Thoughts on Man

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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."

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