Thoughts on Man

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The belief in the reality of matter explains nothing. Supposing
it to exist, if Newton is right, no particle of extraneous matter
ever touched the matter of my body; and therefore it is not just
to regard it as the cause of my sensations. It would amount to
no more than two systems going on at the same time by a
preestablished harmony, but totally independent of and disjointed
from each other.

But the belief in the existence of our fellow-men explains much.
It makes level before us the wonder of the method of their
proceedings, and affords an obvious reason why they should be in
so many respects like our own. If I dismiss from my creed the
existence of inert matter, I lose nothing. The phenomena, the
train of antecedents and consequents, remain as before; and this
is all that I am truly concerned with. But take away the
existence of my fellow-men; and you reduce all that is, and all
that I experience, to a senseless mummery. "You take my life,
taking the thing whereon I live."

Human nature, and the nature of mind, are to us a theme of
endless investigation. "The proper study of mankind is man."
All the subtlety of metaphysics, or (if there be men captious and
prejudiced enough to dislike that term) the science of ourselves,
depends upon it. The science of morals hangs upon the actions of
men, and the effects they produce upon our brother-men, in a
narrower or a wider circle. The endless, and inexpressibly
interesting, roll of history relies for its meaning and its
spirit upon the reality and substance of the subjects of which it
treats. Poetry, and all the wonders and endless varieties that
imagination creates, have this for their solution and their soul.

Sympathy is the only reality of which we are susceptible; it is
our heart of hearts: and, if the world had been "one entire and
perfect chrysolite," without this it would have been no more than
one heap of rubbish.

Observe the difference between what we know of the material
world, and what of the intellectual. The material goes on for
ever according to certain laws that admit of no discrimination.
They proceed upon a first principle, an impulse given them from
the beginning of things. Their effects are regulated by
something that we call their nature: fire burns; water
suffocates; the substances around us that we call solid, depend
for their effects, when put in motion, upon momentum and gravity.

The principle that regulates the dead universe, "acts by general,
not by partial laws."

When the loose mountain trembles from on high,
Shall gravitation cease, if you go by?

No: the chain of antecedents and consequents proceeds in this
respect for ever the same. The laws of what we call the material
world continue unvaried. And, when the vast system of things was
first set in motion, every thing, so far as depends on inert
matter, was determined to the minutest particle, even to the end
of time.

The material world, or that train of antecedents and consequents
which we understand by that term, goes on for ever in a train
agreeably to the impulse previously given. It is deaf and
inexorable. It is unmoved by the consideration of any accidents
and miseries that may result, and unalterable. But man is a
source of events of a very different nature. He looks to
results, and is governed by views growing out of the
contemplation of them. He acts in a way diametrically opposite
to the action of inert matter, and "turns, and turns, and turns
again," at the impulse of the thought that strikes him, the
appetite that prompts, the passions that move, and the effects
that he anticipates. It is therefore in a high degree
unreasonable, to make that train of inferences which may satisfy
us on the subject of material phenomena, a standard of what we
ought to think respecting the phenomena of mind.

It is further worthy of our notice to recollect, that the same
reasonings which apply to our brethren of mankind, apply also to
the brute creation. They, like ourselves, act from motives; that
is, the elections they form are adopted by them for the sake of
certain consequences they expect to see result from them.
Whatever becomes therefore of the phenomena of what we call dead
matter, we are here presented with tribes of being, susceptible
of pleasure and pain, of hope and fear, of regard and resentment.

How beautifully does this conviction vary the scene of things!
What a source to us is the animal creation, of amusement, of
curious observations upon the impulses of inferior intellect, of
the exhaustless varieties of what we call instinct, of the care
we can exercise for their accommodation and welfare, and of the
attachment and affection we win from them in return! If I travel
alone through pathless deserts, if I journey from the rising to
the setting sun, with no object around me but nature's
desolation, or the sublime, the magnificent and the exuberant
scenery she occasionally presents, still I have that noble
animal, the horse, and my faithful dog, the companions of my
toil, and with whom, when my solitude would otherwise become
insufferable, I can hold communion, and engage in dumb dialogues
of sentiment and affection.

I have heard of a man, who, talking to his friend on the subject
of these speculations, said, "What then, are you so poor and
pusillanimous a creature, that you could not preserve your
serenity, be perfectly composed and content, and hold on your way
unvaried, though you were convinced that you were the only real
being in existence, and all the rest were mere phantasies and
shadows?"

If I had been the person to whom this speech was addressed, I
should have frankly acknowledged, "I am the poor and
pusillanimous creature you are disposed to regard with so much
scorn."

To adopt the sententious language of the Bible, "It is not good
for man to be alone." All our faculties and attributes bear
relation to, and talk to us of, other beings like ourselves. We
might indeed eat, drink and sleep, that is, submit to those
necessities which we so denominate, without thinking of any thing
beyond ourselves; for these are the demands of our nature, and we
know that we cannot subsist without them. We might make use of
the alternate conditions of exercise and repose.

But the life of our lives would be gone. As far as we bore in
mind the creed we had adopted, of our single existence, we could
neither love nor hate. Sympathy would be a solemn mockery. We
could not communicate; for the being to whom our communication
was addressed we were satisfied was a non-entity. We could not
anticipate the pleasure or pain, the joy or sorrow, of another;
for that other had no existence. We should be in a worse
condition than Robinson Crusoe in the desolate island; for he
believed in the existence of other men, and hoped and trusted
that he should one day again enter into human society. We should
be in a worse condition than Robinson Crusoe; for he at least was
unannoyed in his solitude; while we are perpetually and per force
intruded on, like a delirious man, by visions which we know to be
unreal, but which we are denied the power to deliver ourselves
from. We have no motive to any of the great and cardinal
functions of human life; for there is no one in being, that we
can benefit, or that we can affect. Study is nothing to us; for
we have no use for it. Even science is unsatisfactory; unless we
can communicate it by word or writing, can converse upon it, and
compare notes with our neighbour. History is nothing; for there
were no Greeks and no Romans; no freemen and no slaves; no kings
and no subjects; no despots, nor victims of their tyranny; no
republics, nor states immerged in brutal and ignominious
servitude. Life must be inevitably a burthen to us, a dreary,
unvaried, motiveless existence; and death must be welcomed, as
the most desirable blessing that can visit us. It is impossible
indeed that we should always recollect this our, by supposition,
real situation; but, as often as we did, it would come over us
like a blight, withering all the prospects of our industry, or
like a scirocco, unbracing the nerves of our frame, and
consigning us to the most pitiable depression.

Thus far I have allowed myself to follow the refinements of those
who profess to deny the existence of the material universe. But
it is satisfactory to come back to that persuasion, which, from
whatever cause it is derived, is incorporated with our very
existence, and can never be shaken off by us. Our senses are too
powerful in their operation, for it to be possible for us to
discard them, and to take as their substitute, in active life,
and in the earnestness of pursuit, the deductions of our logical
faculty, however well knit and irresistible we may apprehend them
to be. Speculation and common sense are at war on this point;
and however we may "think with the learned," and follow the
abstrusenesses of the philosopher, in the sequestered hour of our
meditation, we must always act, and even feel, "with the vulgar,"
when we come abroad into the world.

It is however no small gratification to the man of sober mind,
that, from what has here been alleged, it seems to follow, that
untutored mind, and the severest deductions of philosophy, agree
in that most interesting of our concerns, our intercourse with
our fellow-creatures. The inexorable reasoner, refining on the
reports of sense, may dispose, as he pleases, of the chair, the
table, and the so called material substances around him. He may
include the whole solid matter of the universe in a nutshell, or
less than a nutshell. But he cannot deprive me of that greatest
of all consolations, the sustaining pillar of my existence, "the
cordial drop Heaven in our cup has thrown,"--the intercourse of
my fellow-creatures. When we read history, the subjects of which
we read are realities; they do not "come like shadows, so
depart;" they loved and acted in sober earnest; they sometimes
perpetrated crimes; but they sometimes also achieved illustrious
deeds, which angels might look down from their exalted abodes and
admire. We are not deluded with mockeries. The woman I love,
and the man to whom I swear eternal friendship, are as much
realities as myself. If I relieve the poor, and assist the
progress of genius and virtuous designs struggling with fearful
discouragements, I do something upon the success of which I may
safely congratulate myself. If I devote my energies to enlighten
my fellow-creatures, to detect the weak places in our social
institutions, to plead the cause of liberty, and to invite others
to engage in noble actions and unite in effecting the most solid
and unquestionable improvements, I erect to my name an eternal
monument; or I do something better than this,--secure inestimable
advantage to the latest posterity, the benefit of which they
shall enjoy, long after the very name of the author shall, with a
thousand other things great and small, have been swallowed up in
the gulph of insatiable oblivion.

ESSAY XXIII.
OF HUMAN VIRTUE. THE EPILOGUE.

The life of man is divided into many stages; and we shall not
form a just estimate of our common nature, if we do not to a
certain degree pass its successive periods in review, and observe
it in its commencement, its progress, and its maturity.

It has been attempted to be established in an early part of the
present volume[82], that all men, idiots and extraordinary cases
being put out of the question, are endowed with talents, which,
if rightly directed, would shew them to be apt, adroit,
intelligent and acute, in the walk for which their organisation
especially fitted them. We are bound therefore, particularly in
the morning of life, to consider every thing that presents itself
to us in the human form, with deference and attention.

[82] See above, Essay III.

"God," saith the Preacher, "made man upright; but he hath sought
out many inventions." There is something loose and difficult of
exposition in this statement; but we shall find an important
truth hid beneath its obscurity.

Junius Brutus, in the play, says to his son,

I like thy frame: the fingers of the Gods
I see have left their mastery upon thee;
And the majestic prints distinct appear.

Such is the true description of every well-formed and healthful
infant that is born into the world.

He is placed on the threshold of existence; and an eventful
journey is open before him. For the first four or five years of
life indeed he has little apprehension of the scenes that await
him. But a child of quick apprehension early begins to have
day-dreams, and to form imaginations of the various chances that
may occur to him, and the things he shall have to do, when,
according to the language of the story-books, he "goes out to
seek his fortune."

"God made man upright." Every child that is born, has within him
a concealed magazine of excellence. His heart beats for every
thing that is lovely and good; and whatever is set before him of
that sort in honest colours, rouses his emulation. By how many
tokens does he prove himself worthy of our approbation and
love--the unaffected and ingenuous sobriety with which he listens
to what addresses itself to his attention, the sweetness of his
smile, his hearty laugh, the clear, bell tones of his voice, his
sudden and assured impulses, and his bounding step!

To his own heart he promises well of himself. Like Lear in the
play, he says, "I will do such things!--What they are, yet I know
not." But he is assured, frank and light-spirited. He thinks of
no disguise. He "wears his heart upon his sleeve." He looks in
the face of his seniors with the glistening eye of confidence,
and expects to encounter sympathy and encouragement in return.
Such is man, as he comes from the hands of his maker.

Thus prepared, he is turned into the great field of society.
Here he meets with much that he had not anticipated, and with
many rebuffs. He is taught that he must accommodate his temper
and proceedings to the expectations and prejudices of those
around him. He must be careful to give no offence. With how
many lessons, not always the most salutary and ingenuous, is this
maxim pregnant! It calls on the neophyte to bear a wary eye, and
to watch the first indications of disapprobation and displeasure
in those among whom his lot is cast. It teaches him to suppress
the genuine emotions of his soul. It informs him that he is not
always to yield to his own impulses, but that he must "stretch
forth his hands to another, and be carried whither he would not."

It recommends to him falseness, and to be the thing in outward
appearance that he is not in his heart.

Still however he goes on. He shuts up his thoughts in his bosom;
but they are not exterminated. On the contrary he broods over
them with genial warmth; and the less they are exposed to the eye
of day, the more perseveringly are they cherished. Perhaps he
chooses some youthful confident of his imaginings: and the
effect of this is, that he pours out his soul with uncontrolable
copiousness, and with the fervour of a new and unchecked
conceiving. It is received with answering warmth; or, if there
is any deficiency in the sympathy of his companion, his mind is
so earnest and full, that he does not perceive it. By and by, it
may be, he finds that the discovery he had made of a friend, a
brother of his soul, is, like so many of the visions of this
world, hollow and fallacious. He grasped, as he thought, a jewel
of the first water; and it turns out to be a vulgar pebble. No
matter: he has gained something by the communication. He has
heard from his own lips the imaginings of his mind shaped into
articulate air; they grew more definite and distinct as he
uttered them; they came by the very act to have more of reality,
to be more tangible. He shakes off the ill-assorted companion
that only encumbered him, and springs away in his race, more
light of heart, and with a step more assured, than ever.

By and by he becomes a young man. And, whatever checks he may
have received before, it usually happens that all his hopes and
projects return to him now with recruited strength. He has no
longer a master. He no longer crouches to the yoke of
subjection, and is directed this way and that at the judgment of
another. Liberty is at all times dear to the free-soured and
ingenuous; but never so much so, as when we wear it in its full
gloss and newness. He never felt before, that he was sui juris,
that he might go whithersoever he would, without asking leave,
without consulting any other director than the law of his own
mind. It is nearly at the same season that he arrives at the
period of puberty, at the stature, and in a certain degree at the
strength, which he is destined to attain. He is by general
consent admitted to be at years of discretion.

Though I have put all these things together, they do not, in the
course of nature, all come at the same time. It is a memorable
period, when the ingenuous youth is transferred from the trammels
of the schoolmaster to the residence of a college. It was at the
age of seventeen that, according to the custom of Rome, the
youthful citizen put on the manly gown, and was introduced into
the forum. Even in college-life, there is a difference in the
privileges of the mere freshman, and of the youth who has already
completed the first half of his period in the university.

The season of what may he denominated the independence of the
individual, is certainly in no small degree critical. A human
being, suddenly emancipated from a state of subjection, if we may
not call it slavery, and transported into a state of freedom,
must be expected to be guilty of some extravagancies and follies.

But upon the whole, with a small number of exceptions, it is
creditable to human nature, that we take this period of our new
powers and immunities with so much sobriety as we do.

The young man then, calls to mind all that he imagined at an
earlier season, and that he promised himself. He adds to this
the new lights that he has since obtained, and the nearer and
more distinct view that he has reached, of the realities of life.

He recollects the long noviciate that he served to reach this
period, the twenty years that he passed in ardent and palpitating
expectation; and he resolves to do something worthy of all he had
vowed and had imagined. He takes a full survey of his stores and
endowments; and to the latter, from his enthusiasm and his
self-love, he is morally sure to do justice. He says to himself,
"What I purpose to do will not be achieved to-day. No; it shall
be copious, and worthy of men's suffrage and approbation. But I
will meditate it; I will sketch a grand outline; I will essay my
powers in secret, and ascertain what I may be able to effect."
The youth, whose morning of life is not utterly abortive,
palpitates with the desire to promote the happiness of others,
and with the desire of glory.

We have an apt specimen of this in the first period of the reign
of Nero. The historians, Tacitus in particular, have treated
this with too much incredulity. It was the passion of that
eminent man to indulge in subtleties, and to find hidden meanings
in cases where in reality every thing is plain. We must not
regard the panegyric of Seneca, and the devotion of Lucan to the
imperial stripling, as unworthy of our attention. He was
declared emperor before he had completed the eighteenth year of
his age. No occasion for the exhibition of liberality, clemency,
courtesy or kindness escaped him. He called every one by his
name, and saluted all orders of men. When the senate shewed a
disposition to confer on him peculiar honours, he interposed, he
said, "Let them be bestowed when I have deserved them[83]."
Seneca affirms, that in the first part of his reign, and to the
time in which the philosopher dedicated to him his treatise of
Clemency, he had "shed no drop of blood[84]." He adds, "If the
Gods were this day to call thee to a hearing, thou couldst
account to them for every man that had been intrusted to thy
rule. Not an individual has been lost from the number, either by
secret practices, or by open violence. This could scarcely have
been, if thy good dispositions had not been natural, but assumed.

No one can long personate a character. A pretended goodness will
speedily give place to the real temper; while a sincere mind, and
acts prompted by the heart, will not fail to go on from one stage
of excellence to another[85]."

[83] Suetonius, Nero, cap. 10.

[84] De Clementia, Lib. I, cap. II.

[85] De Clementia, cap. I.

The philosopher expresses himself in raptures on that celebrated
phrase of Nero, WOULD I HAD NEVER LEARNED TO WRITE! "An
exclamation," he says, "not studied, not uttered for the purpose
of courting popularity, but bursting insuppressibly from thy
lips, and indicating the vehemence of the struggle between the
kindness of thy disposition and the duties of thy office[86]."

[86] Ibid., Lib. II, cap. I.

How many generous purposes, what bright and heart-thrilling
visions of beneficence and honour, does the young man, just
starting in the race of life, conceive! There is no one in that
period of existence, who has received a reasonable education, and
has not in his very nonage been trod down in the mire of poverty
and oppression, that does not say to himself, "Now is the time;
and I will do something worthy to be remembered by myself and by
others." Youth is the season of generosity. He calls over the
catalogue of his endowments, his attainments, and his powers, and
exclaims, "To that which I am, my contemporaries are welcome; it
shall all be expended for their service and advantage."

With what disdain he looks at the temptations of selfishness,
effeminate indulgence, and sordid gain! He feels within himself
that he was born for better things. His elders, and those who
have already been tamed down and emasculated by the corrupt
commerce of the world, tell him, "All this is the rhapsody of
youth, fostered by inexperience; you will soon learn to know
better; in no long time you will see these things in the same
light in which we see them." But he despises the sinister
prognostic that is held out to him, and feels proudly conscious
that the sentiments that now live in his bosom, will continue to
animate him to his latest breath.

Youth is necessarily ingenuous in its thoughts, and sanguine in
its anticipations of the future. But the predictions of the
seniors I have quoted, are unfortunately in too many cases
fulfilled. The outline of the scheme of civil society is in a
high degree hostile to the growth and maturity of human virtue.
Its unavoidable operation, except in those rare cases where
positive institutions have arrested its tendency, has been to
divide a great portion of its members, especially in large and
powerful states, into those who are plentifully supplied with the
means of luxury and indulgence, and those who are condemned to
suffer the rigours of indigence.

The young man who is born to the prospect of hereditary wealth,
will not unfrequently feel as generous emotions, and as much of
the spirit of self-denial, as the bosom of man is capable of
conceiving. He will say, What am I, that I should have a
monopoly of those things, which, if "well dispensed, in
unsuperfluous, even proportion," would supply the wants of all?
He is ready, agreeably to the advice of Christ to the young man
in the Gospel, to "sell all that he has, and give to the poor,"
if he could be shewn how so generous a resolution on his part
could be encountered with an extensive conspiracy of the
well-disposed, and rendered available to the real melioration of
the state of man in society. Who is there so ignorant, or that
has lived in so barren and unconceiving a tract of the soil of
earth, that has not his tale to tell of the sublime emotions and
the generous purposes he has witnessed, which so often mark this
beautiful era of our sublunary existence?

But this is in the dawn of life, and the first innocence of the
human heart. When once the young man of "great possessions" has
entered the gardens of Alcina, when he has drunk of the cup of
her enchantments, and seen all the delusive honour and
consideration that, in the corruptness of modern times, are the
lot of him who is the owner of considerable wealth, the dreams of
sublime virtue are too apt to fade away. He was willing before,
to be nourished with the simplest diet, and clad with the
plainest attire. He knew that he was but a man like the rest of
his species, and was in equity entitled to no more than they.
But he presently learns a very different lesson. He believes
that he cannot live without splendour and luxury; he regards a
noble mansion, elegant vesture, horses, equipage, and an ample
establishment, as things without which he must be hopelessly
miserable. That income, which he once thought, if divided, would
have secured the happiness and independence of many, he now finds
scarcely sufficient to supply his increased and artificial
cravings.

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