Thoughts on Man

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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.

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