Thoughts on Man
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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.
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