along
+unheeded.  Instances of a similar nature occur every day.  Hence
+it plainly appears that, whatever may hereafter be known on the
+subject, we can scarcely to the present time be said to have
+overstepped the threshold.  And yet nothing can be more certain
+than that there is a science of physiognomy, though to make use
+of an illustration already cited, it has not to this day been
+extricated out of the block of marble in which it is hid.  Human
+passions, feelings and modes of thinking leave their traces on
+the countenance:  but we have not, thus far, left the dame's
+school in this affair, and are not qualified to enter ourselves
+in the free-school for more liberal enquiries.
+
+The writings of Lavater on the subject of physiognomy are couched
+in a sort of poetic prose, overflowing with incoherent and vague
+exclamations, and bearing small resemblance to a treatise in
+which the elements of science are to be developed.  Their success
+however was extraordinary; and it was probably that success,
+which prompted Gall first to turn his attention from the
+indications of character that are to be found in the face of man,
+to the study of the head generally, as connected with the
+intellectual and moral qualities of the individual.
+
+It was about four years before the commencement of the present
+century, that Gall appears to have begun to deliver lectures on
+the structure and external appearances of the human head.  He
+tells us, that his attention was first called to the subject in
+the ninth year of his age (that is, in the year 1767), and that
+he spent thirty years in the private meditation of his system,
+before he began to promulgate it.  Be that as it will, its most
+striking characteristic is that of marking out the scull into
+compartments, in the same manner as a country delineated on a map
+is divided into districts, and assigning a different faculty or
+organ to each.  In the earliest of these diagrams that has fallen
+under my observation, the human scull is divided into
+twenty-seven compartments.
+
+I would say of craniology, as I have already said of physiognomy,
+that there is such a science attainable probably by man, but that
+we have yet made scarcely any progress in the acquiring it.  As
+certain lines in the countenance are indicative of the
+dispositions of the man, so it is reasonable to believe that a
+certain structure of the head is in correspondence with the
+faculties and propensities of the individual.
+
+Thus far we may probably advance without violating a due degree
+of caution.  But there is a wide distance between this general
+statement, and the conduct of the man who at once splits the
+human head into twenty-seven compartments.
+
+The exterior appearance of the scull is affirmed to correspond
+with the structure of the brain beneath.  And nothing can be more
+analogous to what the deepest thinkers have already confessed of
+man, than to suppose that there is one structure of the brain
+better adapted for intellectual purposes than another.  There is
+probably one structure better adapted than another, for
+calculation, for poetry, for courage, for cowardice, for
+presumption, for diffidence, for roughness, for tenderness, for
+self-control and the want of it.  Even as some have inherently a
+faculty adapted for music or the contrary[40].
+
+[40] See above, Essay II.
+
+
+But it is not reasonable to believe that we think of calculation
+with one portion of the brain, and of poetry with another.
+
+It is very little that we know of the nature of matter; and we
+are equally ignorant as to the substance, whatever it is, in
+which the thinking principle in man resides.  But, without
+adventuring in any way to dogmatise on the subject, we find so
+many analogies between the thinking principle, and the structure
+of what we call the brain, that we cannot but regard the latter
+as in some way the instrument of the former.
+
+Now nothing can be more certain respecting the thinking
+principle, than its individuality.  It has been said, that the
+mind can entertain but one thought at one time; and certain it
+is, from the nature of attention, and from the association of
+ideas, that unity is one of the principal characteristics of
+mind.  It is this which constitutes personal identity; an
+attribute that, however unsatisfactory may be the explanations
+which have been given respecting it, we all of us feel, and that
+lies at the foundation of all our voluntary actions, and all our
+morality.
+
+Analogous to this unity of thought and mind, is the arrangement
+of the nerves and the brain in the human body.  The nerves all
+lead up to the brain; and there is a centrical point in the brain
+itself, in which the reports of the senses terminate, and at
+which the action of the will may be conceived to begin.  This, in
+the language of our fathers, was called the "seat of the soul."
+
+We may therefore, without departing from the limits of a due
+caution and modesty, consider this as the throne before which the
+mind holds its court.  Hither the senses bring in their reports,
+and hence the sovereign will issues his commands.  The whole
+system appears to be conducted through the instrumentality of the
+nerves, along whose subtle texture the feelings and impressions
+are propagated.  Between the reports of the senses and the
+commands of the will, intervenes that which is emphatically the
+office of the mind, comprising meditation, reflection, inference
+and judgment.  How these functions are performed we know not; but
+it is reasonable to believe that the substance of the brain or of
+some part of the brain is implicated in them.
+
+Still however we must not lose sight of what has been already
+said, that in the action of the mind unity is an indispensible
+condition.  Our thoughts can only hold their council and form
+their decrees in a very limited region.  This is their retreat
+and strong hold; and the special use and functions of the remoter
+parts of the brain we are unable to determine; so utterly obscure
+and undefined is our present knowledge of the great ligament
+which binds together the body and the thinking principle.
+
+Enough however results from this imperfect view of the ligament,
+to demonstrate the incongruity and untenableness of a doctrine
+which should assign the indications of different functions,
+exercises and propensities of the mind to the exterior surface of
+the scull or the brain.  This is quackery, and is to be classed
+with chiromancy, augury, astrology, and the rest of those schemes
+for discovering the future and unknown, which the restlessness
+and anxiety of the human mind have invented, built upon arbitrary
+principles, blundered upon in the dark, and having no resemblance
+to the march of genuine science.  I find in sir Thomas Browne the
+following axioms of chiromancy:  "that spots in the tops of the
+nails do signifie things past; in the middle, things present; and
+at the bottom, events to come:  that white specks presage our
+felicity; blue ones our misfortunes:  that those in the nails of
+the thumb have significations of honour, in the forefinger, of
+riches, and so respectively in the rest."
+
+Science, to be of a high and satisfactory character, ought to
+consist of a deduction of causes and effects, shewing us not
+merely that a thing is so, but why it is as it is, and cannot be
+otherwise.  The rest is merely empirical; and, though the
+narrowness of human wit may often drive us to this; yet it is
+essentially of a lower order and description.  As it depends for
+its authority upon an example, or a number of examples, so
+examples of a contrary nature may continually come in, to weaken
+its force, or utterly to subvert it.  And the affair is made
+still worse, when we see, as in the case of craniology, that all
+the reasons that can be deduced (as here from the nature of mind)
+would persuade us to believe, that there can be no connection
+between the supposed indications, and the things pretended to be
+indicated.
+
+Craniology, or phrenology, proceeds exactly in the same train, as
+chiromancy, or any of those pretended sciences which are built
+merely on assumption or conjecture.  The first delineations
+presented to the public, marked out, as I have said, the scull
+into compartments, in the same manner as a country delineated on
+a map is divided into districts.  Geography is a real science,
+and accordingly, like other sciences, has been slow and gradual
+in its progress.  At an early stage travellers knew little more
+than the shores and islands of the Mediterranean.  Afterwards,
+they passed the straits of Hercules, and entered into the
+Atlantic.  At length the habitable world was distributed into
+three parts, Europe, Asia, and Africa.  More recently, by many
+centuries, came the discovery of America.  It is but the other
+day comparatively, that we found the extensive island of New
+Holland in the Southern Ocean.  The ancient geographers placed an
+elephant or some marine monster in the vacant parts of their
+maps, to signify that of these parts they knew nothing.  Not so
+Dr.  Gall.  Every part of his globe of the human Scull, at least
+with small exceptions, is fully tenanted; and he, with his single
+arm, has conquered a world.
+
+The majority of the judgments that have been divulged by the
+professors of this science, have had for their subjects the
+sculls of men, whose habits and history have been already known. 
+And yet with this advantage the errors and contradictions into
+which their authors have fallen are considerably numerous.  Thus
+I find, in the account of the doctor's visit to the House of
+Correction and the Hospital of Torgau in July 1805, the following
+examples.
+
+"Every person was desirous to know what Dr. Gall would say about
+T--, who was known in the house as a thief full of cunning, and
+who, having several times made his escape, wore an additional
+iron.  It was surprising, that he saw in him far less of the
+organ of cunning, than in many of the other prisoners.  However
+it was proved, that examples, and conversation with other thieves
+in the house, had suggested to him the plan for his escape, and
+that the stupidity which he possesses was the cause of his being
+retaken."
+
+"We were much surprised to be told, that M., in whom Dr. Gall had
+not discovered the organ of representation, possessed
+extraordinary abilities in imitating the voice of animals; but we
+were convinced after enquiries, that his talent was not a natural
+one, but acquired by study.  He related to us that, when he was a
+Prussian soldier garrisoned at Berlin, he used to deceive the
+waiting women in the Foundling Hospital by imitating the voice of
+exposed infants, and sometimes counterfeited the cry of a wild
+drake, when the officers were shooting ducks."
+
+"Of another Dr. Gall said, His head is a pattern of inconstancy
+and confinement, and there appears not the least mark of the
+organ of courage.  This rogue had been able to gain a great
+authority among his fellow-convicts.  How is this to be
+reconciled with the want of constancy which his organisation
+plainly indicates?  Dr. Gall answered, He gained his ascendancy
+not by courage, but by cunning."
+
+It is well known, that in Thurtel, who was executed for one of
+the most cold-blooded and remorseless murders ever heard of, the
+phrenologists found the organ of benevolence uncommonly large.
+
+In Spurzheim's delineation of the human head I find six divisions
+of organs marked out in the little hemisphere over the eye,
+indicating six different dispositions.  Must there not be in this
+subtle distribution much of what is arbitrary and sciolistic?
+
+It is to be regretted, that no person skilful in metaphysics, or
+the history of the human mind, has taken a share in this
+investigation.  Many errors and much absurdity would have been
+removed from the statements of these theorists, if a proper
+division had been made between those attributes and propensities,
+which by possibility a human creature may bring into the world
+with him, and those which, being the pure growth of the arbitrary
+institutions of society, must be indebted to those institutions
+for their origin.  I have endeavoured in a former Essay[41] to
+explain this distinction, and to shew how, though a human being
+cannot be born with an express propensity towards any one of the
+infinite pursuits and occupations which may be found in civilised
+society, yet that he may be fitted by his external or internal
+structure to excel in some one of those pursuits rather than
+another.  But all this is overlooked by the phrenologists.  They
+remark the various habits and dispositions, the virtues and the
+vices, that display themselves in society as now constituted, and
+at once and without consideration trace them to the structure
+that we bring into the world with us.
+
+[41] See above, Essay II.
+
+
+Certainly many of Gall's organs are a libel upon our common
+nature.  And, though a scrupulous and exact philosopher will
+perhaps confess that he has little distinct knowledge as to the
+design with which "the earth and all that is therein" were made,
+yet he finds in it so much of beauty and beneficent tendency, as
+will make him extremely reluctant to believe that some men are
+born with a decided propensity to rob, and others to murder.  Nor
+can any thing be more ludicrous than this author's distinction of
+the different organs of memory--of things, of places, of names,
+of language, and of numbers:  organs, which must be conceived to
+be given in the first instance long before names or language or
+numbers had an existence.  The followers of Gall have in a few
+instances corrected this:  but what their denominations have
+gained in avoiding the grossest absurdities of their master, they
+have certainly lost in explicitness and perspicuity.
+
+There is a distinction, not unworthy to be attended to, that is
+here to be made between Lavater's system of physiognomy, and
+Gall's of craniology, which is much in favour of the former.  The
+lines and characteristic expressions of the face which may so
+frequently be observed, are for the most part the creatures of
+the mind.  This is in the first place a mode of observation more
+agreeable to the pride and conscious elevation of man, and is in
+the next place more suitable to morality, and the vindication of
+all that is most admirable in the system of the universe.  It is
+just, that what is most frequently passing in the mind, and is
+entertained there with the greatest favour, should leave its
+traces upon the countenance.  It is thus that the high and
+exalted philosopher, the poet, and the man of benevolence and
+humanity are sometimes seen to be such by the bystander and the
+stranger.  While the malevolent, the trickish, and the grossly
+sensual, give notice of what they are by the cast of their
+features, and put their fellow-creatures upon their guard, that
+they may not be made the prey of these vices.
+
+But the march of craniology or phrenology, by whatever name it is
+called, is directly the reverse of this.  It assigns to us
+organs, as far as the thing is explained by the professors either
+to the public or to their own minds, which are entailed upon us
+from our birth, and which are altogether independent, or nearly
+so, of any discipline or volition that can be exercised by or
+upon the individual who drags their intolerable chain.  Thus I am
+told of one individual that he wants the organ of colour; and all
+the culture in the world can never supply that defect, and enable
+him to see colour at all, or to see it as it is seen by the rest
+of mankind.  Another wants the organ of benevolence; and his case
+is equally hopeless.  I shrink from considering the condition of
+the wretch, to whom nature has supplied the organs of theft and
+murder in full and ample proportions.  The case is like that of
+astrology
+
+     (Their stars are more in fault than they),
+
+with this aggravation, that our stars, so far as the faculty of
+prediction had been supposed to be attained, swayed in few
+things; but craniology climbs at once to universal empire; and in
+her map, as I have said, there are no vacant places, no
+unexplored regions and happy wide-extended deserts.
+
+It is all a system of fatalism.  Independently of ourselves, and
+far beyond our control, we are reserved for good or for evil by
+the predestinating spirit that reigns over all things.  Unhappy
+is the individual who enters himself in this school.  He has no
+consolation, except the gratified wish to know distressing
+truths, unless we add to this the pride of science, that he has
+by his own skill and application purchased for himself the
+discernment which places him in so painful a preeminence.  The
+great triumph of man is in the power of education, to improve his
+intellect, to sharpen his perceptions, and to regulate and modify
+his moral qualities.  But craniology reduces this to almost
+nothing, and exhibits us for the most part as the helpless
+victims of a blind and remorseless destiny.
+
+In the mean time it is happy for us, that, as this system is
+perhaps the most rigorous and degrading that was ever devised, so
+it is in almost all instances founded upon arbitrary assumptions
+and confident assertion, totally in opposition to the true spirit
+of patient and laborious investigation and sound philosophy.
+
+It is in reality very little that we know of the genuine
+characters of men.  Every human creature is a mystery to his
+fellow.  Every human character is made up of incongruities.  Of
+nearly all the great personages in history it is difficult to say
+what was decidedly the motive in which their actions and system
+of conduct originated.  We study what they did, and what they
+said; but in vain.  We never arrive at a full and demonstrative
+conclusion.  In reality no man can be certainly said to know
+himself. "The heart of man is deceitful above all things."
+
+But these dogmatists overlook all those difficulties, which would
+persuade a wise man to suspend his judgment, and induce a jury of
+philosophers to hesitate for ever as to the verdict they would
+pronounce.  They look only at the external character of the act
+by which a man honours or disgraces himself.  They decide
+presumptuously and in a lump, This man is a murderer, a hero, a
+coward, the slave of avarice, or the votary of philanthropy; and
+then, surveying the outside of his head, undertake to find in him
+the configuration that should indicate these dispositions, and
+must be found in all persons of a similar character, or rather
+whose acts bear the same outward form, and seem analogous to his.
+
+Till we have discovered the clue that should enable us to unravel
+the labyrinth of the human mind, it is with small hopes of
+success that we should expect to settle the external indications,
+and decide that this sort of form and appearance, and that class
+of character, will always be found together.
+
+But it is not to be wondered at, that these disorderly fragments
+of a shapeless science should become the special favourites of
+the idle and the arrogant.  Every man (and every woman), however
+destitute of real instruction, and unfitted for the investigation
+of the deep or the sublime mysteries of our nature, can use his
+eyes and his hands.  The whole boundless congregation of mankind,
+with its everlasting varieties, is thus at once subjected to the
+sentence of every pretender:
+
+     And fools rush in, where angels fear to tread.
+
+Nothing is more delightful to the headlong and presumptuous, than
+thus to sit in judgment on their betters, and pronounce ex
+cathedra on those, "whose shoe-latchet they are not worthy to
+stoop down and unloose."  I remember, after lord George Gordon's
+riots, eleven persons accused were set down in one indictment for
+their lives, and given in charge to one jury.  But this is a mere
+shadow, a nothing, compared with the wholesale and
+indiscriminating judgment of the vulgar phrenologist.
+
+
+
+ESSAY XXI.
+OF ASTRONOMY.
+
+SECTION I.
+
+It can scarcely be imputed to me as profane, if I venture to put
+down a few sceptical doubts on the science of astronomy.  All
+branches of knowledge are to be considered as fair subjects of
+enquiry:  and he that has never doubted, may be said, in the
+highest and strictest sense of the word, never to have believed.
+
+The first volume that furnished to me the groundwork of the
+following doubts, was the book commonly known by the name of
+Guthrie's Geographical Grammar, many parts and passages of which
+engaged my attention in my own study, in the house of a rural
+schoolmaster, in the year 1772.  I cannot therefore proceed more
+fairly than by giving here an extract of certain passages in that
+book, which have relation to the present subject.  I know not how
+far they have been altered in the edition of Guthrie which now
+lies before me, from the language of the book then in my
+possession; but I feel confident that in the main particulars
+they continue the same[42].
+
+[42] The article Astronomy, in this book, appears to have been
+written by the well known James Ferguson.
+
+
+"In passing rapidly over the heavens with his new telescope, the
+universe increased under the eye of Herschel; 44,000 stars, seen
+in the space of a few degrees, seemed to indicate that there were
+seventy-five millions in the heavens.  But what are all these,
+when compared with those that fill the whole expanse, the
+boundless field of aether?
+
+"The immense distance of the fixed stars from our earth, and from
+each other, is of all considerations the most proper for raising
+our ideas of the works of God.  Modern discoveries make it
+probable that each of these stars is a sun, having planets and
+comets revolving round it, as our sun has the earth and other
+planets revolving round him.--A ray of light, though its motion
+is so quick as to be commonly thought instantaneous, takes up
+more time in travelling from the stars to us, than we do in
+making a West-India voyage.  A sound, which, next to light, is
+considered as the quickest body we are acquainted with, would not
+arrive to us from thence in 50,000 years.  And a cannon-ball,
+flying at the rate of 480 miles an hour, would not reach us in
+700,000 years.
+
+"From what we know of our own system, it may be reasonably
+concluded, that all the rest are with equal wisdom contrived,
+situated, and provided with accommodations for rational
+inhabitants.
+
+"What a sublime idea does this suggest to the human imagination,
+limited as are its powers, of the works of the Creator! 
+Thousands and thousands of suns, multiplied without end, and
+ranged all around us, at immense distances from each other,
+attended by ten thousand times ten thousand worlds, all in rapid
+motion, yet calm, regular and harmonious, invariably keeping the
+paths prescribed them:  and these worlds peopled with myriads of
+intelligent beings, formed for endless progression in perfection
+and felicity!"
+
+The thought that would immediately occur to a dispassionate man
+in listening to this statement, would be, What a vast deal am I
+here called on to believe!
+
+Now the first rule of sound and sober judgment, in encountering
+any story, is that, in proportion to the magnitude and seemingly
+incredible nature of the propositions tendered to our belief,
+should be the strength and impregnable nature of the evidence by
+which those propositions are supported.
+
+It is not here, as in matters of religion, that we are called
+upon by authority from on high to believe in mysteries, in things
+above our reason, or, as it may be, contrary to our reason.  No
+man pretends to a revelation from heaven of the truths of
+astronomy.  They have been brought to light by the faculties of
+the human mind, exercised upon such facts and circumstances as
+our industry has set before us.
+
+To persons not initiated in the rudiments of astronomical
+science, they rest upon the great and high-sounding names of
+Galileo, Kepler, Halley and Newton.  But, though these men are
+eminently entitled to honour and gratitude from their
+fellow-mortals, they do not stand altogether on the same footing
+as Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, by whose pens has been recorded
+"every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God."
+
+The modest enquirer therefore, without pretending to put himself
+on an equality with these illustrious men, may be forgiven, when
+he permits himself to suggest a few doubts, and presumes to
+examine the grounds upon which he is called upon to believe all
+that is contained in the above passages.
+
+Now the foundations upon which astronomy, as here delivered, is
+built, are, first, the evidence of our senses, secondly, the
+calculations of the mathematician, and, in the third place, moral
+considerations.  These have been denominated respectively,
+practical astronomy, scientific, and theoretical.
+
+As to the first of these, it is impossible for us on this
+occasion not to recollect what has so often occurred as to have
+grown into an every-day observation, of the fallibility of our
+senses.
+
+It may be doubted however whether this is a just statement.  We
+are not deceived by our senses, but deceived in the inference we
+make from our sensations.  Our sensations respecting what we call
+the external world, are chiefly those of length, breadth and
+solidity, hardness and softness, heat and cold, colour, smell,
+sound and taste.  The inference which the generality of mankind
+make in relation to these sensations is, that there is something
+out of ourselves corresponding to the impressions we receive; in
+other words, that the causes of our sensations are like to the
+sensations themselves.  But this is, strictly speaking, an
+inference; and, if the cause of a sensation is not like the
+sensation, it cannot precisely be affirmed that our senses
+deceive us.  We know what passes in the theatre of the mind; but
+we cannot be said absolutely to know any thing, more.
+
+Modern philosophy has taught us, in certain cases, to controvert
+the position, that the causes of our sensations are like to the
+sensations themselves.  Locke in particular has called the
+attention of the reasoning part of mankind to the consideration,
+that heat and cold, sweet and bitter, and odour offensive or
+otherwise, are perceptions, which imply a percipient being, and
+cannot exist in inanimate substances.  We might with equal
+propriety ascribe pain to the whip that beats us, or pleasure to
+the slight alternation of contact in the person or thing that
+tickles us, as suppose that heat and cold, or taste, or smell are
+any thing but sensations.
+
+The same philosophers who have called our attention to these
+remarks, have proceeded to shew that the causes of our sensations
+of sound and colour have no precise correspondence, do not tally
+with the sensations we receive.  Sound is the result of a
+percussion of the air.  Colour is produced by the reflection of
+the rays of light; so that the same object, placed in a position,
+different as to the spectator, but in itself remaining unaltered,
+will produce in him a sensation of different colours, or shades
+of colour, now blue, now green, now brown, now black, and so on. 
+This is the doctrine of Newton, as well as of Locke.
+
+It follows that, if there were no percipient being to receive
+these sensations, there would be no heat or cold, no taste, no
+smell, no sound, and no colour.
+
+Aware of this difference between our sensations in certain cases
+and the causes of these sensations, Locke has divided the
+qualities of substances in the material universe into primary and
+secondary, the sensations we receive of the primary representing
+the actual qualities of material substances, but the sensations
+we receive of what he calls the secondary having no proper
+resemblance to the causes that produce them.
+
+Now, if we proceed in the spirit of severe analysis to examine
+the primary qualities of matter, we shall not perhaps find so
+marked a distinction between those and the secondary, as the
+statement of Locke would have led us to imagine.
+
+The Optics of Newton were published fourteen years later than
+Locke's Essay concerning Human Understanding.
+
+In endeavouring to account for the uninterrupted transmission of
+rays of light through transparent substances, however hard they
+may be found to be, Newton has these observations.
+
+"Bodies are much more rare and porous, than is commonly believed.
+
+Water is nineteen times lighter, and by consequence nineteen
+times rarer, than gold; and gold is so rare, as very readily, and
+without the least opposition, to transmit the magnetic effluvia,
+and easily to admit quicksilver into its pores, and to let water
+pass through it.  From all which we may conclude, that gold has
+more pores than solid parts, and by consequence that water has
+above forty times more pores than parts.  And he that shall find
+out an hypothesis, by which water may be so rare, and yet not
+capable of compression by force, may doubtless, by the same
+hypothesis, make gold, and water, and all other bodies, as much
+rarer as he pleases, so that light may find a ready passage
+through transparent substances[43]."
+
+[43] Newton, Optics, Book II, Part III, Prop. viii.
+
+
+Again:  "The colours of bodies arise from the magnitude of the
+particles that reflect them.  Now, if we conceive these particles
+of bodies to be so disposed among themselves, that the intervals,
+or empty spaces between them, may be equal in magnitude to them
+all; and that these particles may be composed of other particles
+much smaller, which have as much empty space between them as
+equals all the magnitudes of these smaller particles; and that in
+like manner these smaller particles are again composed of others
+much smaller, all which together are equal to all the pores, or
+empty spaces, between them; and so on perpetually till you come
+to solid particles, such as have no pores, or empty spaces within
+them:  and if in any gross body there be, for instance, three
+such degrees of particles, the least of which are solid; this
+body will have seven times more pores than solid parts.  But if
+there be four such degrees of particles, the least of which are
+solid, the body will have fifteen times more pores than solid
+parts.  If there be five degrees, the body will have one and
+thirty times more pores than solid parts.  If six degrees, the
+body will have sixty and three times more pores than solid parts.
+
+And so on perpetually[44]."
+
+[44] Ibid.
+
+
+In the Queries annexed to the Optics, Newton further suggests an
+opinion, that the rays of light are repelled by bodies without
+immediate contact.  He observes that:
+
+"Where attraction ceases, there a repulsive virtue ought to
+succeed.  And that there is such a virtue, seems to follow from
+the reflexions and inflexions of the rays of light.  For the rays
+are repelled by bodies, in both these cases, without the
+immediate contact of the reflecting or inflecting body.  It seems
+also to follow from the emission of light; the ray, so soon as it
+is shaken off from a shining body by the vibrating motion of the
+parts of the body, and gets beyond the reach of attraction, being
+driven away with exceeding great velocity.  For that force, which
+is sufficient to turn it back in reflexion, may be sufficient to
+emit it.  It seems also to follow from the production of air and
+vapour:  the particles, when they are shaken off from bodies by
+heat or fermentation, so soon as they are beyond the reach of the
+attraction of the body, receding from it and also from one
+another, with great strength; and keeping at a distance, so as
+sometimes to take up a million of times more space than they did
+before, in the form of a dense body."
+
+Newton was of opinion that matter was made up, in the last
+resort, of exceedingly small solid particles, having no pores, or
+empty spaces within them.  Priestley, in his Disquisitions
+relating to Matter and Spirit, carries the theory one step
+farther; and, as Newton surrounds his exceedingly small particles
+with spheres of attraction and repulsion, precluding in all cases
+their actual contact, Priestley is disposed to regard the centre
+of these spheres as mathematical points only.  If there is no
+actual contact, then by the very terms no two particles of matter
+were ever so near to each other, but that they might be brought
+nearer, if a sufficient force could be applied for that purpose. 
+You had only another sphere of repulsion to conquer; and, as
+there never is actual contact, the whole world is made up of one
+sphere of repulsion after another, without the possibility of
+ever arriving at an end.
+
+"The principles of the Newtonian philosophy," says our author,
+"were no sooner known, than it was seen how few in comparison, of
+the phenomena of nature, were owing to solid matter, and how much
+to powers, which were only supposed to accompany and surround the
+solid parts of matter.  It has been asserted, and the assertion
+has never been disproved, that for any thing we know to the
+contrary, all the solid matter in the solar system might be
+contained within a nutshell[45]."
+
+[45] Priestley, Disquisitions, Section II.  I know not by whom
+this illustration was first employed.  Among other authors, I
+find, in Fielding (Joseph Andrews, Book II, Chap. II), a sect of
+philosophers spoken of, who "can reduce all the matter of the
+world into a nutshell."
+
+
+It is then with senses, from the impressions upon which we are
+impelled to draw such false conclusions, and that present us with
+images altogether unlike any thing that exists out of ourselves,
+that we come to observe the phenomena of what we call the
+universe.  The first observation that it is here incumbent on us
+to make, and which we ought to keep ever at hand, to be applied
+as occasion may offer, is the well known aphorism of Socrates,
+that "we know only this, that we know nothing."  We have no
+compass to guide us through the pathless waters of science; we
+have no revelation, at least on the subject of astronomy, and of
+the unnumbered inhabitable worlds that float in the ocean of
+ether; and we are bound therefore to sail, as the mariners of
+ancient times sailed, always within sight of land.  One of the
+earliest maxims of ordinary prudence, is that we ought ever to
+correct the reports of one sense by the assistance of another
+sense.  The things we here speak of are not matters of faith; and
+in them therefore it is but reason, that we should imitate the
+conduct of Didymus the apostle, who said, "Except I put my
+fingers into the prints of the nails, and thrust my hand into his
+side, I will not believe."  My eyes report to me an object, as
+having a certain magnitude, texture, and roughness or smoothness;
+but I require that my hands should confirm to me the evidence of
+my eyes.  I see something that appears to be an island at an
+uncertain distance from the shore; but, if I am actuated by a
+laudable curiosity, and wish to possess a real knowledge, I take
+a boat, and proceed to ascertain by nearer inspection, whether
+that which I imagined to be an island is an island or no.
+
+There are indeed many objects with which we are conversant, that
+are in so various ways similar to each other, that, after having
+carefully examined a few, we are satisfied upon slighter
+investigation to admit the dimensions and character of others. 
+Thus, having measured with a quadrant the height of a tower, and
+found on the narrowest search and comparison that the report of
+my instrument was right, I yield credit to this process in
+another instance, without being at the trouble to verify its
+results in any more elaborate method.
+
+The reason why we admit the inference flowing from our
+examination in the second instance, and so onward, with less
+scrupulosity and scepticism than in the first, is that there is a
+strict resemblance and analogy in the two cases.  Experience is
+the basis of our conclusions and our conduct.  I strike against a
+given object, a nail for example, with a certain degree of force,
+because I have remarked in myself and others the effect of such a
+stroke.  I take food and masticate it, because I have found that
+this process contributes to the sound condition of my body and
+mind.  I scatter certain seeds in my field, and discharge the
+other functions of an agriculturist, because I have observed that
+in due time the result of this industry is a crop.  All the
+propriety of these proceedings depends upon the exact analogy
+between the old case and the new one.  The state of the affair is
+still the same, when my business is merely that of an observer
+and a traveller.  I know water from earth, land from sea, and
+mountains from vallies, because I have had experience of these
+objects, and confidently infer that, when certain appearances
+present themselves to my organs of sight, I shall find the same
+results to all my other senses, as I found when such appearances
+occurred to me before.
+
+But the interval that divides the objects which occur upon and
+under the earth, and are accessible in all ways to our
+examination, on the one hand, and the lights which are suspended
+over our heads in the heavens on the other, is of the broadest
+and most memorable nature.  Human beings, in the infancy of the
+world, were contented reverently to behold these in their
+calmness and beauty, perhaps to worship them, and to remark the
+effects that they produced, or seemed to produce, upon man and
+the subjects of his industry.  But they did not aspire to measure
+their dimensions, to enquire into their internal frame, or to
+explain the uses, far removed from our sphere of existence, which
+they might be intended to serve.
+
+It is however one of the effects of the improvement of our
+intellect, to enlarge our curiosity.  The daringness of human
+enterprise is one of the prime glories of our nature.  It is our
+boast that we undertake to "measure earth, weigh air, and state
+the tides."  And, when success crowns the boldness of our
+aspirations after what vulgar and timorous prudence had
+pronounced impossible, it is then chiefly that we are seen to
+participate of an essence divine.
+
+What has not man effected by the boldness of his conceptions and
+the adventurousness of his spirit?  The achievements of human
+genius have appeared so incredible, till they were thoroughly
+examined, and slowly established their right to general
+acceptance, that the great heroes of intellect were universally
+regarded by their contemporaries as dealers in magic, and
+implements of the devil.  The inventor of the art of printing,
+that glorious instrument for advancing the march of human
+improvement, and the discoverer of the more questionable art of
+making gunpowder, alike suffered under this imputation.  We have
+rendered the seas and the winds instruments of our pleasure,
+"exhausted the old world, and then discovered a new one," have
+drawn down lightning from heaven, and exhibited equal rights and
+independence to mankind.  Still however it is incumbent on us to
+be no less wary and suspicious than we are bold, and not to
+imagine, because we have done much, that we are therefore able to
+effect every thing.
+
+As was stated in the commencement of this Essay, we know our own
+sensations, and we know little more.  Matter, whether in its
+primary or secondary qualities, is certainly not the sort of
+thing the vulgar imagine it to be.  The illustrious Berkeley has
+taught many to doubt of its existence altogether; and later
+theorists have gone farther than this, and endeavoured to shew,
+that each man, himself while he speaks on the subject, and you
+and I while we hear, have no conclusive evidence to convince us,
+that we may not, each of us, for aught we know, be the only thing
+that exists, an entire universe to ourselves.
+
+We will not however follow these ingenious persons to the
+startling extreme to which their speculations would lead us. 
+But, without doing so, it will not misbecome us to be cautious,
+and to reflect what we do, before we take a leap into illimitable
+space.
+
+
+SECTION II.
+
+"The sun," we are told, "is a solid body, ninety-five millions of
+miles distant from the earth we inhabit, one million times larger
+in cubic measurement, and to such a degree impregnated with heat,
+that a comet, approaching to it within a certain distance, was by
+that approximation raised to a heat two thousand times greater
+than that of red-hot iron."
+
+It will be acknowledged, that there is in this statement much to
+believe; and we shall not be exposed to reasonable blame, if we
+refuse to subscribe to it, till we have received irresistible
+evidence of its truth.
+
+It has already been observed, that, for the greater part of what
+we imagine we know on the surface or in the bowels of the earth,
+we have, or may have if we please, the evidence of more than one
+of our senses, combining to lead to the same conclusion.  For the
+propositions of astronomy we have no sensible evidence, but that
+of sight, and an imperfect analogy, leading from those visible
+impressions which we can verify, to a reliance upon those which
+we cannot.
+
+The first cardinal particular we meet with in the above statement
+concerning the sun, is the term, distance.  Now, all that,
+strictly speaking, we can affirm respecting the sun and other
+heavenly bodies, is that we have the same series of impressions
+respecting them, that we have respecting terrestrial objects near
+or remote, and that there is an imperfect analogy between the one
+case and the other.
+
+Before we affirm any thing, as of our own knowledge and
+competence, respecting heavenly bodies which are said to be
+millions of millions of miles removed from us, it would not
+perhaps be amiss that we should possess ourselves of a certain
+degree of incontestible information, as to the things which exist
+on the earth we inhabit.  Among these, one of the subjects
+attended with a great degree of doubt and obscurity, is the
+height of the mountains with which the surface of the globe we
+inhabit is diversified.  It is affirmed in the received books of
+elementary geography, that the Andes are the highest mountains in
+the world.  Morse, in his American Gazetteer, third edition,
+printed at Boston in 1810[46], says, "The height of Chimborazzo,
+the most elevated point of the vast chain of the Andes, is 20,280
+feet above the level of the sea, which is 7102 feet higher than
+any other mountain in the known world:" thus making the elevation
+of the mountains of Thibet, or whatever other rising ground the
+compiler had in his thought, precisely 13,178 feet above the
+level of the sea, and no more.  This decision however has lately
+been contradicted.  Mr. Hugh Murray, in an Account of Discoveries
+and Travels in Asia, published in 1820, has collated the reports
+of various recent travellers in central Asia; and he states the
+height of Chumularee, which he speaks of as the most elevated
+point of the mountains of Thibet, as nearly 30,000 feet above the
+level of the sea.
+
+[46] Article, Andes.
+
+
+The elevation of mountains, till lately, was in no way attempted
+to be ascertained but by the use of the quadrant) and their
+height was so generally exaggerated, that Riccioli, one of the
+most eminent astronomers of the seventeenth century, gives it as
+his opinion that mountains, like the Caucasus, may have a
+perpendicular elevation of fifty Italian miles[47].  Later
+observers have undertaken to correct the inaccuracy of these
+results through the application of the barometer, and thus, by
+informing themselves of the weight of the air at a certain
+elevation, proceeding to infer the height of the situation.
+
+[47] Rees, Encyclopedia; article, Mountains.
+
+
+There are many circumstances, which are calculated to induce a
+circumspect enquirer to regard the affirmative positions of
+astronomy, as they are delivered by the most approved modern
+writers, with considerable diffidence.
+
+They are founded, as has already been said, next to the evidence
+of our senses, upon the deductions of mathematical knowledge.
+
+Mathematics are either pure or mixed.
+
+Pure mathematics are concerned only with abstract propositions,
+and have nothing to do with the realities of nature.  There is no
+such thing in actual existence as a mathematical point, line or
+surface.  There is no such thing as a circle or square.  But that
+is of no consequence.  We can define them in words, and reason
+about them.  We can draw a diagram, and suppose that line to be
+straight which is not really straight, and that figure to be a
+circle which is not strictly a circle.  It is conceived therefore
+by the generality of observers, that mathematics is the science
+of certainty.
+
+But this is not strictly the case.  Mathematics are like those
+abstract and imaginary existences about which they are
+conversant.  They may constitute in themselves, and in the
+apprehension of an infallible being, a science of certainty.  But
+they come to us mixed and incorporated with our imperfections. 
+Our faculties are limited; and we may be easily deceived, as to
+what it is that we see with transparent and unerring clearness,
+and what it is that comes to us through a crooked medium,
+refracting and distorting the rays of primitive truth.  We often
+seem clear, when in reality the twilight of undistinguishing
+night has crept fast and far upon us.  In a train of deductions,
+as in the steps of an arithmetical process, an error may have
+insinuated itself imperceptibly at a very early stage, rendering
+all the subsequent steps a wandering farther and farther from the
+unadulterated truth.  Human mathematics, so to speak, like the
+length of life, are subject to the doctrine of chances. 
+Mathematics may be the science of certainty to celestial natures,
+but not to man.
+
+But, if in the case of pure mathematics, we are exposed to the
+chances of error and delusion, it is much worse with mixed
+mathematics.  The moment we step out of the high region of
+abstraction, and apply ourselves to what we call external nature,
+we have forfeited that sacred character and immunity, which we
+seemed entitled to boast, so long as we remained inclosed in the
+sanctuary of unmingled truth.  As has already been said, we know
+what passes in the theatre of the mind; but we cannot be said
+absolutely to know any thing more.  In our speculations upon
+actual existences we are not only subject to the disadvantages
+which arise from the limited nature of our faculties, and the
+errors which may insensibly creep upon us in the process.  We are
+further exposed to the operation of the unevennesses and
+irregularities that perpetually occur in external nature, the
+imperfection of our senses, and of the instruments we construct
+to assist our observations, and the discrepancy which we
+frequently detect between the actual nature of the things about
+us and our impressions respecting them.
+
+This is obvious, whenever we undertake to apply the processes of
+arithmetic to the realities of life.  Arithmetic, unsubjected to
+the impulses of passion and the accidents of created nature,
+holds on its course; but, in the phenomena of the actual world,
+"time and chance happeneth to them all."
+
+Thus it is, for example, in the arithmetical and geometrical
+ratios, set up in political economy by the celebrated Mr. 
+Malthus.  His numbers will go on smoothly enough, 1, 2, 4, 8, 16,
+32, as representing the principle of population among mankind,
+and 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, the means of subsistence; but restiff and
+uncomplying nature refuses to conform herself to his dicta.
+
+Dr.  Price has calculated the produce of one penny, put out at
+the commencement of the Christian era to five per cent.  compound
+interest, and finds that in the year 1791 it would have increased
+to a greater sum than would be contained in three hundred
+millions of earths, all solid gold.  But what has this to do with
+the world in which we live?  Did ever any one put out his penny
+to interest in this fashion for eighteen hundred years?  And, if
+he did, where was the gold to be found, to satisfy his demand?
+
+Morse, in his American Gazetteer, proceeding on the principles of
+Malthus, tells us that, if the city of New York goes on
+increasing for a century in a certain ratio, it will by that time
+contain 5,257,493 inhabitants.  But does any one, for himself or
+his posterity, expect to see this realised?
+
+Blackstone, in his Commentaries on the Laws of England, has
+observed that, as every man has two ancestors in the first
+ascending degree, and four in the second, so in the twentieth
+degree he has more than a million, and in the fortieth the square
+of that number, or upwards of a million millions.  This statement
+therefore would have a greater tendency to prove that mankind in
+remote ages were numerous, almost beyond the power of figures to
+represent, than the opposite doctrine of Malthus, that they have
+a perpetual tendency to such increase as would infallibly bring
+down the most tremendous calamities on our posterity.
+
+Berkeley, whom I have already referred to on another subject, and
+who is admitted to be one of our profoundest philosophers, has
+written a treatise[48] to prove, that the mathematicians, who
+object to the mysteries supposed to exist in revealed religion,
+"admit much greater mysteries, and even falshoods in science, of
+which he alleges the doctrine of fluxions as an eminent
+example[49]."  He observes, that their conclusions are
+established by virtue of a twofold error, and that these errors,
+being in contrary directions, are supposed to compensate each
+other, the expounders of the doctrine thus arriving at what they
+call truth, without being able to shew how, or by what means they
+have arrived at it.
+
+[48] The Analyst. 
+
+[49] Life of Berkeley, prefixed to his Works.
+
+
+It is a memorable and a curious speculation to reflect, upon how
+slight grounds the doctrine of "thousands and thousands of suns,
+multiplied without end, and ranged all around us, at immense
+distances from each other, and attended by ten thousand times ten
+thousand worlds," mentioned in the beginning of this Essay, is
+built.  It may be all true.  But, true or false, it cannot be
+without its use to us, carefully to survey the road upon which we
+are advancing, the pier which human enterprise has dared to throw
+out into the vast ocean of Cimmerian darkness.  We have
+constructed a pyramid, which throws into unspeakable contempt the
+vestiges of ancient Egyptian industry:  but it stands upon its
+apex; it trembles with every breeze; and momentarily threatens to
+overwhelm in its ruins the fearless undertakers that have set it
+up.
+
+It gives us a mighty and sublime idea of the nature of man, to
+think with what composure and confidence a succession of persons
+of the greatest genius have launched themselves in illimitable
+space, with what invincible industry they have proceeded, wasting
+the midnight oil, racking their faculties, and almost wearing
+their organs to dust, in measuring the distance of Sirius and the
+other fixed stars, the velocity of light, and "the myriads of
+intelligent beings formed for endless progression in perfection
+and felicity," that people the numberless worlds of which they
+discourse.  The illustrious names of Copernicus, Galileo,
+Gassendi, Kepler, Halley and Newton impress us with awe; and, if
+the astronomy they have opened before us is a romance, it is at
+least a romance more seriously and perseveringly handled than any
+other in the annals of literature.
+
+A vulgar and a plain man would unavoidably ask the astronomers,
+How came you so familiarly acquainted with the magnitude and
+qualities of the heavenly bodies, a great portion of which, by
+your own account, are millions of millions of miles removed from
+us?  But, I believe, it is not the fashion of the present day to
+start so rude a question.  I have just turned over an article on
+Astronomy in the Encyclopaedia Londinensis, consisting of one
+hundred and thirty-three very closely printed quarto pages, and
+in no corner of this article is any evidence so much as hinted
+at.  Is it not enough?  Newton and his compeers have said it.
+
+The whole doctrine of astronomy rests upon trigonometry, a branch
+of the science of mathematics which teaches us, having two sides
+and one angle, or two angles and one side, of a triangle given
+us, to construct the whole.  To apply this principle therefore to
+the heavenly bodies, it is necessary for us to take two stations,
+the more remote from each other the better, from which our
+observations should be made.  For the sake of illustration we
+will suppose them to be taken at the extremes of the earth's
+diameter, in other words, nearly eight thousand miles apart from
+each other, the thing itself having never been realised to that
+extent.  From each of these stations we will imagine a line to be
+drawn, terminating in the sun.  Now it seems easy, by means of a
+quadrant, to find the arch of a circle (in other words, the
+angle) included between these lines terminating in the sun, and
+the base formed by a right line drawn from one of these stations
+to the other, which in this case is the length of the earth's
+diameter.  I have therefore now the three particulars required to
+enable me to construct my triangle.  And, according to the most
+approved astronomical observations hitherto made, I have an
+isosceles triangle, eight thousand miles broad at its base, and
+ninety-five millions of miles in the length of each of the sides
+reaching from the base to the apex.
+
+It is however obvious to the most indifferent observer, that the
+more any triangle, or other mathematical diagram, falls within
+the limits which our senses can conveniently embrace, the more
+securely, when our business is practical, and our purpose to
+apply the result to external objects, can we rely on the accuracy
+of our results.  In a case therefore like the present, where the
+base of our isosceles triangle is to the other two sides as eight
+units to twelve thousand, it is impossible not to perceive that
+it behoves us to be singularly diffident as to the conclusion at
+which we have arrived, or rather it behoves us to take for
+granted that we are not unlikely to fall into the most important
+error.  We have satisfied ourselves that the sides of the
+triangle including the apex, do not form an angle, till they have
+arrived at the extent of ninety-five millions of miles.  How are
+we sure that they do then?  May not lines which have reached to
+so amazing a length without meeting, be in reality parallel
+lines?  If an angle is never formed, there can be no result.  The
+whole question seems to be incommensurate to our faculties.
+
+It being obvious that this was a very unsatisfactory scheme for
+arriving at the knowledge desired, the celebrated Halley
+suggested another method, in the year 1716, by an observation to
+be taken at the time of the transit of Venus over the sun[50].
+
+[50] Philosophical Transactions, Vol. XXIX, p. 454.
+
+
+It was supposed that we were already pretty accurately acquainted
+with the distance of the moon from the earth, it being so much
+nearer to us, by observing its parallax, or the difference of its
+place in the heavens as seen from the surface of the earth, from
+that in which it would appear if seen from its centre[51].  But
+the parallax of the sun is so exceedingly small, as scarcely to
+afford the basis of a mathematical calculation[52].  The parallax
+of Venus is however almost four times as great as that of the
+sun; and there must therefore be a very sensible difference
+between the times in which Venus may be seen passing over the sun
+from different parts of the earth.  It was on this account
+apprehended, that the parallax of the sun, by means of
+observations taken from different places at the time of the
+transit of Venus in 1761 and 1769, might be ascertained with a
+great degree of precision[53].
+
+[51] Bonnycastle, Astronomy, 7th edition, p. 262, et seq. 
+
+[52] Ibid, p. 268. 
+
+[53] Phil. Transactions, Vol. XXIX, p. 457.
+
+
+But the imperfectness of our instruments and means of observation
+have no small tendency to baffle the ambition of man in these
+curious investigations.
+
+"The true quantity of the moon's parallax," says Bonnycastle,
+"cannot be accurately determined by the methods ordinarily
+resorted to, on account of the varying declination of the moon,
+and the inconstancy of the horizontal refractions, which are
+perpetually changing according to the state the atmosphere is in
+at the time.  For the moon continues but for a short time in the
+equinoctial, and the refraction at a mean rate elevates her
+apparent place near the horizon, half as much as her parallax
+depresses it[54]."
+
+[54] Astronomy, p. 265.
+
+
+"It is well known that the parallax of the sun can never exceed
+nine seconds, or the four-hundredth part of a degree[55]." 
+"Observations," says Halley, "made upon the vibrations of a
+pendulum, to determine these exceedingly small angles, are not
+sufficiently accurate to be depended upon; for by this method of
+ascertaining the parallax, it will sometimes come out to be
+nothing, or even negative; that is, the distance will either be
+infinite, or greater than infinite, which is absurd.  And, to
+confess the truth, it is hardly possible for a person to
+distinguish seconds with certainty by any instruments, however
+skilfully they may be made; and therefore it is not to be
+wondered at, that the excessive nicety of this matter should have
+eluded the many ingenious endeavours of the most able
+opetators[56].
+
+[55] Ibid, p. 268. 
+
+[56] Phil. Transactions, Vol. XXIX, p. 456.
+
+
+Such are the difficulties that beset the subject on every side. 
+It is for the impartial and dispassionate observers who have
+mastered all the subtleties of the science, if such can be found,
+to determine whether the remedies that have been resorted to to
+obviate the above inaccuracies and their causes, have fulfilled
+their end, and are not exposed to similar errors.  But it would
+be vain to expect the persons, who have "scorned delights, and
+lived laborious days" to possess themselves of the mysteries of
+astronomy, should be impartial and dispassionate, or be disposed
+to confess, even to their own minds, that their researches were
+useless, and their labours ended in nothing.
+
+It is further worthy of our attention, that the instruments with
+which we measure the distance of the earth from the sun and the
+planets, are the very instruments which have been pronounced upon
+as incompetent in measuring the heights of mountains[57].  In the
+latter case therefore we have substituted a different mode for
+arriving at the truth, which is supposed to be attended with
+greater precision:  but we have no substitute to which we can
+resort, to correct the mistakes into which we may fall respecting
+the heavenly bodies.
+
+[57] See above, Essay XXI.
+
+
+The result of the uncertainty which adheres to all astronomical
+observations is such as might have been expected.  Common readers
+are only informed of the latest adjustment of the question, and
+are therefore unavoidably led to believe that the distance of the
+sun from the earth, ever since astronomy became entitled to the
+name of a science, has by universal consent been recognised as
+ninety-five millions of miles, or, as near as may be, twenty-four
+thousand semi-diameters of the earth.  But how does the case
+really stand?  Copernicus and Tycho Brahe held the distance to be
+twelve hundred semi-diameters; Kepler, who is received to have
+been perhaps the greatest astronomer that any age has produced,
+puts it down as three thousand five hundred semi-diameters; since
+his time, Riccioli as seven thousand; Hevelius as five thousand
+two hundred and fifty[58]; some later astronomers, mentioned by
+Halley, as fourteen thousand; and Halley himself as sixteen
+thousand five hundred[59].
+
+[58] They were about thirty and forty years younger than Kepler
+respectively.
+
+[59] Halley, apud Philosophical Transactions, Vol. XXIX, p. 455.
+
+
+The doctrine of fluxions is likewise called in by the astronomers
+in their attempts to ascertain the distance and magnitude of the
+different celestial bodies which compose the solar system; and in
+this way their conclusions become subject to all the difficulties
+which Berkeley has alleged against that doctrine.
+
+Kepler has also supplied us with another mode of arriving at the
+distance and size of the sun and the planets:  he has hazarded a
+conjecture, that the squares of the times of the revolution of
+the earth and the other planets are in proportion to the cubes of
+their distances from the sun, their common centre; and, as by
+observation we can arrive with tolerable certainty at a knowledge
+of the times of their revolutions, we may from hence proceed to
+the other matters we are desirous to ascertain.  And that which
+Kepler seemed, as by a divine inspiration, to hazard in the way
+of conjecture, Newton professes to have demonstratively
+established.  But the demonstration of Newton has not been
+considered as satisfactory by all men of science since his time.
+
+Thus far however we proceed as we may, respecting our
+propositions on the subject of the solar system.  But, beyond
+this, all science, real or pretended, deserts us.  We have no
+method for measuring angles, which can be applied to the fixed
+stars; and we know nothing of any revolutions they perform.  All
+here therefore seems gratuitous:  we reason from certain alleged
+analogies; and we can do no more.
+
+Huygens endeavoured to ascertain something on the subject, by
+making the aperture of a telescope so small, that the sun should
+appear through it no larger than Sirius, which he found to be
+only in the proportion of 1 to 27,664 times his diameter, as seen
+by the naked eye.  Hence, supposing Sirius to be a globe of the
+same magnitude as the sun, it must be 27,664 times as distant
+from us as the sun, in other words, at a distance so considerable
+as to equal 345 million diameters of the earth[60].  Every one
+must feel on how slender a thread this conclusion is suspended.
+
+[60] Encyclopaedia Londinensis, Vol. 11, p. 407.
+
+And yet, from this small postulate, the astronomers proceed to
+deduce the most astounding conclusions.  They tell us, that the
+distance of the nearest fixed star from the earth is at least
+7,600,000,000,000 miles, and of another they name, not less than
+38 millions of millions of miles.  A cannon-ball therefore,
+proceeding at the rate of about twenty miles in a minute would be
+760,000 years in passing from us to the nearest fixed star, and
+3,800,000 in passing to the second star of which we speak. 
+Huygens accordingly concluded, that it was not impossible, that
+there might be stars at such inconceivable distances from us,
+that their light has not yet reached the earth since its
+creation[61].
+
+[61] Ibid, p. 408.
+
+
+The received system of the universe, founded upon these so called
+discoveries, is that each of the stars is a sun, having planets
+and comets revolving round it, as our sun has the earth and other
+planets revolving round him.  It has been found also by the
+successive observations of astronomers, that a star now and then
+is totally lost, and that a new star makes its appearance which
+had never been remarked before:  and this they explain into the
+creation of a new system from time to time by the Almighty author
+of the universe, and the destruction of an old system worn out
+with age[62].  We must also remember the power of attraction
+every where diffused through infinite space, by means of which,
+as Herschel assures us, in great length of time a nebula, or
+cluster of stars, may be formed, while the projectile force they
+received in the beginning may prevent them from all coming
+together, at least for millions of ages.  Some of these nebulae,
+he adds, cannot well be supposed to be at a less distance from us
+than six or eight thousand times the distance of Sirius[63]. 
+Kepler however denies that each star, of those which distinctly
+present themselves to our sight, can have its system of planets
+as our sun has, and considers them as all fixed in the same
+surface or sphere; since, if one of them were twice or thrice as
+remote as another, it would, supposing their real magnitudes to
+be equal, appear to be twice or thrice as small, whereas there is
+not in their apparent magnitudes the slightest difference[64].
+
+[62] Encycl. Lond. Vol. II, p. 411.
+
+[63] Ibid, p. 348.
+
+[64] Ibid, p. 411.
+
+
+Certainly the astronomers are a very fortunate and privileged
+race of men, who talk to us in this oracular way of "the unseen
+things of God from the creation of the world," hanging up their
+conclusions upon invisible hooks, while the rest of mankind sit
+listening gravely to their responses, and unreservedly
+"acknowledging that their science is the most sublime, the most
+interesting, and the most useful of all the sciences cultivated
+by man[65]."
+
+[65] Ferguson, Astronomy, Section 1.
+
+
+We have a sensation, which we call the sensation of distance.  It
+comes to us from our sight and our other senses.  It does not
+come immediately by the organ of sight.  It has been proved, that
+the objects we see, previously to the comparison and correction
+of the reports of the organ of sight with those of the other
+senses, do not suggest to us the idea of distance, but that on
+the contrary whatever we see seems to touch the eye, even as the
+objects of the sense of feeling touch the skin.
+
+But, in proportion as we compare the impressions made upon our
+organs of sight with the impressions made on the other senses, we
+come gradually to connect with the objects we see the idea of
+distance.  I put out my hand, and find at first that an object of
+my sense of sight is not within the reach of my hand.  I put out
+my hand farther, or by walking advance my body in the direction
+of the object, and I am enabled to reach it.  From smaller
+experiments I proceed to greater.  I walk towards a tree or a
+building, the figure of which presents itself to my eye, but
+which I find upon trial to have been far from me.  I travel
+towards a place that I cannot see, but which I am told lies in a
+certain direction.  I arrive at the place.  It is thus, that by
+repeated experiments I acquire the idea of remote distances.
+
+To confine ourselves however to the question of objects, which
+without change of place I can discover by the sense of sight.  I
+can see a town, a tower, a mountain at a considerable distance. 
+Let us suppose that the limit of my sight, so far as relates to
+objects on the earth, is one hundred miles.  I can travel towards
+such an object, and thus ascertain by means of my other senses
+what is its real distance.  I can also employ certain
+instruments, invented by man, to measure heights, suppose of a
+tower, and, by experiments made in ways independent of these
+instruments, verify or otherwise the report of these instruments.
+
+The height of the Monument of London is something more than two
+hundred feet.  Other elevations, the produce of human labour, are
+considerably higher.  It is in the nature of the mind, that we
+conclude from the observation that we have verified, to the
+accuracy of another, bearing a striking analogy to the former,
+that we have not verified.  But analogy has its limits.  Is it of
+irresistible certainty, or is it in fact to be considered as
+approaching to certainty, because we have verified an observation
+extending to several hundred feet, that an observation extending
+to ninety-five millions of miles, or to the incredible distances
+of which Herschel so familiarly talks, is to be treated as a
+fact, or laid down as a principle in science?  Is it reasonable
+to consider two propositions as analogous, when the thing
+affirmed in the one is in dimension many million times as great
+as the thing affirmed in the other?  The experience we have had
+as to the truth of the smaller, does it authorise us to consider
+the larger as unquestionable?  That which I see with a bay of the
+sea or a wide river between, though it may appear very like
+something with which I am familiar at home, do I immediately
+affirm it to be of the same species and nature, or do I not
+regard it with a certain degree of scepticism, especially if,
+along with the resemblance in some points, it differs
+essentially, as for example in magnitude, in other points?  We
+have a sensation, and we enquire into its cause.  This is always
+a question of some uncertainty.  Is its cause something of
+absolute and substantive existence without me, or is it not?  Is
+its cause something of the very same nature, as the thing that
+gave me a similar sensation in a matter of comparatively a pigmy
+and diminutive extension?
+
+All these questions an untrained and inquisitive mind will ask
+itself in the propositions of astronomy.  We must believe or not,
+as we think proper or reasonable.  We have no way of verifying
+the propositions by the trial of our senses.  There they lie, to
+be received by us in the construction that first suggests itself
+to us, or not.  They are something like an agreeable imagination
+or fiction:  and a sober observer, in cold blood, will be
+disposed deliberately to weigh both sides of the question, and to
+judge whether the probability lies in favour of the actual
+affirmation of the millions of millions of miles, and the other
+incredible propositions of the travelling of light, and the rest,
+which even the most cautious and sceptical of the retainers of
+modern astronomy, find themselves compelled to receive.
+
+But I shall be told, that the results of our observations of the
+distances of the heavenly bodies are unvaried.  We have measured
+the distances and other phenomena of the sun, the moon, Mercury,
+Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and their satellites, and they all
+fall into a grand system, so as to convey to every unprejudiced
+mind the conviction that this system is the truth itself.  If we
+look at them day after day, and year after year, we see them for
+ever the same, and performing the same divine harmony. 
+Successive astronomers in different ages and countries have
+observed the celestial orbs, and swept the heavens, and for ever
+bring us back the same story of the number, the dimensions, the
+distances, and the arrangement of the heavenly bodies which form
+the subject of astronomical science.
+
+This we have seen indeed not to be exactly the case.  But, if it
+were, it would go a very little way towards proving the point it
+was brought to prove.  It would shew that, the sensations and
+results being similar, the causes of those results must be
+similar to each other, but it would not shew that the causes were
+similar to the sensations produced.  Thus, in the sensations
+which belong to taste, smell, sound, colour, and to those of heat
+and cold, there is all the uniformity which would arise, when the
+real external causes bore the most exact similitude to the
+perceptions they generate; and yet it is now universally
+confessed that tastes, scents, sounds, colours, and heat and cold
+do not exist out of ourselves.  All that we are entitled
+therefore to conclude as to the magnitudes and distances of the
+heavenly bodies, is, that the causes of our sensations and
+perceptions, whatever they are, are not less uniform than the
+sensations and perceptions themselves.
+
+It is further alleged, that we calculate eclipses, and register
+the various phenomena of the heavenly bodies.  Thales predicted
+an eclipse of the sun, which took place nearly six hundred years
+before the Christian era.  The Babylonians, the Persians, the
+Hindoos, and the Chinese early turned their attention to
+astronomy.  Many of their observations were accurately recorded;
+and their tables extend to a period of three thousand years
+before the birth of Christ.  Does not all this strongly argue the
+solidity of the science to which they belong?  Who, after this,
+will have the presumption to question, that the men who profess
+astronomy proceed on real grounds, and have a profound knowledge
+of these things, which at first sight might appear to be set at a
+distance so far removed from our ken?
+
+The answer to this is easy.  I believe in all the astronomy that
+was believed by Thales.  I do not question the statements
+relative to the heavenly bodies that were delivered by the wise
+men of the East.  But the supposed discoveries that were made in
+the eighteenth, and even in the latter part of the seventeenth
+century, purporting to ascertain the precise distance of the sun,
+the planets, and even of the fixed stars, are matters entirely
+distinct from this.
+
+Among the earliest astronomers of Greece were Thales,
+Anaximander, Anaximenes and Anaxagoras.  Thales, we are told,
+held that the earth is a sphere or globe, Anaximenes that it is
+like a round, flat table; Anaximander that the sun is like a
+chariot-wheel, and is twenty-eight times larger than the earth. 
+Anaxagoras was put in prison for affirming that the sun was by
+many degrees larger than the whole Peloponnesus[66].  Kepler is
+of opinion that all the stars are at an equal distance from us,
+and are fixed in the same surface or sphere.
+
+[66] Plutarch, De Placitis Philosophorum.  Diogenes Laertius.
+
+
+In reality the observations and the facts of astronomy do not
+depend either upon the magnitudes or the distances of the
+heavenly bodies.  They proceed in the first place upon what may
+lie seen with the naked eye.  They require an accurate and
+persevering attention.  They may be assisted by telescopes.  But
+they relate only to the sun and the planets.  We are bound to
+ascertain, as nearly as possible, the orbits described by the
+different bodies in the solar system:  but this has still nothing
+to do, strictly speaking, with their magnitudes or distances.  It
+is required that we should know them in their relations to each
+other; but it is no preliminary of just, of practical, it might
+almost be said, of liberal science, that we should know any thing
+of them absolutely.
+
+The unlimited ambition of the nature of man has discovered itself
+in nothing more than this, the amazing superstructure which the
+votaries of contemplation within the last two hundred years have
+built upon the simple astronomy of the ancients.  Having begun to
+compute the distances of miles by millions, it appears clearly
+that nothing can arrest the more than eagle-flight of the human
+mind.  The distance of the nearest fixed star from the earth, we
+are informed, is at least 7,000,000,000,000 miles, and of another
+which the astronomers name, not less than 38 millions of millions
+of miles.  The particles of light are said to travel 193,940
+miles in every second, which is above a million times swifter
+than the progress of a cannon-ball[67].  And Herschel has
+concluded, that the light issuing from the faintest nebulae he
+has discovered, must have been at this rate two millions of years
+in reaching the Barth[68].
+
+[67] Ferguson, Section 216.  "Light moves," says Brewster,
+Optics, p. 2, "from one pole of the earth to the other in the
+24th part of a second:  a velocity which surpasses all
+comprehension.
+
+[68] Brinkley, Astronomy, p. 130.
+
+
+SECTION III.
+
+The next process of the modern astronomer is to affirm the
+innumerable orbs around us, discovered with the naked eye, or
+with which we are made acquainted by the aid of telescopes, to be
+all stocked with rational inhabitants.  The argument for this is,
+that an all-wise and omnipotent creator could never have produced
+such immense bodies, dispersed through infinite space, for any
+meaner purpose, than that of peopling them with "intelligent
+beings, formed for endless progression in perfection and
+felicity[69]."
+
+[69] See above, Essay XXI.
+
+
+Now it appears to me, that, in these assertions, the modern
+astronomers are taking upon themselves somewhat too boldly, to
+expound the counsels of that mysterious power, to which the
+universe is indebted for its arrangement and order.
+
+We know nothing of God but from his works.  Certain speculative
+men have adventured to reason upon the source of all the system
+and the wonders that we behold, a priori, and, having found that
+the creator is all powerful, all wise, and of infinite goodness,
+according to their ideas of power, wisdom and goodness, have from
+thence proceeded to draw their inferences, and to shew us in what
+manner the works of his hands are arranged and conducted by him. 
+This no doubt they have done with the purest intentions in the
+world; but it is not certain, that their discretion has equalled
+the boldness of their undertaking.
+
+The world that we inhabit, this little globe of earth, is to us
+an infinite mystery.  Human imagination is unable to conceive any
+thing more consummate than the great outline of things below. 
+The trees and the skies, the mountains and the seas, the rivers
+and the springs, appear as if the design had been to realise the
+idea of paradise.  The freshness of the air, the silvery light of
+day, the magnificence of the clouds, the gorgeous and soothing
+colouring of the world, the profusion and exquisiteness of the
+fruits and flowers of the earth, are as if nothing but joy and
+delicious sensations had been intended for us.  When we ascend to
+the animal creation, the scene is still more admirable and
+transporting.  The birds and the beasts, the insects that skim
+the air, and the fishes that live in the great deep, are a
+magazine of wonders, that we may study for ever, without fear of
+arriving at the end of their excellence.  Last of all, comes the
+crown of the creation, man, formed with looks erect, to commerce
+with the skies.  What a masterpiece of workmanship is his form,
+while the beauty and intelligence of Gods seems to manifest
+itself in his countenance!  Look at that most consummate of all
+implements, the human hand; think of his understanding, how
+composed and penetrating; of the wealth of his imagination; of
+the resplendent virtues he is qualified to display!  "How
+wonderful are thy works, Oh God; in wisdom hast thou created them
+all!"
+
+But there are other parts of the system in which we live, which
+do not seem to correspond with those already enumerated.  Before
+we proceed to people infinite space, it would be as well, if we
+surveyed the surface of the earth we inhabit.  What vast deserts
+do we find in it; what immense tracks of burning sands!  One half
+of the globe is perhaps irreclaimable to the use of man.  Then
+let us think of earthquakes and tempests, of wasting hurricanes,
+and the number of vessels, freighted with human beings, that are
+yearly buried in the caverns of the ocean.  Let us call to mind
+in man, the prime ornament of the creation, all the diseases to
+which his frame is subject,
+
+  Convulsions, epilepsies, fierce catarrhs,
+  Intestine stone and ulcer, colic pangs,
+  Demoniac frenzy, moping melancholy,
+  And moon-struck madness, pining atrophy,
+  Marasmus, and wide-wasting pestilence,
+  Dropsies, and asthmas, and joint-racking rheums.
+
+The very idea of our killing, and subsisting upon the flesh of
+animals, surely somewhat jars with our conceptions of infinite
+benevolence.
+
+But, when we look at the political history of man, the case is
+infinitely worse.  This too often seems one tissue of misery and
+vice.  War, conquest, oppression, tyranny, slavery,
+insurrections, massacres, cruel punishments, degrading corporal
+infliction, and the extinction of life under the forms of law,
+are to be found in almost every page.  It is as if an evil demon
+were let loose upon us, and whole nations, from one decad of
+years to another, were struck with the most pernicious madness. 
+Certain reasoners tell us that this is owing to the freedom of
+will, without which man could not exist.  But here we are
+presented with an alternative, from which it is impossible for
+human understanding to escape.  Either God, according to our
+ideas of benevolence, would remove evil out of the world, and
+cannot; or he can, and will not.  If he has the will and not the
+power, this argues weakness; if he has the power and not the
+will, this seems to be malevolence.
+
+Let us descend from the great stage of the nations, and look into
+the obscurities of private misery.  Which of us is happy?  What
+bitter springs of misery overflow the human heart, and are borne
+by us in silence!  What cruel disappointments beset us!  To what
+struggles are we doomed, while we struggle often in vain!  The
+human heart seems framed, as if to be the capacious receptacle of
+all imaginable sorrows.  The human frame seems constructed, as if
+all its fibres were prepared to sustain varieties of torment. 
+"In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread, till thou return
+to the earth." But how often does that sweat prove ineffective!
+There are men of whom sorrow seems to be the destiny, from which
+they can never escape.  There are hearts, into which by their
+constitution it appears as if serenity and content could never
+enter, but which are given up to all the furious passions, or are
+for ever the prey of repining and depression.  
+ 
+  Ah, little think the gay, licentious proud,
+  Whom pleasure, power and affluence surround,
+  How many pine in want!  How many shrink
+  Into the sordid hut, how many drink
+  The cup of grief, and eat the bitter bread
+  Of misery!
+
+And, which aggravates the evil, almost all the worst vices, the
+most unprincipled acts, and the darkest passions of the human
+mind, are bred out of poverty and distress.  Satan, in the Book
+of Job, says to the Almighty, "Thou hast blessed the work of thy
+servant, and his substance is increased in the land.  But put
+forth thy hand now, and take away all that he hath; and he will
+curse thee to thy face." The prayer of Agar runs, "Feed me with
+food convenient for me; lest I be poor, and steal, and take the
+name of my God in vain."
+
+It is with a deep knowledge of the scenes of life, that the
+prophet pronounces, "My thoughts are not your thoughts; neither
+are your ways my ways, saith the Lord."
+
+All reflecting persons, who have surveyed the state of the world
+in which we live, have been struck with the contrarieties of
+sublunary things; and many hypotheses have been invented to solve
+the enigma.  Some have maintained the doctrine of two principles,
+Oromasdes and Arimanius, the genius of good and of evil, who are
+perpetually contending with each other which shall have the
+greatest sway in the fortunes of the world, and each alternately
+acquiring the upper hand.  Others have inculcated the theory of
+the fall of man, that God at first made all things beautiful and
+good, but that man has incurred his displeasure, and been turned
+out of the paradise for which he was destined.  Hence, they say,
+has arisen the corruption of our nature.  "There is none that
+cloth good, no, not one.  That every mouth may be stopped, and
+all the world become guilty before God."  But the solution that
+has been most generally adopted, particularly in later days, is
+that of a future state of retribution, in which all the
+inequalities of our present condition shall be removed, the tears
+of the unfortunate and the sufferer shall be wiped from their
+eyes, and their agonies and miseries compensated.  This, in other
+words, independently of the light of revelation, is to infer
+infinite wisdom and benevolence from what we see, and then,
+finding the actual phenomena not to correspond with our theories,
+to invent something of which we have no knowledge, to supply the
+deficiency.
+
+The astronomer however proceeds from what we see of the globe of
+earth, to fashion other worlds of which we have no direct
+knowledge.  Finding that there is no part of the soil of the
+earth into which our wanderings can penetrate, that is not turned
+to the account of rational and happy beings, creatures capable of
+knowing and adoring their creator, that nature does nothing in
+vain, and that the world is full of the evidences of his
+unmingled beneficence, according to our narrow and imperfect
+ideas of beneficence, (for such ought to be our premises) we
+proceed to construct millions of worlds upon the plan we have
+imagined.  The earth is a globe, the planets are globes, and
+several of them larger than our earth:  the earth has a moon;
+several of the planets have satellites:  the globe we dwell in
+moves in an orbit round the sun; so do the planets:  upon these
+premises, and no more, we hold ourselves authorised to affirm
+that they contain "myriads of intelligent beings, formed for
+endless progression in perfection and felicity."  Having gone
+thus far, we next find that the fixed stars bear a certain
+resemblance to the sun; and, as the sun has a number of planets
+attendant on him, so, we say, has each of the fixed stars,
+composing all together "ten thousand times ten thousand"
+habitable worlds.
+
+All this is well, so long as we view it as a bold and ingenious
+conjecture.  On any other subject it would be so regarded; and we
+should consider it as reserved for the amusement and
+gratification of a fanciful visionary in the hour, when he gives
+up the reins to his imagination.  But, backed as it is by a
+complexity of geometrical right lines and curves, and handed
+forth to us in large quartos, stuffed with calculations, it
+experiences a very different fortune.  We are told that, "by the
+knowledge we derive from astronomy, our faculties are enlarged,
+our minds exalted, and our understandings clearly convinced, and
+affected with the conviction, of the existence, wisdom, power,
+goodness, immutability and superintendency of the supreme being;
+so that, without an hyperbole, 'an undevout astronomer is
+mad[e][70].'"
+
+[70] Ferguson, Astronomy, Section I.
+
+
+It is singular, how deeply I was impressed with this
+representation, while I was a schoolboy, and was so led to
+propose a difficulty to the wife of the master.  I said, "I find
+that we have millions of worlds round us peopled with rational
+creatures.  I know not that we have any decisive reason for
+supposing these creatures more exalted, than the wonderful
+species of which we are individuals.  We are imperfect; they are
+imperfect.  We fell; it is reasonable to suppose that they have
+fallen also.  It became necessary for the second person in the
+trinity to take upon him our nature, and by suffering for our
+sins to appease the wrath of his father.  I am unwilling to
+believe that he has less commiseration for the inhabitants of
+other planets.  But in that case it may be supposed that since
+the creation he has been making a circuit of the planets, and
+dying on the cross for the sins of rational creatures in
+uninterrupted succession."  The lady was wiser than I, admonished
+me of the danger of being over-inquisitive, and said we should
+act more discreetly in leaving those questions to the judgment of
+the Almighty.
+
+But thus far we have reasoned only on one side of the question. 
+Our pious sentiments have led us to magnify the Lord in all his
+works, and, however imperfect the analogy, and however obscure
+the conception we can form of the myriads of rational creatures,
+all of them no doubt infinitely varied in their nature, their
+structure and faculties, yet to view the whole scheme with an
+undoubting persuasion of its truth.  It is however somewhat in
+opposition  to the ideas of piety formed by our less adventurous
+ancestors, that we should usurp the throne of God,
+
+     Snatch from his hand the balance and the rod,
+
+and, by means of our telescopes and our calculations, penetrate
+into mysteries not originally intended for us.  According to the
+received Mosaic chronology we are now in the five thousand eight
+hundred and thirty-fifth year from the creation:  the Samaritan
+version adds to this date.  It is therefore scarcely in the
+spirit of a Christian, that Herschel talks to us of a light,
+which must have been two millions of years in reaching the earth.
+
+Moses describes the operations of the Almighty, in one of the six
+days devoted to the work of creation, as being to place "lights
+in the firmament of heaven, to divide the day from the night, to
+be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years, and to give
+light upon the earth; two great lights, the greater to rule the
+day, and the lesser the night; and the stars also."  And Christ,
+prophesying what is to happen in the latter days, says, "The sun
+shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the
+stars shall fall from heaven."  Whatever therefore be the piety
+of the persons, who talk to us of "ten thousand times ten
+thousand worlds, all peopled with rational creatures," it
+certainly is not a piety in precise accordance with the Christian
+scriptures.
+
+
+SECTION IV.
+
+It is also no more than just, that we should bear in mind the
+apparent fitness or otherwise, of these bodies, so far as we are
+acquainted with them, for the dwelling-place of rational
+creatures.  Not to mention the probable extreme coldness of
+Jupiter and Saturn, the heat of the sunbeams in the planet
+Mercury is understood to be such as that water would unavoidably
+boil and be carried away[71], and we can scarcely imagine any
+living substance that would not be dissolved and dispersed in
+such an atmosphere.  The moon, of which, as being so much nearer
+to us, we may naturally be supposed to know most, we are told by
+the astronomers has no water and no atmosphere, or, if any, such
+an atmosphere as would not sustain clouds and ascending vapour. 
+To our eye, as seen through the telescope, it appears like a
+metallic substance, which has been burned by fire, and so reduced
+into the ruined and ragged condition in which we seem to behold
+it.  The sun appears to be still less an appropriate habitation
+for rational, or for living creatures, than any of the planets. 
+The comets, which describe an orbit so exceedingly eccentric, and
+are subject to all the excessive vicissitudes of heat and cold,
+are, we are told, admirably adapted for a scene of eternal, or of
+lengthened punishment for those who have acquitted themselves ill
+in a previous state of probation.  Buffon is of opinion, that all
+the planets in the solar system were once so many portions of our
+great luminary, struck off from the sun by the blow of a comet,
+and so having received a projectile impulse calculated to carry
+them forward in a right line, at the same time that the power of
+attraction counteracts this impulse, and gives them that compound
+principle of motion which retains them in an orbicular course. 
+In this sense it may be said that all the planets were suns;
+while on the contrary Herschel pronounces, that the sun itself is
+a planet, an opake body, richly stored with inhabitants[72].
+
+[71] Encyclopaedia Londinensis, Vol. II, p. 355.
+
+[72] Philosophical Transactions for 1795, p. 68.
+
+
+The modern astronomers go on to account to us for the total
+disappearance of a star in certain cases, which, they say, may be
+in reality the destruction of a system, such as that of our sun
+and its attendant planets, while the appearance of a new star
+may, in like manner, be the occasional creation of a new system
+of planets.  "We ought perhaps," says Herschel, "to look upon
+certain clusters of stars, and the destruction of a star now and
+then in some thousands of ages, as the very means by which the
+whole is preserved and renewed.  These clusters may be the
+laboratories of the universe, wherein the most salutary remedies
+for the decay of the whole are prepared[73]."
+
+[73] Philosophical Transactions for 1785, p. 217.
+
+
+All this must appear to a sober mind, unbitten by the rage which
+grows out of the heat of these new discoverers, to be nothing
+less than astronomy run mad.  This occasional creation of new
+systems and worlds, is in little accordance with the Christian
+scriptures, or, I believe, with any sober speculation upon the
+attributes of the creator.  The astronomer seizes upon some hint
+so fine as scarcely by any ingenuity to be arrested, immediately
+launches forth into infinite space, and in an instant returns,
+and presents us with millions of worlds, each of them peopled
+with ten thousand times ten thousand inhabitants.
+
+We spoke a while since of the apparent unfitness of many of the
+heavenly bodies for the reception of living inhabitants.  But for
+all this these discoverers have a remedy.  They remind us how
+unlike these inhabitants may be to ourselves, having other organs
+than ours, and being able to live in a very different
+temperature.  "The great heat in the planet Mercury is no
+argument against its being inhabited; since the Almighty could as
+easily suit the bodies and constitutions of its inhabitants to
+the heat of their dwelling, as he has done ours to the
+temperature of our earth.  And it is very probable that the
+people there have such an opinion of us, as we have of the
+inhabitants of Jupiter and Saturn; namely, that we must be
+intolerably cold, and have very little light at so great a
+distance from the sun."
+
+These are the remarks of Ferguson[74].  One of our latest
+astronomers expresses himself to the same purpose.
+
+[74] Astronomy, Section 22.
+
+
+"We have no argument against the planets being inhabited by
+rational beings, and consequently by witnesses of the creator's
+power, magnificence and benevolence, unless it be said that some
+are much nearer the sun than the earth is, and therefore must be
+uninhabitable from heat, and those more distant from cold. 
+Whatever objection this may be against their being inhabited by
+rational beings, of an organisation similar to those on the
+earth, it can have little force, when urged with respect to
+rational beings in general.
+
+"But we may examine without indulging too much in conjecture,
+whether it be not possible that the planets may be possessed by
+rational beings, and contain animals and vegetables, even little
+different from those with which we are familiar.
+
+"Is the sun the principal cause of the temperature of the earth? 
+We have reason to suppose that it is not.  The mean temperature
+of the earth, at a small depth from the surface, seems constant
+in summer and in winter, and is probably coeval with its first
+formation.
+
+"At the planet Mercury, the direct heat of the sun, or its power
+of causing heat, is six times greater than with us.  If we
+suppose the mean temperature of Mercury to be the same as of the
+earth, and the planet to be surrounded with an atmosphere, denser
+than that of the earth, less capable of transmitting heat, or
+rather the influence of the sun to extricate heat, and at the
+same time more readily conducting it to keep up an evenness of
+temperature, may we not suppose the planet Mercury fit for the
+habitation of men, and the production of vegetables similar to
+our own?
+
+"At the Georgium Sidus, the direct influence of the sun is 360
+times less than at the earth, and the sun is there seen at an
+angle not much greater than that under which we behold Venus,
+when nearest.  Yet may not the mean temperature of the Georgium
+Sidus be nearly the same as that of the earth?  May not its
+atmosphere more easily transmit the influence of the sun, and may
+not the matter of heat be more copiously combined, and more
+readily extricated, than with us?  Whence changes of season
+similar to our own may take place.  Even in the comets we may
+suppose no great change of temperature takes place, as we know of
+no cause which will deprive them of their mean temperature, and
+particularly if we suppose, that on their approach towards the
+sun, there is a provision for their atmosphere becoming denser. 
+The tails they exhibit, when in the neighbourhood of the sun,
+seem in some measure to countenance this idea.
+
+"We can hardly suppose the sun, a body three hundred times larger
+than all the planets together, was created only to preserve the
+periodic motions, and give light and heat to the planets.  Many
+astronomers have thought that its atmosphere only is luminous,
+and its body opake, and probably of the same constitution as the
+planets.  Allowing therefore that its luminous atmosphere only
+extricates heat, we see no reason why the sun itself should not
+be inhabited[75]."
+
+[75] Brinkley, Elements of Astronomy, Chap. IX.
+
+
+There is certainly no end to the suppositions that may be made by
+an ingenious astronomer.  May we not suppose that we might do
+nearly as well altogether without the sun, which it appears is at
+present of little use to us as to warmth and heat?  As to light,
+the great creator might, for aught we know, find a substitute;
+feelers, for example, endued with a certain acuteness of sense: 
+or, at all events, the least imaginable degree of light might
+answer every purpose to organs adapted to this kind of twilight. 
+In that way the inhabitants of the Georgium Sidus are already
+sufficiently provided for; they appear to have as little benefit
+of the light as of the heat of the sun.  How the satellites of
+the distant planets are supplied with light is a mystery, since
+their principals have scarcely any.  Unless indeed, like the sun,
+they have a luminous atmosphere, competent to enlighten a whole
+system, themselves being opake.  But in truth light in a greater
+or less degree seems scarcely worthy of a thought, since the
+inhabitants of the planet Mercury have not their eyes put out by
+a light, scarcely inferior in radiance to that which is reflected
+by those plates of burning brass, with which tyrants in some ages
+were accustomed to extinguish the sense of vision in their
+unfortunate victims.  The comets also must be a delectable
+residence; that of 1680 completing its orbit in 576 years, and
+being at its greatest distance about eleven thousand two hundred
+millions of miles from the sun, and at its least within less than
+a third part of the sun's semi-diameter from its surface[76]. 
+They must therefore have delightful vicissitudes of light and the
+contrary; for, as to heat, that is already provided for. 
+Archdeacon Brinkley's postulate is, that these bodies are
+"possessed by rational beings, and contain animals and
+vegetables, little different from those with which we are
+familiar."
+
+[76] Ferguson, Section 93.
+
+
+Now the only reason we have to believe in these extraordinary
+propositions, is the knowledge we possess of the divine
+attributes.  From the force of this consideration it is argued
+that God will not leave any sensible area of matter unoccupied,
+and therefore that it is impossible that such vast orbs as we
+believe surround us even to the extent of infinite space, should
+not be "richly stored with rational beings, the capable witnesses
+of his power, magnificence and benevolence."  All difficulties
+arising from the considerations of light, and heat, and a
+thousand other obstacles, are to give way to the perfect insight
+we have as to how the deity will conduct himself in every case
+that can be proposed.  I am not persuaded that this is agreeable
+to religion; and I am still less convinced that it is compatible
+with the sobriety and sedateness of common sense.
+
+It is with some degree of satisfaction that I perceive lord
+Brougham, the reputed author of the Preliminary Discourse to the
+Library of Useful Knowledge, at the same time that he states the
+dimensions and distances of the heavenly bodies in the usual way,
+says not a word of their inhabitants.
+
+It is somewhat remarkable that, since the commencement of the
+present century, four new planets have been added to those
+formerly contained in the enumeration of the solar system.  They
+lie between the planets Mars and Jupiter, and have been named
+Vesta, Juno, Ceres and Pallas.  Brinkley speaks of them in this
+manner.  "The very small magnitudes of the new planets Ceres and
+Pallas, and their nearly equal distances from the sun, induced
+Dr. Olbers, who discovered Pallas in 1802, nearly in the same
+place where he had observed Ceres a few months before, to
+conjecture that they were fragments of a larger planet, which had
+by some unknown cause been broken to pieces.  It follows from the
+law of gravity, by which the planets are retained in their
+orbits, that each fragment would again, after every revolution
+about the sun, pass nearly through the place in which the planet
+was when the catastrophe happened, and besides the orbit of each
+fragment would intersect the continuation of the line joining
+this place and the sun.  Thence it was easy to ascertain the two
+particular regions of the heavens through which all these
+fragments would pass.  Also, by carefully noting the small stars
+thereabout, and examining them from time to time, it might be
+expected that more of the fragments would be discovered.--M.
+Harding discovered the planet Juno in one of these regions; and
+Dr. Olbers himself also, by carefully examining them [the small
+stars] from time to time, discovered Vesta."
+
+These additions certainly afford us a new epoch in the annals of
+the solar system, and of astronomy itself.  It is somewhat
+remarkable, that Herschel, who in the course of his observations
+traced certain nebulae, the light from which must have been two
+millions of years in reaching the earth, should never have
+remarked these planets, which, so to speak, lay at his feet.  It
+reminds one of Esop's astrologer, who, to the amusement of his
+ignorant countrymen, while he was wholly occupied in surveying
+the heavens, suddenly found himself plunged in a pit.  These new
+planets also we are told are fragments of a larger planet:  how
+came this larger planet never to have been discovered?
+
+Till Herschel's time we were content with six planets and the
+sun, making up the cabalistical number seven.  He added another. 
+But these four new ones entirely derange the scheme.  The
+astronomers have not yet had opportunity to digest them into
+their places, and form new worlds of them.  This is all
+unpleasant.  They are, it seems, "fragments of a larger planet,
+which had by some unknown cause been broken to pieces."  They
+therefore are probably not inhabited.  How does this correspond
+with the goodness of God, which will suffer no mass of matter in
+his creation to remain unoccupied?  Herschel talks at his ease of
+whole systems, suns with all their attendant planets, being
+consigned to destruction.  But here we have a catastrophe
+happening before our eyes, and cannot avoid being shocked by it. 
+"God does nothing in vain."  For which of his lofty purposes has
+this planet been broken to pieces, and its fragments left to
+deform the system of which we are inhabitants; at least to humble
+the pride of man, and laugh to scorn his presumption?  Still they
+perform their revolutions, and obey the projectile and
+gravitating forces, which have induced us to people ten thousand
+times ten thousand worlds.  It is time, that we should learn
+modesty, to revere in silence the great cause to which the
+universe is indebted for its magnificence, its beauty and
+harmony, and to acknowledge that we do not possess the key that
+should unlock the mysteries of creation.
+
+One of the most important lessons that can be impressed on the
+human mind, is that of self-knowledge and a just apprehension of
+what it is that we are competent to achieve.  We can do much.  We
+are capable of much knowledge and much virtue.  We have patience,
+perseverance and subtlety.  We can put forth considerable
+energies, and nerve ourselves to resist great obstacles and much
+suffering.  Our ingenuity is various and considerable.  We can
+form machines, and erect mighty structures.  The invention of man
+for the ease of human life, and for procuring it a multitude of
+pleasures and accommodations, is truly astonishing.  We can
+dissect the human frame, and anatomise the mind.  We can study
+the scene of our social existence, and make extraordinary
+improvements in the administration of justice, and in securing to
+ourselves that germ of all our noblest virtues, civil and
+political liberty.  We can study the earth, its strata, its soil,
+its animals, and its productions, "from the cedar that is in
+Lebanon, to the hyssop that springeth out of the wall."
+
+But man is not omnipotent.  If he aspires to be worthy of honour,
+it is necessary that he should compute his powers, and what it is
+they are competent to achieve.  The globe of earth, with "all
+that is therein," is our estate and our empire.  Let us be
+content with that which we have.  It were a pitiful thing to see
+so noble a creature struggling in a field, where it is impossible
+for him to distinguish himself, or to effect any thing real. 
+There is no situation in which any one can appear more little and
+ludicrous, than when he engages in vain essays, and seeks to
+accomplish that, which a moment's sober thought would teach him
+was utterly hopeless.
+
+Even astronomy is to a certain degree our own.  We can measure
+the course of the sun, and the orbits of the planets.  We can
+calculate eclipses.  We can number the stars, assign to them
+their places, and form them into what we call constellations. 
+But, when we pretend to measure millions of miles in the heavens,
+and to make ourselves acquainted with the inhabitants of ten
+thousand times ten thousand worlds and the accommodations which
+the creator has provided for their comfort and felicity, we
+probably engage in something more fruitless and idle, than the
+pigmy who should undertake to bend the bow of Ulysses, or strut
+and perform the office of a warrior clad in the armour of
+Achilles.
+
+How beautiful is the "firmament; this majestical roof fretted
+with golden fire!" Let us beware how we mar the magnificent scene
+with our interpolations and commentaries!  Simplicity is of the
+essence of the truly great.  Let us look at the operations of
+that mighty power from which we ourselves derive our existence,
+with humility and reverential awe!  It may well become us.  Let
+us not "presume into the heaven of heavens," unbidden,
+unauthorised guests!  Let us adopt the counsel of the apostle,
+and allow no man to "spoil us through vain philosophy."  The
+business of human life is serious; the useful investigations in
+which we may engage are multiplied.  It is excellent to see a
+rational being conscious of his genuine province, and not idly
+wasting powers adapted for the noblest uses in unmeasured essays
+and ill-concocted attempts.
+
+
+
+ESSAY XXII.
+OF THE MATERIAL UNIVERSE.
+
+In the preceding Essay I have referred to the theory of Berkeley,
+whose opinion is that there is no such thing as matter in the
+sense in which it is understood by the writers on natural
+philosophy, and that the whole of our experience in that respect
+is the result of a system of accidents without an intelligible
+subject, by means of which antecedents and consequents flow on
+for ever in a train, the past succession of which man is able to
+record, and the future in many cases he is qualified to predict
+and to act upon.
+
+An argument more palpable and popular than that of Berkeley in
+favour of the same hypothesis, might be deduced from the points
+recapitulated in that Essay as delivered by Locke and Newton.  If
+what are vulgarly denominated the secondary qualities of matter
+are in reality nothing but sensations existing in the human mind,
+then at any rate matter is a very different thing from what it is
+ordinarily apprehended to be.  To which I add, in the second
+place, that, if matter, as is stated by Newton, consists in so
+much greater a degree of pores than solid parts, that the
+absolute particles contained in the solar system might, for aught
+we know, he contained in a nutshell[77], and that no two ever
+touched each other, or approached so near that they might not be
+brought nearer, provided a sufficient force could be applied for
+that purpose,--and if, as Priestley teaches, all that we observe
+is the result of successive spheres of attraction and repulsion,
+the centre of which is a mathematical point only, we then
+certainly come very near to a conclusion, which should banish
+matter out of the theatre of real existences[78].
+
+[77] See above, Essay XXI.
+
+[78] See above, Essay XXI.
+
+
+But the extreme subtleties of human intellect are perhaps of
+little further use, than to afford an amusement to persons of
+curious speculation, and whose condition in human society
+procures them leisure for such enquiries.  The same thing happens
+here, as in the subject of my Twelfth Essay, on the Liberty of
+Human Actions.  The speculator in his closet is one man:  the
+same person, when he comes out of his retirement, and mixes in
+intercourse with his fellow-creatures, is another man.  The
+necessarian, when he reasons on the everlasting concatenation of
+antecedents and consequents, proves to his own apprehension
+irrefragably, that he is a passive instrument, acted upon, and
+acting upon other things, in turn, and that he can never
+disengage himself from the operation of the omnipotent laws of
+physical nature, and the impulses of other men with whom he is
+united in the ties of society.  But no sooner does this acute and
+ingenious reasoner come into active life and the intercourse of
+his fellowmen, than all these fine-drawn speculations vanish from
+his recollection.  He regards himself and other men as beings
+endowed with a liberty of action, as possessed of a proper
+initiative power, and free to do a thing or not to do it, without
+being subject to the absolute and irresistible constraint of
+motives.  It is from this internal and indefeasible sense of
+liberty, that we draw all our moral energies and enthusiasm, that
+we persevere heroically in defiance of obstacles and
+discouragements, that we praise or blame the actions of others,
+and admire the elevated virtues of the best of our
+contemporaries, and of those whose achievements adorn the page of
+history.
+
+It is in a manner of precisely the same sort as that which
+prevails in the philosophical doctrines of liberty and necessity,
+that we find ourselves impelled to feel on the question of the
+existence of the material universe.  Berkeley, and as many
+persons as are persuaded by his or similar reasonings, feel
+satisfied in speculation that there is no such thing as matter in
+the sense in which it is understood by the writers on natural
+philosophy, and that all our notions of the external and actual
+existence of the table, the chair, and the other material
+substances with which we conceive ourselves to be surrounded, of
+woods, and mountains, and rivers, and seas, are mere prejudice
+and misconception.  All this is very well in the closet, and as
+long as we are involved in meditation, and remain abstracted from
+action, business, and the exertion of our limbs and corporal
+faculties.  But it is too fine for the realities of life. 
+Berkeley, and the most strenuous and spiritualised of his
+followers, no sooner descend from the high tower of their
+speculations, submit to the necessities of their nature, and mix
+in the business of the world, than they become impelled, as
+strongly as the necessarian in the question of the liberty of
+human actions, not only to act like other men, but even to feel
+just in the same manner as if they had never been acquainted with
+these abstractions.  A table then becomes absolutely a table, and
+a chair a chair:  they are "fed with the same food, hurt by the
+same weapons, and warmed and cooled by the same summer and
+winter," as other men:  and they make use of the refreshments
+which nature requires, with as true an orthodoxy, and as
+credulous a temper, as he who was never assailed with such
+refinements.  Nature is too strong, to be prevailed on to retire,
+and give way to the authority of definitions and syllogistical
+deduction.
+
+But, when we have granted all this, it is however a mistake to
+say, that these "subtleties of human intellect are of little
+further use, than to afford an amusement to persons of curious
+speculation[79]." We have seen, in the case of the doctrine of
+philosophical necessity[80], that, though it can never form a
+rule for the intercourse between man and man, it may nevertheless
+be turned to no mean advantage.  It is calculated to inspire us
+with temperance and toleration.  It tends impressively to evince
+to us, that this scene of things is but like the shadows which
+pass before us in a magic lanthorn, and that, after all, men are
+but the tools, not the masters, of their fate.  It corrects the
+illusions of life, much after the same manner as the spectator of
+a puppet-shew is enlightened, who should be taken within the
+curtain, and shewn how the wires are pulled by the master, which
+produce all the turmoil and strife that before riveted our
+attention.  It is good for him who would arrive at all the
+improvement of which our nature is capable, at one time to take
+his place among the literal beholders of the drama, and at
+another to go behind the scenes, and remark the deceptions in
+their original elements, and the actors in their proper and
+natural costume.
+
+[79] See above, Essay XXII.
+
+[80] See above, Essay XII.
+
+
+And, as in the question of the liberty of human actions, so in
+that of the reality of the material universe, it is a privilege
+not to be despised, that we are so formed as to be able to
+dissect the subject that is submitted to our examination, and to
+strip the elements of which this sublunary scene is composed, of
+the disguise in which they present themselves to the vulgar
+spectator.  It is little, after all, that we are capable to know;
+and the man of heroic mind and generous enterprise, will not
+refuse the discoveries that are placed within his reach.  The
+subtleties of grammar are as the porch, which leads from the
+knowledge of words to the knowledge of things.  The subtleties of
+mathematics defecate the grossness of our apprehension, and
+supply the elements of a sounder and severer logic.  And in the
+same manner the faculty which removes the illusions of external
+appearance, and enables us to "look into the seeds of time," is
+one which we are bound to estimate at its genuine value.  The
+more we refine our faculties, other things equal, the wiser we
+grow:  we are the more raised above the thickness of the
+atmosphere that envelops our fellow-mortals, and are made
+partakers of a nature superhuman and divine.
+
+There is a curious question that has risen out of this
+proposition of Berkeley, of the supposed illusion we suffer in
+our conceptions of the material universe.  It has been said,
+"Well then, I am satisfied that the chairs, the tables, and the
+other material substances with which I conceive myself to be
+surrounded, are not what they appear to be, but are merely an
+eternal chain of antecedents and consequents, going on according
+to what Leibnitz calls a 'preestablished harmony,' and thus
+furnishing the ground of the speculations which mortals cherish,
+and the motives of their proceeding.  But, if thus, in the
+ordinary process of human affairs, we believe in matter, when in
+reality there is no such thing as matter, how shall we pronounce
+of mind, and the things which happen to us in our seeming
+intercourse with our fellow-men, and in the complexities of love
+and hatred, of kindred and friendship, of benevolence and
+misanthropy, of robbery and murder, and of the wholesale massacre
+of thousands of human beings which are recorded in the page of
+history?  We absolutely know nothing of the lives and actions of
+others but through the medium of material impulse.  And, if you
+take away matter, the bodies of our fellow-men, does it not
+follow by irresistible consequence that all knowledge of their
+minds is taken away also?  Am not I therefore (the person engaged
+in reading the present Essay) the only being in existence, an
+entire universe to myself?"
+
+Certainly this is a very different conclusion from any that
+Berkeley ever contemplated.  In the very title of the Treatise in
+which his notions on this subject are unfolded, he professes his
+purpose to be to remove "the grounds of scepticism, atheism and
+irreligion."  Berkeley was a sincere Christian, and a man of the
+most ingenuous dispositions.  Pope, in the Epilogue to his
+Satires, does not hesitate to ascribe to him "every virtue under
+heaven."  He was for twenty years a prelate of the Protestant
+church.  And, though his personal sentiments were in the highest
+degree philanthropical and amiable, yet, in his most diffusive
+production, entitled The Minute Philosopher, he treats "those who
+are called Free Thinkers" with a scorn and disdain, scarcely to
+be reconciled with the spirit of Christian meekness.
+
+There are examples however, especially in the fields of
+controversy, where an adventurous speculatist has been known to
+lay down premises and principles, from which inferences might be
+fairly deduced, incompatible with the opinions entertained by him
+who delivered them.  It may therefore be no unprofitable research
+to enquire how far the creed of the non-existence of matter is to
+be regarded as in truth and reality countenancing the inference
+which has just been recited.
+
+The persons then, who refine with Berkeley upon the system of
+things so far, as to deny that there is any such thing as matter
+in the sense in which it is understood by the writers on natural
+philosophy, proceed on the ground of affirming that we have no
+reason to believe that the causes of our sensations have an
+express resemblance to the sensations themselves[81].  That which
+gives us a sensation of colour is not itself coloured:  and the
+same may be affirmed of the sensations of hot and cold, of sweet
+and bitter, and of odours offensive or otherwise.  The
+immaterialist proceeds to say, that what we call matter has been
+strewn to be so exceedingly porous, that, for any thing we know,
+all the solid particles in the universe might be contained in a
+nutshell, that there is no such thing in the external world as
+actual contact, and that no two particles of matter were ever so
+near to each other, but that they might be brought nearer, if a
+sufficient force could be applied for that purpose.  From these
+premises it seems to follow with sufficient evidence, that the
+causes of our sensations, so far as the material universe is
+concerned, bear no express resemblance to the sensations
+themselves.
+
+[81] See above, Essay XXI.
+
+
+How then does the question stand with relation to mind?  Are
+those persons who deny the existence of matter, reduced, if they
+would be consistent in their reasonings, to deny, each man for
+himself, that he has any proper evidence of the existence of
+other minds than his own?
+
+He denies, while he has the sensation of colour, that there
+exists colour out of himself, unless in thinking and percipient
+beings constituted in a manner similar to that in which he is
+constituted.  And the same of the sensations of hot and cold,
+sweet and bitter, and odours offensive or otherwise.  He affirms,
+while he has the sensation of length, breadth and thickness, that
+there is no continuous substance out of himself, possessing the
+attributes of length, breadth and thickness in any way similar to
+the sensation of which he is conscious.  He professes therefore
+that he has no evidence, arising from his observation of what we
+call matter, of the actual existence of a material world.  He
+looks into himself, and all he finds is sensation; but sensation
+cannot be a property of inert matter.  There is therefore no
+assignable analogy between the causes of his sensations, whatever
+they may be, and the sensations themselves; and the material
+world, such as we apprehend it, is the mere creature of his own
+mind.
+
+Let us next consider how this question stands as to the
+conceptions he entertains respecting the minds of other men. 
+That which gives him the sensation of colour, is not any thing
+coloured out of himself; and that which gives him the sensation
+of length, breadth and thickness, is not any thing long, broad
+and thick in a manner corresponding with the impression he
+receives.  There is nothing in the nature of a parallel, a type
+and its archetype, between that which is without him and that
+which is within, the impresser and the impression.  This is the
+point supposed to be established by Locke and Newton, and by
+those who have followed the reasonings of these philosophers into
+their remotest consequences.
+
+But the case is far otherwise in the impressions we receive
+respecting the minds of other men.  In colour it has been proved
+by these authors that there is no express correspondence and
+analogy between the cause of the sensation and the sensation. 
+They are not part and counterpart.  But in mind there is a
+precise resemblance and analogy between the conceptions we are
+led to entertain respecting other men, and what we know of
+ourselves.  I and my associate, or fellow-man, are like two
+instruments of music constructed upon the same model.  We have
+each of us, so to speak, the three great divisions of sound,
+base, tenor and treble.  We have each the same number of keys,
+capable of being struck, consecutively or with alternations, at
+the will of the master.  We can utter the same sound or series of
+sounds, or sounds of a different character, but which respond to
+each other.  My neighbour therefore being of the same nature as
+myself, what passes within me may be regarded as amounting to a
+commanding evidence that he is a real being, having a proper and
+independent existence.
+
+There is further something still more impressive and irresistible
+in the notices I receive respecting the minds of other men.  The
+sceptics whose reasonings I am here taking into consideration,
+admit, each man for himself, the reality of his own existence. 
+There is such a thing therefore as human nature; for he is a
+specimen of it.  Now the idea of human nature, or of man, is a
+very complex thing.  He is in the first place the subject of
+sensible impressions, however these impressions are communicated
+to him.  He has the faculties of thinking and feeling.  He is
+subject to the law of the association of ideas, or, in other
+words, any one idea existing in his mind has a tendency to call
+up the ideas of other things which have been connected with it in
+his first experience.  He has, be it delusive or otherwise, the
+sense of liberty of action.
+
+But we will go still further into detail as to the nature of man.
+
+Our lives are carried forward by the intervention of what we call
+meat, drink and sleep.  We are liable to the accidents of health
+and sickness.  We are alternately the recipients of joy and
+sorrow, of cheerfulness and melancholy.  Our passions are excited
+by similar means, whether of love or hatred, complacency or
+indignation, sympathy or resentment.  I could fill many pages
+with a description of the properties or accidents, which belong
+to man as such, or to which he is liable.
+
+Now with all these each man is acquainted in the sphere of his
+inward experience, whether he is a single being standing by
+himself, or is an individual belonging to a numerous species.
+
+Observe then the difference between my acquaintance with the
+phenomena of the material universe, and with the individuals of
+my own species.  The former say nothing to me; they are a series
+of events and no more; I cannot penetrate into their causes; that
+which gives rise to my sensations, may or may not be similar to
+the sensations themselves.  The follower of Berkeley or Newton
+has satisfied himself in the negative.
+
+But the case is very different in my intercourse with my
+fellow-men.  Agreeably to the statement already made I know the
+reality of human nature; for I feel the particulars that
+constitute it within myself.  The impressions I receive from that
+intercourse say something to me; for they talk to me of beings
+like myself.  My own existence becomes multiplied in infinitum. 
+Of the possibility of matter I know nothing; but with the
+possibility of mind I am acquainted; for I am myself an example. 
+I am amazed at the consistency and systematic succession of the
+phenomena of the material universe; though I cannot penetrate the
+veil which presents itself to my grosser sense, nor see effects
+in their causes.  But I can see, in other words, I have the most
+cogent reasons to believe in, the causes of the phenomena that
+occur in my apparent intercourse with my fellow-men.  What
+solution so natural, as that they are produced by beings like
+myself, the duplicates, with certain variations, of what I feel
+within me?
+
+The belief in the reality of matter explains nothing.  Supposing
+it to exist, if Newton is right, no particle of extraneous matter
+ever touched the matter of my body; and therefore it is not just
+to regard it as the cause of my sensations.  It would amount to
+no more than two systems going on at the same time by a
+preestablished harmony, but totally independent of and disjointed
+from each other.
+
+But the belief in the existence of our fellow-men explains much. 
+It makes level before us the wonder of the method of their
+proceedings, and affords an obvious reason why they should be in
+so many respects like our own.  If I dismiss from my creed the
+existence of inert matter, I lose nothing.  The phenomena, the
+train of antecedents and consequents, remain as before; and this
+is all that I am truly concerned with.  But take away the
+existence of my fellow-men; and you reduce all that is, and all
+that I experience, to a senseless mummery.  "You take my life,
+taking the thing whereon I live."
+
+Human nature, and the nature of mind, are to us a theme of
+endless investigation.  "The proper study of mankind is man." 
+All the subtlety of metaphysics, or (if there be men captious and
+prejudiced enough to dislike that term) the science of ourselves,
+depends upon it.  The science of morals hangs upon the actions of
+men, and the effects they produce upon our brother-men, in a
+narrower or a wider circle.  The endless, and inexpressibly
+interesting, roll of history relies for its meaning and its
+spirit upon the reality and substance of the subjects of which it
+treats.  Poetry, and all the wonders and endless varieties that
+imagination creates, have this for their solution and their soul.
+
+Sympathy is the only reality of which we are susceptible; it is
+our heart of hearts:  and, if the world had been "one entire and
+perfect chrysolite," without this it would have been no more than
+one heap of rubbish.
+
+Observe the difference between what we know of the material
+world, and what of the intellectual.  The material goes on for
+ever according to certain laws that admit of no discrimination. 
+They proceed upon a first principle, an impulse given them from
+the beginning of things.  Their effects are regulated by
+something that we call their nature:  fire burns; water
+suffocates; the substances around us that we call solid, depend
+for their effects, when put in motion, upon momentum and gravity.
+
+The principle that regulates the dead universe, "acts by general,
+not by partial laws."
+
+     When the loose mountain trembles from on high,
+      Shall gravitation cease, if you go by?
+
+No:  the chain of antecedents and consequents proceeds in this
+respect for ever the same.  The laws of what we call the material
+world continue unvaried.  And, when the vast system of things was
+first set in motion, every thing, so far as depends on inert
+matter, was determined to the minutest particle, even to the end
+of time.
+
+The material world, or that train of antecedents and consequents
+which we understand by that term, goes on for ever in a train
+agreeably to the impulse previously given.  It is deaf and
+inexorable.  It is unmoved by the consideration of any accidents
+and miseries that may result, and unalterable.  But man is a
+source of events of a very different nature.  He looks to
+results, and is governed by views growing out of the
+contemplation of them.  He acts in a way diametrically opposite
+to the action of inert matter, and "turns, and turns, and turns
+again," at the impulse of the thought that strikes him, the
+appetite that prompts, the passions that move, and the effects
+that he anticipates.  It is therefore in a high degree
+unreasonable, to make that train of inferences which may satisfy
+us on the subject of material phenomena, a standard of what we
+ought to think respecting the phenomena of mind.
+
+It is further worthy of our notice to recollect, that the same
+reasonings which apply to our brethren of mankind, apply also to
+the brute creation.  They, like ourselves, act from motives; that
+is, the elections they form are adopted by them for the sake of
+certain consequences they expect to see result from them. 
+Whatever becomes therefore of the phenomena of what we call dead
+matter, we are here presented with tribes of being, susceptible
+of pleasure and pain, of hope and fear, of regard and resentment.
+
+How beautifully does this conviction vary the scene of things! 
+What a source to us is the animal creation, of amusement, of
+curious observations upon the impulses of inferior intellect, of
+the exhaustless varieties of what we call instinct, of the care
+we can exercise for their accommodation and welfare, and of the
+attachment and affection we win from them in return!  If I travel
+alone through pathless deserts, if I journey from the rising to
+the setting sun, with no object around me but nature's
+desolation, or the sublime, the magnificent and the exuberant
+scenery she occasionally presents, still I have that noble
+animal, the horse, and my faithful dog, the companions of my
+toil, and with whom, when my solitude would otherwise become
+insufferable, I can hold communion, and engage in dumb dialogues
+of sentiment and affection.
+
+I have heard of a man, who, talking to his friend on the subject
+of these speculations, said, "What then, are you so poor and
+pusillanimous a creature, that you could not preserve your
+serenity, be perfectly composed and content, and hold on your way
+unvaried, though you were convinced that you were the only real
+being in existence, and all the rest were mere phantasies and
+shadows?"
+
+If I had been the person to whom this speech was addressed, I
+should have frankly acknowledged, "I am the poor and
+pusillanimous creature you are disposed to regard with so much
+scorn."
+
+To adopt the sententious language of the Bible, "It is not good
+for man to be alone."  All our faculties and attributes bear
+relation to, and talk to us of, other beings like ourselves.  We
+might indeed eat, drink and sleep, that is, submit to those
+necessities which we so denominate, without thinking of any thing
+beyond ourselves; for these are the demands of our nature, and we
+know that we cannot subsist without them.  We might make use of
+the alternate conditions of exercise and repose.
+
+But the life of our lives would be gone.  As far as we bore in
+mind the creed we had adopted, of our single existence, we could
+neither love nor hate.  Sympathy would be a solemn mockery.  We
+could not communicate; for the being to whom our communication
+was addressed we were satisfied was a non-entity.  We could not
+anticipate the pleasure or pain, the joy or sorrow, of another;
+for that other had no existence.  We should be in a worse
+condition than Robinson Crusoe in the desolate island; for he
+believed in the existence of other men, and hoped and trusted
+that he should one day again enter into human society.  We should
+be in a worse condition than Robinson Crusoe; for he at least was
+unannoyed in his solitude; while we are perpetually and per force
+intruded on, like a delirious man, by visions which we know to be
+unreal, but which we are denied the power to deliver ourselves
+from.  We have no motive to any of the great and cardinal
+functions of human life; for there is no one in being, that we
+can benefit, or that we can affect.  Study is nothing to us; for
+we have no use for it.  Even science is unsatisfactory; unless we
+can communicate it by word or writing, can converse upon it, and
+compare notes with our neighbour.  History is nothing; for there
+were no Greeks and no Romans; no freemen and no slaves; no kings
+and no subjects; no despots, nor victims of their tyranny; no
+republics, nor states immerged in brutal and ignominious
+servitude.  Life must be inevitably a burthen to us, a dreary,
+unvaried, motiveless existence; and death must be welcomed, as
+the most desirable blessing that can visit us.  It is impossible
+indeed that we should always recollect this our, by supposition,
+real situation; but, as often as we did, it would come over us
+like a blight, withering all the prospects of our industry, or
+like a scirocco, unbracing the nerves of our frame, and
+consigning us to the most pitiable depression.
+
+Thus far I have allowed myself to follow the refinements of those
+who profess to deny the existence of the material universe.  But
+it is satisfactory to come back to that persuasion, which, from
+whatever cause it is derived, is incorporated with our very
+existence, and can never be shaken off by us.  Our senses are too
+powerful in their operation, for it to be possible for us to
+discard them, and to take as their substitute, in active life,
+and in the earnestness of pursuit, the deductions of our logical
+faculty, however well knit and irresistible we may apprehend them
+to be.  Speculation and common sense are at war on this point;
+and however we may "think with the learned," and follow the
+abstrusenesses of the philosopher, in the sequestered hour of our
+meditation, we must always act, and even feel, "with the vulgar,"
+when we come abroad into the world.
+
+It is however no small gratification to the man of sober mind,
+that, from what has here been alleged, it seems to follow, that
+untutored mind, and the severest deductions of philosophy, agree
+in that most interesting of our concerns, our intercourse with
+our fellow-creatures.  The inexorable reasoner, refining on the
+reports of sense, may dispose, as he pleases, of the chair, the
+table, and the so called material substances around him.  He may
+include the whole solid matter of the universe in a nutshell, or
+less than a nutshell.  But he cannot deprive me of that greatest
+of all consolations, the sustaining pillar of my existence, "the
+cordial drop Heaven in our cup has thrown,"--the intercourse of
+my fellow-creatures.  When we read history, the subjects of which
+we read are realities; they do not "come like shadows, so
+depart;" they loved and acted in sober earnest; they sometimes
+perpetrated crimes; but they sometimes also achieved illustrious
+deeds, which angels might look down from their exalted abodes and
+admire.  We are not deluded with mockeries.  The woman I love,
+and the man to whom I swear eternal friendship, are as much
+realities as myself.  If I relieve the poor, and assist the
+progress of genius and virtuous designs struggling with fearful
+discouragements, I do something upon the success of which I may
+safely congratulate myself.  If I devote my energies to enlighten
+my fellow-creatures, to detect the weak places in our social
+institutions, to plead the cause of liberty, and to invite others
+to engage in noble actions and unite in effecting the most solid
+and unquestionable improvements, I erect to my name an eternal
+monument; or I do something better than this,--secure inestimable
+advantage to the latest posterity, the benefit of which they
+shall enjoy, long after the very name of the author shall, with a
+thousand other things great and small, have been swallowed up in
+the gulph of insatiable oblivion.
+
+
+
+ESSAY XXIII.
+OF HUMAN VIRTUE. THE EPILOGUE.
+
+The life of man is divided into many stages; and we shall not
+form a just estimate of our common nature, if we do not to a
+certain degree pass its successive periods in review, and observe
+it in its commencement, its progress, and its maturity.
+
+It has been attempted to be established in an early part of the
+present volume[82], that all men, idiots and extraordinary cases
+being put out of the question, are endowed with talents, which,
+if rightly directed, would shew them to be apt, adroit,
+intelligent and acute, in the walk for which their organisation
+especially fitted them.  We are bound therefore, particularly in
+the morning of life, to consider every thing that presents itself
+to us in the human form, with deference and attention.
+
+[82] See above, Essay III.
+
+
+"God," saith the Preacher, "made man upright; but he hath sought
+out many inventions."  There is something loose and difficult of
+exposition in this statement; but we shall find an important
+truth hid beneath its obscurity.
+
+Junius Brutus, in the play, says to his son,
+
+      I like thy frame:  the fingers of the Gods
+      I see have left their mastery upon thee;
+      And the majestic prints distinct appear.
+
+Such is the true description of every well-formed and healthful
+infant that is born into the world.
+
+He is placed on the threshold of existence; and an eventful
+journey is open before him.  For the first four or five years of
+life indeed he has little apprehension of the scenes that await
+him.  But a child of quick apprehension early begins to have
+day-dreams, and to form imaginations of the various chances that
+may occur to him, and the things he shall have to do, when,
+according to the language of the story-books, he "goes out to
+seek his fortune."
+
+"God made man upright."  Every child that is born, has within him
+a concealed magazine of excellence.  His heart beats for every
+thing that is lovely and good; and whatever is set before him of
+that sort in honest colours, rouses his emulation.  By how many
+tokens does he prove himself worthy of our approbation and
+love--the unaffected and ingenuous sobriety with which he listens
+to what addresses itself to his attention, the sweetness of his
+smile, his hearty laugh, the clear, bell tones of his voice, his
+sudden and assured impulses, and his bounding step!
+
+To his own heart he promises well of himself.  Like Lear in the
+play, he says, "I will do such things!--What they are, yet I know
+not."  But he is assured, frank and light-spirited.  He thinks of
+no disguise.  He "wears his heart upon his sleeve." He looks in
+the face of his seniors with the glistening eye of confidence,
+and expects to encounter sympathy and encouragement in return. 
+Such is man, as he comes from the hands of his maker.
+
+Thus prepared, he is turned into the great field of society. 
+Here he meets with much that he had not anticipated, and with
+many rebuffs.  He is taught that he must accommodate his temper
+and proceedings to the expectations and prejudices of those
+around him.  He must be careful to give no offence.  With how
+many lessons, not always the most salutary and ingenuous, is this
+maxim pregnant! It calls on the neophyte to bear a wary eye, and
+to watch the first indications of disapprobation and displeasure
+in those among whom his lot is cast.  It teaches him to suppress
+the genuine emotions of his soul.  It informs him that he is not
+always to yield to his own impulses, but that he must "stretch
+forth his hands to another, and be carried whither he would not."
+
+It recommends to him falseness, and to be the thing in outward
+appearance that he is not in his heart.
+
+Still however he goes on.  He shuts up his thoughts in his bosom;
+but they are not exterminated.  On the contrary he broods over
+them with genial warmth; and the less they are exposed to the eye
+of day, the more perseveringly are they cherished.  Perhaps he
+chooses some youthful confident of his imaginings:  and the
+effect of this is, that he pours out his soul with uncontrolable
+copiousness, and with the fervour of a new and unchecked
+conceiving.  It is received with answering warmth; or, if there
+is any deficiency in the sympathy of his companion, his mind is
+so earnest and full, that he does not perceive it.  By and by, it
+may be, he finds that the discovery he had made of a friend, a
+brother of his soul, is, like so many of the visions of this
+world, hollow and fallacious.  He grasped, as he thought, a jewel
+of the first water; and it turns out to be a vulgar pebble.  No
+matter:  he has gained something by the communication.  He has
+heard from his own lips the imaginings of his mind shaped into
+articulate air; they grew more definite and distinct as he
+uttered them; they came by the very act to have more of reality,
+to be more tangible.  He shakes off the ill-assorted companion
+that only encumbered him, and springs away in his race, more
+light of heart, and with a step more assured, than ever.
+
+By and by he becomes a young man.  And, whatever checks he may
+have received before, it usually happens that all his hopes and
+projects return to him now with recruited strength.  He has no
+longer a master.  He no longer crouches to the yoke of
+subjection, and is directed this way and that at the judgment of
+another.  Liberty is at all times dear to the free-soured and
+ingenuous; but never so much so, as when we wear it in its full
+gloss and newness.  He never felt before, that he was sui juris,
+that he might go whithersoever he would, without asking leave,
+without consulting any other director than the law of his own
+mind.  It is nearly at the same season that he arrives at the
+period of puberty, at the stature, and in a certain degree at the
+strength, which he is destined to attain.  He is by general
+consent admitted to be at years of discretion.
+
+Though I have put all these things together, they do not, in the
+course of nature, all come at the same time.  It is a memorable
+period, when the ingenuous youth is transferred from the trammels
+of the schoolmaster to the residence of a college.  It was at the
+age of seventeen that, according to the custom of Rome, the
+youthful citizen put on the manly gown, and was introduced into
+the forum.  Even in college-life, there is a difference in the
+privileges of the mere freshman, and of the youth who has already
+completed the first half of his period in the university.
+
+The season of what may he denominated the independence of the
+individual, is certainly in no small degree critical.  A human
+being, suddenly emancipated from a state of subjection, if we may
+not call it slavery, and transported into a state of freedom,
+must be expected to be guilty of some extravagancies and follies.
+
+But upon the whole, with a small number of exceptions, it is
+creditable to human nature, that we take this period of our new
+powers and immunities with so much sobriety as we do.
+
+The young man then, calls to mind all that he imagined at an
+earlier season, and that he promised himself.  He adds to this
+the new lights that he has since obtained, and the nearer and
+more distinct view that he has reached, of the realities of life.
+
+He recollects the long noviciate that he served to reach this
+period, the twenty years that he passed in ardent and palpitating
+expectation; and he resolves to do something worthy of all he had
+vowed and had imagined.  He takes a full survey of his stores and
+endowments; and to the latter, from his enthusiasm and his
+self-love, he is morally sure to do justice.  He says to himself,
+"What I purpose to do will not be achieved to-day.  No; it shall
+be copious, and worthy of men's suffrage and approbation.  But I
+will meditate it; I will sketch a grand outline; I will essay my
+powers in secret, and ascertain what I may be able to effect." 
+The youth, whose morning of life is not utterly abortive,
+palpitates with the desire to promote the happiness of others,
+and with the desire of glory.
+
+We have an apt specimen of this in the first period of the reign
+of Nero.  The historians, Tacitus in particular, have treated
+this with too much incredulity.  It was the passion of that
+eminent man to indulge in subtleties, and to find hidden meanings
+in cases where in reality every thing is plain.  We must not
+regard the panegyric of Seneca, and the devotion of Lucan to the
+imperial stripling, as unworthy of our attention.  He was
+declared emperor before he had completed the eighteenth year of
+his age.  No occasion for the exhibition of liberality, clemency,
+courtesy or kindness escaped him.  He called every one by his
+name, and saluted all orders of men.  When the senate shewed a
+disposition to confer on him peculiar honours, he interposed, he
+said, "Let them be bestowed when I have deserved them[83]." 
+Seneca affirms, that in the first part of his reign, and to the
+time in which the philosopher dedicated to him his treatise of
+Clemency, he had "shed no drop of blood[84]."  He adds, "If the
+Gods were this day to call thee to a hearing, thou couldst
+account to them for every man that had been intrusted to thy
+rule.  Not an individual has been lost from the number, either by
+secret practices, or by open violence.  This could scarcely have
+been, if thy good dispositions had not been natural, but assumed.
+
+No one can long personate a character.  A pretended goodness will
+speedily give place to the real temper; while a sincere mind, and
+acts prompted by the heart, will not fail to go on from one stage
+of excellence to another[85]."
+
+[83] Suetonius, Nero, cap. 10.
+
+[84] De Clementia, Lib. I, cap. II.
+
+[85] De Clementia, cap. I.
+
+
+The philosopher expresses himself in raptures on that celebrated
+phrase of Nero, WOULD I HAD NEVER LEARNED TO WRITE!  "An
+exclamation," he says, "not studied, not uttered for the purpose
+of courting popularity, but bursting insuppressibly from thy
+lips, and indicating the vehemence of the struggle between the
+kindness of thy disposition and the duties of thy office[86]."
+
+[86] Ibid., Lib. II, cap. I.
+
+How many generous purposes, what bright and heart-thrilling
+visions of beneficence and honour, does the young man, just
+starting in the race of life, conceive!  There is no one in that
+period of existence, who has received a reasonable education, and
+has not in his very nonage been trod down in the mire of poverty
+and oppression, that does not say to himself, "Now is the time;
+and I will do something worthy to be remembered by myself and by
+others."  Youth is the season of generosity.  He calls over the
+catalogue of his endowments, his attainments, and his powers, and
+exclaims, "To that which I am, my contemporaries are welcome; it
+shall all be expended for their service and advantage."
+
+With what disdain he looks at the temptations of selfishness,
+effeminate indulgence, and sordid gain!  He feels within himself
+that he was born for better things.  His elders, and those who
+have already been tamed down and emasculated by the corrupt
+commerce of the world, tell him, "All this is the rhapsody of
+youth, fostered by inexperience; you will soon learn to know
+better; in no long time you will see these things in the same
+light in which we see them."  But he despises the sinister
+prognostic that is held out to him, and feels proudly conscious
+that the sentiments that now live in his bosom, will continue to
+animate him to his latest breath.
+
+Youth is necessarily ingenuous in its thoughts, and sanguine in
+its anticipations of the future.  But the predictions of the
+seniors I have quoted, are unfortunately in too many cases
+fulfilled.  The outline of the scheme of civil society is in a
+high degree hostile to the growth and maturity of human virtue. 
+Its unavoidable operation, except in those rare cases where
+positive institutions have arrested its tendency, has been to
+divide a great portion of its members, especially in large and
+powerful states, into those who are plentifully supplied with the
+means of luxury and indulgence, and those who are condemned to
+suffer the rigours of indigence.
+
+The young man who is born to the prospect of hereditary wealth,
+will not unfrequently feel as generous emotions, and as much of
+the spirit of self-denial, as the bosom of man is capable of
+conceiving.  He will say, What am I, that I should have a
+monopoly of those things, which, if "well dispensed, in
+unsuperfluous, even proportion," would supply the wants of all? 
+He is ready, agreeably to the advice of Christ to the young man
+in the Gospel, to "sell all that he has, and give to the poor,"
+if he could be shewn how so generous a resolution on his part
+could be encountered with an extensive conspiracy of the
+well-disposed, and rendered available to the real melioration of
+the state of man in society.  Who is there so ignorant, or that
+has lived in so barren and unconceiving a tract of the soil of
+earth, that has not his tale to tell of the sublime emotions and
+the generous purposes he has witnessed, which so often mark this
+beautiful era of our sublunary existence?
+
+But this is in the dawn of life, and the first innocence of the
+human heart.  When once the young man of "great possessions" has
+entered the gardens of Alcina, when he has drunk of the cup of
+her enchantments, and seen all the delusive honour and
+consideration that, in the corruptness of modern times, are the
+lot of him who is the owner of considerable wealth, the dreams of
+sublime virtue are too apt to fade away.  He was willing before,
+to be nourished with the simplest diet, and clad with the
+plainest attire.  He knew that he was but a man like the rest of
+his species, and was in equity entitled to no more than they. 
+But he presently learns a very different lesson.  He believes
+that he cannot live without splendour and luxury; he regards a
+noble mansion, elegant vesture, horses, equipage, and an ample
+establishment, as things without which he must be hopelessly
+miserable.  That income, which he once thought, if divided, would
+have secured the happiness and independence of many, he now finds
+scarcely sufficient to supply his increased and artificial
+cravings.
+
+But, if the rich are seduced and led away from the inspirations
+of virtue, it may easily be conceived how much more injurious,
+and beyond the power of control, are the effects on the poor. 
+The mysterious source from which the talents of men are derived,
+cannot be supposed in their distribution to be regulated by the
+artificial laws of society, and to have one measure for those
+which are bestowed upon the opulent, and another for the
+destitute.  It will therefore not seldom happen that powers
+susceptible of the noblest uses may be cast, like "seed sown upon
+stony places," where they have scarcely any chance to be unfolded
+and matured.  In a few instances they may attract the attention
+of persons both able and willing to contribute to their being
+brought to perfection.  In a few instances the principle may be
+so vigorous, and the tendency to excel so decisive, as to bid
+defiance to and to conquer every obstacle.  But in a vast
+majority the promise will be made vain, and the hopes that might
+have been entertained will prove frustrate.  What can be expected
+from the buds of the most auspicious infancy, if encountered in
+their earliest stage with the rigorous blasts of a polar climate?
+
+And not only will the germs of excellence be likely to be
+extinguished in the members of the lower class of the community,
+but the temptations to irregular acts and incroachments upon the
+laws for the security of property will often be so great, as to
+be in a manner irresistible.  The man who perceives that, with
+all his industry, he cannot provide for the bare subsistence of
+himself and those dependent upon him, while his neighbour revels
+in boundless profusion, cannot but sometimes feel himself goaded
+to an attempt to correct this crying evil.  What must be expected
+to become of that general good-will which is the natural
+inheritance of a well-constituted mind, when urged by so bitter
+oppression and such unendurable sufferings?  The whole temper of
+the human heart must be spoiled, and the wine of life acquire a
+quality acrimonious and malignant.
+
+But it is not only in the extreme classes of society that the
+glaring inequality with which property is shared produces its
+injurious effects.  All those who are born in the intermediate
+ranks are urged with a distempered ambition, unfavourable to
+independence of temper, and to true philanthropy. Each man
+aspires to the improvement of his circumstances, and the
+mounting, by one step and another, higher in the scale of the
+community.  The contemplations of the mind are turned towards
+selfishness.  In opulent communities we are presented with the
+genuine theatre for courts and kings.  And, wherever there are
+courts, duplicity, lying, hypocrisy and cringing dwell as in
+their proper field.  Next come trades and professions, with all
+the ignoble contemplations, the resolved smoothness, servility
+and falshood, by which they are enabled to gain a prosperous and
+triumphant career.
+
+It is by such means, that man, whom "God made upright," is led
+away into a thousand devious paths, and, long before the closing
+scene of his life, is rendered something the very reverse of what
+in the dawning of existence he promised to be.  He is like Hazael
+in the Jewish history, who, when the prophet set before him the
+crying enormities he should hereafter perpetrate, exclaimed, "Is
+thy servant a dog," that he should degrade himself so vilely?  He
+feels the purity of his purposes; but is goaded by one excitement
+and exasperation after another, till he becomes debased,
+worthless and criminal.  This is strikingly illustrated in the
+story of Dr. Johnson and the celebrated Windham, who, when he was
+setting out as secretary to the lord lieutenant of Ireland,
+expressed to his aged monitor, some doubts whether he could ever
+reconcile himself to certain indirect proceedings which he was
+afraid would be expected of him:  to which the veteran replied,
+"Oh, sir, be under no alarm; in a short time, depend upon it, you
+will make a very pretty rascal[87]."
+
+[87]  The phrase here used by Johnson is marked with the
+licentiousness we sometimes indulge in familiar conversation. 
+Translate it into a general maxim; and it contains much
+melancholy truth.  It is true also, that there are few
+individuals, who, in the urgent realities of life, have not
+occasionally descended from the heights of theoretical
+excellence.  It is but just however to observe in the case of
+Windham, that, though he was a man of many errors, he was not the
+less characterised by high honour and eminent virtue.
+
+
+Such are the "inventions of man," or rather such is the operation
+of those institutions which ordinarily prevail in society. 
+Still, however, much honour ought to be rendered to our common
+nature, since all of us are not led away by the potent spells of
+the enchantress.  If the vulgar crew of the vessel of Ulysses
+were by Circe changed into brutes, so was not their commander. 
+The human species is divided into two classes, the successfully
+tempted, and the tempted in vain.  And, though the latter must be
+admitted to be a small minority, yet they ought to be regarded as
+the "salt of the earth," which preserves the entire mass from
+putridity and dishonour.  They are like the remnant, which, if
+they had been to be found in the cities of the Asphaltic lake,
+the God of Abraham pronounced as worthy to redeem the whole
+community.  They are like the two witnesses amidst the general
+apostasy, spoken of in the book of Revelations, who were the
+harbingers and forerunners of the millenium, the reign of
+universal virtue and peace.  Their excellence only appears with
+the greater lustre amidst the general defection.
+
+Nothing can be more unjust than the spirit of general levelling
+and satire, which so customarily prevails.  History records, if
+you will, the vices and follies of mankind.  But does it record
+nothing else?  Are the virtues of the best men, the noblest
+philosophers, and the most disinterested patriots of antiquity,
+nothing?  It is impossible for two things to be more unlike than
+the general profligacy of the reigns of Charles the Second and
+Louis the Fifteenth on the one hand, and the austere virtues and
+the extinction of all private considerations in the general
+happiness and honour, which constitute the spirit of the best
+pages of ancient history, and which exalt and transfix the spirit
+of every ingenuous and high-souled reader, on the other.
+
+Let us then pay to human virtue the honour that is so justly its
+due!  Imagination is indeed a marvellous power; but imagination
+never equalled history, the achievements which man has actually
+performed.  It is in vain that the man of contemplation sits down
+in his closet; it is in vain that the poet yields the reins to
+enthusiasm and fancy:  there is something in the realities of
+life, that excites the mind infinitely more, than is in the power
+of the most exalted reverie.  The true hero cannot, like the
+poet, or the delineator of fictitious adventures, put off what he
+has to do till to-morrow.  The occasion calls, and he must obey. 
+He sees the obstacles, and the adversary he has to encounter,
+before him.  He sees the individuals, for whose dear sake he
+resolves to expose himself to every hazard and every evil.  The
+very circumstance, that he is called on to act in the face of the
+public, animates him.  It is thus that resolution is produced,
+that martyrdom is voluntarily encountered, and that the deeds of
+genuine, pure and undeniable heroism are performed.
+
+Let then no man, in the supercilious spirit of a fancied disdain,
+allow himself to detract from our common nature.  We are
+ourselves the models of all the excellence that the human mind
+can conceive.  There have been men, whose virtues may well redeem
+all the contempt with which satire and detraction have sought to
+overwhelm our species.  There have been memorable periods in the
+history of man, when the best, the most generous and exalted
+sentiments have swallowed up and obliterated all that was of an
+opposite character.  And it is but just, that those by whom these
+things are fairly considered, should anticipate the progress of
+our nature, and believe that human understanding and human virtue
+will hereafter accomplish such things as the heart of man has
+never yet been daring enough to conceive.
+
+
+
+
+[End Project Gutenberg Etext of Thoughts on Man His Nature,
+Productions and Discoveries, by William Godwin]
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