Thoughts on Man

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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.

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