ESSAYS SERIES OF LETTERS^ BY JOHN FOSTER, AOrnOB OP AN ESSAY ON POPULAR IGNORANdt. NEW YORK: liOBERT CARTER &• BROTHERS, No. 530 BROADWAY, 1869. v; Sm i, . ... DEC 2 ifis PUB .LT .4ABT ADVERTISEMENT. y. p£RiiAis h will be thought that pieces written so much in the manner of set compositions as the follow- ing, should not have been denominated Letters ; it may therefore be proper to say, that they are so called because they were actually addressed to a friend. They were written however with an mtention to put them in print, if, when they were finished, the writer could pt;rsuade himself that they deserved it ; and the temper of even the most inconsiderable pictenders .to literature in these times is too well known for any ^ne to be surprised that he could so persuade himself. When he began these letters, his intention was to confine himself within such limits, that essays on twelve or fifteen subjects might be comprised in a vol- ume. But he soon found that so narrow a space would exclude many illustrations not less appropriate or useful than any which would be introduced. It will not seem a very natural manner of com- mencing a course of letters to a friend, to enter for- mally on a subject in the first sentence. In excuse for *his abruptness it rnay be mentioned, that tliere was an introductory letter; but as it was written in the presumption that a considerable variety of subjects IV ADVERTISEMENT. would be treated in the compass of a moderate number of letters, it is omitted, as not being adapted to precede what is executed in a manner so different from the design. When writing which has occupied a considerable length, and has been interrupted by considerable in- tervals, of time, which is also on very different sub jects, and was perhaps meditated under the influence of different circumstances, is at last all gone over in one short course of perusal, this immediate succession and close comparison make the writer sensible of some things of which he was not aware in the slow sepa- rate stages of the progress. On thus bringing the fol- lowing essays under one review, the writer perceives some reason to apprehend, that the spirit of the third may appear so different from that of the second, as to give an impression of something like inconsistency. The second may be thought to have an appearance of representing that a man may effect almost every thing, the third that he can effect scarcely any thing. But the writer would say, that the one does not assert the efficacy of human resolution and effort under the same conditions under which the other asserts their ineffi- cacy ; and that therefore there is no real contrariety between the principles of the two essays. From the evidence of history and familiar experience we know that, under certain conditions, and within certain limits, (strait ones indeed,) an enlightened and resolute hu- man spirit has great power, tbis greatness being rela- tive to the measures of things within a small sphere ; while it is equally obvious that this enlightened and ADVEP.TISEMENT. V resDlute spirit, if disregarding these conditions, and at. tempting to extend its agency over a much wider sphere, shall find its power baffled and annihilated, till it draws back within the boundary. Now the great power of the human mind within the narrow limit be- ing forcibly and largely insisted on at one time, and its impotence beyond that limit, at another> the assem- blage of sentiments and exemplifications mos! adapted to illustrate, (and without real or considerable exagge- ration,) that power alone, will form apparently so strong a contrast with the assemblage of thoughts and facts proper for illustrating that imbecility alone, that on a superficial view the two representations may ap- pear contradictory. The author appeals to the expe- rience of such thinking men as are accustomed to commit their thoughts to writing, whether sometimes, on comparing the pages in which they had endeav cured to place one truth in the strongest light, with those in which they have endeavoured a strong but yet not extravagant exhibition of another, they have not felt a momentary difficulty to reconcile them, even while satisfied of the substantial justness of both. The whole doctrine on any extensive moral subject neces- sarily includes two views which may be considered as its extremes ; and if these are strongly stated quite apart from their relations to each other, both the rep- resentations may be perfectly true, and yet may re- quire, in order to the reader's perceiving their con- sistency, a recollection of many intermediate ideas. In the fourth essay; it was not intended to take a comprehensive or systematic view of the causes con. !• Vl ADVERTISEMENT TO THE NINTH EDITION. tributing to prevent the candid attention and the cor dial admission due to evangelical religion, but sim-ply to select a few which had particularly attracted the writer's observation. One or two more would have been specified and slightly illustrated, if the essay had not been already too long. ADVERTISEMENT TO THE NINTH EDITION. As it is signified in the title-page that the book is corrected in this edition, it may not be impertinent to indicate by a few sentences the nature and amount of the correction. After a revisal which introduced a number of small verbal alterations in one of the later of the preceding editions, the writer had been willing to believe himself excused from any repetition of that kind of task. But when it was becoming probable that the new edition now printed would be called for, an acute literary friend strongly recommended one more and a final revisal ; enforcing his recommenda- tion by pointing out, in various places, what tlie writer readily acknowledged to be faults in the composition. This determined him to try the effect of a careful in- spection throughout with a view to such an abatement of the imperfections of the book, as might make him ADVERTISEMENT TO THE NINTH EDITION. VU decidedly content to let it go without any future re. vision. In this operation there has been no attempt at nov- elty beyond such slight changes and diminutive ad- ditions as appeared necessary in order to give a rr.ore exact or full expression of the sense. There is not, probably, more of any thing that could properly be called new, than might be contained in half-a-dozen pages. Correction^ in the strict sense, has been the object. Sentences, of ill-ordered construction, or loose or inconsequential in their connexion, have been at- tempted to be reformed. In some instances a sentence has been abbreviated, in others a little extended by the insertion of an explanatory or qualifying clause. Here and there a sentence has been substituted for one that was not easily reducible to the exact direction of the line of thought, or appeared feeble in expression. In several instances some modification has been re- quired to obviate a seeming or real inconsistency with what is said in other places. This part of the process may have taken off in such instances somewhat of the cast of force and spirit, exhibited or attempted in the former mode of expression ; and might have been ob- jected to as a deterioration, by a person not aware of the reason for the change. Here and there an epithet, or a combination of words, bordering on extravagance, has yielded to the dictate of the maturer judgment, or more fastidious taste, or less stimulated feelings, of advanced life, and given place to a somewhat mode- rated language. The general course of thought is not affected by these minute alterations : except that, nil ADVERTISEMENT TO THE NINTH EDITION. (as the writer would persuade himself,) it is in parts a little more distinctly and palpably brought out. The endeavour has been to disperse any mists that appeared to lie on th5 pages, that the ideas might present them- selves in as defined a form as the writer could give to any of them which had seemed obscure, and ineffec- tive to their object, from the indeterminate or involved enunciation. In the revised diction, as in the original writing, he has designedly and constantly avoide > i J; I Y th-j r altl> tude that have occurred — Direction and '.sa of suc'i a review as woulu be required for writing a memoir — Impor* mce of ci;r past life considere/ as the beginnmg of an endless duration .'f existence— General deficiency of self-observation— Oblivion of the gr '.test number of our past feelings — Occasional glimpses of vivid reco', ction— Associations with things and places — The different and unkno a associations of different persons with the same places . . ... Paqb 17 LETTE I II. All past life an education — Discipline and influence from — direct instruc* tion— couipanionship — books — scenes of nature — and the state of so- ciety . . . . . . . . p. 26 LETTER IIL Very powerful impressions sometime? from particular facts, tending to form discriminated characters — Yet very few strongly discriminated and indi- vidual characters found — Most perscns belong to general classes of char- acter — Immense number and diversity of impressions, of indefinitely various tendency, which the moral being has undergone in the course of life — Might bo expected that such a confusion of influences would not permit the formation of any settled character — That such a character is, nevertheless, acquired and maintained, is owing to some one leading determination, given by whatever means, to the mind, generally in early life — Common self-deceptive belief that we have maintained moral recti- tude, and the exercise of sound reason, under the impressions that have been forming our characters . . . . p. 34 LETTER IV. Most of the influences under which the characters of men are forming un- favourable to wisdom, virtue, and happiness — Proof of this if a number of persons, suppose a hundred, were to give a clear account of the cir- cumstances that have most effected the state of their minds — A few ex amples — a misanthropist— a lazy prejudiced thinker — a man fancying him- self a genius — a projector — an antiquary in excess — a petty tyrant, p. 44 LETTER V. An Atheist- -Slight sketch of the process by which a man in the hiunblor order of abilities and attainments may become one . ^ p. 69 CONTENTS. LETTER VI. The Influence of Relisrion counteracted by almost all other influences—" Pensive reflections on the imperfect iiiHnilestation of the Sui)renie Being- on the inetficacy of the belief of such a being — on the stranireness of that ineliic icy — ind on the debasement and infelicity consequent on it — llappiness^of a devout man . . . . . p. 57 LETTER VII flelf-knowledfre being supposed the principal object in writing the memoir, the train of exterior fortunes and actions will claim but a subordinate notice in it — If it were intended for the amusement of the pul)lic the writer wtiuld do well to fill it rather with incident and action — Yet the mere mental history of some men would bs interesting to reflecting read- ers — of a man. for example, of a speculative di>position, who has passed throusfli mtny chinges of opinion — Influences that warp opinion — Effects of time and experience on the notions and feelings cherished in early life — Feelings of a sensible old luan on viewing a picture of his own mind, drawn by himself when he was young — Failure of excellent designs; disappointment of sanguine hopes — Degree of explicitness required in the record — Conscience — Impudence and canting false preteaces of many writers of " confessioas" — Rousseau . . p. 66 ESSAY II. ON DECISION OP CHARACTER. LETTER Examples of the distress and humiliation incident to an irresolute mind- Such a mind cantmt be said to belong to itself— Manner in which a man of decisive spirit deliberates, and passes into action — Cassar— Such a spirit prevents the fretting away, in harassing alternations of wiil, of the ani- mated feelings required for sustaining the vigour of action — Averts im- pertinent interference — Acquires, if free from harshness of manner, an undisputed and beneficial ascendency over associates — Its last resource inflexible pertinacity — Instance in a man on a jury . p. 82 LETTER 11. Brief inquiry into the constituents of this commanding quality — Physical constitution — Possibility, nevertheless, of a firm mind in a feeble body — Confidence in a man's own judgment — This an uncomnwin distinction — Picture of a man who wants It — This confidence distinguished from ob- stinacy—Partly founded on experience — Takes a high lone of indepen- dence in devising schemes — Distressing dilemmas . . p. 92 LETTER III. Brierpy of feeling as necessary as confidence of opinion— Conduct that results from their combination— Elfect and value of a ruling nassion — Great decision of character invests even wicked beings with something TOJiich we are temj)ted to atlmire— Satan— Zanga— A Spanish asaassitt— CONTENTS. HI Remarkable etample of this quality in a man who was a prodigal (ind became poor, but turned miser and became rich— Howard— Whitefie.d — Christian missionaries ..... p. 100 LETTER IV. w -ttirage a chief const! tutent of the character — Effect of this in encounter- ^g censure and ridicule — Almagro, Pizarro, and De Luques — Defiance of ianger—Lutlier— Daniel— Another indispensable requisite to decision is 3 most elevated of its disciples ... . . p. 207 LETTER III. Another cause, the Peculiarity of Language adopted in religious discourse and writing— Classical standard of language — The theological deviation from it barbarousr— Surprise and perplexity of a sensible heathen forelgaer 2 AlV CONTENTS. who, having learnt our language according to its best standard alone, should be introduced to hear a public evangelical discourse— Distinctive characters of this Theological Dialect — Reasons against employiog it- Competence of our Innguage to express all religious ideas without the aid of this uncouth peculiarity— Advantages that would attend the use of the language of mere general intelligence, with the addition of an ex- tremely small number of words that may be considered as necessary technical terms in theology .... p. 23G LETTER IV. Answer to the plea, in behalf of the dialect in question, that it is formed from the language of the Bible— Description of the manner in which it iJ so formed — This way of employing biblical language very different from simple quotation — Grace and utility with which brief forms of words, whether sentences or single phrases, may be introduced from the Bible, if they are brought in as pure pieces and particles of the sacred compo- sition, set in our own comp-ositi(m as something distinct from it and foreign to it— But the biblical phraseology in the Theological Dialect, in- stead of thus appearing in distinct bright points and gems, is modified and mixed up througl jut the whole consistence of the diction, so as at once to lose its own v nerable character, and to give a pervading uncouthness, without dignity to the whole composition — Let the scripture language be quoted often but not degraded into a barbarous compound phraseology — Even if it were advisable to construct the language of theological in- struction in some kind of resemblance to that of the Bible, it would not follow that it should be constructed in imitation of the phraseology of an antique version — License to very old theologians to retain in a great de- gree this peculiar dialect — Young ones recommended to learn to employ in religion the language in which cultivated men talk and write on gen- eral subjects — The vast mass of writing in a comprehensive literary sense bad, on the subjects of evangelical theology, one great cause of the distaste felt by men of intellectual refinement— Several kinds of this bad writing specified ....... p. 250 LETTER V. A grand catise of displacency encountered by evangelical religion among men of taste is, that the great school in which that taste is formed, that of polite literature, taken in the widest sense of the phrase, is hostile to that religion — Modern literature intended principally to be animadverted on — Brief notice of the ancient — Heathen theology, metaphysics, and morality — Harmlessness of the two former: deceptiveness of the last — But the chief infiuence is from so much of the history as may be called Biography, and from the Poetry — Homer — Manner in which the interest he excites is hostile to the spirit of the Christian rehgion — Virgil, p. 265 LETTER VL Lucan— Influence of the moral sublimity of his heroes— Plutarch— The Historians— Antichristian effect of admiring the moral greatness of the eminent heathens — Points of essential difference between excellence ac- cording to Christian principles, and the most elevated excellence of the Heathens — An unqualified complacency in the latter produces an aliena- tion of affection and admiration from the former . . p. 2bC LETTER VIL When a communication, declaring the true theory of both religion and morals, was admitted as coming from heaven, it was reasonable to ex pect that, from the lime of this revelation to the end of the world, all by whom it was so admitted would be religiously careful to maintain, ia CONTE.VTS. Xf whatever they taught on subjects within its cognizance, a systeaiatic and punctilious conformity to its principles — Absurdity, inij)iety, and perni- cinus effect, of disregarding this sovereign claim to conformity— The greatest number of our tine writers have incurred this guilt, and done this ii'.iscjiief— They are antichristian, in the first place, by omission ; liiey exclude from their moral sentiments llie modifying interference of the Christian principles— Extended illustration of the fact, and of its consequences . .... p. 291 LETTER Vlll. More specific forms of their contrariety to the principles of Revelation — The\r good man not a Christian — Contrasted with St. Paul — Their theory of hap'^jiiness essentially different from the evangelical— Short statement of both— In moralizing on life, they do not habitually consider, and they prevent their readers from consitlering. the present state as introduc- tory to another — Their consolations for distress, old age, and death, widely dilierent, on the whole, from those which constitute so much of the value of the Gospel— The grandeur and heroism in death, which they have represented with irresistible eloquence, emphatically and perni- ciously opposite to the Christian doctrine and examples of subluuily and happiness in death — Examples from tragedy ... p. 303 LETTER IX. The estimate of the depraved moral condition of human nature is quite different in revelation and polite literature — Consequently, the Redemp- tion by Jesus Christ, which appears with such momentous importance in the one. is, in comparison, a trifle in the other — Our fine writers employ and justify antichristian motives to action, especially the love of fame — The morality of this passion argued— The earnest repression of it shown to be a duty — Some of the lighter order of our popular writers have aided the counteraction of literature to evangelical religion by careless or ma- lignant ridicule of things associated with it — Brief notice of the several clas.ses of fine writers, as lying under the charge of contributing to alien- ate men of taste from the doctrines and moral spirit of the New Testa- ment-Moral philosophers — Historians — Essayists — Addison — Johnson — The Poets — Exception in favour of Milton, &c. — Pope — Antichristian quality of his Essay on Man— Novels— Melancholy reflections on the Review— Conclusion . . . . . p. 3^1 ESSAY I. ON A MAN'S WRITING MEMOIRS OF HIMSELF. LETTER I. MY DEAR FRIEND, Every one knows with what interest it is natural to retrace the course of our own lives. The past states and periods of a man's being are retained in a connex- ion with the present by that principle of self-love, which is unwilling to relinquish its hold on what has once been his. Though he cannot but be sensible of how little consequence his life can have been in the creation, compared with m.any other trains of events, yet he has felt it more important to himself than all other trains together ; and you will very rarely find him tired of narrating again the little history, or at least the favourite parts of the little history, of himself. To turn this partiality to some account, I recollect having proposed to two or three of my friends, that they should write, each principally however for his own use, memoirs of their own lives, endeavouring not so much to enumerate the mere facts and events of life, as to discriminate the successive states of the mind, and so trace the progress of what may be called the character. In this progress consists the chief impor- tance of life ; but even on an inferior account also to this of what the character has become, and regarded merely as supplying a constant series of interests to the 2* 18 ON A man's writing affections and passions, we have all accounted our life an inestimable possession which it deserved incessant cares and labours to retain, and which continues in most cases to be still held with anxious attachment. What has been the object of so much partiality, and has been delighted and pained by so many emotions, might claim, even if the highest interest were out o*" the question, that a short memorial should be retained by him who has possessed it, has seen it all to this moment depart, and can never recall it. To write memoirs of many years, as twenty, thirty, or forty, seems, at the first glance, a very onerous task. To reap the products of so many acres of earth indeed might, to one person, be an undertaking of mighty toil. But the materials of any value that all past life can supply to a recording pen, would be reduced by a dis- cerning selection to a very small and modest amount. Would as much as one page of moderate size be deemed by any man's self-importance to be due, on an average, to each of the days that he has lived ? No man would judge more than one in ten thousand of all his thoughts, sayings, and actions, worthy to be mentioned, if mem- ory were capable of recalling them..* Necessarily a very large portion of what has occupied the successive years of life was of a kind to be utterly useless for a history of it; being merely for the accommodation of the time. Perhaps in the space of forty or fifty years, millions of sentences are proper to be uttered, and many thousands of affairs requisite to be transacted, or of journeys to be performed, which it would be ridiculous to record. They are a kind of material for the com- mon expenditure and waste of the day. Yet it is often by a derail ^f this subordinate economy of life, that the ♦ An exception may be adirittcd for the few imlividuals whose daily deliberations, discourses and proceedings, affect the interest* of mankind on a grand scale. MEMOIKS OF inMSELF. 19 works of fiction, the narratives of age, the journals of travellers, and even grave biographical accounts, are made so unreasonably long. As well might a chron- icle of the coats that a man has worn, with the colour and date of each, be ;!alled his life, for any important uses of relating its history. As well might a man, of whom I inquire the dimensions, the internal divisions, and the use, of some remarkable building, begin to tell me how much wood was employed in the scaffolding, where the mortar was prepared, or how often it rained while the work was proceeding. But, in a dehberate review of all that we can re member of past life, it will be possible to select a cer- tain proportion which may with the most propriety be regarded as the history of the man. What 1 am rec- ommending is, to follow the order of time, and reduce your recollections, from the earliest period to the pres- ent, into as simple a statement and explanation as you can, of your feelings, opinions, and habits, and of the principal circumstances through each stage that have influenced them, till they have become at last what they now are. Whatever tendencies nature may justly be deemed to have imparted in the first instance, you would prob- ably find the greater part of the moral constitution of your being composed of the contributions of many years and events, consolidated by degrees into what we call character; and by investigating the progress of the accumulation, you would be assisted to judge more clearly how far the materials are valuable, the mixture congruous, and the whole conformation worthy to remain unaltered. With respect to any friend who greatly interests us, we have a curiosity to obtain an accurate account of the past train of his life and feel- ings: and whatever other reasons there may be for 8uch a wish, it partly springs from a consciousness how '4[} much this retrospective knowledge would assist to complete our estimate of that friend ; but our estimate of ourselves is of more serious consequence. The elapsed periods of life acquire importance too from the prospect of its continuance. The smallest, thing rises into consequence when regarded as the commencement of what has advanced, or is advancing into magnificence. The first rude settlement of Rom- ulus would have been an insignificant circumstance, and might justly have sunk into oblivion, if Rome had not at length commanded the world. The little rill near the source of one of the great American rivers, is an interesting object to the traveller, who is apprised, as he steps across it, or walks a few miles along its bank, that this is the stream which runs so far, and which gradually swells into so vast a flood. So, while I anticipate the endless progress of life, and wonder through what 'inknown scenes it is to take its course, its past years lose that character of vanity which would seem to belong to a train of fleeting, perishing mo- ments, and I see them assuming the dignity of a com- mencing eternity. In them I have begun to be that conscious existence which I am to be through endless duration ; and I feel a strange emotion of curiosity about this little life, in which I am setting out on such a progress ; I cannot be content without an accurate sketch of the windings thus far of a stream which is to bear me on for ever. I try to imagine how it will be to recollect, at a far distant point of my era, what I was when here ; and wish if it were possible to retain, as I advance, some clear trace of the whole course of my existence within the scope of reflection ; to fix in my mind so strong an idea of what I have been in this original period of my time, that I may possess this idea in ages too remote for calculation. The review becomes still more important, when I me:(Ioirs of himself. 21 learn the influence which this first part of tLe progresa will have on the happiness or misery of the next. One of the greatest difficulties in the way of execu. ting the proposed task will have been caused by the extreme deficiency of that self-observation, which is of no common habit either of youth or any later age. Men are content to have no more intimate sense of their existence than what they feel in the exercise of their faculties on extraneous objects. The vital being, with all its agency and emotions, is so blended and ab- sorbed in these its exterior interests, that it is very rare- ly collected and concentrated in the consciousness of it? own absolute self^ so as to be recognised as a thing in- ternal, apart and alone, for its own inspection and knowledge. Men carry their minds as for the most part they carry their watches, content to be ignorant of the constitution and action within, and attentive only to the little exterior circle of things, to which the pas- sions, like indexes, are pointing. It is surprising to see how little self-knowledge a person not watchfully ob- servant of himself may have gained, in the whole course of an active, or even an inquisitive life. He may have lived almost an age, and traversed a conti- nent, minutely examining its curiosities, and interpret- ing the half-obliterated characters on its monuments, unconscious the while of a process operating on his own mind, to impress or to e«-ase characteristics of much more importance to him than all the figured brass or marble that Europe contains. After having explored many a cavern or dark ruinous avenue, he may have left undetected a darker recess within where there would be much more striking discoveries. He may have conversed with many people, in diflferent lan- guages, on numberless subjects ; but, ha\ing neglected those conversations with himself by which his whole roora^ being should have been kept continually dis- 22 ON A man's WRITLNQ closed to his view, he is better qualified perhaps to de* scribe the intrigues of a foreign court, or the progress of a foreign trade ; to depict the manners of the Italians, or the Turks ; to narrate the proceedings of the Jesuits, or the adventures of the gypsies ; than to write the history of his own mind. If we had practised habitual self-observation, we could not have failed to be made aware of much that it had been well for us to know. There have been thousands of feelings, each of which, if strongly seized upon, and made the subject of reflection, would have shown us what our character was, and what it was likely to become. There have been numerous in- cidents, which operated on us as tests, and so fully brought out our prevailing quality, that another person, who should have been discriminately observing us, would speedily have formed a decided estimate. But unfortunately the mind is generally too much occupied by the feeling or the incident itself, to have the slight- est care or consciousness that any thing could be learnt or is disclosed. In very early youth it is almost in- evitable for it to be thus lost to itself even amidst its own feelings, and the external objects of attention ; but it seems a contemptible thing, and certainly is a criminal and dangerous thing, for a man in mature life to allow himself this thoughtless escape from self-examination. We have not only neglected to observe what our feelings indi:aied, but have also in a very great degree ceased to remember what they were. We may wonder how we could pass away successively from so many scenes and conjunctures, each in its time of no trifling moment in our apprehension, and retain so light an impression, that we have how nothing distinctly to tell about what once excited our utmost emotion. As to my own mind, I perceive that it is becoming uncertain of the exa:t nature of many feelings of considerable MEMOIRS OF imiSELF. 23 interest, even of comparatively recent date ; and that the remembrance of what was felt in very early life has nearly faded away. I have just been observing several children of eight or ten years old, in all the ac- tive vivacity which enjoys the plenitude of the moment without " looking before or after ;" and while observing, I attempted, but without success, to recollect what I was at that age. I can indeed remember the principal events of the . period, and the actions and projects to which my feelings impelled me ; but the feelings them- selves, in their own pure juvenility, cannot be revived so as to be described and placed in comparison with those of later life. What is become of all those vernal fancies which had so much power to touch the heart ? What a number of sentiments have lived and revelled in the soul that are now irrevocably gone ! They died like the singing birds of that time, which sing no more. The life we then had, now seems almost as if It could not have been our own. We are like a man returning, after the absence of many years, to visit the embowered cottage where he passed the morning of his life, and finding only a relic of its ruins. Thus an oblivious shade is spread over that early tract of our time, where some of the acquired propen- sities which remain in force to this hour may have had their origin, in a manner of which we had then no thought or consciousness. When we met with the in- cident, or heard the conversation, or saw the spectacle, or felt the emotion, which were the first causes or oc- casions of some of the chief permanent tendencies of future life, how little could we think that long after- wards we might be curiously and in vain desirous to investio-ate those tendencies back to their orio^in. In some occasional states of the mind, we can look back much more clearly, and much further, than at other times. I would advise to seize those short in- 24 ON A man's writing tervals of illumination which sometimes occur withoui our knowing the cause, and in which the genuine aspect of some remote event, or long-forgotten image, is recovered with extreme distinctness in spontaneous glimpses of thought, such as no effort could have com- manded ; as the sombre features and minute objects of a distant ridge of hills become strikingly visible in the strong gleams of light which transiently fall on them. An instance of this kind occurred to me but a few hours since, while reading what had no perceptible connexion with a circumstance of my early youth, which probably I have not recollected for many years, and which was of no unusual interest at the time it happened. That circumstance came suddenly to my mind with a clearness of representation which I was not able to retain to the end of an hour, and which I could not at this instant renew by the strongest effort. I seemed almost to see the walls and windows of a par- ticular room, with four or five persons in it, who were so perfectly restored to my imagination, that I could recognise not only the features, but even the momen- tary expressions, of their countenances, and the tones of their voices. According to different states of the mind too, retro- spect appears longer or shorter. It may happen that some memorable circumstance of very early life shall be so powerfully recalled, as to contract the wide intervening space, by banishing from the view, a little while, all the series of intermediate remembrances ; but when this one object of memory retires again to its remoteness and indifference, and all the others resume their proper places and distances, the retrospect appears 'ong. Places and things which have an association with any of the events or feelings of past life, will greatly assist the recollection of them. A man of strong a* MEMOIRS OF HIMSELF. 25 sociations finis memori.i s of himself already traced en the places where he has conversed with happiness or misery. If an old man wished to animate for a moment the languid and faded ideas which he retains of his youth, he might walk with his crutch across the green, where he once played with companions who are now laid to repose probably in another green spot not far off An aged saint may meet again some of the affecting ideas of his early piety, in the place where he first found it happy to pray. A walk in a meadow, the sight of a bank of flowers, perhaps even of some one flower, a landscape with the tints of autumn, the descent into a valley, the brow of a mountain, the house where a friend has been met, or has resided, or haa died, have often produced a much more lively recol- lection of our past feelings, and of the objects and events which caused them, than the most perfect description could have done ; and we have lingered a considerable time for the pensive luxury of thus resuming the long- departed state. But there are many to whom local associations present images which they fervently wish they could exorcise ; images which haunt the places where crimes had been perpetrated, and which seem to approach and glare on the criminal as he hastily passes by, especially if in the evening or the night. No local associations are so impressive as those of guilt. It may here be ob- served, that as each one has his own separate remem- brances, giving to some places an aspect and a signifi- cance which he alone can perceive, there must be an unknown number of pleasing, or mournftil, or dread- ful associations, spread over the scenes inhabited or visited by men. We pass without any awakened con- sciousness by the bridge, or the wood, or the house, where there is something to excite the most painful or frightful ideas in another man if he were to go that 3 26 ON A man's WRITINvS way, or it may be in the companion who walks along with us. How much there is in a thousand s}Ots of the earth, that is invisible and silent to all but the con* scious individual ! I hear a voice you cannot hear; I see a hand you cannot see. LETTER II. We may regard our past life as a continued though irregular course of education, through an order, oi rather disorder of means, consisting of instruction, companionship, reading, and the diversified influences of the world. The young mind, in the mere natural impulse of its activity, and innocently unthinking ol any process it was about to undergo, came forward l»j meet the operation of some or all of thcoo plastic cir- cumstances. It would be worth while to e/tamiiie in what manner and measure they have rL-qiec'.ively YmS iheir influence on us. Few persons can look back to the eail/ period when they were most directly the subjects cf instruction^ without a regret for themselves, (wliKh may be ex- tended to the human race.) that the resdlt of instruction, excepting that which leads to evil, bears so small a proportion to its compass and repetition. Yet some good consequence must follow the dili?;ent inculcation of truth and precept on the youthful mind; and our consciousness of possessing certain advantages derived from it will be a partial consolation, in the review which w^ll comprise so many proofs of its comparative ineffi- cacy. You can recollect, perhaps, the instructions to which you feel yourself permanently the most indebted, toud some of those which produced the greatest eflfect Are^rOIRS OF HIMSELF. 27 at the time, those which surprised, delighted, or mor- tified you. You can partially remember the facility oi difficulty of understandir.g-, the facility or difficulty of believing, and the practical influences which you drew from principles, on the strength of your own reason and sometimes in variance w^ith those made by your in- structors. You can remember what view^s of truth and duty were most frequently and cogently presented, what passions were appealed to, what arguments were employed, and which had the greatest influence. Per- haps your present idea of the most convincing and persuasive mode of instruction, may be derived from your early experience of the manner of those persons with whose opinions j'ou felt it the most easy and de- lightful to harmonize, who gave you the most agree- able consciousness of your faculties expanding to the light like morning flowers, and who, assuming the least of dictation, exerted the greatest degree of power. You can recollect the submissiveness with which your mind yielded to instructions as from an oracle, or the hardihood with which you dared to examine and oppose them. You can remember how far they be- came, as to your own conduct, an internal authority ot reason and conscience, when you were not under the inspection of those w'ho inculcated them ; and what classes of persons or things around you they contrib* utod to make you dislike or approve. And you can perhaps imperfectly trace the manner and the particu- lars in which they sometimes aided, or sometimes counteracted, those other influences which have a far stronger efficacy on the character than instruction can boast. Some persons can recollect certain particular sen- tences or conversations which made so deep an im- pression, perhaps in some instances they can scart-ely tell why, that they have been thousands of times re- called, while innumeral.le others have been forgotten ; or they can revert to some striking incident, coming iu aid of instruction, or being of itself a forcible instruc- tion, which they seem even now to see as plainly as when it happened, and of which they will retain a per- fect idea to the end of life. The most remarkable cii- cumstances of this kind deserve to be recorded in the supposed memoirs. In some instances, to recollect the instructions of a former period will be to recollect too the excellence, the affection, and the death, of the per- sons who gave them. Amidst the sadness of such a remembrance, it will be a consolation that they are not entirely lost to us. Wise monitions, when they return on us with this melancholy charm, have more pathetic cogency than when they were first uttered by the voice of a living friend. It will be an interesting oc- cupation of the pensive hour, to recount the advantages which we have received from the beings who have left the w^orld, and to reinforce our virtues from the dust of those who first taught them. In our review, we shall find that the companions of our childhood, and of each succeeding period, have had a great influence on our characters. A creature so prone to conformity as man, and at the same time so capable of being moulded into partial dissimilarity by social antipathies, cannot have conversed with his fellow beings thousands of hours, walked with them thousands of miles, undertaken wnth them numberless enterprises, smaller and greater, and had every passion, by turns, awakened in their company, without being immensely affected by all this association. A large share, indeed, of the social interest may have been of so common a kind, and with persons of so common an order, that the effect on the character has bee/i too little peculiar to be perceptible during the progress. We were not sensible of it, till we came to some of those MEMOIRS OP HIMSELF. 20 Circumstances and changes in life, which make us aware of the state of our minds by the manner in which new objects are acceptable or repulsive to them. On removing into a new circle of society, for instance, we could perceive by the number of things in which we found ourselves uncomplacent and unconformable with the new acquaintance, the modification which our sentiments had received in the preceding social inter- course. But in some instances we have been in a short time sensible of a powerful force operating on our opinions, tastes, and habits, and reducing them to a greatly altered cast. This effect is inevitable, if a young susceptible mind happens to become familiarly acquainted with a person in whom a strongly individual character is sustained and dignified by uncommon mental resources ; and it may be found that, generally, the greatest measure of effect has been produced by the influence of a very small number of persons ; often of one only, whose master-spirit had more power to sur- round and assimilate a young ingenuous being, than the co"ective influence of a multitude of the persons, whose characters were moulded in the manufactory of custom, and sent forth like images of clay of kindred shape and varnish from a pottery. — I am supposing all along, that the person who writes memoirs of him- self, is conscious of a something more peculiar than a mere dull resemblance of that ordinary form and in- significance of character, which it strangely depreciates our nature to see such a multitude exemplifying. As lo the crowd of those who are faithfully stamped, like bank notes, with the same marks, with the difference only of being worth more guineas or fewer, they are mere particles of a class, mere pieces and bits of the great -"ulgar or the small ; they need not write their history, it may be found in the newspaper chronicle, or the gossip's or the sexton's narrative. 3* 30 ON It is obvious, in what I have suggested respecting the research through past life, that all the persons who are recaJed to the mind, as having had an influence on us, m'lst stand before it in judgment. It is impossible to examine our moral and intellectual growth without forming an estimate, as we proceed, of those who re- tarded, advanced, or perverted it. Our dearest relations and friends cannot be exempted. There will be in some instances the necessity of blaming where we would wish to give entire praise ; though perhaps some worthy motives and generous feelings may, at the same time, be discovered in the conduct, where they had hardly been perceived or allowed before. But, at any rate, it is important that in no instance the judg- ment be duped into delusive estimates, amidst the ex- amination, and so as to compromise the principles of the examination, by which we mean to bring ourselves to rigorous justice. For if any indulgent partiality, or mistaken idea, of that duty which requires a kind and candid feeling to accompany the clearest discernment of defects, may be permitted to beguile our judgment out of the decisions of justice in favour of others, self-love, a still more indulgent and partial feeling, will not fail to practise the same beguilement in favour of ourselves. But indeed it would seem impossible, besides being ab- surd, to apply one set of principles to judge of our- selves, and another to judge of those with whom we have associated. Every person of tolerable education has been con- siderably influenced by the books he has read ; and remembers with a kind of gratitude several of those that made without injury the earliest and the strongest impression. It is pleasing at a more advanced period to look again into the early favourites ; though the mature person may wonder how some of them had once power to absorb his passions, make him retire into a MEMOIRS OF HIMSELF. 31 iouely wood in order to read unmolested, repel the approaches of sleep, or, when it came, infect it with visions. A capital part of the proposed task would be 10 recollect the books that have been read with the greatest interest, the periods when they were lead, the partiality which any of them inspired to a particular mode of life, to a study, to a system of opinions, or to a class of human characters ; to note the counteraction of later ones (where we have been sensible of it) to the effect produced by the former ; and then to en- deavour to estimate the whole and ultimate influence. Considering the multitude of facts, sentiments, and characters, which have been contemplated by a person who has read much, the effect, one should think, must have been very great. Still, however, it is probable that a very small number of books will have the pre- eminence in our mental history. Perhaps your memo- ry will promptly recur to six or ten that have contribu- ted more to your present habits of feeling and thought than all the rest together. — It may be observed here, that when a few books of the same kind have pleased us emphatically, it is a possible ill consequence that they may create an almost exclusive taste, which is car- ried through all future reading, and is pleased only with books of that kind. It might be supposed that the scenes of nature, an amazing assemblage of phenomena if their effect were not lost through familiarity, would have a powerful in- fluence on opening minds, and transfuse into the inter- nal economy of ideas and sentiment something of a character and a colour correspondent to the beauty, vicissitude, and grandeur, which press on the senses. They have this effect on minds of genius ; and Beattie's Minstrel may be as just as it is a captivating description of the perceptions and emotions of such a spirit. But o" ' 'i freatest number this influence operates feebly j 52 ON A man's writing you wiL not see the process in children, nor the result in mature persons. That significance is unfelt, which belongs to the beauties of nature as something more than their being merely objects of the senses. And in many instances even the senses themselves are so de- ficient in attention, so idly passive, and therefore appre- hend these objects so slightly, undefinedly, and tran- siently, that it is no wonder the impressions do not go so much deeper than the senses as to infuse a mood of sentiment, awaken the mind to thoughtful and imagi- native action, and form in it an order of feelings and ideas congenial with what is fair and great in external nature. This defect of sensibility and fancy is unfor- tunate amidst a creation infinitely rich with grand and beautiful objects, which can impart to a mind adapted and habituated to converse with nature an exquisite sentiment, that seems to come as by an emanation from a spirit dwelling in those objects. It is unfortunate 1 have thought within these few minutes — while looking out on one of the most enchanting nights of the most interesting season of the year, and hearing the voices of a company of persons, to whom I can perceive that :his soft and solemn shade over the earth, the calm , condemning mark ; I answer, that if a man writes it exclusively for his own use, he ought to signify the quality and measure of the delinquency, so far expli- citly, as to secure to his mind a defined recollection of MEMOIRS OF HIMSELF. 75 the verdict pronounced by conscience before its emo- tions were quelled by time ; and so far as, in default of an adequate sentence then^ to constrain him to pro- nounce it now. Such honest distinctness is necessary, because this will be the most useful part of his rei'ord for reflection to dwell upon ; because this is the part which self-love is most willing to diminish and memo- ry to dismiss; because mere general terms or allusions of censure will but little aid the cultivation of his hu- mility ; and because this license of saying so much about himself in the character of a biographer may be- come only a temptation to the indulgence of vanity, and a protection from the shame of it. unless he can maintain the feeling in earnest that it is really at a con- fessional, a severe one, that he is giving his account. But perhaps he wishes to hold this record open to an intimate relation or friend ; perhaps even thinks it might supply some interest and some lessons to his children. And what then 1 Why then it is perhaps too probable that though he could readily confess some of his faults, there may have been certain states of his mind, and certain circumstances in his conduct, which he cannot persuade himself to present to such mspection. Such a difficulty of being quite ingenuous, when it is actually guilt, and not merely some propriety of dis- cretion or good taste, that creates it, is in every instance a cause for deep regret. Should not a man tremble to feel himself not daring to confide to an equal and a mortal, what has been all observed by the Supreme Witness and Judge ? And the consideration of the large proportion of men constituting such instances, throws a melancholy hue over the general human char- acter. It has several times, in writing this essay, oc- curred to me what strangers men may be to one anoth- er, whether as to the influences which have determined their characters, or as to the less obvious parts of their 76 ON A man's writing conduct. What strangers too we may be, with per- sons who have the art of concealment, to the principles which are at this moment prevailing in the heart Each mind has an interior apartment of its own, into which none but itself and the Divinity can enter. In this secluded place the passions mingle and fluctuate in unknown agitations. Here all the fantastic and all the tragic shapes of imagination have a haunt, where they can neither be invaded nor descried. Here the sur- rounding human beings, while quite insensible of it, are made the subjects of deliberate thought, and many of the designs respecting them revolved in silence. Here projects, convictions, vows, are confusedly scat- tered, and the records of past life are laid. Here in solitary state sits Conscience, surrounded by her own thunders, which sometimes sleep, and sometimes roar, while the world does not know. The secrets of this apartment, could they have been even but very partially brought forth, might have been fatal to that eulogy and splendour with which many a piece of biography has been exhibited by a partial and ignorant friend. If, in a man's own account of himself, written on the supposition of being seen by any other person, the substance of the secrets of this apartment be brought forth, he throws open the last asylum of his character, where it is well if there be nothing found that will distress and irritate his most partial friend, who may thus become the ally of his conscience to condemn, without the leniency which even conscience acquires from self-love. And if it be not brought forth, where is the integrity or value of the history, suppo- sing it pretend to aflbrd a full and faithful estimate ; anu what ingenuous man could bear to give a delu- sive assurance of his being, or having been, so much more worthy of applause or affection than conscience all the while pronounces ? It is obvious then that a MEMOIRS OF HIMSELF. 77 man whose sentiments and designs, or the undisclosed parts of whose conduct have been deeply criminal, must keep his record sacred to himself; unless he feels such an unsupportable longing to relieve his heart by confiding its painful consciousness, that he can be con^ tent to hold the regard of his friend on the strength of his penitence and recovered virtue. As to those, whose memory of the past is sullied by shades if not by stains, they must either in the same manner retain the delineation for solitary use, or limit themselves in wri- ting it, to a deliberate and strong expression of the measure of conscious culpabilities, and their effect in the general character, with a certain, not deceptive but partially reserved explanation, that shall equally avoid particularity and mystery ; or else they must consent to meet their friends, who share the human frailty and have had their deviations, on terms of mutual ingen- uous acknowledgment. In this confidential commu« nication, each will learn to behold the other's trans- gressions fully as much in that light in which they cer- tainly are infelicities to be commiserated, as in that in which they are also faults or vices to be condemned ; while both earnestly endeavour to improve by their re- membered errors. But I shall find myself in danger of becoming ridic- ulous, amidst these scruples about an entire ingenu- ousness to a confidential friend or two, while I glance into the literary world, and observe the number of his^ torians of their own lives, who magnanimously throw the complete cargo, both of their vanities and their vices, before the whole public. Men who can gaily laugh at themselves for ever having even pretended to goodness ; who can tell of having sought consolation for the sorrows of bereaved tenderness, in tTie recesses of debauchery ; whose language betrays that they deem a spirited course of profligate adventures a much finer 7* TS ON A man's writing thing than the stupidity of vulgar virtues, and who seem to claim the sentiments with which we regard aa unfortunate hero for the disasters into which these ad ventures led them ; venal partisans whose talents would hardly have been bought, if their venom had not made up the deficiency ; profane travelling cox- combs ; players, and the makers of immoral plays — all can narrate the course of a contaminated life with the most ingenuous hardihood. Even courtezans, grieved at the excess of modesty with which the age is afflicted, have endeavoured to diminish the evil by presenting themselves before the public in their narratives, in a manner very analogous to that in which the Lady Godiva is said to have consented, from a most generous inducement, to pass through the city of Coventry. They can gravely relate, perhaps with intermingled paragraphs and verses of plaintive sensibility (a kind of weeds in which sentiment without principle apes and mocks mourning virtue,) the whole nauseous de- tail of their transitions from proprietor to proprietor. They can tell of the precautions for meeting some " il- lustrious personage," accomplished in depravity even in his early youth, with the proper adjustment of time and circumstances to save him the scandal of such a meeting; the hour when they crossed the river in a boat; the arrangements about money; the kindness of the " personage" at one time, his contemptuous neglect at another ; and every thing else that can turn the compassion with which we deplore their first misfor- tunes and errors, into detestation of the effrontery which can take to itself a merit in proclaiming the commencement, sequel, and all, to the wide world. With regard to all the classes of self describers who thus think the publication of their vices necessary to crown their fame, one should wish there were some Dublic special mark and brand of emphatic reprobation. MEMOmS OF HIMSELF. 79 to reward this tribute to public morals. Men that court the pillory for the pleasure of it, ought to receive the honour of it too, in all those contumelious salu- tations which suit the merits of vice grown proud of its impudence. They who " glory in their shame" should, like other distinguished personages, " pay a tax for being eminent." Yet I own the public itself is to be consulted in this case ; for if the public welcomes such productions, it shows there are readers who feel themselves akin to the writers, and it would be hard to deprive congenial souls of the luxury of their appro- priate sympathies. If such is the taste, it proves that a considerable portion of the public deserves just that kind of respect for its virtue, which is very signifi- cantly implied in this confidence of its favour. One is indignant at the cant pretence and title of Confessions, sometimes adopted by these exhibiters of their own disgrace ; as if it were to be believed, that penitence and humiliation would ever excite men to call thousands to witness a needless disclosure of what oppresses them with grief and shame. If they would be mortified that only a few readers should think it worth while to see them thus performing the work of self degradation, hke the fetid heroes of the Dunciad in a ditch, would it be because they are desirous that the greatest possible number should have the benefit of being averted from vice through disgust and con- tempt of them as its example ? No, this title of Confes- sions is only a nominal deference to morality, neces- sary indeed to be paid, because mankind never forget to insist, that the name of virtue shall be respected, even while vice obtains from them that practical fa- vour on which these writers place their reliance for toleration or applause. This slight homage being duly rendered and occasionally repeated, they trust in the character of the community that they shall not meet 80 ON A man's writing Jie kind of condemnation, and they have no desire for the kind of pity, which would strictly belong to cri- minals ; nor is it any part or effect of their penitence, to wish that society may be made better by seeing in them how odious are folly and vice. They are glad the age continues such, that even they may have claims to be praised ; and honour of some kind, and from some quarter, is the object to which they aspire, and the consequence which they promise themselves. Let them once be convinced, that they make such exhi- bitions under the absolute condition of subjecting them- selves irredeemably to opprobrium, as in Miletus the persons infected with a rage for destroying themselves were by a solemn decree assured of being exposed in naked ignominy after the perpetration of the deed — and these literary suicides will be heard of no more. Rousseau has given a memorable example of this voluntary humiliation. And he has very honestly assigned the degree of contrition which accompanied the self-inflicted penance, in the declaration that this document with all its dishonours, shall be presented in his justification before the Eternal Judge. If we could, in any case, pardon the kind of ingenuousness which he has displayed, it would certainly be in the disclosure of a mind so wonderfully singular as his.* We are * There is indeetl one case in wliich this kind of honesty would De so signally useful to mankind, that it would deserve almost to be canonized into a virtue. If statesmen, including monarchs, courtiers, ministers, senators, popular leaders, ambassadors, &c., would publish, before they go in the triumph of virtue, to the ''last audit," or leave to be puUishcd after they are gone, each a frank exposition of motives, intrigues, cabals, and manoeuvres, the worship which mankind have rendered to power and rank would cease to be what it has always been, a mere blind supersti- tion, when such rational grounds should come to be shown for the homage. It might contribute to a happy exorcism of that spirit which has never suffered nations to be at peace ; wliile it would MEMOIRS OF HIMSELF. 81 almost willing to have such a being preserved to all the unsightly minutias and anomalies of its form, to be placed, as an unique in the moral museum of the world. Rousseau's impious reference to the Divine Judge, leads me to suggest, as I conclude, the consideration, that the history of each man's life, though it should not be written by himself or by any mortal hand, is thus far unerringly recorded, will one day be finished in truth, and one other day yet to come, will be brought to a final estimate. A mind accustomed to grave reflections is sometimes led involuntarily into a curiosity of awful conjecture, which asks. What are those words which I should read this night, if, as to Belshazzar, a hand of prophetic shade were sent to write before me the identical expression, or the mo- mentous import, of the sentence in which that final estimate will be declared 1 give an altered and less delusive character to history. Great ser- vice in this way, but unfortunately late, is in the course of being rendered in our times, by the publication of private memoirs, written by persons connected or acquainted with those of the highest order. Let any one look at the exhibition of the very centre of the dignity and power of a great nation, as given in Pepys's Memoirs, though with the omission in that pubUcation, aa I am informed on the best authority, of sundry passages contained in the manuscript, of such a colour that their production would have exceeded the very utmost license allowable by public deco- rum. I need not revert to works now omf aratively ancient, such as Lord Melbourn's Diary. ESSAY II. O^ DECISION OF CHARACTER. LETTER I. We have several times talked of this^ld quality nnd acknowleged its great importance. Without it, a human being", with powers at best but feeble and sur rounded by innumerable things tending to perplex, to divert, and to frustrate, their operations, is indeed a pitiable atom, the sport of divers and casual impulses. It is a poor and disgraceful thing, not to be able to reply, with some degree of certainty, to the simple questions. What will you be ? What will you do ? A little acquaintance with mankind will supply numberless illustrations of the importance of this qual- ification. You will often see a person anxiously hesi- tating a long time between different, or opposite deter- minations, though impatient of the pain of such a slate, and ashamed of the debility. A faint impulse of preference alternates toward the one, and toward the other ; and the mind, while thus held in a trembling balance, is vexed that it cannot get some new thought, or feeling, or motive ; that it has not more sense, more resolution, more of any thing that would save it from envying even the decisive instinct of brutes. It wishes that any circumstance might happen, or any person might appear, that could deliver it from the miserable suspense. ON DECISION OF CHARACTER 83 En many instances, when a determination is adopted, ii is frustrated by this temperament. A man, for ex- ample, resolves on a journey to-morrow, which he is not under an absolute necessity to undertake, but the inducements appear, this evening, so strong, that he does not think it possible he can hesitate in the morn- ing. In the morning, however, these inducements have unaccountably lost much of their force. Like the sun that is rising at the same time, they appear dim through a mist ; and the sky lowers, or he fancies that it does, and almost wishes to see darker clouds than there actually are ; recollections of toils and fatigues ill repaid in past expeditions rise and pass into anticipa- tion ; and he lingers, uncertain, till an advanced hour determines the question for him, by the certainty that it is now too late to go. Perhaps a man has conclusive reasons for wishing to remove to another place of residence. But when he is going to take the first actual step tov»rards ex- ecuting his purpose, he is met by a new train of ideas, presenting the possible and magnifying the unques- tionable, disadvantages and uncertainties of a new situation ; awakening the natural reluctance to quit a place to which habit has accommodated his feel ings, and which has grown warm to him, (if 1 may so express it,) by his havmg been in it so long ; giving a new impulse to his affection for the friends whom he must leave ; and so detaining him still lingering, long after his judgment may have dictated to him to be gone. A man may think of some desirable alteration in his plan of life ; perhaps in the arrangements of his family, or in the mode of his intercourse with society, — Would it be a good thing ? He thinks it would be a good thing. It certainly would be a very good thing. He wishes it were done. He will attempt it almost 84 ON DECISION OF CilARACTER. immediately. The following day, he doubts whethei it would be ijuite prudent. Many tilings are to be considered. ]\Jay there not be in the change some evil of which he is not aware? Is this a proper time? What will people say ? — And thus, though he does not formally renounce liis purpose, he shrinks out of it, with an irksome wish that he could be fully satisfied of the propriety of renouncing it. Perhaps he wishes that the thought had never occurred to him, since it has diminished his self-complacency, without promoting his virtue. But next week, his conviction of the wis- dom and advantage of such a reform comes again with great force. Then, Is it so practicable as I was at first willing to imagine? Why not? Other men have done much greater things ; a resolute mind may brave and accomplish every thing ; difficulty is a stimulus and a triumph to a strong spirit ; " the joys of conquest are the joys of man." What need I care for peopled opinion? It shall be done. — He makes the first at- tempt. But some unexpected obstacle presents itself; he feels the awkwardness of attempting an unaccus- tomed manner of acting ; the questions or the ridicule of his friends disconcert him ; his ardour abates and expires. He again begins to question, whether it be wise, whether it be necessary, whether it be possible ; and at last surrenders his purpose to be perhaps re- sumed when the same feelings return, and to be in the same manner again relinquished. While animated by some magnanimous sentiments which he has heard or read, or while musing on some great example, a man may conceive the design, and partly sketch the plan, of a generous enterprise ; and iiis imagination revels in the felicity, to others and Himself, that would follow from its accomplishment. The splendid representation always centres in himself as the hero who is to realize it. ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 85 In a moment of remitted excitement, a faint whispei from within may doubtfully ask, Is this more than a dream ; or am I really destined to achieve such an en- terprise ? Destmed ! — and why are not this conviction of its excellence, this conscious duty of performing the noblest things that are possible, and this passionate ar- dour, enough to constitute a destiny ? He feels indig- nant that there should be a failing part of his nature to defraud the nobler, and cast him below the ideal model and the actual examples which he is admiring ; and this feeling assists him to resolve, that he will un- dertake this enterprise, that he certainly will, though the Alps or the Ocean lie between him and the object. Again, his ardour slackens ; distrustful of himself, he wishes to know how the design would appear to other minds ; and when he speaks of it to his associates, one of them wonders, another laughs, and another frowns. His pride, while with them, attempts a manful defence ; but his resolution gradually crumbles down toward their level ; he becomes in a little while ashamed to en- tertain a visionary project, which therefore, like a re- jected friend, desists from intruding on him or follow- ing him, except at lingering distance ; and he subsides, at last, into what he labours to believe a man too ra- tional for the schemes of ill-calculating enthusiasm. And it were strange if the effort to make out this fa vourable estimate of himself did not succeed, while it is so much more pleasant to attribute one's defect of enter- prise to wisdom, which on maturer thought disapproves it, than to imbecility, which shrinks from it. A person of undecisive character wonders how all the embarrassments in the world happened to meet exactly in his way, to place him just in that one situa- tion for which he is peculiarly unadapted, but in which he is also willing to think no other man could have acted with facility or confidence. Incapable of setting 8 86 ON DECISION OP CHARACTER. up a firm purpose on the basis of things as they are, ne is often employed in vain speculations on some different supposable state of things, which would have saved him from all this perplexity and irresolution. He thinks what a determined course he could have pursued, if his talents, his health, his age, had been different ; if he had been acquainted with some one person sooner ; if his friends were, in this or the other point, different from what they are ; or if fortune had showered her favours on him. And he gives himself as much license to complain, as if all these advantages had been among the rights of his nativity, but refused, by a malignant or capricious fate, to his life. Thus he is occupied — instead of marking with a vigilant eye, and seizing with a strong hand, all the possibili- ties of his actual situation. A man without decision can never be said to belong to himself; since, if he dared to assert that he did, the puny force of some cause, about as powerful, you ivould have supposed, as a spider, may make a seizure of the hapless boaster the very next moment, and con- temptuously exhibit the futility of the determinations by which he was to have proved the independence of his understanding and his will. He belongs to what- ever can make capture of him ; and one thing after another vindicates its right to him, by arresting him while he is trying to go on ; as twigs and chips, float- ing near the edge of a river, are intercepted by every weed, and whirled in every little eddy. Having con- cluded on a design, he may pledge himself to accom- plish it — if the hundred diversities of feeling which may come within the week, will let him. His charac- ler precluding all foresight of his conduct, he may sit and wonder what form and direction his views and actions are destined to take to-morrow ; as a farmer ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 87 has often to acknowledge that next day's proceedings are at the disposal of its winds and clouds. This man's notions and determinations always de- pend very much on other human beings ; and what chance for consistency and stability, while the persona with whom he may converse, or transact, are so vari- ous ? This very evening, he may talk with a man whose sentiments will melt away the present form and outline of his purposes, however firm and defined he may have fancied them to be. A succession of per- sons whose faculties were stronger than his own. might, in spite of his irresolute re-action, take him and dispose of him as they pleased. Such infirmity of spirit prac- tically confesses him made for subjection, and he passes, like a slave, from owner to owner. Sometimes indeed it happens, that a person so constituted falls into the train, and under the permanent ascendency, of soma one stronger mind, which thus becomes through life the oracle and guide, and gives the inferior a steady will and plan. This, when the governing spirit is wise and virtuous, is a fortunate relief to the feeh'ng, and an advantage gained to the utility, of the subordinate, and as it were, appended mind. The regulation of every man's plan must greatly depend on the course of events,, which come in an or- der not to be foreseen or prevented. But in accommo- dating the plans of conduct to the train of events, the difference between two men may be no less than that, in the one instance, the man is subservient to the events, ar\d in the other, the events are made subservi- ent to the man. Some men seem to have been taken along by a succession of events, and, as it were, handed forward in helpless passivcness from one to another ; having no determined principle in their own charac- ters, by which they could constrain those events to serve a design farmed antecedently to them, or appa* 88 ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. rently in defiance of them. The events seized them as a neutral material, not they the events. Others, ad- vancing through life with an internal invincible deter- mination, have seemed to make the train of circum- stances, whatever they were, conduce as much to their chief design as if they had, by some directing interpo- sition, been brought about on purpose. It is wonderful how even the casualties of life seem to bow to a spirit that will not bow to them, and yield to subserve a de- sign which they may, in their first apparent tendency, threaten to frustrate. You may have known such examples, though they are comparatively not numerous. You may have seen a man of this vigorous character in a state of indecision concerning some affair in which it was necessary for him to determine, because it was necessary for him to act. But in this case, his manner would assure you that he would not remain long undecided ; you would wonder if you found him^ still balancing and hesitating the next day. If he explained his thoughts, you would perceive that their clear process, evidently at each effort gaining something toward the result, must certainly reach it ere long. The deliberation of such a mind is a very different thing from the fluctuation of one whose second thinking only upsets the first, and whose third confounds both. To know how to obtain a determination, is one of the first requisites and indi- cations of a rationally decisive character. When the decision was arrived at, and a plan of action approved, you would feel an assurance that something would absolutely be done. It is charac- teristic of such a mind, to think for effect ; and the pleasure of escaping from temporary doubt g-ves an additional impulse to the fcrce with which it is carried into action. The man will not re-examine his con- clusions wifh endless repetition, and he will not be de* ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 85 layed long by consulting- other persons, after he had ceased to consult himself. He cannot bear to sit still among unexecuted decisions and unattempted projects. We wait to hear of his achievements, and are confident we shall not wait long. The possibility or the means may not be obvious to us, but we know that every thing will be attempted, and that a spirit of such de- termined will is like a river, which, in whatever man- ner it is obstructed, will make its way somewhere It must have cost Caesar many anxious hours of delibera- tion, before he decided to pass the Rubicon ; but it is probable he suflfercd but few to elapse between the de- cision and the execution. And any one of his friends, who should have been apprised of his determination, and understood his character, would have smiled con- temptuously to hear it insinuated that though Caesar had resolved, Caesar would not dare ; or that though he might cross the Rubicon, whose opposite bank pre- sented to him no hostile legions, he might come to other rivers, which he would not cross ; or that either rivers, or any other obstacle, would deter him from prosecuting his determination from this ominous com mencement to its very last consequence. One signal advantage possessed by a mind of this character is, that its passions are not wasted. The whole measure of passion of which any one, with im- portant transactions before him, is capable, is not more than enough to supply interest and energy for the re- quired practical exertions ; the therefore as little as possible of this costly flame should be expended in a way that does not augm.ent the force of action. But nothing can less contribute or be more destructive to vigour of action than protracted anxious fluctuation^ through resolutions adopted, rejected, resumed, sus- pended ; while yet nothing causes a greater expense of feeling. The heart is fretted and exhausted by being 8* 90 ON DECISION OF CHAllACTER. subjected to an alternation of contrary «xciterjents with the ultimate mortifying consciousness of their con- tributing to no end. The long-wavering deliberation, whether to perform some bold action of difficult virtue, has often cost more to feeling than the action itself, or a series of such actions, would have cost ; with the great disadvantage too of not being relieved by any of that invigoration which the man in action finds in the activity itself, that spirit created to renovate the energy which the action is expending. When the passions are not consumed among dubious musings and abor- tive resolutions, their utmost value and use can be se- cured by throwing all their animating force into effec- tive operation. Another advantage of this character, is, that it exempts from a great deal of interference and ob- structive annoyance, which an irresolute man may be almost sure to encounter. Weakness, in every form, -empts arrogance ; and a man may be allowed to wish for a kind of character with which stupidity and im- pertinence may not make so free. When a firm decisive spirit is recognised, it is curious to see how the space clears around a man, and leaves him room and freedom. The disposition to interrogate, dictate, or banter, pre- serves a respectful and politic distance, judging it not unwise to keep the peace with a person of so much energy. A conviction that he understands and that he wills with extraordinary force, silences the conceit that intended to perplex or instruct him, and intimidates the malice that was disposed to attack him There is a feeling, as in respect to Fate, that the decrees of so inflexible a spirit 7/ius(: be right, or that, at least, they will be accomplished. But not only will he secure the freedom of acting for himself, he will obtain also by degrees the coinci- dence of those in whose company he is to transact the ON DECISION OF CHAKACIER. 91 business ol" life. If the manners of such a man be free from arrogance, and he can qualify his firmness v/ilh a moderate degree of insinuation ; and if his measures have partly lost the appearance of being the dictates of his will, under the wider and softer sanction of some experience that they are reasonable ; both competition and fear will be laid to sleep, and his will may acquire an unresisted ascendency over many who will be pleased to fall into the mechanism of a system, which they find makes them more successful and happy than they could have been amidst the anxiety of ad- justing plans and expedients of their own, and the consequences of often adjusting them ill. I have known several parents, both fathers and mothers, whose management of their families has answered this de- scription ; and has displayed a striking example of the facile complacency with which a number of persons, of different ages and dispositions, will yield to the de- cisions of a firm mind, acting on an equitable and en- lightened system. The last resource of this character, is, hard inflexible pertinacity, on which it may be allowed to rest its strength after finding it can be effectual in none of its milder forms. I remember admiring an instance of this kind, in a firm, sagacious, and estimable old man, whom I well knew, and who has long been dead. Being on a jury, in a trial of life and death, he was satisfied of the innocence of the prisoner; the other eleven were of the opposite opinion. But he was resolved the man should not be condemned ; and as the first effort for pre- venting it. very properly made application to the minds of his associates, spending several hours in labouring to convince them. But he found he made no impression, while he was exhausting the strength which it was ne- cessary to reserve for another mode of operation. He then calmly told them that it should now be a trial 92 ON LECJSION OF CHARACTER. who could endure confinement and famine the longest^ and that they might be quite assured he would soonei die than release them at the expense of the prisoner's life. In this situation they spent about twenty-four hours ; when at length all acceded to his verdict of ac- quittal. It is not necessary to amplify on the indispensable importance of this quality, in order to the accomplish- ment of any thing eminently good. We instantly see, that every path to signal excellence is so obstructed and beset, that none but a spirit so qualified can pass. But it is time to examine what are the elements of that mental constitution which is displayed in the character in question. LETTER II. Perhaps the best mode would be, to bring into our thoughts, in succession, the most remarkable examples of this character that we have known in real life, or that we have read of in history or even in fiction ; and attentively to observe, in their conversations, rnannerSj and actions, what principles apyear to produce, or to constitute, this commanding distinction. You will easily pursue this investigation yourself I lately made a partial attempt, and shall offer you a number of sug. gestions. As a previous observation, it is beyond all doubt that very much depends on the constitution of the body. It would be for physiologists to explain, if it were expli- cable, the manner in which corporeal organization affects the mind ; I only assume it as a fact, that there is in the material construction of some persons, much more than of others, some quality which augments, if it do not ON DECISION OF CHARACTER, 93 create, both the stability of their resolution, and the energy of their active tendencies. There is something that, like the ligatures which one class of the Olympic combatants bound on their hands and wrists, braces round, if I may so describe it, and compresses the powers of the mind, giving them a steady forcible spring and reaction, which they would presently lose if they could be transferred into a constitution of soft, fielding, treacherous debility. The action of strong 'character seems to demand something firm in its mate- lial basis, as massive engines require, for their weight ,4nd for their working, to be fixed on a solid foundation. Accordingly I believe it would be found, that a majority of the persons most remarkable for decisive character, have possessed great constitutional physical firmness. I do not mean an exemption from disease and pain, nor any certain measure of mechanical strength, but a tone of vigour, the opposite to lassitude, and adapted to great exertion and endurance. This is clearly evinced in respect to many of them, by the prodigious labours and deprivations which they have borne in prosecuting their designs. The physical nature has seemed a proud ally of the moral one, and with a hardness that would never Cvhrink, has sustained the energy that could never remit. A view of the disparities between the different races of animals inferior to man, will show the effect of organization on disposition. Compare, for instance, a lion with the common beasts of our fields, many of them larger in bulk of animated substance. What a vast superiority of courage, and impetuous and determined action ; wliich difference we attribute to some great dissimilarity of modification in the composition of the animated material. Now it is probable that a difference somewhat analogous subsists between some human beings and others in point of what we may call mera 91 ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. physical constitution ; and that this is no small part of the cause of the striking inequalities in respect to deci- sive character. A man who excels in the power of decision has probably more of the physical quality of a lion in his composition than other men. It is observable that women in general have less in- flexibilit}'- of character than men ; and though many moral influences contribute to this difference, the prin- cipal cause may probably be something less- firm in the corporeal constitution. Now that physical quality, whatever it is, from the smaller measure of which in the constitution of the frame, women have less firmness than men, may be possessed by one man more than by men in general in a greater degree of difference than that by which men in general exceed women. If there have been found some resolute spirits pow erfuliy asserting themselves in feeble vehicles, it is so much the better ; since this would authorize a hope that if all the other grand requisites can be combined, they may form a strong character, in spite of an un- adapted constitution. And on the other hand, no con- stitutional hardness will form the true character, without those superior properties ; though it may produce that false and contemptible kind of decision which we term obstinacy ; a stubbornness of temper, which can assign no reasons but mere will, for a constancy which acts in the nature of dead weight rather than of strength ; re- sembling less the reaction of a powerful spring than the gravitation of a big stone. The first prominent mental characteristic of the person whom I describe, is, a complete confidence in his own judgment. It will perhaps be said, that this is not so uncommon a qualification. I however think it is uncommon. It is indeed obvious enough, that almost all men have a flattering estimate of their own under- Btanding, and that as long as this understanding has no ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 95 harder task than to form opinions which are not to be tried in action, they have a most self-complacent assurance of being right. This assurance extends to the judgments which they pass on the proceedings of others. But let them be brought into the necessity of adopting actual measures in an untried situation, where, unassisted by any previous example or practice, they are reduced to depend on the bare resources of judgment alone, and you will see in many cases, this confidence of opinion vanish away. The mind seems all at once placed in a misty vacuity, where it reaches round on all sides, but can find nothing to take hold of Or if not lost in vacuity, it is overwhelmed in confusion ; and feels as if its faculties were annihilated in the attempt to think of schemes and calculations among the possibilities, chances, and hazards which overspread a wide untrodden field ; and this conscious imbecility becomes severe distress, when it is believed that conse- quences, of serious or unknown good or evil, are de- pending on the decisions which are to be formed amidst so much uncertainty. The thought painfully recurs at each step and turn, I may by chance be right, but it is fully as probable I am wrong. It is like the case of a rustic walking in London, who, having no certain direction through the vast confusion of streets to the place where he wishes to be, advances, and hesitates, and turns, and inquires, and becomes, at each corner, still more inextricably perplexed.* A man in this situation feels he shall be very unfortunate if he cannot accomplish more than he can understand. Is not this frequently, when brought to the practical test, the stale ♦ " Why does not the man call a hackney-coach T' a gay reader, 1 am aware, will say of the person f50 bemazed in the great town. So he might, certainly ; (that is, if he knew whereto find one ;) and the gay reader and I have only to deplore that there is no parallel convenience for the %.«!!5istanceof pcrplexr^d understandings. 96 ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. of a mind not disposed in general tc undervalue its own judgment? In cases where judgment is not so completely bewil- dered, you will yet perceive a great practical distrust of it. A man has perhaps advanced a considerable way towards a decision, but then lingers at a small dis- tance from it, till necessity, with a stronger hand than conviction, impels him upon it. He cannot see the whole length of the question, and suspects the part be- yond his sight to be the most important, for the most essential point and stress of it may be there. He fears ^hat certain possible consequences, if they should follow, would cause him to reproach himself for his present determination. He wonders how this or the other per- son would have acted in the same circumstances ; ea- gerly catches at any thing like a respectable precedent; would be perfectly willing to forego the pride of set- ting an example, for the safety of following one ; and looks anxiously round to know what each person may think on the subject ; while the various and opposite opinions to which he listens, perhaps only serve to con- found his perception of the track of thought by which he had hoped to reach his conclusion. Even when that conclusion is obtained, there are not many minds that might not be brought a few degrees back into du- bious hesitation, by a man of respected understanding saying, in a confident tone. Your plan is injudicious ; your selection is unfortunate ; the event will disappoint you. It cannot be supposed that I am maintaining sucn an absurdity as that a man's complete reliance on his own judgment is a proof of its strength and rectitude. Intense stupidity may be in this point the rival of clear- sio^hted wisdom. I had once some knowledg-e of a person whom no mortal could have surpassed, not Cromwell or Strafford, in confidence in his own iudg» ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 97 ment and consequent inflexibility of conduct ; while at the same time his successive schemes were ill-judged to a degree that made his disappointments ridiculous still more than pitiable. He was not an example of that simple obstinacy which I have mentioned before ; for he considered his measures, and did not want for reasons which seriously satisfied himself of their being most judicious. This confidence of opinion may be possessed by a person in whom it will be contemptible or mischievous ; but its proper place is in a very differ- ent character, and without it there can be no dignified actors in human affairs. If, after it is seen how foolish this confidence appears as a feature in a weak character, it be inquired what, in a rightfully decisive person's manner of thinking, it is that authorizes him in this firm assurance that his view of the concerns before him is comprehensive and accurate ; he may, in answer, justify his confidence on such grounds as these : that he is conscious that objects are presented to his mind with an exceedingly distinct and perspicuous aspect, not like the shapes of moon- light, or like Ossian's ghosts, dim forms of uncircum- scribed shade ; that he sees the diflferent parts of the Bubject in an arranged order, not in unconnected frag- ments ; that in each deliberation the main object keeps its clear pre-eminence, and he perceives the bearings which the subordinate and conducive ones have on it ; that perhaps several trains of thought, drawn from dif- ferent points, lead him to he same conclusion ; and that he finds his judgment does not vary in servility to the moods of his feelings. It may be presumed that a high degree of this char- acter is not attained without a considerable measure of that kind of certainty, with respect to the relations of things, which can be acquired only from experience and observation A very protracted course of time, 9 98 ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. however, may not be indispensable for this discipline. An extreme vigilance in the exercise of observation, and a strong and strongly exerted power of general- izing on experience, may have made a comparatively short time enough to supply a large share of the wis- dom derivable from these sources ; so that a man may long before he is old be rich in the benefits of experi- ence, and therefore may have all the decision of judg- ment legitimately founded on that accomplishment. This knowledge from experience he will be able to apply in a direct and immediate manner, and without refining it into general principles, to some situations of aflfairs, so as to anticipate the consequences of certain actions in those situations by as plain a reason, and as con- fidently, as the kind of fruit to be produced by a given kind of tree. Thus far the facts of his experience will serve him as precedents; cases of such near resem- blance to those in which he is now to act as to aflbrd him a rule by the most immediate inference. At the next step, he will be able to apply this knowledge, now converted into general principles, to a multitude of cases bearing but a partial resemblance to any thing he has actually witnessed. And then, in looking forward to the possible occurrence of altogether new combina- tions of circumstances, he can trust to the resources which he is persuaded his intellect will open to him, or is humbly confident, if he be a devout man, that the Supreme Intelligence will not suffer to be wanting to him when the occasion arrives. In proportion as his views include, at all events, more certainties than those of other men, he is with good reason less fearful of contmgencies. And if, in the course of executing his design, unexpected disastrous events should befall, but which are not owing to any thing wrong in the plan and principles of that design, but to foreign causes ; it will be characteristic of a strong mind to attribute these ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 99 events discriminatively to their own causes, and not to the j)lan^ which, therefore, instead of being disliked and relinquished, will be still as much approved as be- fore, and the man will proceed calmly to the sequel of it without any change of arrangement ; — unless in- deed these sinister events should be of such conse quence as to alter the whole state of things to which he plan was correctly adapted, and so create a neces' sity to form an entirely new one, adapted to that alter- ed state. Though he do not absolutely despise the under- standings of other men, he will perceive their dimen- sions as compared with his own, which will preserve its independence through every communication and encounter. It is however a part of this very inde- pendence, that he will hold himself free to alter his opinion, if the information which may be communica ted to him shall bring sufficient reason. And as m one is so sensible of the importance of a complete ac quaintance with a subject as the man who is always endeavouring to think conclusively, he will listen with the utmost attention to the informalion^ which maj sometimes be received from persons for whose judgment he has no great respect. The information which they may afford him is not at all the less valuable for the circumstance, that his practical inferences from it may be quite different from theirs. If they will only give him an accurate account of facts, he does not care how indifferently they may reason on them. Counsel will in general have only so much weight with him as it supplies knowledge which may assist his judgment ; he will yield nothing to it implicitly as authority, except when it comes from persons of approved and eminent wisdom ; but he may hear it with more candour and good temper, from being conscious of th^-s independence of his judgment, than the man who is afraid lest the 100 ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. first person that begins to persuade him, should baffle his determination. He feels it entirely a work of hii own to deliberate and to resolve, amidst all the advice which may be attempting to control him. If, with an assurance of his intellect being of the highest order, he also holds a commanding station, he will feel it gratu- itous to consult with any one, excepting merely to re- ceive statements of facts. This appears to be exem- plified in the man, who has lately shown the nations of Europe how large a portion of the world may, when Heaven permits, be at the mercy of the solitary workings of an individual mind. The strongest trial of this determination of judgment is in those cases of urgency where something must immediately be done, and the alternative of right or wrong is of important consequence ; as in the duty of a medical man, treating a patient whose situation at once requires a daring practice, and puts it in painful doubt what to dare. A still stronger illustration is the case of a general who is compelled, in the very instant, to make dispositions on which the event of a battle, the lives of thousands of his men, or perhaps almost the fate of a nation, may depend. He may even be placed in a dilemma which appears equally dreadful on both sides. Such a predicament is described in Denon's account of one of the sanguinary conflicts be- tween the French and Mamelukes, as having for a while held in the most distressing hesitation General Desaix, though a prompt and intrepid commander. LETTER III. This indispensable basis, confidence of opinion, is nowever not enough to constitute the character iv. ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 101 question. For many persons, who have been conscious and proud of a much stronger grasp of thought than ordinary men, and have held the most decided opinions on important things to be done, have yet exhibited, in the listlessness or inconstancy of their actions, a con- trast and a disgrace to the operations of their understand- ings. For want of some cogent feeling impelling them to carry every internal decision into action, they have been still left where they were ; and a dignified judg- ment has been seen in the hapless plight of having no effective forces to execute its decrees. It is evident then, (and I perceive I have partly an- ticipated this article in the first letter,) that another es- sential principle of the character is, a total incapability of surrendering to indifference or delay the serious de- terminations of the mind. A strenuous will must ac- company the conclusions of thought, and constantly in- cite the utmost eiTorts to give them a practical result. The intellect must b^ invested, if I may so describe it, with a glowing atmosphere of passion, under the in fiuence of which, the cold dictates of reason take fire, and spring into active powers. Revert once more in your thoughts to the persons most remarkably distinguished by this quality. You will perceive, that instead of allowing themselves to sit down delighted after the labour of successful think- ing, as if they had completed some great thing, they regard this labour but as a circumstance of preparation, and the conclusions resulting from it as of no more value, (till going into effect,) than the entombed lamps of the Rosicrucians. They are not disposed to be content in a region of mere ideas, while they ought to be advancing into the field of corresponding realities ; they retire to that region sometimes, as ambitious ad- venturers anciently went to Delphi, to consult, but not to reside. You will therefore find them almost uni 9 102 ON DECISION OF CHAllACTER. formly in determined pursuit of some object, on which they fix a keen and steady look, never losing sight of it while they follow it through the confused multitude of other things. A person actuated by such a spirit, seems by his manner to say. Do you think that I would not disdain to adopt a purpose which I would not devote my ut- most force to effect ; or that having thus devoted my exertions, I will intermit or withdraw them, through indolence, debility, or caprice ; or that I will surrender my object to any interference except the uncontrollable dispensations of Providence ? No, I am linked to my determination with iron bands ; it clings to me as if a part of my destiny ; and if its frustration be, on the contrary, doomed a part of that destiny, it is doomed so only through calamity or death. This display of systematic energy seems to indicate a constitution of .mind in which the passions are com- mensurate with the intellectual part, and at the same time hold an inseparable correspondence with it, like the faithful sympathy of the tides with the phases of the moon. There is such an equality and connexion, that subjects of the decisions of judgment become pro- portionally and of course the objects of passion. When the judgment decides with a very strong preference, that same strength of preference, actuating also the passions, devotes them with energy to the object, as long as it is thus approved ; and this will produce such a conduct as I have described. When therefore a firm, self-confiding, and unaltering judgment fails to make a decisive character, it is evident either that the passions in that mind are too languid to be capable of a strong and unremitting excitement, which defect makes an indolent or irresolute man ; or that they per- versely sometin.es coincide with judgment ond some- ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 103 time,s clash with it, which makes an inconsistent or versatile man. There is no man so irresolute as not to act with de- termination in many single cases, where the motive is powerful and simple, and where there is no need of plan and perseverance ; but this gives no claim to the term character^ which expresses the habitual tenour of a man's active being. The character may be display- ed in the successive unconnected undertakings, which are each of limited extent, and end with the attainment of their particular objects. But it is seen in its most commanding aspect in those grand schemes of action, which have no necessary point of conclusion, which continue on through successive years, and extend even to that dark period when the agent himself is with- drawn from human sight. I have repeatedly, in conversation, remarked to you the effect of what has been called a Ruling Passion. When its object is noble, and an enlightened under- standing regulates its movements, it appears to me a great felicity ; but whether its object be noble or not, it infallibly creates, where it exists in great force, that active ardent constancy, which I describe as a capital feature of the decisive character. The Subject of such a commanding passion wonders, if indeed he were at leisure to wonder, at the persons who pretend to attach importance to an object which they make none but the most languid efforts to secure. The utmost powers of the man are constrained into the service of the favour- ite Cause by this passion, which sweeps away, as it ad- vances, all the trivial objections and little opposing mo- tives, and seems almost to open a way through impos- sibilities. This spirit comes on him in the morning as soon as he recovers his consciousness, and commands and impels him through the day, with a power from which he could not emancipate himself if he would. 1 04 ON DECISION OP CHARACTER. When the force of habit is added, the determination becomes invincible, and seems to assume rank with the great laws of nature, making it nearly as certain that such a man will persist in his course as that in the momng the sun will rise. A persisting untameable efficacy of soul gives a seductive and pernicious dignity even to a character which every moral principle forbids us to approve. Often in the narrations of history and fiction, an agent of the most dreadful designs compels a sentiment of deep respect for the unconquerable mind displayed in their execution. While we shudder at his activity, we say with regret, mingled with an admiration Avhich borders on partiality. What a noble being this would have been, if goodness had been his destiny ! The partiality is evinced in the very selection of terms, by which we show that we are tempted to refer his atrocity rather to his destiny than to his choice. I wonder whether an emotion like this, have not been experienced by each reader of Paradise Lost, relative 10 the Leader of the infernal spirits; a proof, if such were the fact, of some insinuation of evil into the mag- nificent creation of the poet. In some of the high examples of ambition (the ambition which is a vice), we almost revere the force of mind which impelled them forward through the longest series of action, su- perior to doubt and fluctuation, and disdainful of ease, of pleasures, of opposition, and of danger. We bend in homage before the ambitious spirit which reached the true sublime in the reply of Pompey to his friends, w^ho dissuaded him from hazarding his life on a tem- pestuous sea in order to be at Rome on an important occasion : " It is necessary for me to go, it is not neces- sary for me to live." Revenge has produced wonderful examples of thia unremitting constancy to a purpose. Zanga is a well* ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 105 supported illustration. And you may have real of a real instance of a Spaniard, who, being injured by an- other inhabitant of the same town, resolved to destroy him ; the other was apprised of this, and removed with the utmost secresy, as he thought, to another town at a considerable distance, where, however, he had not been more than a day or two, before he found that his enemy also was there. He removed in the same manner to several parts of the kingdom, remote from each other ; but in every place quickly perceived that his deadly pursuer was near him. At last he went to South America, where he had enjoyed his security but a very short time, before his relentless pursuer came up with him, and accomplished his purpose. You may recollect the mention in one of our con- versations, of a young man who wasted in two or three years a large patrimony, in profligate revels with a number of worthless associates calling themselves his friends, till his last means were exhausted, when they of course treated him with neglect or contempt. Re- duced to absolute want, he one day went out of the house with an intention to put an end to his life ; but wandering awhile almost unconsciously, he came to the brow of an eminence which overlooked what were lately his estates. Here he sat down and remained fixed in thought a number of hours, at the end of which he sprang from the ground with a vehement exulting emotion. He had formed his resolution, which was that all these estates should be his again ; he had formed his plan too, which he instantly began to execute. He walked hastily forward, determined to seize the very first opportunity, of however humble a kind, to gain any money, though it were ever so des- picable a trifle, and resolved absolutely not to spend, if he could help it, a farthing of whatever he might obtain. The first thing that drew his attention was a heap of 106 ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. coals shot out of carts on the pavement before a house. He offered himself to shovel or wheel them into the place where they were to be laid, and was employed. He received a few pence for the labour ; and then, in pursuance of the saving part of his plan, requested some small gratuity of meat and drink, which was given him. He then looked out for the next thing that might chance to offer ; and went, with indefati- gable industry, through a succession of servile employ- ments, in different places, of longer and shorter dura- tion, still scrupulously avoiding, as far as possible, the expense of a penny. He promptly seized every oppor- tunity which could advance his design, without regard- ing the meanness of occupation or appearance. By this method he had gained, after a considerable time, money enough to purchase, in order to sell again, a few cattle, of which he had taken pains to understand the value. He speedily but cautiously turned his first gains into second advantages ; retained without a single deviation his extreme parsimony ; and thus advanced by degrees into larger transactions and incipient wealth. I did not hear, or have forgotten the continu- ed course of his life : but the final result was, that he more than recovered his lost possessions, and died an inveterate miser, worth 60,000/. I have always recol- lected this as a signal instance, though in an unfortu- nate and ignoble direction, of decisive character, and of the extraordinary effect^ which, according to general laws, belongs to the strongest form of such a character. But not less decision has been displayed by men of virtue. In this distinction no man ever exceeded, or ever will exceed, for instance, the late illustrious Howard. The energy of his determination was so great, that if, instead of being habitual, it had been shown only for a short time on particular occasions, it would have ON r/ECISICjiN OF CHARACTER. 107 a/.^ mred a vehement impetuosity; but by being unin- termiited, it had an equability of manner which scarce- ly appeared to exceed the tone of a calm constancy, it was so totally the reverse of any thing like turbulence or agitation. It was the calmness of an intensity kept uniform by the nature of the human mind forbidding it to be more, and by the character of the individual forbidding it to be less. The habitual passion of his mind was a pitch of excitement and impulsion almost equal to the temporary extremes and paroxysms of common minds ; as a great river, in its customary state, is equal to a small or moderate one when swollen to a torrent. The moment of finishing his plans in deliberation, and commencing them in action, was the same. I wonder what must have been the amount of that bribe. in emolument or pleasure, that would have detained him a week inactive after their final adjustment. The law which carries water down a declivity was not more unconquerable and invariable than the determination of his feelings toward ^the main object. The impor- tance of this object held his faculties in a state of deter- mination which was to* rigid to be affected by lighter interests, and on which therefore the beauties of nature and of art had no power. He had no leisure feeling which he could spare to be diverted among the innu- merable varieties of the extensive scene which he traversed ; his subordinate feelings nearly lost their separate existence and operation, by falling into the grand one. There have not been wanting trivial minds, to mark this as a fault in his character. But the mere men of taste ought to be silent respecting such a man as Howard ; he is above their sphere of Judgment. The invisible spirits, who fulfd their com* mission of philanthropy among mortals, do not caro %bout pictures, statues, and sumptuous buildings ; and 108 ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. no more did he, when the time in which he must hav% inspected and admired them, would have been taken from the work to which he had consecrated his hfe. The curiosity which he might feel, was reduced to wait till the hour should arrive, when its gratihcavlun should be presented by conscience, (which kept a scru- pulous charge of all his time,) as the duty of that hour. If he was still at every hour, when it came, fated to feel the attractions of the fine arts but the second claim, they might be sure of their revenge ; for no other man will ever visit Rome under such a despotic ac- knowledged rule of duty, as to refuse himself time for surveying the magnificence of its ruins. Such a sin ?»gainst taste is very far beyond the reach of common saintship to commit. It implied an inconceivable se- verity of conviction, that he had one thing to do^ and that he who would do some great thing in this short life, must apply himself to the work with such a con- centration of his forces, as, to idle spectators, who live only to amuse themselves, looks like insanity. His attention was so strongly and tenaciously fixed on his object, that even at the greatest distance, as the Egyptian pyramids to travellers, it appeared to him with a luminous distinctness as if it had been nigh, and beguiled the toilsome length of labour and enterprise by which he was to reach it. So conspicuous was it before him, that not a step deviated from the direction, and every movement and every day was an approxi- mation. As his method referred every thing he did and thought to the end, and as his exertion did not relax for a moment, he made the trial, so seldom made, what is the utmost effect which may be granted to the last possible eflTorts of a human agent : and therefore what he did not accomplish, he migl.t conclude to be placed beyond the sphere of mortal activity, and calnr»iy leave to the immediate disposal of Providence. OiV DECISIO i OF CL..ARACTEfl. J 09 Unless the eternal hippine.;s of mankind be an in- significant concern, and the passion to promote it an inglorious distinction, I may cite George Whitefield as a noble instance of this attribute of the decisive char- acter, this intense necessity of action. The great cause which was so languid a thing in the hands of many of its advocates, assumed in his administratiotis an unmitigable urgency. Many of the christian missionaries among the heathens, such as Brainerd, Elliot, and Schwartz, have displayed memorable examples of this dedication of their whole being to their office, this abjuration of all the quiescent feelings. This would be the proper place for introducing (if I did not hesitate to introduce in any connexion with merely human instances) the example of him who said, " I must be about my Father's business. My meat and drink is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work. I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished '" LETTER IV. After the illustrations on the last article, it will seem but a very slight transition when I proceed to specify Courage, as an essential part of the decisive character. An intelligent man, adventurous only in thought, may sketch the most excellent scheme, and after duly admiring it, and himself as it^ author, may be reduced to say. What a noble spirit that would be which should dare to realize this ! A noble spirit ! is it I ? And his heart may answer in the negative, while he glances a mortified thought of inquiry round to recollect persons who would venture what he dares 10 klO ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. not, and almost hopes not to find them. Or if by ex tremp effort he has brought himself to a resolution of bravinor the difficulty, he is compelled to execrate the timid iingerings that still keep him back from the trial. A m.-'U endowed with the complete character, migh say, with a sober consciousness as remote from the spirit of bravado as it is from timidity, Thus, and thus, is my conviction and my determination ; now for the phantoms of fear ; let me look them in the face ; their mena'iing glare and ominous tones will be lost on me ; " I d \re do all that may become a man." I trust I shall firmly confront every thing that threatens me while prosecuting my purpose, and I am prepared to meet the consequences of it when it is accomplished. I should despise a being, though it were myself, whose agency could be held enslaved by the gloomy shapes of imagination, by the haunting recollections of a dream, by the whistling or the howling of winds, by the shriek of owls, by the shades of midnight, or by the threats or frowns of man. I should be indignant to feel that, in the commencement of an adventure, I could think of nothing but the deep pit by the side of the way where I must walk, into which I may slide, the mad animal which it is not impossible that 1 may meet, or the assassin who may lurk in a thicket of yonder wood. And I disdain to compromise the in- terests that rouse me to action, for the privilege of an ignoble security. As the conduct of a man of decision is always indi- vidual, and often singular, he may expect some serious trials of courage. For one thing, he may be encoun- tered by the strongest disapprobation of many of his connexions, and the censure of the greater part of the society where he is known. In this case, it is not a man of common spirit that can show himself just a« at other times, and meet their anger in the sara i undis* ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. Ill (urbed manner as he would meet some ordinary in Clemency of the weather ; that can, without harshness or violence, continue to effect every moment some part of his design, coolly replying to each ungracious look and indignant voice, I am sorry to oppose you : I am not unfriendly to you, while thus persisting in what excites your displeasure ; it would please me to have your approbation and concurrence, and I think I should have them if you would seriously consider my reasons ; but meanwhile, I am superior to opinion, I am not to be intimidated by reproaches, nor would your favour and applause be any reward for the sacrifice of my object. As you can do without my approbation, I can certainly do without yours ; it is enough that I can approve myself, it is enough that I appeal to the last authority in the creation. Amuse yourselves as you may, by continuing to censure or to rail ; I must con- tinue to act. The attack of contempt and ridicule is perhaps a still greater trial of courage. It is felt by all to be an admirable thing, when it can in no degree be ascribed to the hardness of either stupidity or confirmed deprav- ity, to sustain for a considerable time, or in numerous instances, the looks of scorn, or an unrestrained shower of taunts and jeers, with perfect composure, and proceed immediately after, or at the time, on the business that provokes all this ridicule. This invincibility of temper will often make even the scoffers themselves tired of the sport : they begin to feel that against such a man it is a poor sort of hostility to joke and sneer ; and there is nothing that people are more mortified to spend in vain than their scorn. Till, however, a man shall be- come a veteran, he must reckon on sometimes meet- ing this trial in the course of virtuous enterprise. And if, at the suggestion of some meritorious but unprece- dented proceeding, I hear him ask, with a look aad 1^2 ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. one of shrinking alarm, But will they not laugh at me ? — I know that he is not the person whom this es- say attempts to describe. A man of the right kind would say, They will smile, they will laugh, will they ? Much good may it do them. I have something else to do than to trouble myself about their mirth. I do no care if the whole neighbourhood were to laugh in a chorus. I should indeed be sorry to see or hear such a number of fools, but pleased enough to find that they considered me as an outlaw to their tribe. The good to result from my project will not be less, because vain and shallow minds that cannot understand it, are di- verted at it and at me. What should I think of my pursuits, if every trivial thoughtless being could com- prehend or would applaud them ; and of myself, if my courage needed levity and ignorance for their allies, or could be abashed at their sneers ? I remember, that on reading the account of th-e pro- ject for conquering Peru, formed by Almagro, Pizarro, and De Luques, while abhorring the actuating princi- ple of the men, I could not help admiring the hardi- hood of mind which made them regardless of scorn. These three individuals, before they had obtained any associates, or arms, or soldiers, or more than a very imperfect knowledge of the power of the kingdom they were to conquer, celebrated a solemn mass in one of the great churches, as a pledge and a commencement of the enterprise, amidst the astonishment and contempt expressed by a multitude of people for what was deem- ed a monstrous project. They, however, proceeded through the service, and afterwards to their respectiv^e departments of preparation, with an apparently entire insensibility to all this triumphant contempt ; and thus gave the first proof of possessing that invincible firm- ness with which they afterwards prosecuted their design, till they attained a success, the destructive process and ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 113 many of the results of which humanity has ever de- plored. Milton's Abdiel is a noble illustration of the courage that rises invincible above the derision not only of the .multitude, but of the proud and elevated. But there may be situations where decision of char acter will be brought to trial against evils of a darker aspect than disapprobation or contempt. There may be the threatening of serious sufferings ; and very of- ten, to dare as far as conscience or a great cause requi red, has been to dare to die. In almost all plans of great enterprise, a man must systematically dismiss, at the entrance, every wish to stipulate with his destiny for safety. He voluntarily treads within the precincts of danger ; and though it be possible he may escape, he ought to be prepared with the fortitude of a self-de- voted victim. This is the inevitable condition on which heroes, travellers or missionaries among savage nations, and reformers on a grand scale, must commence their career. Either they must allay their fire of enter- prise, or abide the liability to be exploded by it from the world. The last decisive energy of a rational courage, which cxjnfides in the Supreme Power, is very sublime. It makes a man who intrepidly dares every thing that can oppose or attack him within the whole sphere of mortality ; who will still press toward his object while death is impending over him ; who would retain his purpose unshaken amidst the ruins of the world. It was in the true elevation of this character that Luther, when cited to appear at the Diet of Worms, under a very questionable assurance of safety from high authority, said to his friends, who conjured him not to go, ana warned him by the example cf John Huss, whom, in a similar situation, the same pledge of pro- teci'on had not saved from the fire, " I am called 10* 114 ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. ia the name of God to go, and I would go, though I were certain to meet as many devils in Worms as there are tiles on the houses." A reader of the Bible will not forget Daniel, braving in calm devotion the decree which virtually consigned him to the den of lions: or Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego. saying to the tyrant, " We are not careful to answer thee in this matter," when the "burning fiery" furnace was in sight. The combination of these several essential principles constitutes that state of mind which is a grand requi- site to decision of character, and perhaps its most stri- king distinction — the full agreement of the mind with itself, the consenting co-operation of all its powers and all its dispositions. What an unfortunate task it would be for a char- ioteer, who hu.i harnessed a set of horses, however strong, if he could not make them draw together ; if while one of them would go forward, another was res- tiff, another struggled backward, another started aside. If even one of the four were unmanageably perverse, while the three were tractable, an aged beggar with his crutch might leave Phaeton behind. So in a hu- man being, unless the chief forces act consentaneously, there can be no inflexible vigour, either of will or ex- ecution. Ofie dissentient principle in the mind not only deducts so much from the strength and mass of its agency, but counteracts and embarrasses all the rest. If the judgment holds in low estimation that which yet the passions incline to pursue, the pursuit will be irregular and inconstant, though it may have occasional fits of animation, when those passions hap- pen to be highly stimulated. If there is an opposition between judgment and habit, though the man will probably continue to act mainly under the sway of ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 115 habit in spite of his opinions, yet some imes the in- trusion of those opinions will have for the moment an effect like that of Prospero's wand on the limbs of Ferdinand ; and to be alternately impelled by habit, and checked by opinion, will be a state of vexatious debility. If two principal passions are opposed to each other, they will utterly distract any mind, whatever might be the force of its faculties if acting without em- barrassment. The one passion may be somewhaj stronger than the other, and therefore just prevail bare- ly enough to give a feeble impulse to the conduct of the man ; a feebleness which will continue till there be a greater disparity between these rivals, in conse- quence of a reinforcement to the slightly ascendent one, by new impressions or the gradual strengthening of habit forming in its favour. The disparity must be no less than an absolute predominance of the one and subjec- tion of the other, before the prevailing passion will have at liberty from the intestine conflict any large measure of its force to throw activity into the system of conduct. If, for instance, a man feels at once the love of fame which is to be gained only by arduous exertions, and an equal degree of the love of ease or pleasure which precludes those exertions ; if he is eager to show «f! in splendour, and yet anxious to save money ; if he has the curiosity of adventure, and yet that solicitude for safety, which forbids him to climb a precipice, descend into a cavern, or explore a dangerous wild ; if he has the stern will of a tyrant, and yet the relent- ings of a man ; if he has the ambition to domineer over his fellow-mortals, counteracted by a reluctance to inflict so much mischief as it might cost to subdue them ; we may anticipate the irresolute contradictory tenour of his actions. Especially if conscience, that great troubler of the human breast, loudly declares against a man's wishes or project?, it will be a fatal 116 ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. enemy to decision, till it either reclaim the dehnquent passions, or be debauched or laid dead by them. Lady Macbeth may be cited as a harmonious char- acter, though the epithet seem strangely applied. She had capacity, ambition, and courage ; and she willed the death of the king. Macbeth had still more ca- pacity, ambition, and courage ; and he also willed the murder of the king. But he had besides humanity, generosity, conscience, and some measure of what forms the power of conscience, the fear of a Superior Being. Consequently, when the dreadful moment approached, he felt an insupportable conflict between these opposite principles, and when it was arrived his utmost courage began to fail. The worst part of his nature fell pros- trate under the power of the better ; the angel of good- ness arrested the demon that grasped the dagger ; and w^ould have taken that dagger away, if the pure de- moniac firmness of his wife, who had none of these counteracting principles, had not shamed and hardened him to the deed. The poet's delineation of Richard III. offers a dread- ful specimen of this indivisibility of mental impulse. After his determination was fixed, the whole mind with the compactest fidelity supported him in prosecuting it. Securely privileged from all interference of doubt that could linger, or humanity that could soften, or timidity that could shrink, he advanced with a concentrated constancy through scene after scene of atrocity, still fulfilling his vow to " cut his way through with u bloody axe." He did not waver while he pursued his object, nor relent when he seized it. Cromwell (whom I mention as a parallel, of course not to Richard's wickedness, but to his inflexible vig- our,) lost his mental consistency in the latter end of a career which had displayed a superlative example of decision. It appears that the wish to be a king, at last ON DECISION OF CHARACTER, 117 arose in a mind which had contemned royalty, ana battled it from the land. As far as he really had any republican principles and partialities, this new desire must have been a very untoward associate for them, and must have produced a schism in the breast where all the strong forces of thought and passion had acted till then in concord. The new form of ambition be- came just predoninant enough to carry him, by slow degrees, through the embarrassment and the shame of this incongruity, into an irresolute determination to as- sume the crown ; so irresolute, that he was reduced again to a mortifying indecision by the remonstrances of some of his friends, which he could have slighted, and by an apprehension of the public disapprobation, v/hich he could have braved, if some of the principles of his own mind had not shrunk or revolted from the design. When at last the motives for relinquishing this design prevailed, it was by so small a degree of preponderance, that his reluctant refusal of the offered crown was the voice of only half his soul. Not only two distinct counteracting passions, but one passion interested for two objects, both equally desira- ble, but of which the one must be sacrificed, may an- nihilate in that instance the possibility of a resolute promptitude of conduct. I recollect reading in an old divine, a story from some historian, applicable to this remark. A father went to the agents of a tyrant, to endeavour to redeem his two sons, military men, who, with some other captives of war, were condemned to die. He offered, as a ransom, a sum of money, and to surrender his own life. The tyrant's agents who had them in charge, informed him that this equivalent would be accepted for one of his sons, and for one only, because they should be accountable for the ex- ecution of two persons ; he mighj therefore choose which he would redeem Anxious to save even one 118 ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. of them thus at the expense of his o\vn life, he yet was unable to decide which should die, by choosing the other to live, and remained in the agony of this dilem- ma so long that they were both irreversibly ordered foj execution. LETTER V. It were absurd to suppose that any human bemg can attain a state of mind capable of acting in all in- stances invariably with the full power of determina- tion ; but it is obvious that many have possessed a habitual and very commanding measure of it ; and I think the preceding remarks have taken account of its chief characteristics and constituent principles. A number of additional observations remains. The slightest view of human affairs shows what fatal and wide-spread mischief may be caused by men of this character, when misled or wicked. You have but to recollect the conquerors, despots, bigots, unjust conspirators, and signal villains of every class, who have blasted society by the relentless vigour which could act consistently and heroically wrong. Till therefore the virtue of mankind be greater, there is reason to be pleased that so few of them are endowed with extraordinary decision. Even when dignified by wisdom and principle, this quality requires great care in the possessors of it to pre- vent its becoming unamiable.- As it involves much practical assertion of superiority over other human be- ings, it should be as temperate and conciliating as pos- sible in manner ; else pride will feel provoked, affec- tion hurt, and weakness oppressed. But this is not the manner which will be most natural to such a man ; ON DECISION OF CHAIIACTER. 1 19 rather it will be high-toned, laconic, and careless of pleasing-. He will have the appearance of keeping himself always at a distance from social equality ; and his friends will feel as if their friendship were contin- ually sliding into subserviency;- while his intimate connexions will think he does not attach the due im- portance either to their opinions or to their regard. His manner, when they differ from him, or complain, will be too much like the expression of slight estima tion, and sometimes of disdain. When he can accomplish a design by his own per- sonal means alone, he may be disposed to separate himself to the work with the cold self-enclosed in dividuality on which no one has any hold, which seems to recognise no kindred being in the world which takes little account of good wishes and kind concern, any more than it cares for opposition ; which seeks neither aid nor sympathy, and seems to say, I do not want any of you, and I am glad that I do not ; leave me alone to succeed or die. This has a very re- pellent effect on the friends who wished to feel them- selves of some importance, in some way or other, to a person whom they are constrained to respect. When assistance is indispensable to his undertakings, his mode of signifying it will seem to command, rather than invite, the co-operation. In consultation, his manner will indicate that when he is equally with the rest in possession of the circum- stances of the case, he does not at all expect to hear anj- opinions that shall correct his own ; but is sat- isfied that either his present conception of the subject is the just one, or that his own mind must originate that which shall be so. This difference will be appa- rent between him and his associates, that their manner of receiving his opinions is that of agreement or dis- sent; /«5 manner of receiving theirs is judicial — thai 12C ON lEClSION OF CHARACTER. of sanction or rejection. He has the tone of authori- tatively deciding on what they say, but never of submit- ting to decision what himseh" says. Their coincidence with his views does not give him a firmer assurance of his being right, nor their dissent any other impression than that of their incapacity to judge. If his feeling took the distinct form of a reflection, it would be, Mine is the business of comprehending and devising, and 1 am here to rule this company, and not to consult them ; I want their docility, and not their arguments ; I am come, not to seek their assistance in thinking, but to determine their concurrence in executing what is already thought for them. Of course, many sugges- tions and reasons which appear important to those they come from will be disposed of by him with a transient attention, or a light facility, that will seem very dis- respectful to persons who possibly hesitate to admit that he is a demi-god, and that they are but idiots. Lord Chatham, in going out of the House of Commons, just as one of the speakers against him concluded his speech by emphatically urging what he perhaps rightly thought the unanswerable question, " Where can we find means to support such a war?" turned round a moment, and gaily chanted, " Gentle shepherd tell me where ?" Even the assenting convictions, and practical com pliances, yielded by degrees to this decisive man, may be somewhat undervalued ; as they will appear to him no more than simply coming, and that very slowly, to a right apprehension ; whereas he understood and de- cided justly from the first, and has been right all this while. He will be in danger of rejecting the just claims of charity for a little tolerance to the prejudices, hesitation, ind timidity, of those with whom he has to act. He will say to himself, I wish there were anything like ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 12^ manhood among the beings called men ; and thai they could have the sense and spirit not to let themselves be hampered by so many silly notio'DS and childish fears ! Why cannot they either determine with some promp- titude, or let me; that can, do it for them? Am I to wait till debility become strong, and folly wise ? — If full scope be allowed to these tendencies, they may give too much of the character of a tyrant to even a man of elevated virtue, since, in the consciousness of the right intention, and the assurance of the wise con- trivance, of his designs, he will hold himself justified in being regardless of every thing but the accomplish- ment of them. He will forget all respect for the feel ings and liberties of beings who are accounted but a subordinate machinery, to be actuated, or to be throw a aside when not actuated, by the spring of his command- ing spirit. i have before asserted that this strong character may \)e exhibited with a mildness, or at least temperance, of manner ; and that, generally, it will thus best se- cure its efficacy. But this mildness must often be at the cost of great effort ; and how much considerate policy or benevolent forbearance it \\'\\\ require, for a man to exert his utmost vigour in the very task, as it will appear to him at the time, of cramping that vigour! — Lycurgus appears to have been a high example of conciliating patience in the resolute prosecution of de* signs to be effected among a* perverse multitude. It is probable that the men most distinguished for decision, have not in general possessed a large share of tenderness; and it is easy to imagine, that the laws of our nature will, with great difficulty, allow the com- bination of the refined sensibilities with a hard, never- shrinking, never-yielding firmness. Is it not almost of the essence of this temperament to be free from even the perception of such impressions as cause a mind, 11 122 ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. weak through susceptibility, to relax or waver ; just as the skin of the elephant, or the armour of the rhino- ceros, would be but indistinctly sensible to the applica- tion of a force by which a small animal, with a skin of thin and delicate texture, would be pierced or lacerated to death ? No doubt, this firmness consists partly in a commanding and repressive power over feelings, but it may consist fully as much in not having them. To be exquisitely alive to gentle impressions, and yet to be able to preserve, when the prosecution of a design re- quires it, an immovable heart amidst the most im- perious causes of subduing emotion, is perhaps not an impossible constitution of mind, but it must be the rarest endowment of humanity. If you take a view of the first rank of decisive men, you will observe that their faculties have been too much bent ro arduous effort, their souls have been kept in too military an attitude, they have been begirt with too much iron, for the melting movements of the heart. Their whole being appears too much arrogated and oc- cupied by the spirit of severe design, urging them to- ward some defined end, to be sufficiently at ease for the indolent complacency, the soft lassitude of gentle affections, which love to surrender themselves to the present felicities, forgetful of all "enterprises of great pith and moment." The man seems rigorously intent still on his own affairs, as he walks, or regales, or min- gles with domestic society ; and appears to despise all the feelings that will not take rank with the grave la- bours and decisions of intellect, or coalesce with the un- remitting passion which is his spring of action ; he values not feelings which he cannot employ either as weapons or as engines. He loves to be actuated by a passion so strong as to compel into exercise the utmost ^orce of his being, and fix him in a tone, compared with which, the gentle aflfections, if he had felt them, ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 123 would be accounted lameness, and their exciting causes insipidity. Yet we cannot w/llingly admit that those gentle affections are totally incompatible with the most im- pregnable resolution and vigour; nor can we help believing that such men as Timoleon, Alfred, and Gustavus AdolphuSj must have been very fascinating associates in private and domestic life, whenever the urgency of their affairs would allow them to withdraw from the interests of statesmen and warriors, to indulge the affections of men : most fascinating, for, with relations or friends who had any right perceptions, an effect of the strong character would be recognised in a peculiar charm imparted by it to the gentle moods and seasons. The firmness and energy of the man whom nothing could subdue, would exalt the quality of the tenderness which softened him to recline. But it were much easier to enumerate a long train of ancient and modern examples of the vigour un- mitigated by the sensibility. Perhaps indeed these indomitable spirits have yielded sometimes to some species of love, as a mode of amusing their passions for an interval, till greater engagements have sum- moned them into their proper element; when they have shown how little the sentiment was an element of the heart, by the ease with which they could re- linquish the temporary favourite. In other cases, where there have not been the selfish inducements, which this passion supplies, to the exhibition of some- thing like softness, and where they have been left to the trial of what they might feel of the sympathies of humanity in their simplicity, no rock on earth could be harder. The celebrated King of Prussia occurs to me, as a capital instance of the decisive character ; and there occurs to me, at the same time, one of the anecdotes 1^4 ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. related of him.* Intending to make, in the niglit, an important movement in his camp, which was in sight of the enemy, he gave orders that by eight o'clock all the lights in the camp should be put out, on pain of death. The moment that the time was passed, he walked out himself to see whether all were dark. He found a light in the tent of a Captain Zietern, which he entered just as the officer was folding up a letter. Zietern knew him, and instantly fell on his knees to entreat his mercy. The king asked to whom he had been writing ; he said it was a letter to his wife, which he had retained the candle these few minutes beyond the time in order to finish. The king coolly ordered him to rise, and write one line more, which he should dictate. This line was to inform his wife, without any explanation, that by such an hour the next day, he should be a dead man. The letter was then sealed, and despatched as it had been intended ; and, the next day, the captain was executed. I say nothing of the justice of the punishment itself; but this cool barbarity to the affection both of the officer and his wife, proved how little the decisive hero and reputed philosopher was capable of the tender affections, or of sympathizing with their pains. At the same time, it is proper to observe, that the case may easily occur, in which a man, sustaining a high responsibility, must be resolute to act in a manner ♦ The authenticity of this anecdote, which I read in some trifling fugitive publication many years since, has been questioned. Pos- sibly enough it might be one of the many stories only half true which could not fail to go abroad concerning a man who made, in his day, so great a figure. But as it does not at all misrepresent the general character of his mind, since there are many incontrovertible facts, proving against hira as great a degree of cruelty as this anecdote would charge on him, the want of means to prove this one fact does not seem to impose any necessity for omitting the illus- tration. ON LECISION OF CHARACTER. 125 which may make him appear to want the finer feelings. He may be placed under the necessity of doing what he knows will cause pain to persons of a character to feel it severely. He may be obliged to resist affec- tionate wishes, expostulations, entreaties, and tears. Take this same instance. Suppose the wife of Zietern had come to supplicate for him, not only the remission of the punishment of death, but an exemption from any other severe punishment, which was perhaps justly due to the violation of such an order issued no doubt for important reasons ; it had then probably been the duty and the virtue of the commander to deny the most interesting suppliant, and to resist the most pathetic appeals which could have been made to his feelings. LETTER VI. Various circumstances might be specified as adapted to confirm such a character as I have attempted to describe. I shall notice two or three. And first, opposition. The passions which inspirit men to resistance, and sustain them in it, such as anger, indig-nation, and resentment, are evidently far stronger than those which have reference to friendly objects ; and if any of these strong passions are fre- quently excited by opposition, they infuse a certain quality into the general temperament of the mind, which remains after the immediate excitement is past. They continually strengthen the principle of re-action ; they put the mind in the habitual array of defence and self-assertion, and often give it the aspect and the posture of a gladiator, when there appears no con- fronting combatant. When these passions are provoked 11* 126 ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. in such a person as I describe, it is ])robable that each excitement is followed b^ a greater increase of this principle of re-action than m other men, because this result is so congenial with his naturally resolute dis- position. Let him be opposed then, throughout the prosecution of one of his designs, or in the general tenour of his actions, and this constant opposition would render him the service of an ally, by augmenting the resisting and defying power of his mind. An irre- solute spirit indeed might be quelled and subjugated by a formidable and persisting opposition ; but the strong wind which blows out a taper, exasperates a powerful fire (if there be fuel enough) to an indefinite intensity. It would be found, in fact, on a recollection of instances, that many of the persons most conspicuous for decision, have been exercised and forced to this high tone of spirit in having to make their way through opposition and contest; a discipline under which they were wrought to both a prompt acuteness of faculty, and an inflexibility of temper, hardly attainable even by minds of great natural strength, if brought forward into the affairs of life under indulgent auspices, and in habits of easy and friendly coincidence with those around them. Often, however, it is granted, the firmness matured by such discipline is, in a man of virtue, accompanied with a Catonic severity, and in a mere man of the world is an unhumanized repulsive hardness. Desertion may be another cause conducive to the consolidation of this character. A kind mutually reclining dependence, is certainly for the happiness of human beings ; but this necessarily prevents the development of some great individual powers which would be forced into action by a state of abandonment I lately happened to notice, with some surprise, an ivy which, finding nothing to cling to beyond a ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 127 certain point, had shot off into a bold elastic stem, wiih an air of as much independence as any branch of oak in the vicinity. So a human being thrown, whether by cruelty, justice, or accident, from all social support and kindness, if he have any vigour of spirit, and be not in the bodily debility of either childhood or age, will begin to act for himself with a resolution which will appear like a new faculty. And the most absolute inflexibility is likely to characterize the reso- lution of an individual who is obliged to deliberate without consultation, and execute without assistance. He will disdain to yield to beings who have rejected him, or to forego a particle of his designs or advantages in concession to the opinions or the will of all the world. Himself, his pursuits, and his interests, are emphaticaiiy his own. " The world is not his friend, nor the world's law ;" and therefore he becomes re- gardless of every thing but its power, of which his policy carefully takes the measure, in order to ascer- tain his own means of action and impunity, as set against the world's means of annoyance, prevention, and retaliation. If this person have but little humanity or principle, he will become a misanthrope, or perhaps a villain, who will resemble a solitary wild beast of the night, which m.akes prey of every thing it can overpower, and cares for nothing but fire. If he be capable of grand conception and enterprise, he may, like Spar- tacus, make a daring attempt against the whole social order of the state where he has been oppressed. If he be of great humanity and principle, he may become one of the noblest of mankind, and display a generous virtue to which society had no claim, and which it is not worthy to rev/ard, if it should at last become in- clined. No, he will say, give your rewards to another ; as it has been no part of my object to gain them, they 128 ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. are not necessary to my satisfaction, I have done goocl_, without expecting your gratitude, and without caring for your approbation. If conscience and my Creator had not been more auspicious than you, none of these virtues would ever have opened to the day. When I ought to have been an object of your compassion, I might have perished ; now when you find I can serve your interests, you will affect to acknowledge me and reward me ; but I will abide by my destiny to verify the principle that virtue is its own reward. — In either case, virtuous or wicked, the man who has been compelled to do without assistance, will spurn inter- ference. Common life would supply illustrations of the effect of desertion, in examples of some of the most resolute men having become such partly from being left friend- less in early life. The case has also sometimes hap- pened, that a wife and mother, remarkable perhaps for gentleness and acquiescence before, has been compel- led, after the death of her husband on whom she de- pended, and when she has met with nothing but ne- glect or unkindness from relations and those who had been accounted friends, to adopt a plan of her own, and has executed it with a resolution which has astonish- ed even herself One regrets that the signal examples, real or ficti- tious, that most readily present themselves, are still of the depraved order. I fancy myself to see Marlus sitting on the ruins of Carthage, where no arch or column, that remained unshaken amidst the desolation, could present a stronger image of a firmness beyond the power of disaster to subdue. The rigid constancy which had before distinguished his character, would be aggravated oy lis finding himself thus an outcast from all human society ; and he would proudly shake off every sentiment that had ever for an instant checked ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 129 his designs in the way of reminding him of social ob- ligations. The lonely individual was placed in the alternative of becoming- the victim or the antao^onist of the power of the empire. While, with a spirit ca- pable of confronting that power, he resolved, amidst those ruins, on a great experiment, he would enjoy 9 kind of sullen luxury in surveying the dreary situa tion into which he was driven, and recollecting the cir- cumstances of his expulsion ; since they would seem to him to sanction an unlimited vengeance ; to present what had been his country as the pure legitimate prize for desperate achievement ; and to give him a proud consequence in being reduced to maintain singly a mortal quarrel against the bulk of mankind. He would exult that the very desolation of his condition rendered but the more complete the proof of his pos- sessing a mind which no misfortunes could repress or intimidate, and that it kindled an animosity intense enough to force that mind from firm endurance into impetuous action. He would feel that he became stronger for enterprise, in proportion as his exile and destitution rendered him more inexorable ; and the sentiment with which he quitted his solitude would be, — Rome expelled her patriot, let her receive her evil genius. The decision of Satan, in Paradise Lost, is repre- sented as consolidated by his reflections on his hopeless banishment from heaven, which oppress him with sad- ness for some moments, but he soon resumes his in- vincible spirit, and utters the impious but sublime sen- timent, " What matter where, if 7 be still the same." You remember how this effect of desertion is repre- sented in Charles de Moor.* His father's supposed * A wildly extravagant, certainly, but most imposing and gigan- tic character in Schilht's tragedy, The Robbers. 130 ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. cruel rejection consigned hiin irretrievably to the careei of atrocious enterprise, in whl:h, notwithstanding the most interesting emotions of humanity and tenderness, he persisted with heroic determination till he consider- ed his destiny as accomplished. Success tends considerably to remforce this com- manding quality. It is true that a man possessing it in a high degree will not lose it by occasional failure ; for if the failure was caused by something entirely beyond the reach of human knowledge and ability, he will remember that fortitude is the virtue required in meeting unfavourable events which in no sense depended on him ; if by something which might have been known and prevented, he will feel that even the experience of failure completes his competence, by ad- monishing his prudence, and enlarging his understand- ing. But as schemes and measures of action rightly adjusted to their proposed ends will generally attain them, continual failure would show something essen- tially wrong in a man's system, and destroy his confi- dence, or else expose it as mere absurdity or obstinacy. On the contrary, when a man has ascertained by ex periment the justness of his calculations and the extent of his powers, when he has measured his f^rce with various persons, when he has braved and vanquished difficulty, and partly seized the prize, he will carry for- ward the result of all this in an intrepid self-sufficiency for whatever may yet await him. In some men, whose lives have been spent in con- stant perils, continued success has. produced a confi- dence beyond its rational eflJect, by inspiring a presump- tion that the common laws of human affairs were, in their case, superseded by the decrees of a peculiar des- tiny, securing them from almost the possibility of dis« aster ; and this superstitious feeling, though it has dis- placed the unconquerable resolution from its rational CN DECISION OF CHARACTER 131 oasis, has often produced the most wonderful eiTects. This dictated Caesar's expression to the mariner who was terrified at the storm and billows, " What art thou afraid of? — thy vessel carries Caesar." The brave men in the times of the English Commonwealth were, some of them, indebted in a degree for their magna- nimity to this idea of a special destination, entertained as a religious sentiment. The wilfulness of an obstinate person is sometimes fortified by some single instance of remarkable success in his undertakings, which is promptly recalled in every case where his decisions are questioned or op- j)Osed, as a proof, or ground of just presumption, that he must in this instance too be right ; especially if that one success happened contrary to your predictions. I shall only add, and without illustration, that the habit of associating with inferiors^ among whom a man can always, and therefore does always, take the prece- dence and give the law, is conducive to a subordinate coarse kind of decision of character. You may see this exemplified any day in an ignorant country 'squire among his vassals ; especially if he wear the lordly superaddition of Justice of the Peace. In viewing the characters and actions of the men who have possessed in imperial eminence the quality which I have attempted to describe, one cannot but wish it were possible to know how much of this mighty superiority was created by the circumstances in which they were placed ; but it is inevitable to believe that there was some vast intrinsic difference from ordinary men in the original constitutional structure of the mind. In observing lately a man who appeared too vacant almost to think of a purpose, too indifferent to resolve upon it, and too sluggish to execute it if he had resolv- ed, I was distinctly struck with the idea of the dis- tance between him and Marius, of whom I happened 132 ON DECISION OF CHARACTEPw. to have been reailing; and it was infinitely beyond my power to believe that any circumstances on earth, though ever so perfectly combined and adapted, would have |-Toduced in this man, if placed under their full- est influence fmm his childhood, any resemblance (un- less perhaps the courage to enact a diminutive imitation in revenge and cruelty) of the formidable Roman. It is needless to discuss whether a person who is practically evinced, at the age of maturity, to want the stamina of this character, can, by any process, acquire it. Indeed such a person cannot have sufficient force of will to make the complete experiment. If there were the unconquerable will that would persist to seize all possible means, and apply them in order to attain, if I may so express it, this stronger mode of active exist- ence, it would prove the possession already of a high degree of the character sought ; and if there is not this willj how then is the supposed attainment possi- ble ? Yet though it is improbable that a very irresolute man can ever become a habitually decisive one, it should be observed, that since there are degrees of this powerful quality, and since the essential principles of it, when partially existing in those degrees, cannot be supposed subject to definite and ultimate limitation, like the dimension of the bodily stature, it might be possible to apply a discipline which should advance a man from the lowest degree to the next, from that to the third, and how much further — it will be worth his trying if his first successful experiments have not cost more in the efforts for making the attainment, than he judges likely to be repaid by any good he shall gain from its exercise. I have but a very imperfect conception of the discipline ; but will suggest a hint or two. In the first place, the indispensable necessity ol a ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 133 cleai and comprehensive knowledge of the concerns be- fore us, seems too obvious for remark ; and yet no man has been sufficiently sensible of it, till he has been placed in circumstances which forced him to act before he had time, or after he had made ineffectual efibrts, to obtain the needful information and understanding. The pain of having brought things to an unfortunate issue, is hardly greater than that of proceeding in the conscious ignorance which continually threatens such an issue. While thus proceeding at hazard, under some compulsion which makes it impossible for him to remain in inaction, a man looks round for information as eagerly as a benighted wanderer would for the light of a human dwelling. He perhaps labours to recall what he thinks he once heard or read as relating to a similar situation, without dreaming at that time that such instruction could ever come to be of importance to him ; and is distressed to find his best recollection so indistinct as to be useless. He would give a consider- able sum, if some particular book could be brought to him at the instant ; or a certain document which he believes to be in existence ; or the detail of a process, the terms of a prescription, or the model of an imple- ment. He thinks how many people know, without its being of any present use to them, exactly what could be of such important service to him, if he could know it. In some cases, a line, a sentence, a monosyllable of affirming or denying, or a momentary sight of an object, would be inexpressibly valuable and welcome. And he resolves that if he can once happily escape from the present difficulty, he will apply himself day and night to obtain knowledge, not concerning one particular matter only, but divers others, in provision agamst possible emergencies, rather than be so involv- ed and harassed again. It might really be of service to have been occasionally forced to act under the dis* 12 134 ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. advantage of conscious ignorance (if the affair was not BO important as to allow the consequence to be very injurious), as an effectual lesson on the necessity of knowledge in order to decision either of plan or exe- cution, P must indeed be an extreme case that will compel a cg nsiderate man to act in the absence of know- ledge ; yet he may sometimes be necessitated to pro- ceed to action, when he is sensible his information is far from extending to the whole of the concern in which he is going to commit himself And in this case, he will feel no little uneasiness, while transacting that part of it in which his knowledge is competent, when he looks forward to the point where that knowledge ter- minates ; unless he be conscious of possessing an ex- ceedingly prompt faculty of catching information at the moment that he wants it for use ; as Indians set out on a long journey with but a trifling stock of pro- vision, because they are sure that their bows or guns will procure it by the way. It is one of the nicest points of wisdom to decide how much less than complete knowledge, in any question of practical interest, will warrant a man to venture on an undertaking, in the presumption that the deficiency will be supplied in time to prevent either perplexity or disaster. A thousand familiar instances show the effect of complete knowledge on determination. An artisan may be said to be decisive as to the mode of working a piece of iron or wood, because he is certain of the proper process and the effect. A man perfectly ac- quainted with the intricate paths of a woodland district, takes the right one without a moment's hesitation ; while a stranger, who has only some very vague infor- mation, is lost in perplexity. It is easy to imagine what a number of circumstances may occur in the course of a life or even of a y 3ar, in which a man cannot thus read- ilv determme, and thus confidently proceed without a ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 135 compass and an exactness of knowledge which few persons have application enough to acquire. And it would be frightful to know to what extent human interests are committed to the direction of ignorance. What a consolatory doctrine is that of a particular Providence ! In connexion with the necessity of knowledge, I would suggest the importance of cultivating, with the utmost industry, a conclusive manner of thinking. In the first place, let the general course of thinking partake of the nature of reasoning; and let it be remembered that this name does not belong to a series of thoughts and fancies which follow one another without deduction or dependence, and which can there- fore no more bring a subject to a proper issue, than a number of separate links will answer the mechanical purpose of a chain. The conclusion which terminates such a series, does not deserve the name of result or conclusion^ since it has little more than a casual con- nexion with what went before ; the conclusion might as properly have taken place at an earlier point of the train, or have been deferred till that train had been extended much further. Instead of having been busily smployed in this kind of thinking, for perhaps many hours, a man might possibly as well have been sleeping all the time ; since the single thought which is now to determine his conduct, might have happened to be the first thought that occurred to him on awaking. It only happens to occur to him now ; it does not follow from what he has been thinking these hours ; at least, ho cannot prove that some other thought might not just as appropriately have come in its place at the end, and to make an end, of this long series. It is easy to see how feeble that determination is likely to be, which is formed on so narrow a ground as the last ac(;idental idea that comes into the mind^ or on so loose a ground 136 ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. as this crude uncombined assemblage of ideas. Indeed it is difficult to form a determination at all on such slight ground. A man delays, and waits for some more satisfactory thought to occur to him ; and perhaps he has not waited long, before an idea arises in his mind of a quite contrary tendency to the last. As this addi- tional idea is not, more than that which preceded it, the result of any process of reasoning, nor brings with it any arguments, it may be expected to give place soon to another, and still another ; and they are all in suc- cession of equal authority, that is properly of none. If at last an idea occurs to him which seems of consid- erable authority, he may here make a stand, and adopt his resolution, with firmness, as he thinks, and com- mence the execution. But still, if he cannot see whence the principle which has determined him derives its authority — on what it holds for that authority — his resolution is likely to prove treacherous and evanescent in any serious trial. A principle so little verified by sound reasoning, is not terra firma for a man to trust himself upon ; it is only as a slight incrustation on a yielding element ; it is like the sand compacted into a thin surface on the lake Serbonis, which broke away under the unfortunate army which had begun to ad- vance on it, mistaking it for solid ground. — These re- marks may seem to refer only to a single instance of deliberation ; but they are equally applicable to all the deliberations and undertakings of a man's life ; the same connected manner of thinking, which is so ne- cessary to give firmness of determination and of con- duct in a particular instance, will, if habitual greatly contribute to form a decisive character. Not only should thinking be thus reduced, by a strong and patient discipline, to a train or process, in which all the parts at once depend upon and support one another, but also this train should be followed on t»N DECISION OF CHAR\crER. 137 to a full conclusion. It should be held as a law gen- i^rally in force, that the question must be disposed of before it is let alone. The mind may carry on this accurate process to some length, and then stop through indolence, or start away through levity ; but it car, never possess that rational confidence in its opinions which is requisite to the character in question, till it is conscious of acquiring them from an exercise of thought continued on to its result. The habit of thinking thus completely is indispensable to the general charac- ter of decision ; and in any particular instance, it is found that short pieces of courses of reasoning, though correct as far as they go, are inadequate to make a man master of the immediate concern. They are be- sides of little value for aid to future thinking ; because from being left thus incomplete they are but slightly retained by the mind, and soon sink away ; in the same manner as the walls of a structure left unfinished speedily moulder. After these remarks, I should take occasion to ob- serve, that a vigorous exercise of thought may some- times for a while seem to increase the difficulty of de- cision, by discovering a great number of unthought-of reasons for a measure and against it, so that the most discriminating mind may, during a short space, find itself in the state of the magnetic needle under the equator. But no case in the world can really have a perfect equality of opposite reasons ; nor will it long appear to have it, in the estimate of a clear and well- disciplined intellect, which after some time will ascer- tain, though the difference is small, which side of the question has ten, and which has but nine. At any rate, this is the mind to come nearest in the approximation. Another thing that would powerfully assist toward complete decision, both in the particular instance, and in the general spirit of the chatacter. is for a man to 12* 138 ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. place himself in a situation analogous to that in which CjEsar placed his soldiers, when he burnt the ships which brought them to land. If his judgment is really decided, let him commit himself irretrievably, by doing something which shall oblige him to do more, which shall lay on him the necessity of doing all. If a man resolves as a general intention to be a philanthropist, I would say to him, Form some actual ^lan of philanthropy, and begin the execution of it to- morrow, (if I may not say to-day^) so explicitly, that you cannot relinquish it without becoming degraded even in your own estimation. If a man would be a hero, let him, if it be possible to find a good cause in. arms, go presently to the camp. If a man is desirous of a travelling adventure through distant countries, and deliberately approves both his purpose and his scheme, let him actually prepare to set off Let him not still dwell, in imagination, on mountains, rivers, and temples ; but give directions about his remittances, his personal equipments, or the carriage, or the vessel, in which he is to go. Ledyard surprised the official person who asked him how soon he could be ready to set off for the interior of Africa, by replying promptly nnd firmly, " To-morrow." Again, it is highly conducive to a manly firmness, that the interests in which it is exerted should be of a dignified order, so as to give the passions an ample scope, and a noble object. The degradation they suf- fer in being devoted to mean and trivial pursuits, ofteri perceived to be such in spite of every fallacy of the imagination, would in general, I should think, also de bilitate their energy, and therefore preclude strength of character, to which nothing can be more adverse, than to have the fire of the passions damped by the mortification of feehng contempt for the object, as often ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 13^1 as its meanness is betrayed by failure of the delusio ^ which invests it. And finally, I would repeat that one should think ^ man's own conscientious approbation of his conduc must be of vast importance to his decision in the outset^ and his persevering constancy; and I would attribute it to defect of memory that a greater proportion of the examples, introduced for illustration in this essay, do not exhibit goodness in union with the moral and intel- lectual power so conspicuous in the quality described. Certainly a bright constellation of such examples might be displayed ; yet it is the mortifying truth that much the greater number of men pre-eminent for decision, have been such as could not have their own serioua approbation, except through an utter perversion of judgment or abolition of conscience. And it is melari!- choly to contemplate beings represented in our imagi- nation as of adequate power, (when they possessed great external means to give effect to the force of their minds,) for the grandest utility, for vindicating each good cause which has languished in a world adverse to all goodness, and for intimidating the collective vice5 of a nation or an age — to contemplate such beings as becoming themselves the mighty exemplars, giants, and champions of those vices ; and it is fearful to fol- low them in thought, from this region, of which not all the powers and difficulties and inhabitants together could have subdued their adamantine resolution, to the Supreme Tribunal where that esolution must tremble and melt away. ESSAY III ON THE APPLICATION OF THE EPITHET ROMANTIC. LETTER I. A THOUGHTFUL judge of Sentiments, books, and men will often find reason to regret that the language of censure is so easy and so undefined. It costs no la- bour, and needs no intellect, to pronounce the words, foolish, stupid, dull, odious, absurd, ridiculous. The weakest or most uncultivated mind may therefore gratify its vanity, laziness, and malice, all at once, by a prompt application of vague condemnatory words, where a wise and liberal man would not feel himself warranted to pronounce without the most deliberate consideration, and where such consideration might per haps result in applause. Thus excellent performances, in the department of thinking or of action, might be consigned to contempt, if there were no better judges, on the authority of those who could not so much as understand tLem. A man who wishes some decency and sense to prevail in the circulation of opinions, will do well, when he hears these decisions of ignorant ar- ^•ogance, to call for a precise explication of the manner in which the terms of the verd'ct apply to the subject. There is a competent number of words for this use of cheap censure ; but though a man doubts not he is giving a tolerable proof of sagac.ty in the confident THE EPITHET ROMANTIC. 141 readiness to cimdemn, even with this impotence of lan- guage, he may however have an irksome conscious- ness that there is wanting to him a certain dexterity of biting expression that would do more mischief than the words dull, stupid, and ridiculous, which he is re- peating many times to compensate for the incapacity of hitting off the right thing at once. These vague epithets describe nothing, discriminate nothing ; they express no species, are as applicable to ten thousand" things as to this one, and he has before employed them on a numberless diversity of subjects. He has a fret- ted feeling of this their inefficiency; and can perceive that censure or contempt has the smartest effect, when its expressions have a special cast which fits them more peculiarly to the present subject than to another ; and he is therefore secretly dissatisfied in uttering the ex- pressions which say " about it and about it," but do not say the thing itself; which showing his good will betray his deficient power. He wants words and phrases which would make the edge of his clumsy meaning fall just where it ought. Yes, he wants words ; for his meaning is sharp, he knows, if only the words would come. Discriminative censure must be conveyed, either by a marked expression of thought in a sentence, or by an epithet or other term so specifically appropriate, that the single word is sufficient to fix the condemnation by the mere precision with which it describes. But as the censurer perhaps cannot succeed in either of these ways, he is willing to seek some other resource. And he may often find it in cant terms, which have a more spite- ful force, and seem to have more particularity of mean- ing, than plain common w^ords, while yet needing no shrewdness for their application. Each of these is sup- posed to denominate some one class or character of scorned or reprobated things, but so little defines it, 1 42 ON THE APPLICATION OF .hat duil malice may venture to assign to the class any thing which it would desire to throw under the odium of the denomination. Such words serve for a mode of collective execution, somewhat like the vessels which, in a season of outrage in a neighbouring country, re- ceived a promiscuous crowd of reputed criminals, of unexamined and dubious similarity, and were then sunk in the flood. You cannot wonder that such compendious words of decision, which can give quick vent to crude impatient censure, emit plenty of antipa- thy in ^ few syllables, and save the condemner the difficulcy of telling exactly what he wants to mean, should have had an extensive circulation. Puritan was, doubtless, welcomed as a term most luckily invented or revived, when it began to be appli- ed in contempt to a class of men of whom the world was not worthy. Its odd peculiarity gave it almost such an advantage as that of a proper name among the lumber of common words by which they were described and reviled : while yet it meant any thing, every thing, which the vain world disliked in the devout and con- scientious character. To the more sluggish it saved, and to the more loquacious it relieved, the labour of endlessly repeating "demure rogues," " sanctimonious pretenders," " formal hypocrites." The abusive faculty of this word has long been ex- tinct, and left it to become a grave and almost vener- able term in history ; but some word of a similar cast was indispensably necessary to the vulgar of both kinds. The vain and malignant spirit which had decried the elevated piety of the Puritans, sought about (as Milton describes the wicked one in Paradise) for some con- venient form in which it might again come forth to hiss at zealous Christianity ; and in another lucky moment tell on the term Methodist. If there is no sense in the *»^ord, as now applied, there seems, however, to be a THE KPITHET ROMANTIC. 143 great deal of aptitude and execution. It has the advan- tage of being comprehensive as a general denomination, and yet opprobrious as a special badge, for every thing that ignorance and folly may mistake for fanaticism, or that malice may wilfully assign to it. Whenever a formalist feels it his duty to sneer at those opera- tions of religion on the passions, by which he has never been disturbed, he has only to call them methodistical ; and though the word be both so trite and so vague, he feels as if he had uttered a good pungent thing. There is a satiric smartness in the word, though there be none in the man. In default of keen faculty in the mind, it is delightful thus to find something that will do as well, ready bottled up in odd terms. It is not less convenient to a profligate, or a coxcomb, whose propriety of char- acter is to be supported by laughing indiscriminately dt religion in every form ; the one, to evince that his courage is not sapped by conscience, the other, to make the best advantage of his instinct of catching at impiety as a compensative substitute for sense. The word Methodism so readily sets aside all religion as super- stitious folly, that they pronounce it with an air as if no more needed to be said. Such terms have a pleas- ant facility of throwing away the matter in question to scorn, without any trouble of making a definite intelli- gible charge of extravagance or delusion, and attempt- ing to prove it. In politics, Jacobinism has, of late years, been the brand by which all sentiments referring to the principles of liberty, in a way to censure the measures of the ascendent party in the State, have been sentenced to execration. What a quantity of noisy zeal would have been quashed in dead silence, if it had been possible tc enforce the substitution of statements and definitions for this vulgar, senseless, but most efficacious term of reproach I What a number of persons have vented the 44 ON THE APPLICATION OF superabundance of their loyalty, or their rancour, by means of this and two or three similar words, who, if by some sudden lapse of memory they had lost these two or three words and a few names of persons, would have locked round with an idiotic vacancy, totally at a loss what was the subject of their anger or their approbation. One may here catch a glimpse of the policy of men of a superior class, in employing these terms as much as the vulgar, in order to keep them in active currency. If a rude populace, whose understandings they despise, and do not wish to improve, could not be excited and kept up to loyal animosity, but by means of a clear comprehension of what they were to oppose, and of the reasons why, a political party would have but feebl© hold on popular zeal, and might vociferate, and intrigue, and fret itself to nothing. But if a single word, devised in hatred and defamation of political liberty, can b@ made the symbol of all that is absurd and execrable, so that the very sound of it shall irritate the passions of this ignorant and scorned multitude, as dogs have been taught to bark at the name of a neighbouring tyrant, it is a commodious expedient for rendering these passions available and subservient to the interests of those who despise, while they cajole, their duped aux- iliaries. The popular passions are the imps and de- mons of the political conjuror, and he can raise them, as other conjurors affect to do theirs, by terms of gib- berish.* The epithet romantic has obviously no similarity to these words in its coinage, but it is considerably like ♦ It is curious that, within no long time after this was first printed, the terms jacobin and jacobinism became completely worn out and obsolete. It is not worth a guess how long the term rocfi- cal, to which the duty of the defunct ones was transferred, may continue of any service against the doctrines and persons of refo^ mists. THE EPITHET ROMANTIC 145 iheni in the mode aod effect of its applictition. F(U' having partly quitted the rank of plain epiihets, it has become a convenient exploding word, of more special deriding significance than the other words of its order, such as wild, extravagant, visionary. It is a standard expression of contemptuous despatch, which you have often heard pronounced with a very self-complacent air, that said, "How much wiser I am than some people," by the indolent and inanimate on what they would not acknowledge practicable, by the apes of prudence on what,they accounted foolishly adventurous, and by the slaves of custom on what startled them as singular. The class of absurdities which it denominates is left so undefined, that all the views and sentiments which a narrow cold mind could not like or understand in an ample and fervid one, might be referred thither ; and yet the word 5^^m5,or assumes, to discriminate their character so conclusively as to put them out of argu- ment. With this cast of sapience and vacancy of sense, it is allowed to depreciate without being accountable; it has the license of a parrot to call names without be- ing taxed with insolence. And when any sentiments are decisively stigmatised with this denomination, it would require considerable courage to attempt their rescue and defence ; since the imputation which the epi- thet fixes on them will pass upon the advocate ; and he may expect to be himself enrolled among the heroes of whom Don Quixote is from time immemorial the com- mander-in-chief. At least he may be assigned to that class which occupies a dubious frontier space between the rational and the insane. If, however, the suggestions and sketches which I had endeavoured to exhibit as interesting and practi- cable, were attempted to be turned into vanity and "thin air'» by the enunciation of this epithet, I would say, Pray now what do you mean by romantic? Have 13 146 ON itIE APPLICATION OF you, as you pronounce it, any precise conception in your mind, which you can give in some other words, and then distinctly fix the charge 1 Or is this a word, which because it is often used in some sut;h way as you now use it, may be left to tell its own meaning better than the speaker knows how to explain it? Or perhaps you mean, that the notions which I am ex- pressing recall to your mind, as kindred ideas, the fan tastic images of Romance ; and that you cannot help thinking of enchanted castles, encounters with giants, solemn exorlled power, and its victory over so- 14 ^58 Oi\ THE APPLICATION OF ber reason, f remember, for example, a person, very young I confess, who was so enchanted with the stories of Gregory Lopez, and one or two more pious hermits, as almost to form the resolution to betake himself to some wilderness and live as Gregory did. At any time, the very word hermit was enough to transport him, like the witch's broomstick, to the solitary hut, which was delightfully surrounded by shady solemn groves, mossy rocks, crystal streams, and gardens of radishes. While this fancy lasted, he forgot the most obvious of all facts, that man is not made for habitual solitude, nor can endure it without misery, except when transform- ed into a genuine superstitious ascetic ; — questionable whether even then.* Contrary to human nature, is the proper description of those theories of education, and those flatteries of parental hope, which presume that young people in general maybe matured to eminent wisdom, and adorn- ed with the universality of noble attainments, by the period at which in fact the intellectual faculty is but beginning to operate with any thing like clearness and sustained force. Because some individuals, remarkable exceptions to the natural character of youth, have in their very childhood advanced beyond the youthful giddiness and debility of reason, and have displayed, at the age perhaps of twenty, a wonderful assemblage of all the strong and all the graceful endowments, it there- fore only needs a proper system of education to make other young people, (at least those of my family, the parent thinks,) be no longer what nature has always * Lopez indeed was often visited by pious persons who sought his instructions ; this was a great modification of the lonehness, and of the trial involved in enduring it; but my hermit was fond of the idea of an uninhabited island, or of a wilderness so deep that these good people would not have been able to come at him, with- out a more formidable pilgrimage than was ever yet made for the sake of obtaining instruction. THE EPITHET ROMANTIC 159 made youth to be. Let this be adopted, and we shall Bee multitudes at that age possessing the judgment of sages, or the diversified acquirements and graces of all-accompHshed gentlemen and ladies. And what, pray, are the beings which are to become, by the dis- cipline of ten or a dozen years, such finished examples of various excellence 1 Not, surely, these boys here, that love nothing so much as tops, marbles and petty mischief — and those girls, that have yet attained but few ideas beyond the dressing of dolls ? Yes, even these ! The same charge of being unadapted to man, falls on the speculations of those philosophers and philan- thropists, who have eloquently displayed the happiness, and asserted the practicability, of something near an equality of property and modes of life throughout socie- ty. Those who really anticipated or projected the prac- tical trial of the system, must have forgotten on what planet those apartments were built, or those arbours were growing, in which they were favoured with such visions. For in these visions they beheld the ambition of one part of the inhabitants, the craft or audacity of an- other, the avarice of another, the stupidity or indolence of another, and the selfishness of almost all, as mere adventitious faults, super-induced on the character of the species, and instantly flying off at the approach of better institutions, which shall prove, to the confusion of all the calumniators of human nature, that nothinof is so congenial to it as industry, moderation, and disin- terestedness. It is at the same time but just to acknow- ledge, that many of them have admitted the necessity of such a grand transformation as to make man another being previously/ to the adoption of the system. This is "all very well: when the proper race of men shall come from Utopia, the system and polity may very properly come along with them ; or these sketches of 160 ON THB APPLICATION OF it, prepared for them by us, may be carefully preservea here, in volumes more precious than those of the Sib- yls, against their arrival. Till then, the sober observers of the human character will read these beautiful theo- ries as romances, offering the fairest game for sarcasm in their splenetic hours when they are disgusted with human nature, and infusing melancholy in their benev- olent ones, when they look on it with a commiserating and almost desponding sentiment. The character of the age of chivalry presents itself conspicuously among this class of illustrations. One of its most prominent distinctions was, an immense in- congruity with the simplest principles of human nature. For instance, in the concern of love : a generous young man became attached to an interesting young woman — interesting as he believed, from having once seen her ; for probably he never heard her speak. His heart would naturally prompt him to seek access to the object whose society, it told him, would make him happy ; and if in a great measure debarred from that society, he would surrender himself to the melting mood of the passion, in the musings of pensive retire- ment. But this was not the way. He must exile himself for successive years from her society and vi- cinity, and every soft indulgence of feeling, and rush boldly into all sorts of hardships and perils, deeming no misfortune so great as not to find constant occasions of hazarding his life among the roughest foes, or, if he could find or fancy them, the strangest monsters ; and all this, not as the alleviation of despair, but as the court- ship of hope. And when he was at length betrayed to flatter himself that such a probation, through every kind of patience and danger, might entitle him to throw his trophies and himself at her imperial feet, it was very possible she might be affronted at his having presumed to be still alive. It is unnecessary to refer THE EPITHET K-OMANTIC. IGl to the other parts of the institution of chivalry, the whole system of which would seem more adapted to any race of beings exhibited in the Arabian Nights, or to any still wilder creation of fancy, than to a commu nity of creatures, appointed to live by cultivating the soil, anxious to avoid pain and trouble, seeking the re- ciprocation of affection on the easiest terms, and near- est to happiness in regular pursuits and quiet domestic life. One cannot help reflecting here, how amazingly ac- commodating this human nature has been to all insti- tutions but wise and good ones; insomuch that an or- der of life and manners conceived in the wildest devia- tion from all plain sense and native instinct, could be practically adopted, by some of those who had rank and courage enough, and adored and envied by the rest of mankind. Still, the genuine tendencies of na- ture have survived the strange but transient sophistica- tions of time, and remain the same after the age of chivalry is gone far toward that oblivion, to which you will not fail to wish that many other institutions might speedily follow it. Forgive the prolixity of these illus- trations intended to show, that schemes and specula- tions respecting the interests either of an individual or of society, which are inconsistent with the natural con- stitution of man, may, except where it should be rea- sonable to expect some supernatural intervention, be denominated romantic. The tendency to this species of romance, may be caused, or very greatly promoted, by an exclusive taste for what is grand^ a disease with which some few minds are affected. They have no pleasure in con- templating the system of things as the Creator has or- dered it, a combination of great and little, in which the great is much more dependent on the l.ittlp.j than the little on the great. The}'' cut out the grecuniary interest. At least the guilt v^^ould so have remained up«n the na- tion acting in its capacity of a state. — This note is added «:ubse- quently to the first edition. — It may be subjoined, in quaJiiication of the reproach relative to the next article, — the condition of the poor, — that during a later period there has been an increase of the attention and exertion directed to that condition ; which has, never- theless, become worse and worse. * It is obvious that I am not supposing this moral revolutionia to be armed with any power but that of persuasion. If he weie k monarch, and possessed virtue and talents equa» to his power, th* niE EPITHET ROMANTIC. 185 /ence, make him sad. He will repeat to himself, " How easy it is to conceive these inestimable improve- ments, and how nobly they would exalt my species ; but how to work them into the actual condition of man ! — Are there somewhere in possibility," he will ask, " intellectual and moral engines mighty enough to per- form the great process ? Where in darkness is the sacred repository in which they lie ? What Marraton* shall explore the miknown way to it ? The man whc would not as part of the price of the discovery, be glad to close up all the transatlantic mines, would de- serve to be immured as the last victim of those deadly caverns." But each projecting visionary thinks the discovery is made; and while surveying his own great maga- zine of expedients, consisting of Fortunatus's cap, the philosopher's stone, Aladdin's lamp, and other equally efficient articles, he is confident that the work may speedily be done. These powerful instruments of me- lioration perhaps lose their individual names under the general denomination of Philosophy, a term that would be venerable, if it could be rescued from the misfortune of being haclvueyed into cant, and from serving the impiety which substitutes human ability to divine pow- er. But it is of little consequence what denomination the projectors assume to themselves or their schemes : it is by their fruits that we shall know them. Their work is before them ; the scene of moral disorder pre- sents to them the plagues which they are to stop, the mountain which they are to remove, the torrent which they are to diveu, the desert which they are to clothe case would be materially different. Even then, he would accom- plish but little compared with what he could imagine, and would desire; yet, to all human appearance, he might be the instrument of wonderfully changing the condition of society within his em- pire. If the soul of Alfred could return to the earth ! — • Spectator, No. 5G. 1^* >86 OS Till:; AI'PLILAT'ON OF iii verdure and bloom. Let them make their experi- ment, and add each liis jage to the humiliating records in which experience contemns the foll}'^ of elated im- agination.* * la reading lately some part of a tolerably well-written book published a few years since, I came to the following passage, which though in connexion indeed with the subject of eZecj! ions, expresses the author's general opinion of the state of society, and of the means of exalting it to wisdom and virtue. "The bulk of the commu- nity begin to examine, to feel, to understand, their rights and duties. They ordy require the fostering care of the Philosopher to ripen them into complete rationality, and furnish them with the requisites of political and moral action." Here I paused in won- dering mood. The fostering care of the Philosopher ! Why then is not the philosopher about his business 1 Why does he not go and indoctrinate a company of peasants in the intervals of a plough- ing or a harvest day, when he will find them far more eager for his instructions than for drink '? Why docs he not introduce himself among a circle oi' ^'irmers, who cannot fail, as he enters, to be very ju- diciously discussiri ;, with the aid of their punch and their pipes, the most refined questions respecting their rights and duties, and want- ing but exactly his aid, instead of viore punch and tobacco, to pos- sess themselves completely of the requisites of political and moral action 7 The populace of a manufactory, is another most promising seminary, where all the moral and intellectual endowments are so nearly " ripe," that he will seem less to have the task of cultivating than the pleasure of reaping. Even among the company in the ale-house, though the Philosopher might at first be sorry, and might wonder, to perceive a slight merge of the moral part of the man in the sensual, and to find in so vociferous a mood that inquiring reason which, he had supposed, would be waiting for him with the silent anxious docility of.a pupil of Pythagoras, yet he would find a most powerful predisposition to truth and virtue, and there would be every thing to hope from the accuracy of his logic, the compre- hensiveness of his views, and the beauty of his moral sentiments. But perhaps it will be explained, that the Philosopher dotes on mean to visit all these people in person; but that having first se- cured the source of influence, having taken entire possession of princes, nobility, gentry, and clergy, which he expects to do in a very short time, he will manage them like an electrical machine, to operate on the bulk of the community. Either way the achieve- ment will be great and admirable : the latter event seems to have THE EPITHET ROMANTIC. 187 All the speculations and schemes x»f the sanguine projectors of all ages, have left the world still a prey- to infinite legions of vices and miseries, an immortal band, which has trampled in scorn on the monuments and the dust of the self-idolizing men, who dreamed, each in his day, that they were born to chase these evils out of the earth. If these vain demigods of an hour, who trusted to change the world, and who per- haps wished to change it only to make it a temple to their fame, could be awaked from the unmarked graves into which they sunk, to look a little while round on the scene for some traces of the success of their projects, would they not be eager to retire again into the cham- bers of death, to hide the shame of their remembered presumption? The wars and tyranny, the rancour, cruelty and revenge, together with all the other un- numbered vices and crimes with which the earth is still infested, are enough, if the whole mass could be brought within one section of the inhabited world, of the extent of a considerable kingdom, to constitute its whole population literally infernal, all but their being incarnate ; which last they would soon, through mutual destruction, cease to be. Hitherto the power of the rad- ical cause of these many forms of evil, the corruption of the human heart, has sported with the weakness, or seduced the strength, of all human contrivances to sub- due them. Nor are there as yet more than glimmer- ing signs that we are commencing a better era, in which the means that have failed before, or the expe dients of a new and more fortunate invention, are ap- pointed to victory and triumph. The nature of man still " casts ominous oonjecture on the whole success." While that is corrupt, it will pervert even the v^ry schemes and operations by which the world should be been predicted in that sibylline sentence. "When the sky falls wt •hall catch lark&" 188 ON THE APPLICATION OF improved, thoifgh their first principles were pure «u heaven. The innate principle of evil, instead of indif- ferently letting them alone, to work what good they can, will put forth a stupendous force to compel them into subserviency ; so that revolutions, great discoveries, augmented science, and new forms of polity, shall be- come in effect what may be denominated the sublime mechanics of depravity. LETTER V. This view of moral and philosophical projects, added to that of the limited exertion of energy which the Al- mighty has made to attend, as yet, the dispensation of true religion, and accompanied with the consideration of the impotence of human efforts to make that dispen- sation efficacious where his will does not, forms a mel- ancholy and awful contemplation. In the hours when it casts its gloom over the mind of the thoughtful ob- server, unless he can fully resign the condition of man to the infinite wisdom and goodness of his Crearor, he will feel an emotion of horror, as if standing on the verge of a hideous gulf, into which almost all the pos- sibilities, and speculations, and efforts, and hopes, rela- ting to the best improvements of mankind, are brought down by the torrent of ages, in a long abortive series, to be lost in final despair. To an atheist of enlarged sensibility, if there could be such a man, how dark and hideous, beyond all power of description, must be th^ long review and the undefinable prospect of this triumph of evil, unaccom- panied, as it must be presented to his thoughts, by any sublime process of intelligent power, converting, iii some manner unknown to mortai-s, this evil into good, THE EPITHET ROMANTIC. 189 either during- the course or in the result. A devout theistj when he becomes sad amidst his contemplations, recovers a submissive tranquillity, by reverting to his assurance of such a wise and omnipotent sovereignty and agency. As a believer in revelation, he is con- soled by the confidence both that this dark train of evils will ultimately issue in transcendent brightness, and that the evil itself in this world will at a future period almost cease. He is persuaded that the Great Spirit, who presides over this mysterious scene, has an energy of influence yet in reserve to beam forth on the earth, such as its inhabitants have never, except in a few momentary glimpses, beheld ; and that when the predestined period is completed for his kingdom to come, he will command this chaos of turbulent and malignant elements to become transformed into a fair and happy moral world. And is it not strange, my dear friend, to observe how carefully some philosophers, who deplore the con- dition of the world, and profess to expect its melio- ration, keep their speculations clear of every idea of divine interposition ? No builders of houses or cities were ever more attentive to guard against the access of flood or fire. If He should but touch their pro- spective theories of improvement, they would renounce them, as defiled and fit only for vulgar fanaticism. Their system of Providence would be profaned by the intrusion of the Almighty. Man is to effect an apo- theosis for himself, by the hopeful process of exhaust- ing his corruptions. And should it take a long series of ages, vices, and woes, to reach this glorious attain- ment, patience may sustain itself the while by the thought that when it is realized, it will be burdened with no duty of religious gratitude. No time is too long to wait, no cost too deep to incur, for the triumph of proving that we have no need of a Divinity, re- 190 ON THE iirFLICATION OF garded as possessing that one attribute which makes it delightful to acknowledge such a Being, the benevo- lence that would make us happ}'-. But even if this noble self-sufnciency cannot be realized, the indepen- dence of spirit which has laboured for it must not sink at last into piety. This afflicted world, " this poor ter- restrial citadel of man," is to lock its gates, and keci its miseries, rather than admit the degradation of ru ceiving help from God. I wish it were not true that even men who firmly believe in the general doctrine of the divine govern- ment of the world, are often betrayed into the impiety of attaching an excessive importance to human agen- cy m its events. How easily a creature of their own species is transformed by a sympathetic pride into a God before them ! If what they deem the cause of truth and justice, advances with a splendid front of dis- tinguished names of legislators, or patriots, or martial heroes, it must then and must therefore triumph ; nothing can withstand such talents, accompanied by the zeal of so many faithful adherents. If these shining msects of fame are crushed, or sink into the despicable reptiles of corruption, alas, then, for the cause of truth and justice 1 All this while, there is no due reference to the " Blessed and only Potentate." If, however, the foundations of their religious faith have not been sha- ken, and they possess any docility to the lessons of time, they will after awhile be taught to withdraw their dependence and confidence from all subordinate agents, and habitually regard the Supreme Being as the sole possessor of real and absolute power. Perhaps it is not improbable, that the grand moral improvements of a future age may be accomplished in a manner that shall leave nothing to man but humil- ity and grateful adoration. His pride so obstinately ascribes to himself whatever good is effected on the THE EPITHET ROMANTIC. 191 globe, that perhaps the Deity will evince his own interposition, by events as evidently independent of the might of man as the rising of the sun. It may be that some of them may take place in a manner but little connected even with human operation. Or if the activity of men shall be employed as the means of producing all of them, there will probably be as palpable a disproportion between the instruments ana the events, as there was between the rod of Moses and the amazing phasnomena which followed when it was stretched forth. No Israelite was foolish enough to ascribe to the rod the power that divided the sea ; nor will the witnesses of the moral wonders to come at- tribute them to man. " Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts." I hope these extended observations will not appear like an attempt to exhibit the whole stock of means, as destitute of all value, and the industrious application of them as a labour without reward. It is not to depreciate a thing, if, in the attempt to ascertain its real magnitude, it is proved to be little. It is no in- justice to mechanical powers, to say that slender ma- chines will not move rocks and massive timbers; nor to chemical ones, to assert that though an earthquake may fling a promontory from its basis, the explosion of a canister of gunpowder H'ill not. — Between moral forces also, and the objects to which they are to be ap- plied, there are constituted measures of proportion ; and it would seem an obvious principle of good sense, that an estimate moderately correct of the value of each of our means according to those measures, as far as they can be ascertained, should precede every appli- cation of them. Such an estimate has no place in a mind under the ascendency of imagination, which, tlierefore, by extravagantly magnifying the virtue of its means, inflates its projects with hopes which may 192 ON THE APPLICATION OF justly be called romantic. The best corrective of such irrational expectation is an appeal to experience. There is an immense record of experiments, which will assign the force of almost all the engines, as worked by human hands, in the whole moral magazine. And if a man expects any one of them to produce a greater effect than ever before, it must be because the talents of him that repeats the trial are believed to transcend those of all former experimenters, or else because the season appears more auspicious. The estimate of the power of means, which comes in answer to the appeal to experience, is indeed most humiliating ; but what then ? It is a humble thing to be a man. The feebleness of means is, in fact, the feebleness of him that employs them ; for instruments to all human apprehension the most inconsiderable, can produce the most prodigious effects when wielded by celestial powers. Till, then, the time shall arrive for us to attain a nobler rank of existence, we must be content to work on the present level of our nature, and effect that little which we can effect ; unless it be greater magnanimity and piety to resolve that because our powers are limited to do only little things, they shall therefore, as if in revenge for such an economy, do nothing. Our means will do something ; that something is what they were meant to be adequate to in our hands, and not some indefinitely greater effect, which we may all be tempted to wish, and which a sanguine visionary confidently expects. This disproportion between the powers and means with which mortals are confined to work, and the great objects which good men would desire to accomplish, is a part of the appointments of Him who determined all the relations in the universe ; and he will see to the consequences. For the present, he seems to say to his servants, " Forbear to inquire why so small a part of THE EPITHET ROMANTIC. 193 ©bjcots to which I have summoned your activity, is placed »^'ithin the reach of your powers. "Your fee- ble abilit> for action is not accompanied by such a ca- pacity of understanding, as would be requisite to com- prehend ivhy that ability was made no greater. Though it had been made incomparably greater, would tht re not still have been objects before it too vast for it« operation ? Must not the highest of created beings stiU have something in view, which they feel they can but partially accomplish till the sphere of their active force be enlarged ? Must there not be an end of improvement in my creation, if the powers of my creatures had become perfectly equal to the mag- nitude of their designs ? How mean must be the spirit of that being that would not make an effort now^ toward the accomplishment of something higher than he will be able to accomplish till hereafter. Because mightier labourers would have been requisite to effect all that you wish, will you murmur that I have hon- oured you, the inferior ones, with the appointment of making a noble exertion with however limited success? If there is but little power in your hands, is it not be- cause I retain the power in mine ? Are you afraid lest that power should fail to do all things right, only be- cause you are so little made its instruments'? Be grateful that all the work is not to be done without you, and that God employs you in that in which he also is employed. But remember, that while the em ployment is yours, the success is altogether his ; and that your diligence therefore, and not the measure of effect which it produces, will be the test of your char- acters. Good men have been employed in all ages under the same economy of inadequate means, and what appeared to them inconsiderable success. Go to your labours: every sincere effort will infallibly be one step more in your own progress to a perfect state ; 17 194 ON THE APPLICATION OP and as to the Cause, when I see it necessary for a God to interpose in his own manner, I will come. ' I might deem a train of observations of the melancholy hue which shades some of the latter pages of this essay of too depressive a tendency, were I not convinced that a serious exhibition of the feebleness of human agency in relation to ail great objects, may aggravate the im. pression, often so insufficient, of the absolute supremacy of God, of the total dependence of all mortal strength and effort on him, and of the necessity of maintaining habitually a devout respect to his intervention. It might promote that last attainment of a zealously good man, the resignation to be as diminutive and as im- perfectly successful an agent as God pleases. I am assured also that, in a pious mind, the humiliating estimate of means and human sufficiency, and the con- sequent sinking down of all lofty expectations founded on them, will leave one single mean, and that far the best of all, to be held not only of undiminished but of more eminent value than ever was ascribed to it before The most excellent of all human means must be that of which the effect is to obtain the exertion of divine power. The means which are to be employed in a direct immediate instrumentality toward the end, seem to bear such a measured proportion to their objects as to assign and limit the probable effect. This regulated proportion exists no longer, and therefore the possible effects become too great for calculation, when that ex- pedient is solemnly employed which is appointed as the mean of engaging the divine energy to act on the object.' If the only means by which Jehoshaphat sought to over- come his superior enemy, had been his troops, horses, and arms, there would have been nearly an assignable proportion between these means and the end, and the probable result of the conflict would have been a matter of ordinary calculation. But when he said, " NeithcT THE EPITHET ROMANTIC. 195 Know we what to do, but our eyes are up unto thee," he moved (if I may reverently express it so) another and an infinite force to invade the host of Moab and Ammon ; and the consequence displayed in their camp, the difference between an irreligious. leader, who could fight only with arms and on the ievel of the plain, and a pious one who could thus assault from Heaven. It may not, I own, be perfectly correct to cite, in illus- tration of the efficacy of prayer, the most memorable ancient examples. Nor is it needful, since the expe- rience of devout and eminently rational men, in latter times, has- supplied numerous striking instances of im- portant advantages so connected in time and circum- stance with prayer, that with good reason they regarded them as the evident result of it.* This experience, taken in confirmation of the assurances of the Bible, warrants ample expectations of the efficacy of an earnest and habitual devotion ; provided still, as I need not remind you, that this mean be employed as the grand auxiliary of the other means, and not alone, till all the rest are exhausted or impracticable. And no doubt any man who should, amidst his serious projects, become sensible, with any thing approaching to an adequate apprehension, of his dependejice on God, would far more earnestly and constantly press on this great re- source than is common even among good men. He would as little, without it, promise himself any distin- guished success, as a mariner would expect to reach a distant coast by means of his sails spread in a stagnation of the air. — I have intimated my fear that it is visionary to expect an unusual success in the human administra- tion of religion, unless there were unusual omens ; now an emphatical spirit of prayer would be such an omen ; ♦ Here I shall not be misunderstood to believe the multitude of ■tones which have been toW by deluded fancy or detestable isn- posture. 196 ON THE APPLICATION OP and the individual who should solemnly resolve to make proof of its last possible efficacy, might probably find himself becoming a much more prevailing agent of good in his little sphere. And if the whole, or the greater number, of the disciples of Christianity, were, with an earnest unfailing resolution of each, to combine that Heaven should not withhold one single influence which the very utmost effort of conspiring and perse- vering supplication would obtain, it would be the sign of a revolution of the world being at hand. My dear friend, it is quite time to dismiss this whole subject ; though it will probably appear to you that I have entirely lost and forgotten the very purpose for which I took it up, which certainly was to examine the correctness of some not unusual applications of the epithet Romantic. It seemed necessary, first, to de- scribe, with some exemplifications, the characteristics of that extravagance which ought to be given up to the charge. The attempt to do this, has led me into a length of detail far beyond all expectation. The intention was, next, to display and to vindicate, in an extended illustration, several schemes of life, and models of character ; but I will not prolong the subject. I shall only just specify, in concluding, two or three of those modes of feeling and action on which the censure of being romantic has improperly fallen. One is, a disposition to take high examples for imi- tation. I have condemned the extravagance which presumes on rivalling the career of action and success that has been the appointment of some individuals, so extraordinary as to be the most conspicuous phenomena of history. But this delirium of ambitious presumption is distinguishable enough from the more temperate, yet warm aspiration to attain some resemblance to ex •mples, which it wir. require the most strenuous and sustained exertion to resemble. Away with any such THE EriTHET ROMANTIC. 197 sobriety and rationality as would repress tlat disposition to contemplate with a generous emulation the class of men who hav6 been illustrious for their excellence and their wisdom ; to observe with interested self-reference the principles that animated them and the process ot their attainments ; and to fix the standard of character high by keeping these exemplars in view. A man may, without a presumptuous estimate of his talents, or the expectation of passing through any course of unex- ampled events, in«dulge the ambition to resemble and follow, in the essential determination of their charac- ters, those sublime spirits who are now removed to the kingdom where they are to " shine as the stars for ever and ever," and those yet on earth who are evidently on their way to the same illustrious end. A striking departure from the order of custom in the rank to which a man belongs, exhibited in his de- voting the privileges of that rank to a mode of excel- lence which the generality of the people who compose it never dream to be a duty, will by them be denom- inated and scouted as romantic. They will wonder why a man who ought to be like themselves, should affect quite a different style of life, a deserte' and alien from the reign of fashion, should attempt unusual plans of doing good, and should put himself under.some extra- ordinary discipline of virtue — while yet every point in his system may be a dictate of reason and conscience, speaking in a voice heard by him alone. The irreligious will apply this epithet to the deter- mination to make, and the zeal to inculcate, great ex- ertions and sacrifices for a purely moral ideal reward. Some gross and palpable prize is requisite to excite their energies ; and therefore self-denial repaid by con- science, beneficence without fame, and the delight of lesembling the Divinity, appear visionary felicities. The epithet will be in readiness for application to a 17* i98 ON THE APPLICATION OF man who feeis it an imperious duty to realize, as far as possible, and as soon as possible, every thing" which he approves and applauds in theory. You will often hear a circle of perhaps respectable persons agreeing entirely that this one thing spoken of is a worthy prin- ciple of action, and that other an estimable quality, and a third a sublime excellence, who would be amazed at your fanaticism, if you were to adjure them thus : " My friends, from this moment you are bound, from this moment we are all Dound, on peril of the displeasure of God, to realize in ourselves, to the last possible extent, all that we have thus in good faith de- liberately applauded." Through some fatal defect of conscience, there is a very general feeling, regarding the high order of moral and religious attainments, that though it is a happy exaltation to possess them, yet it is perfectly safe to stop contented where we are, on a far lower ground. One is confounded to hear irritable persons praising a character of self-command ; persons who trifle away their days professing to admire the in- stances of a strenuous improvement of time ; rich per- sons lavishing fine words on examples of beneficence which they know to be far surpassing themselves, though perhaps with no larger means ; and all express- ing deep respect for the men who have been most emi- nent in piety ; — and yet all this apparently with the ease of a perfect freedom from any admonition of con- science, that they are themselves standing in the very serious predicament of having to choose, whether they will henceforward earnestly and practically aim at these higher attainments, or resign themselves to be found wanting in the day of final account. Finally, in the application of this epithet, but little allowance is generally made for the great difference between a man's entertaining high designs and hopes for himself alone, and his entertaining them relative tv THE EPITHET ROMANTIC. 199 Other pei'iwns. It might be very romantic for a man to reckon on effecting sach designs with respect to others, as it may be reasonable to meditate for himself. If he feels the powerful habitual impulse of conviction, urging and animating him to the highest attainments of wisdom and excellence, he may perhaps justly hope to approach them himself, though it would be most ex- travagant to extend the same hope to all the persons to whom he may wish and try to impart the impulse. I specify the strictly personal attainments, wisdom and excellence^ for the reason that, besides the difference in probability of realization, between large schemes and hopes as indulged by a man for himself or entertained for others, there is a distinction to be made in respect to such as he might entertain only for himself His ex- traordinary plans and expectations for himself might be of such a nature as to depend on other persons for their accomplishment, and might therefore be as ex- travagant as if other persons alone, persons in no de- gree at his command, had been their object. Or, on the contrary, they may be of a kind which shall not need the co-operation of other persons, and may be re- ahzed independently of their will. The design of ac- quiring immense riches, or becoming the commander of an army, or a person of high official importance in national affairs, must in its progress be dependent on other men in incalculably too many points and ways for a considerate man to presume that he shall be fortu- nate in them all. But the schemes of eminent personal improvement, depending comparatively little on the will, capacity, or conduct of other persons, are romantic only when there is some fital intellectual or moral de« feet in the individual himself who has adopted them. ESSAY IV. ON SOME OF THE CAUSES BY WHICH EVAN. GELICAL RELIGION HAS BEEN RENDERED UN. ACCEPTABLE TO PERSONS OF CULTIVATED »^ASTE. LETTER I. MY DEAR FRIEND, It is Striking to observe, under what various forms of character men are passing through this introductory season of their being, to enter on its future greater stage. Some one of these, it may be presumed, is more eligible than all the rest for proceeding to that greater stage ; and to ascertain which it is, must be felt by a wise man the most important of his inquiries. We, my friend, are persuaded that the inquiry, if made in good faith, will soon terminate, and that the chris tian character will be selected as the only one, in which it is wise to advance to the entrance on the endless futurity, Indeed the assurance of our permanent ex- istence itself rests but on that authority which dictates also the right introduction to it. The christian character is simply a conformity to the whole religion of Christ. This implies a cordial admission of that whole religion ; but it meets, on the contrarj'-, in many minds not denying it to be a com- munication from God, a disposition to shrini' from some of its peculiar properties and distinctions "^r an ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE, ETC. 201 effort to displace or neutralize them. I am not now to learn that the substantial cause of this is that repugn nance in human nature to what is purely divine, which revelation affirms, and all history proves, and which perhaps some of the humiliating points of the chris- tian system are more adapted to provoke, than any other thing that bears the divine impress. Nor do 1 need to be told how much this chief cause has aided and aggravated the power of those subordinate ones, which may have conspired to prevent the success of evangelical religion among a class of persons that I have in view, I mean those of refined taste, whose feelings, concerning what is great and excellent, have been disciplined to accord to a literary or philosophical standard. But even had there been less of this natural aversion in such minds, or had there been none, some of the causes which have acted on them would have tended, necessarily, to produce an effect injurious to the claims of pure Christianity. — I wish to illustrate several of these causes, after briefly describing the antichristian feelings in which I have observed that effect. It is true that many persons of taste have, without any formal disbelief of the christian truth, so little con- cern about religion in any shape, that the unthinking dislike to the evangelical principles, occasionally rising and passing among their transient moods of feeling with no distinctness of apprehension, hardly deserves to be described. These are to be assigned, whatever may be their facuhies or improvements, to the multi- tude of triflers relatively to the gravest concerns, on whom we can pronounce only the general condemna- tion of irreligion, their feelings not being sufficiently marked for a more discriminative censure. But the aversion is of a more defined character, as it exists in a mind too serious for the follies of the world and the neglect of all religion, an^ in which the very sentiment 202 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE itself becomes, al lim^s, the subject of painful and ap- prehensive reflection, from an internal monition that it IS an unha| py symptom, if the truth should be that the religious system which excites the dispiacency, has really the sanction of divine revelation. If a person in this condition of mind disclosed himself to you, he would describe how the elevated sentiment, inspired by the contemplation of other sublime subjects, is con- founded, and sinks mortified into the heart, when this new subject is presented to his view. It seems to re- quire almost a total change of his mental habits to ad- mit this as the most interesting subject of all, while yet he dares not reject the authority which supports its claim. The dignity of religion, as a general and re- fined speculation, he may have long acknowledged ; but it appears to him as if it lost that aspect of dignity, m taking the specific form of the evangelical system ; just as if an ethereal being were reduced to combine his radiance and subtility with an earthly conformation. He is aware that religion in the abstract, or in other words, the principles which constitute the obligatory relation of all intelligent creatures to the Supreme Being, must receive a special modification, by means of the addition of some other principles, in order to become a peculiar religious economy for a particular race of those creatures, especially for a race low in rank and corrupted in nature. And the christian rev- elation assigns the principles by which this religion in the abstract, the religion of the universe, is thus modi- fied into the peculiar form required for the nature and condition of man. But when he contemplates some of these principles, framed on an assumption, and con- veying a plain declaration of an ignominious and deplorable condition of our nature, he can hardly help regretting that, even if our condition he so degraded, the system of our relations with the Divinity, though \. TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 203 constituted according and in adaptation to that degraded state, is not an economy of a brighter character. The gospel indeed appears to him like the image in Nebu- chadnezzar's dream ; it is refulgent with a head of gold ,* the sublime truths or facts of religious theory, which stand antecedent and superior to every peculiarity of the special dispensations of religion, are luminously exhibited ; but the doctrines which are added as dis- tinctive of the peculiar circumstances of the christian economy, appear less splendid, and as if descending to- wards the qualities of iron and clay. If he must admit this portion of the system as a part of the truth, his feelings amount to the wish that a different theory had been true. It is therefore with a degree of shrinking reluctance that he sometimes adverts to the ideas pecu- , liar to the gospel. He would willingly lose this spe- cific scheme of doctrines in a more general theory of religion, instead of resigning every wider speculation for this scheme, in which God has comprised, and dis- tinguished by a very peculiar character, all the religion which he wills to be known, or to be useful, to our world. It is not a welcome conviction, that the gospel, instead of being a modification of religion exhibited in competition with others, and subject to choice or re jection according to his taste, is peremptorily and ex- clusively the religion for our lapsed race ; insomuch that he who has not a religion conformed to the model in the New Testament does not stand in' the only right and safe relation to the Supreme Being. He suffers himself to pass the year in a dissatisfied uncertainty, and a criminal neglect of deciding, whether his cold reception of the specific views of Christianity will ren- der unavailing his regard for those more general truths, respecting the Deity, moral rectitude, and a future state, which are necessarily at the basis of the system. He is afraid to examine and determine the question, wheth* 204 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE er he may with impunity rest in a scheme composed of the general principles of wisdom and virtue, selected from the christian oracles and the speculations of philos- ophy, harmonized by reason, and embellished by taste. If it were safe, he would much rather be the dignified professor of such a philosophic refinement on Christian- ity, than yield himself a submissive and wholly con- formed disciple of Jesus Christ. This refined system would be clear of the undesirable peculiarities of chris- tian doctrine, and it would also allow some different ideas of the nature of moral excellence. He would not be so explicitly condemned for indulging a disposition to admire and imitate some of those models of char- acter which, however opposite to pure christian excel- lence, the world has always idolized. I wish I could display, in the most forcible manner, the considerations which show how fir such a state of mind is wrong. But my object is, to remark on a few of the causes which may have contributed to it. I do not, for a moment, place among these causes that continual dishonour which the religion of Christ has suffered through the corrupted institutions, and the depraved character of individuals or communities, of what is called the christian world. Such a man as I have supposed, understands what the dictates and ten- dency of that religion really are, so far at least, that in contemplating the bigotry, persecution, hypocrisy, and worldly ambition, which have been forced as an oppro- brious adjunct on Christianity during all ages of its occupancy on earth, his mind dissevers, by a decisive glance of thought, all these evils, and the pretended christians who are accountable for them, from the religion which is as distinct from them as the Spirit that pervades all things is pure from matter and from sin. In his view, these odious things and these wicked meiij that have arrogated and defiled the chrisu an namftj TO EV-INGELICAL RELIGION. 205 sink out of sight through a chasm like Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, and leave the camp and the cause holy, though they leave the numbers small. It needs so very moderate a share of discernment, in a protestant country at least, where a well-known volume exhibits ihe religion itself, genuine and entire as it came from heaven, to perceive the essential disunion and antipathy between it and all these abominations, that to take them as congenial and inseparable, betrays, in every instance, a detestable want of principle, or a most wretched want of sense. The defect of cordiality toward the religion of Christ, in the persons that I am accusing, does not arise from this debility or this injustice. They would not be less equitable to Christianity than they would to some estimable man, whom they would not esteem the less because villains that hated him, knew, however, so well the excellence of his name and char- acter, as gladly to avail themselves of them in any way they could to aid their schemes, or to shelter their crimes. — But indeed these remarks are not strictly to the purpose ; since the prejudice which a weak or cor- rupt mind receives from such a view of the christian history, operates, as we see by facts, not discriminateiy against particular characteristics of Christianity, but against the whole system, and leads toward a denial of its divine origin. On the contrary, the class of persons now in question fully admit its divine authority, but feel a repugnance to some of its most peculiar dis- tinctions. These peculiarities they may wish, as 1 have said, to refine away ; but in moments of impartial seriousness, are constrained to admit something very near at least to the conviction, of their being inseparable from the sacred economy. This however fails tc subdue or conciliate the heart ; and the dislike to some of the parts has often an influence on the affections in regard to the whole. That portion of the system which they 18 206 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE think they could admire, is admitted with the coldnesa of a mere speculative assent, from the e^ect of the intrudinof recollection of its beinof combined with some- thing else which they cannot admire. Those distinctions from which they recoil, are chiefly comprised in that view of Christianity which, among a large proportion of the professors of it, is denominated in a somewhat specific sense. Evangelical ; and therefore I have adopted this denomination in the title of this letter. Christianity taken in this view contains — a humiliating estimate of the moral condition of man, as a being radically corrupt — the doctrine of redemption from that condition by the merit and sufferings of Christ- — the doctrine of a divine influence being necessary to transform the char- acter of the human mind, in order to prepare it for a higher station in the universe — and a grand moral peculiarity by which it insists on humihty, penitence, and a separation from the spirit and habits of the world. — I do not see any necessity for a more formai and amplified description of that mode of understanding Christianity which has acquired the distinctive epithet Evangelical ; and which is not, to say the least, more discriminatively designated among the scoffing part of the wits, critics, and theologians of the day, by the terms Fanatical, Calvinistical, Meihodistical. I may here notice that, though the greater share of the injurious influences on which I may remark operates more pointedly against the peculiar doctrines of Chris- tianity, yet some of them are perniciously efliectual agfainst its moral sentiments and laws, which are of a tenour corresponding to the principles it prescribes to our faith. I would observe also, that though I have specified the more refined and intellectual class of minds, as indisposed to the religion of Christ by the causes on which I may comm mt, and though I keep them chiefly TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 207 in view, yet the influence of some of these causes ex tends in a degree to many persons of subordinate men* tal rank. LETTER II. In the view of an intelligent and honest mind the religion of Christ stands as clear of all connexion with the corruption of men, and churches, and ages, as when it was first revealed. It retains its purity like Moses in Egypt, or Daniel in Babylon, or the Saviour of the world himself while he mingled with scribes and phari- sees, or publicans and sinners. But though it thus instantly and totally separates itself from all appearance of relation to the vices of bad men, a degree of effort may be required in order to display it, or to view it in an equally perfect separation from the weakness of good ones. It is in reality no more identified with the one than with the other ; its essential sublimity is as in- capable of being reduced to littleness, as its purity is of uniting with vice. But it may have a vital con- nexion with a weak mind, while it necessarily disowns a wicked one; and the qualities of that mind with which it confessedly unites itself, will much more seem to adhere to it, than of that with which all its principles are plainly in antipathy. It will be more natural to take those persons who are acknowledged the real subjects of its influence, as illustrations of its nature, than those on whom it is the heaviest reproach that they pretend to be its friends. The perception of its nature and dignity must be clear and absolute, in the man who can observe it under the appearance it acquires in intimate combination with the thoughts, feelings, ind language of its disciples, without ever losing sigm 208 ON THE AVERSION CF MEN OF TASTE of its own essential qualities and lustre. No possible associations indeed can diminish the grandeur of some parts of the christian system. The doctrine of im- mortality, for instance, cannot be reduced to take even a transient appearance of littleness, by the meanest or most uncouth words and images that shall ever be employed to represent it. But some other things in the system have not the same obvious philosophic dignity ; and these are capable of acquiring, from the mental defects of their believers, such associations as will give a character much at variance with our ideas of magnificence, to so much as they constitute of the evangelical economy. One of the causes therefore which I meant to notice, as having excited in persons of taste a sentiment unfavourable to the reception of evangelical religion, is, that this is the religion of many weak and uncultivated mind«. The schools of philosophy have been composed of men of superior faculties and extensive accomplish- ments, who could sustain, by eloquence and capacious thought, the dignity of the favourite themes; so that the proud distinctions of the disciples and advocates ap- peared as the attributes of the doctrines. The adepts could attract refined and aspiring spirits by proclaiming, that the temple of their goddess was not profaned by being a rendezvous for vulgar men. On the contrary, it is the beneficent distinction of the gospel, that though it is of a magnitude to interest and to surpass angelic investigation^ (and therefore assuredly to pour contempt on the pride of human intelligence rejecting it for its meanness^) it is yet most expressly sent to the class which philosophers have always despised. And a good man feels it a cause of grateful joy, that a communi- cation has come from heaven, adapted to effect the hap« piness of multitudes in spite of natural debility or ne« giected education. While he observes that confined TO EVA.N'GELICAL RELIGION 209 capacities do not preclude the entrance, and the perma nent residence, of that sacred combination of truth aaa power, which find? no place in the minds of many phi- Icsophers, and wi:s, and statesmen, he is grateful to him who has " hidden these things from the wise and prudent, and revealed them to babes." But it is not to be denied that the natural conse- quence follows. Contracted and obscured in its abode, the inhabitant will appear, as the sun through a misty sky, with but little of its magnificence, to a man who can be content to receive his impression of the intel- lectual character of the religion from the form of its manifestation made from the minds of its disciples; and, in doing so, can indolently and perversely allow himself to regard its weakest display as its truest image. In taking such a dwelling, the religion seems to imitate what was prophesied of its author, that, when he should be seen, there would be no beauty that he should be desired. This humiliation is inevitable ; for unless miracles were wrought, to impart to the less in- tellectual disciples an enlarged power of thinking, the evangelic truth must accommodate itself to the dimen- sions and habitudes of their minds. And perhaps the exhibitions of it will come forth with more of the character of those minds, than of its own celestial dis- tinctions : insomuch that if there were no declaration of the sacred system, but in the forms of conception and language in which they give it forth, even a candid man might hesitate to admit it as the most glorious gift of heaven. Happily, he finds its quality declared by other oracles ; but while from them *he receives it in its own character, he is tempted to wish he could detach it from all the associations which he feels it has acquired from the humbler exhibition. And he does not greatly wonder that other men of the same ir'el- lectual habitSj and with a less candid solicitude o 210 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE receive with simplicity every thing that really ooaies from God, should have adniitled a prejudice from these associations. They would not make this impression on a mar already devoted to the religion of Jesus Christ. Nt passion that has become predominant is ever cooled bj any thing which can be associated with its object, whik that object itself continues unaltered. The passion ii even willing to verify its power, and the merit of that which interests it, by sometimes letting the unpleasing associations surround and touch the object for an instant, and then chasing them away ; and it welcomes with augmented attachment that object coming forth from them unstained ; as happy spirits at the last day will receive with joy their bodies recovered from the dust in a state of purity that will leave every thing belonging to the dust behind. A zealous christian exults to feel \i\ contempt of how many counteracting circumstances he can still love his religion : and that this counteraction, by exciting his understanding to make a more defined estimate of its excellence, has resulted in his loving it the more. It has now in some degree even pre-occupied those avenues of taste and imagination, by which alone the ungracious effect of associations could have been admitted. The thing itself is close to his mind, and therefore the causes which would have misrepresented it by coming be- tween, have lost their power. As he hears the sentiments of sincere Christianity from the weak and illiterate, he says to himself — All this is indeed little, but I am happy to feel that the subject itself is great, and that this humble display of it cannot nake it appear to me different from what I absolutely know it to be ; any more than a clouded atmosphere can diminish my idea of the grandeur of the heavens, after 1 have so often beheld the pure azure, and the host of stars. I am TO EVANGEL. CAL RELIGION. 211 glad that it has in this man all the consolatory and all the purifying efficacy, which I wish that my mora elevated views of it may not fail to have in me. This is the chief end for which a divine communication can have been granted to the world. If this religion, in- stead of being designed to make its disciples pure and happy amidst their littleness, had required to receive lustre from their mental dignity, it would have been sent to none of us. At least, not to me ; for though I would be grateful for my intellectual advantage over my uncultivated fellovv-christian, I am conscious that the noblest forms of thought in which I apprehend, or could represent the subject, do but contract its am- plitude, do but depress its sublimity. Those superior spirits who are said to rejoice over the first proof of the efficacy of divine truth, have rejoiced over its in- troduction, even in so humble a form, into the mind of this man, and probably see in flict but little dif- ference, in point of speculative greatness, between his manner of viewing and illustrating it and mine. If Jesus Christ could be on earth as before, he would receive this disciple, and benignantly approve, for its operation on the heart, that faith in his doctrines, which men of taste might be tempted to despise for its want of intellectual refinement. And since all his true dis- ciples are destined to attain greatness at length, the time is coming, when each pious, though now conti-acted mind, will do justice to this high subject. Meanwhile, such as this subject will appear to the intelligence of immortals, and such as it will be expressed in riieir eloquence, such it really is now ; and I should deplore the perversity of my mind, if I felt more disposed to take the character of the religion from that style of its exhibition in which it appears humiliated, than from that in which I am assured it will be sublime. If, while we are all advancing to meet the revelations of eternity, 212 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE I have a more vivid and comprehensive idea than these less privileged christians, of the glory of our religion, aa displayed in the New Testament, and if I can much more delightfully participate the sentiments which de- vout genius has uttered in the contemplation of :jt, I am therefore called upon to excel them as much in de- votedness to this religion, as I have a more luminous view of its excellence. Let the spirit of the evangelical system once have the ascendency, and it may thus defy the threatening mischief of disagreeable associations with its principles ; as the angels in the house of Lot repelled the base as- sailants. But it requires a most extraordinary cogency of conviction, and indeed more than simple intellectual conviction, to obtain a cordial reception for these prin- ciples, if such associations are in prepossession of the mind. And that they should be so in the man of taste is not wonderful, if you consider how early, how often, and by what diversities of the same general cause, they may have been made on him. As the gospel com- prises an ample assemblage of intellectual views, and as the greater number of christians are inevitably inca- pable of presenting them in a digriified character of conception and language from the same causes which disqualify them to do such justice to other intellectual subjects, it is not improbable that far the greater number of expressions vi^hich he has heard in his whole life, have been utterly below the subject. Obviously this is a very serious circumstance ; for if he had heard as much spoken on any other subject of high intel lectual rank, as moral philosophy, or poetry, or rhetoric, in which perhaps he now takes great interest, and if a similar proportion of what he had heard had been as much below the subject, it is prooable that he and the sub- ject would have remained strangers. And it is a melan- choly deposition against the human heart, that fewer TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 213 unfavourable associations will cause it to recoil from the gospel, than from any other subject which comes with high claims. The prejudicial influence of mental denciency or meanness associated with evangelical doctrine, may have beset him in many ways. For instance, he has met with some zealous christians, who not only were very slightly acquainted with the evidences of the truth, and the illustrations of the reasonableness, of their religion, but who actually felt no interest in the inquiry. Perhaps more than one individual attempted to deter him from pursuing it, by suggesting that in- quiry either implies doubt, which was pronounced a criminal state of mind, or will probably lead to it, as a judgment on the profane inquisitiveness which, on such a subject, is not satisfied with implicitly believing. An attempt to examine the foundation would be likely to end in a wish to demolish the structure. He may sometimes have heard the discourse of sin cere christians, whose religion involved no intellectual exercise, and, strictly speaking, no subject of intellect. Separately from their feelings, it had no definition, no topics, no distinct succession of views. And if he or some other person attempted to talk on some part of the religion itself^ as a thing definable and important, independently of the feelings of any individual, and as consisting in a vast congeries of ideas, concerning the divine government of the world, the relations of ra- tional creatures with the Creator, the general nature of the economy disclosed by the Messiah, the system of moral principles and rules, and the greatness of the future prospects of man, they seemed to have no con- cern in that religion, and impatiently interrupted such discourse with the observation — That is not experi- ence. Others he has heard continually recurring to two or 214 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE three points of opinion, adopted perhaps in servile .« i diction to a system, or perhaps by some chance seizure of the individual's preference, and asserted to be the life and essence of Christianity. These opinions he has heard zealousl}" though not argumentatively de- fended, even when they were not attacked or question- ed. If ihey were called in question, it was an evidence not less of depraved principle than of perverted judg- ment. All other religious truths were represented as deriving their authority and importance purely from these, and as being so wholly included and subordinate, that it is needless and almost impertinent to give them a distinct attention. The neglect of constantly repeat- ing and enforcing these opinions was said to be the chief cause of the comparative failure of the efforts to promote Christianity in the world, and of the decay of particular religious societies. Though he perhaps could not perceive how these points were essential to Christianity, even admitting them to be true, they were made the sole and decisive standard for distinguishing between a genuine and a false profession of it. And perhaps they were applied in eager haste to any sen- timent which he happened to express concerning re- ligion, as a test of its quality, and a proof of its cor- ruptness. Instances may have occurred in which he has ob- served some one idea or doctrine, that was not the dis- tinctive peculiarity of any system, to have so monopo- lized the mind, that every conversation, from whatever point of the compass it started, was certain to find its way to the favourite topic, while he was sometimes fret- ted, sometimes amused, never much improved, by ob- serving its instinctive pi ogress to the appointed place. If his situation and connexions rendered it unavoidable for him often to hear this unfortunate manner of dis- coursing on religion, his mind probably fell into a TO jsv^angclical religion. 215 fault very similar to that of his well-meaning acquain- tance. As this worthy man could never speak on the subject without soon bringing the whole of it down to one particular point, so the indocile and recusant audi- tor became unable to think on the subject without ad- verting immediately to the narrow illustration of it ex- hibited by this one man ; insomuch that this image of combined penury and conceit became established in his mind as representative of the subject. In consequence of this connexion of ideas, he perhaps became disin- clined to think on the subject at all ; or, if he was dis- posed or constrained to think of it, he was so averse to let his views of Christianity thus converge to the little- ness of a point, that he laboured to expand them till they lost all specifically evangelical distinctions in the wideness of generality and abstraction. Again, the majority of christians are precluded, by their condition in life, from any considerable acquire- ment of general knowledge. It would be unpardon- able in the more cultivated man not to make the large allowance for the natural effect of this on the extent of their religious ideas. But it shall have happened, that he has met with numbers who had no inconsiderable means, both in the way of money, judging by their unnecessarj'- expenses, and of leisure, judging by the quantity of time consumed in trivial talk, or in need- less sleep, to furnish their minds with various informa- tion, but who were quite on a level, in this respect, with those of the humblest rank. They never even suspected that knowledge could have any connexion with religion ; or that they could not be as clearly and comprehensively in possession of the great subject as a man whose faculties had been exercised, and whose extended acquaintance with things would supply an ample diversity of ideas illustrative of religion. Ho has perhaps even heard them make a kind of merit of 216 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE their Indifference to knowledge, as if it were ite proof or the result of a higher value for religion. If there was ventured a hint of reprehensive wonder at theij reading so little, and within so very confined a scope, it would be replied, that they thought it enough to read the Bible ; as if it were possible for a person whose mmd fixes with inquisitive attention on what is before him, to read through the Bible without thou- sands of such questions being started in his thoughts, as can be answered only from sources of information extraneous to the Bible. But he perceived that this reading the Bible was no work of inquiring thought ; and indeed he has commonly found, that those who have no wish for any thing like a general improve- ment in knowledge, have no disposition for the real business of thinking even in religion, and that their discourse on that subject is the exposure of intellectual poverty. He has seen them live on for a number of years content with the same confined views, the same meagre list of topics, and the same uncouth religious language. In so considerable a space of time, the ha- bitual inquisitiveness after yarious truth would have given much more clearness to their faculties, and much more precision to the articles of their belief They might have ramified the few leading articles, into a rich variety of subordinate principles and important inferences. They might have learned to place the christian truth in all those combinations with the other parts of our knowledge, by which it is enabled to pre- sent new and striking aspects, and to multiply its argu- ments to the understanding, and its appeals to the heart. They might have enriched themselves by rendering nature, history, and the present views of the moral world, tributary to the illustration and the effect of their religion. But they neglected, and even despised, all the8e means of enlarging their ideas of a subject which rO EVANGELIIAL RELIGION. '^l? they professed to hold of infinite importance. Y'ei perliaps, if this man of more intellectual habits showea but little interest in conversing with them on that sub- ject, or seemed intentionally to avoid it, this was con- sidered as pure aversion to religion ; and what had been uninteresting to him as doctrine, then became re- volting as reproof.* He may not unfrequently have heard worthy but illiterate persons expressing their utmost admiration of sayings, passages in books, or public discourses, which he could not help perceiving to be hardly sense, or to be the dictates of conceit, or to be common-place in- flated to fustian. While on the other hand, if he has introduced a favourite passage, or an admired book, they have perhaps acknowledged no perception of its beauty, or expressed a doubt of its tendencjr, from its not being in canonical diction. Or perhaps they have directly avowed that they could not understand it, in a manner plainly implying that therefore it could be of no value. Possibly when he has expressed his high admiration of some of the views of the gospel, not ordinarily recognised or exhibited, and bearing what I may perhaps call a philosophical aspect, (such, for instance, as struck the mind of Rousseau,) he has been mortified to find, that some peculiar and even sublime distinctions of the religion of Christ are lost to many of his disciples, from being of too abstract a kind for the apprehension of any but improved and intellectual men. If he had generally found in those professed chris tians whose mental powers and attainments were small, a candid humility, instructing them, while expressing their animated gratitude for what acquaintance with ♦ I own that what I said of Jesus Christ's gladly receiving ODe of the h ambler intellectual order for his disciple, would be but liitia applicable to some of the characters that I describe. 19 218 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE .religion they had been enabled to attain, and for the immortal hopes springing from it, to feci that they had but a confined view of a subject which is of immense variety and magnitude, he might have been too much pleased by this amiable temper to be much repelled by the defective character of their conceptions and ex- pressions. But often, on the contrary, they may have shown such a complacent assurance of sufficiency in the little sphere, as if it self-evidently comprised every thing which it is possible, or which it is of consequence for any mind to see in the christian religion. They were like persons who should doubt the information that myriads more of stars can be seen through a tele- scope than they ever beheld, and who should have no curiosity to try. Many christians may have appeared to him to attack an extremely disproportionate importance to the precise modes of religious observances, not only in the hour of controversy respecting them, when they are always ex- travagantly magnified, but in the habitual course of their religious references. These modes may be either such as are adhered to by communities and sects of christians, perhaps as their respective marks of dis- tinction from one another ; or any smaller ceremonial peculiarities, devised and pleaded for by particular in- dividuals or families. Certain things in the religious habits of some chris- tians may have disgusted him excessively. Every thing which could even distantly remind him of grimace, would inevitably do this ; as, for instance, a solemn lifting up of the eyes, artificial impulses of the breath, grotesque and regulated gestures and postures in relig- ious exercises, an aflJected faltering of the voice, and, I might add, abrupt religious exclamations in common discourse, though they were even benedictions to the Almighty, which he has often heard so ill-timed as to TO EVANQELICAL RELIGION. 219 have an irreverent and almost a ludicrous effect. In p man of correct and refined taste, the happiest improvo- ment in point of veneration for genuine religion will produce no tolerance for such habits. Nor will the dis- like to them be lessened by ever so perfect a conviction of the sincere piety of any of the persons who have fallen into them. I shall be justified in laying great stress on this particular ; for I have known instances of extreme mischief done to the feelings relative to religion, in young persons especially, through the continued ir- ritation of disgust caused by such displeasing habits deforming personal piety. In the conversation of illiterate christians the sup- posed man of taste has perhaps frequently heard the most unfortunate metaphors and similes, employed to explain or enforce evangelical sentiments ; and prob' ably, if he twenty times recollected one of those senti- ments, the repulsive figure was sure to recur to his im- agination. If he has heard so many of these, that each christian topic has acquired its appropriate offensive images, you can easily conceive what a lively percep-- tion of the importance of the subject itself must be requisite to overcome the disgust of the associations. The feeling accompanying these topics, as connected with these distasteful ideas, will be somewhat like that which spoils the pleasure of reading a noble poet, Vir- g-il for instance, when each admired passage recalls the phrases and images into which it has been degraded in that kind of imitation denominated travesty. It may be added, that the reluctance to think of the subject be^ cause it is connected with these ideas, strengthens that connexion. For often the striving not to dwell on the disagreeable images, produces a mischievous reaction by which they press in more forcibly. The tenacity with which ideas adhere to the mind, is in proportion to the degree of interest, Avhether pleasing or un pleas- ^20 ON THE AVERSION OF HEN OF TASl'E ing, with which they affect it ; and an idea canuot well excite a stronger kind of interest than the earnest wish to escape from it. If we could cease to dislike it, it would soon cease to haunt us. It may also be c\ serv- ed, that the infrequency of thinking on the evangelical subjects, will confirm the injurious associations. The same mental law prevails in regard to subjects as to persons. If any unfortunate incident, or any circum- stance of expression or conduct, displeased us in our first meeting with a person, it will be strongly recalled each time that we see him again, if we meet him but seldom ; on the contrary, if our intercourse become fre- quent or habitual, such a first unpleasing circumstance, and others subsequent to it, may be forgotten. This observation might be of some use to a man who really wishes to neutralize in his mind the offensive associa- tions with evangelical subjects ; as he may be assured that one of the most effectual means would be, to make those subjects familiar by often thinking on them. While remarking on the effect of unpleasing images employed to illustrate christian principles, I cannot help wishing that religious teachers had the good taste Jo avoid amplifying the metaphors of an undignified order, which may have a kind of coarse fitness for illustration, and are perhaps employed, in a short and transient way, in the Bible. I shall notice only that common one, in which the benefits and pleasures of religion are represented under the image of food. I do not recollect that in the Scriptures this metaphor is ever drawn to a great length. But from the facility of the process, it is not strange that it has been amplified, both in books and discourses, into the most extended parallel descriptions ; exhausting the dining-room of images, and ransacking the language for substantives and adjectives, to stimulate the spiritual palate. The figure is combined with so many terms in our Ian* TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 22 i guage, thai it will unavoidably occur ; and the analogy briefly and simply suo-gested may sometimes assist the thought without lessening the subject. But it is de- grading to spiritual ideas to be extensively and syste- matically transmuted, I might say cooked, into sensual ones. The analogy between meaner and more digni- fied things should never be pursued further than one or two points of obviously useful illustration ; for, if it be traced to every particular in which a resemblance can be found or fancied, the meaner thing abdicates its humble office of merely indicating some qualities of the great one, and becomes formally its representative and equal. By their being made to touch at all points, the meaner is constituted a scale to measure and to limit the magnitude of the superior, and thus the im- portance of the one shrinks to the insignificance of the other. It will take some time for a man to recover any great degree of solemnity in thinking on the de- lights or the supports of religion, after he has seen them reduced into all the forms of eating and drink- ing. In such detailed analogies it often happens, that the most fanciful, or that the coarsest points of the resemblance, remain longest in the thoughts. When the mind has been taught to descend to a low manner of considering divine truth, it will be apt to descend to the lowest. There is no such violent tendency to ab- straction and sublimity, in the minds of the generality of readers and hearers, as to render it necessary to take any great pains for the purpose of retaining their ideas in some degree of alliance with matter. We are to acknowledge, then, the serious disadvan- tage under which evangelical religion presents itself to persons of mental refinement, with the associations which it has contracted from its uncultivated and in- judicious professors. At the same time, it would bo unjust not to observe that some christians, of a sub- 19* 2*22 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE ordinate intellectual order, are distinguished by such an unassuming simplicity, by so much rectitude of conscience, and by a piety so warm and even exalted, as to leave a cultivated man convicted of a great per- version of feeling, if the faith, of which these are living representatives, did not appear to him in stronger at- tractive association with their excellence, than in re- pulsive association with their intellectual inferiority. But I am supposing his mind to be in a perverted state, and am far from seeking to defend him. This suppo- sition however being made, I feel no surprise, on surveying the prevailing mental condition of evan- gelical communities, that this man has acquired an accumulation of prejudices against some of the distin- guishing features of the gospel. Permitting himself to feel as if the circumstances which thus diminish or distort an order of christian sentiments, were insepara- ble from it, he is inclined to regret that there should be any divine sanctions against his framing for himself, on the foundation of some selected principles in Christi- anity which he cannot but admire, but with a qualify- ing intermixture of foreign elements, a more liberalized scheme of religion. It was especially unfortunate, if, in the advanced stage of this man's perhaps highly cultivated youth, while he was exulting in the conscious enlargement of intellect, and the quickening and vivid perceptiveness of taste, but was still to be regarded as in a degree the subject of education^ it was his lot to have the princi- ples of religion exhibited and inculcated in a repulsive language and cast of thought by the seniors of his family or acquaintance. In that case, the unavoidable frequency of intercourse must have rendered the coun- teractive operation of the unpleasing circumstances, associated wiih christian truth, almost incessant. And .*t would naturally become continually stronger. For TO EVANGELICAI RELiGION, 223 each repetition of that which offended his refined men- tal habits, would incite him to value and cherish them the more, and to cultivate them according to a standard still more foreign from all congeniality with his irr structors. These habits he began and continued to acquire from books of elegant sentiment or philosophi- cal speculation, which he read in disregard of the ad- vice, perhaps to occupy himself much more with works specifically religious. To such literary employment and amusement he has again and again returned, with a delightful rebound from systematic common-places, whether delivered in private or in public instruction ; and has felt the full contrast between the force, lustre, and mental richness, brightening and animating the moral speculations or poetical visions of genius, and the manner in which the truths of the gospel had been conveyed. He was not serious and honest enough to make, when in retirement, any deliberate trial of ab- stracting these truths from the vehicle and combination in which they were thus unhappily set forth, and in a measure disguised, in order to see what they would appear in a better form. This change of form he was competent to effect, or, if he was not, he had but a very small portion of that mental superiority, of which he was congratulating himself that his disgusts were an evidence. But his sense of the duty of doing this was perhaps less cogent, from his perceiving that the evangelical doctrines were inculcated by his relations with no less deficiency of the means of proving them true, than of rendering them interesting ; and he could easily discern that his instructors had received the arti- cles of their faith implicitly from a class of teachers, or the standard creed of a religious community, without even perhaps a subsequent exercise of reasoning to confirm what they had thus adopted. They beheved these articles through the habit of hearing them, and 224 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE maintained them by the habit of believing- them. The recoil of his feelings, therefore, did not alarm h^'s con* science with the apprehension that it might be abso- lutely the truth of God, that, under this uninviting form, he was loath to embrace. Unaided by such an impression already existing, and unarmed with a force of argument to work conviction, the seriousness, per- haps sometimes harsh seriousness, of his friends, reite- rating the assertion of his mind being in a fatal condi- tion, till he should think and feel exactly as they did, was little likely to conciliate his repugnance. When sometimes their admonitions took the mild or pathetic tone, his respect for their piet}^, and his gratitude for their affectionate solicitude, had perhaps a momentary effect to make him earnestly wish he could renounce his intellectual fastidiousness, and adopt in piouf* sim- plicity all their feelings and ideas. But as the con- tracted views, the rude figures, and the mixture of sys- tematic and illiterate language, recurred, his mind would again revolt, and compel him to say, This can- not, will not, be my mode of religion. Now, one wishes there had been some enlightened friend to say to such a man, Why will you not under- stand that there is no necessity for this to be the mode cf your religion ? By what want of acuteness do yoii fail to distinguish between the mode, (a mere extrinsic and accidental mode,) and the substance ? In the world of nature you see the same elements wrought into the plainest and the most beautiful, into the most diminu- tive and the most majestic forms. So the same simple principles of christian truth may ccnstitute the basis of a very inferior, or a very noble, order of ideas. The principles themselves have an essential quality which is not convertible ; but they were not imparted to man to be fixed in the mind as so many bare scientific propo- sitions, each confined to one single anode of conception, TO EVANGELICAL REl Iv^.ON. ^25 without any collateral ideas, and to be always express- ed in one unalterable form of words. They are placed there in order to spread out, if I might so express it, into a great multitude and diversity of ideas and feel- ings. These ideas and feelings, forming round the pure simple principles, will correspond, and will make those principles themselves seem to correspond, to the meaner or the more dignified intellectual rank of the mind. Why will you not perceive, that if the subject takes so humble a style in its less intellectual believers, it is not that it cannot unfold greater proportions through a gradation of larger and still larger faculties, and with facility occupy the whole capacity of the amplest, in the same manner as the ocean fills a gulf as easily as a creek ! Through this climax it retains an identity of its essential principles, and appears progressively a nobler thing only by gaining a position for more con spicuously displaymg itself Why will you not go with it through this gradation, till you see it presented in a greatness of character adequate to the utmost that you can, without folly, attribute to yourself of large and improved faculty ? Never fear lest the gospel should prove not sublime enough for the elevation of your thoughts. If you could attain an intellectual eminence from which you would look wiih pity on the rank you at present hold, you would still find the dignity of this subject on your level, and rising above it. Do you doubt this ? What then do you think of such spirits, for instance, as those of Milton and Pascal 1 And by how many degrees of the intellectual scale shall yours surpass them, to authorize yolir feeling that to be little which they felt to be great? They were at times sensible of the magnificence of christian truth, filling, distending, and exceeding, their faculties, and could have wished for even greater powers to do it justice. In their loftiest contemplations, they did not feel their 226 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF. TASTE minds elevating the subject, but the subject elevating their minds. Now consider that their views of the gospel were, in essence, the same with those of its meanest sincere disciples ; and that therefore many sentiments which, by their unhappy form, have dis gusted you so much, bore a faithful though humble analogy to the ideas of these illustrious christians. Why then, while hearing such sentiments, have you not learnt the habit of recognising this analogy, and in pursuance of it casting your thought upward to the highest style of the subject, instead of abandoning the subject itself in the recoil from the unfortunate mode of presenting it? Have you not cause to fear that your dislike goes deeper than this exterior of its exhi- bition ? For, else, would you not anxiously seek, and rejoice to meet, the divine subject in that transfigu- ration of aspect by which its grandeur would thus be redeemed ? I would make a solemn appeal to the understanding and the conscience of such a man. I would say to him, Is it to the honour of a mind of taste, that it loses, when the religion of Christ is concerned, all the value 3f its discrimination ? Do you not absolutely know ihat the littleness which you see investing that religion is adventitious ? Are you not certain that in hearing the discourse of such men, if they were now to be found, as those I have named, the evangelical truths would appear to you sublime, and that they cannot be less so in fact than they would appear as displayed fmm those minds? But even suppose that they also failed, and that all modern christians, without exception, had con- spired to give an unattractive and unimpressive aspect to the subject of their profession, there is still the Chris- tian Revelation — may I not presume that you some- times read it? But this is to be done in that state of Busceptible seriousness, without which you will have TO EVANGELICAL RELIG.ON. 227 iH> just apprehension of its character ; without which you are but like an ignorant clown who, happening to look at the heavens, perceives nothing more awful in that immeasurable wilderness of suns than in the row of lamps along the streets. If you do read that book, in the better state of feeling, I have no comprehension of the constitution of your mind, if the first perception would not be that of a simple venerable dignity, and if the second would not be that of a certain abstract undefinable magnificence ; a perception of something which, behind this simplicity, expands into a greatness beyond the compass of your mind ; an impression like that with which a thoughtful and imaginative man might be supposed to have looked on the countenance of Newton, feeling a kind of mystical absorption in the attempt to comprehend the magnitude of the soul re- siding within that form. When in this state of serious susceptibility, have you not also perceived in the char- acter and the manner of the first apostles of this truth, while they were declaring it, an expression of dignity, altogether different from that of other distinguished inen, and much more elevated and unearthly ? If you examined the cause, you perceived that the dignity arose partly from their being employed as living ora- cles of this truth, and still more from their whole char- acters being pervaded by its spirit. And have you not been sometimes conscious, for a moment, that if it pos- sessed your soul in the same manner as it did theirs, it would raise you to be one of the most excellent order of mortals ? You would then stand forth in a combi nation of sanctity, devotion, disinterestedness, superiority to external things, energy, and aspiring hope, in com' parison of which the ambition of a conqueror, or the pride of a self-admiring philosopher, would be a very vulgar kind of dignity. You acknowledge these rep- resentations to be just; you allow that the kind of 228 ON THE AVERSION OF HEX OF TASTE sublimity which you have sometimes perceived in the New Testament, that the qualities of the apostolic spirit, and that the intellectual and moral greatness of some modern christians, express the genume character of the evangelical religion, showing that character to be of great lustre. But then, is it not most disingenu- ous in you to suffer the meanness which you know to be but associated and separable, to be admitted by your own mind as an excuse for its alienation from what is acknowledged to be in itself the very contrary of mean- ness? Ought you not to turn on yourself with indig- nation at that want of rectitude which resigns you to the effect of these associations, or with contempt of the debility which tries in vain to break them ? Is it for you to be offended at the mental weakness of christians, you, whose intellectual vigour, and whose sense of justice, but leave you to sink helpless in the fastidious- ness of sickl)?" taste, and to lament that so many inferior spirits have been consoled and saved by this divine faith as to leave on it a soil which forbids your em- bracing it, even though your own salvation depend % At the very same time perhaps this weakness takes the form of pride. Let that pride speak out ; it would be curious to hear it say, that your mental refinement per- haps might have permitted you to take your ground on that eminence of the christian faith where Milton and Pascal stood, z/so many humbler beings did not dis- grace it, by occupying the declivity and the vale. But after all, what need of referring to illustrious names ? as if the claims of that which you acknowl- edge to be from heaven should be made to depend on the number of those who have received it gracefully ; :r as if a rational being could calmly wait for his taste K) be conciliated, before he would embrace a system by which his immortal interest is to be secured. The Sovereign Authority has signified what the difference TO EV.C^GELICAL KELIGION. 229 shall be in the end, between the conse4iiences of re- ceiving or not receiving the evangelic declaration. I3 the difference so announced of such small account that you would not, on serious consideration, be overwhelm- ed with wonder and shame, that so minor an interfer- ence as that of mere taste should so long have made you unjust to yourself in relation to what you are in progress to realize 7 And if, persisting to decline an exercise of such faithful consideration, you go on a venture to meet a consequence unspeakably disastrous, will an unhallowed and proud refinement appear to have been a worthy cause for which to incur it ? You deserve to be disgusted wiih a divine communication, and to lose all its benefits, if you can thus let every thing have a greater influence on your feelings con cerning it than its truth and importance, and if its ac cidental and separable associations with littleness, can counteract its essential inseparable ones with the Gov- ernor and Redeemer of t'he world, with happiness, and with eternity. With what compassion might you be iustly regarded by an illiterate but zealous christian, whose interest in the truths of the New Testament, at once constitutes the best felicity here, and securely car- ries him toward the kingdom of his Father ; while you are standing aloof, and perhaps thinking, that if he and all such as he were dead, you might, after a while, ac- quire the spirit which should impel you also toward heaven. But why do you not feel your individual con- cern in this great subject as absolutely as if all men were dead, and you heard alone in the earth the voice of God ; or as if you saw, like the solitary exile of Patmos, an awful appearance of Jesus Christ and the visions of hereafter? What is it to you that many christians have given an aspect of littleness to the gos- pel, or that a few have sustamed and exemplified its sublimity 1 20 230 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE LETTITR III. Another cause -A'hich I think has tended to rendei evangelical religion less acceptable to persons of taste, is \)a.Q 'peculiarity of language adopted in the discourses and books of its teachers, as well as in the religious conversation and correspondence of the majority of its adherents. I do not refer to any past age, when an excessive quaintness deformed the composition of so many writers on religion and all other subjects ; my assertion is respecting the diction at present in use. The works collectively of the best writers in the language, of those especially who may be called the moderns of the language, have created, and substantially fixed a standard of general phraseology. If any de- partment is exempted from the authority of this stand- ard, it is the low one* of humour and buffoonery, in which the writer may coin and fashion phrases at his whim. But in the language of the higher, and of what may be called middle order of writing, that au- thority is the law. It does indeed allow indefinite va- rieties of what is called style, since twenty able and approved writers might be cited, who have each a dif- ferent style ; but yet there is a certain general charac- ter of expression which they have mainly concurred to establish. This compound result of all their modes of writing is become sanctioned as the classical manner of employing the language, as the form in which it constitutes the most rectified general vehicle of thought. And though it is difficult to define this standard, yet a well-read person of taste feels when it is transgressed or deserted, and pronounces that no classical writer has employed that phrase, or would have combined those words in such a manner. TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 231 The deviations from this standard must be, first, by mean or vulgar diction, which is below it ; or secondly, by a barbarous diction, which is out of it, or foreign to it ; or thirdly, by a diction which, though foreign to it, is yet not to be termed barbarous, because it is ele- vated entirely above the authority of the standard, by some transcendent force or majesty of thought, or a su- perhuman communication of truth. I might make some charge against the language of divines under the first of these distinctions; but my present attention is to what seems to me to come under the second character of difference from the standard, that of being barbarous. — The phrases peculiar to any trade, profession, or fraternity, are barbarous, if they were not low; they are commonly both. The lan- guage of law is felt by every one to be barbarous in the extreme, not only by the huge lumber of its technical terms, but by its very structure, in the parts not con- sisting of technical terms. The language of science is barbarous, as far as it differs arbitrarily, and in more than the use of those terms which are indispensable to the science, from the pure general model. And I am afraid that, on the same principle, the accustomed dic- tion of evangelical religion also must be pronounced barbarous. For I suppose it will be instantly allowed, that the mode of expression of the greater number of evangelical divines,* and of those taught by them, is * When I say evangelical divines, I concur with the opinion of those, who deem a considerable, and, in an intellectual and literary view, a highly respectable class of the writers who have professed- ly taught Christianity, to be not strictly evangelical. They might rather be denominated moral and philosophical divines, illustrating and enforcing very ably the generalities of religion, and the chris- tian morals, but not placing the economy of redemption exactly in that light in which the New Testament appears to place it. Soma of Ihese have avoided the kind of dialect on which I am animad* verting, ^ot only by means of a diction mo^e classical and (ligni« 232 ON TIIE AVERSION OP MEN OF TASTE widely different from the standard of general language, not only by the necessary adof/tion of some peculiar terms, but by a continued and systematic cast of phrase* ology; insomuch that in reading or hearing five or six sentences of an evangelical discourse, 3^ou ascertain the school by the mere turn of expression, independ- ently of any attention to the quality of the ideas. If, in order to try what those ideas would appear in an al- tered form of words, you attempted to reduce a par- agraph to the language employed by intellectual men in speaking or writing well on general subjects, you would find it must be absolutely a version. You know how easily a vast mass of exemplification might be quoted ; and the specimens would give the idea of an attempt to create, out of the general mass of the lan- guage, a dialect which should be intrinsically spiritual ; and so exclusively appropriated to christian doctrine as to be totally unserviceable for any other subject, and to become ludicrous when applied to it.* And this being extracted, like the sabbath from the common course of time, the general range of diction is abandoned, with all its nov/ers, diversities, and elegance, to secular sub fied in the general principles of its structure, but also by avoiding the ideas with which the phrases of this dialect are commonly as • sociated. I may however here observe, that it is by no means al- together confined to the specifically evangelical department of writing and discourse, though it there prevails the most, and with the greatest number of phrases. It extends, in some degree, into the majority of writing on religion in general, and may therefore be called the theological, almost as properly as the evangelical, dialect. * This is so true, that it is no uncommon expedient with the would-be wits, to introduce some of the spiritual phrases, in speak, ing of any thing which they wish to render ludicrous; and they are generally so far successful as to be rewarded by the laugh oi the smile of the circle, who probably may never have had the good fortune of hearing wit, and have not the sense or conscience to care about religion. TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 233 jects and the use of the profane. It is a kind of popery of language, vilifying every thing not marked with the signs ^f the holy church, and forbidding any one to minister to religion ' except in consecrated speech. Suppose that a heathen foreigner had acquired a full acquaintance with our language in its most classical construction, yet without learning any thing about the gospel, (which it is true enough he might do,) and that he then happened to read or hear an evangelical discourse — he would be exceedingly surprised at the cast of phraseology. He would probably be arrested and perplexed in such a manner as hardly to know whether he was trying his faculties on the new doctrine, or on the singularity of the diction ; whereas the general course of the diction should appear but the same as that to which he had been accustomed. It should be such that he would not even think of it, but only oC the new subject and peculiar ideas which were coming through it to his apprehension ; unless there could be some advantage in the necessity of looking at these ideas through the mist and confusion of the double medium, created by the super-induction of an uncouth special dialect on the general language. — Or if he were noi a stranger to the subject, but had acquired its leading principles from some author or speaker who employed (with the addition of a very small number of peculiar terms) the same kind of language in which any other serious subject would have been discoursed on, he would still be not less surprised. "Is it possible," he would say, as soon as he could apprehend what he was attending to, " that these are the very same views which lately presented themselves with such lucid sim- plicity to my understanding? Or is there something more, of which I am not aware, conveyed and con* ceded under the?e rcrange shapings of phrase? Is 20* 234 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE this another stage of the religion, the school of th« sidepts, in which I am not yet initiated ? And does religion then every where, as well a» in 7n7/ country, affect to show and guard its importance by relinquish- ing the simple language of intelligence, and assuming a sinister dialect of its own 7 Or is this the diction of an individual only, and of one who real.y intends but to convey the same ideas that I have elsewhere re- ceived in so much more clear and direct a vehicle of words? But then, in what remote corner, placed be yond the authority of criticism and the circulation of literature, where a noble language stagnates into bar- barism, did this man study his religion and acquire his phrases ? Or by VA^hat inconceivable perversion of taste and of labour has he framed, for the sentiments of his religion, a mode of expression so uncongenial with the eloquence of his country, and so calculated to ex- clude it from all benefit of that eloquence?" My dear friend, if I were not conscious of a most sincere veneration for evangelical religion itself, I should be more afraid to trust myself in making these obser- vations on the usual manner of expressing its ideas. If my description be exaggerated, I am willing to be corrected. But that there is a great and systematical alienation from the true classical diction, is most pal- pably obvious : and I cannot help regarding it as an unfortunate circumstance. It gives the gospel too much the air of a professional thing, which must have its peculiar cast of phrases, for the mutual recognition of its proficients, in the same manner as other professions, arts, crafts, and mysteries have theirs. This is offi- ciously placing the singularity of littleness to draw attention to the singularity of greatness, which in the very act it misrepresents and obscures. It is giving an uncouthness of mien to a beauty which should attract ftll hear^. It is tea^h^'ng a provincial dialect to the TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 235 rising instructor of a world. It is imposing the guise of a cramped formal ecclesiastic on what is destined for an universal monarch. Would it not be an improvement in the administra tion of religion, by discourse and writing, if christian truth were conveyed in that neutral vehicle of expression which is adapted indifferently to common serious sub- jects ? But it may be made a question whether it can be perfectly conveyed in such language. This point therefore requires a little consideration. — The diction on which I have animadverted, maybe described under three distinctions. The first is a peculiar way of using various common words. And this peculiarity consists partly in ex- pressing ideas by such single words as do not simply and directly belong to them, instead of other single words which do simply and directly belong to them, and in general language are used to express them ;* and partly in using such combinations of words as make uncouth phrases. Now what necessity? The answer is immediately obvious as to the former part of the description ; there can be no need to use one com- mon word in an afTected and forced manner to convey an idea, which there is another common word at hand to express in the simplest and most usual manner. And then as to phrases, consisting of an uncouth combina- tion of words which are common, and have no degree of technicality, — are they necessary ? They are not absolutely necessary, unless each of these combinations conveys a thought of so exquisitely singular a turn, that no other conjunction of terms could have expressed it ; which was never suggested by one mind to another till these three or four words, falling out of the general * As for instance, walk, and conversaticrx, instead of conduct, actions, or deportment; Jlesh, instead of, sometimes, bodi/, times natural inclination. S,36 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE order o\ th.e language, gathered into a peculiar phrase ; which cannot be expressed in the language of anothel country that has not a correspondent idiom ; and which will vanish from the world if ever this phrase shall be forgotten. But these combinations of words have no such pretensions. When you obtain their meaning, you may well wonder why a peculiar appa- ratus of phrase should have been constructed, to bring and retain such an element of thought within the sphere of your understanding. But indeed the very circum- stance of there being nothing extraordmary in the sense, may have been one inducement to the contrivance. There may have been a certain discontent that the im- port should not appear more significant, more weighty, more sacred, more authoritative, than it could be made to appear as conveyed in common secular language. It could not be trusted to have its proper effect, without some special token borne on its exterior to warn us to pay it reverence. In whatever manner, however, the language came to be perverted into these artificial modes, it would be easy to try whether the ideas, of which they are the vehicles, are such as they exclusively are com- petent and privileged to convey, insomuch that theif rejection would be the forfeiture of a certain portior of religious truth and sentiment, which would there upon retire beyond the confines of our intelligence disdaining to stay and make an abode in common forma of language. And it would be found that these phrases* as it is within our familiar experience that all phla>:ive lo them both, will have verified m his own experience. He has feU the animation which pervaded his soul, in musing on the virtues, the sentiments, and the great actions, of these dignified men, suddenly ex- piring, when he has attempted to prolong or transfer it to the virtues, sentiments, and actions, of the apostles of Jesus Christ. Sometimes he has, with mixed wonder and indignation, remonstrated with his own feelings, and has said, I know there is the highest excellence in the religion of the Messiah, and in the characters of his most magnanimous followers ; and surely it is ex- cellence also that attracts me to those other illustrious men ; why then cannot I take a full delightful interest in them both? But it is in vain ; he finds this amphi- bious devotion impossible. And he will always find it so ; for, antecedently to experience, it would be obvious that the order of sentiments which animated the one form of excellence, is extremely diverse from that which is the vitality of the other. If the whole system of a christian's sentiments is required to be exactly adjusted to the economy of redemption, they must be widely different from those of the men, however wise or vir- tuous, who never thought or heard of the Saviour of the world ; else where is the peculiarity or importance of this new dispensation, which does however both avow and manifest a most signal peculiarity, and with which heaven has connected the signs and declarations of infinite importance ? If, again, a christian's grand object and sohcitude is to please God, this must con- stitute his moral excellence, (even though the/ac^s, the mere actions were the same,) of a very different nature from that of the men who had not in firm faith any god that they cared to please, and whose highest glory might possibly become, that they boldly differed from their deities ; as Lucan undoubtedly intended it as the most emphatical applause of Cato, that he was ti*^ 288 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE inflexible patron and hero of the cause which was the aversion ol' the gods.* If hunnility is required as a characteristic of a christian's mind, he is hero again jilaced in a state of contrariety to that self-idolatry, the Jove of glory which accompanied, and was applauded as a virtue while it accompanied, almost all the moral greatness of the heathens. If a christian lives for eternity, and advances towards death with the certain expectation of judgment, and of a new and awful world, how different must be the essential quality of his serious sentiments, as partly created, and wholly pervaded, by this mighty anticipation, from the order of feeling of the virtuous heathens, who had no positive or sublime expectations beyond death. The interior essences, if I may so speak, of the two kinds of excellence, sus- tained or produced by these two systems or principles, are so different, that they will hardly be more con- vertible or compatible in the same mind than even ex- cellence and turpitude. — Now it appears to me that the enthusiasm with which a mind of deep and thoughtful sensibility dwells on the history of sages, virtuous legis- lators, and the worthiest class of heroes of heathen antiquity, will be found to beguile that mind into an order of sentiments congenial with theirs, and therefore \hus seriously different from the spirit and principles of Christianity. t It is not exactly that the judgment * Victrix causa Diis placuit, scd victa Cutoni. t Should it be pretended that, in admiring pagan excellence, the mind takes the mere fcicts of that excellence, separately from the principles, and as far as they are identical with the facts of chris- tian excellence, and then, connecting christian principles with them, converts the whole ideally into a christian character before it cordially admires, I appeal to experience that this is not true. If it were, the mind would be able to turn with full complacency from an affectionate admiration of an illustrious heathen, to ad- mire, in the same train of feeling and with still warmer emotion, the excellence of St. Paul : which is not the fact. TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 289 •rfmils distinct pagan propositions, but the heart insen- sibly acquires an unison with many of the sentiments which imply those propositions, and are wrong unless those propositions be right. It forgets that a different state of feeling, corresponding to a greatly different scheme of principles, is appointed by the Sovereign Judge of all things as (with relation to us) an indis- pensable preparation for entering the eternal paradise ;* and that now, no moral distinctions, however splendid, are excellence in his sight, if not conformed to his declared standard. It slides into a persuasion that, under any economy, to be like one of those heathen examples should be a competent fitness for any world to which good spirits are to be assigned. The devoted admirer contemplates them as the most enviable spe- cimens of his nature, and almost wishes he could have been one of them ; without reflecting that this would probably have been under the condition, among many other circumstances, of adoring Jupiter, Bacchus, or iEsculapius, and yet despising the deities that he adored ; and under the condition of beinjr a stranger to the Son of God, and to all that he has disclosed and accom- plished for the felicity of our race. It would even throw an ungracious chill on his ardour, if an evan- gelical monitor should whisper, " Remember Jesus Christ," and express his regret that these illustrious men could not have been privileged to be elevated into christians. If precisely the word " elevated " were used, the admonished person might have a feeling, at the instant, as if it were not the right word. But this state of mind is no less in effect than hostility to the gospel, which these feelings are practically pronouncing * 1 hope none of these observations will be understood to insinuate the impossibility of tlie future happiness of virtuous heathens. But a question on that subject would here be out of place. 25 290 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE to be at least unnecessary ; and therefore that noblest part of ancient literature which tends to produce it, is inexpressibly injurious. It had been happy for many cultivated and aspiring minds, if the men whose cha- racters are the moral magnificence of the classical history, had been such atrocious villains, that their names could not have been recollected without ex- ecration. Nothing can be more disastrous than to be led astray by eminent virtue and intelligence, which can give a sense of congeniality with grandeur in the deviation. It will require a very affecting impression of the christian truth, a decided conception of the christian character, and a habit of thinking with sympathetic admiration of the most elevated class of christians, to preserve the genuine evangelical spirit amidst this ideal society with personages who might pardonably have been esteemed of the noblest form of human nature, if a revelation had not been received from heaven. Some views of this excellence it were in vain for a christiaa to forbid himself to admire ; but he must learn to ad mire under a discriminative restriction, else the emotion involves a desertion of his cause. He must learn to as- sign these men in thought to another sphere, and to regard them as beings under a difierent economy with which our relations are dissolved ; as wonderful exam- ples of a certain imperfect kind of moral greatness, formed on a model foreign to true religion, and which is crumbled to dust and given to the winds. — At the same time, he may well, while beholding some of these men, deplore that if so much excellence could be form- ed on such a model, the sacred system which gives the acicnowledged exemplar for his own character should not have far more assimilated him to heaven. — So much for the eflect of the most nteresting part of aacis» literature TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 291 In the next letter I shall make some observaiion:* on modern polite literature, in application of the same rule of judgment. Many of .hem must unavoidably be very analogous to those already made ; since tne greatest number of the modern fine writers acquired much of the character of their minds from those of the ancient world. Probably indeed the ancients have ex- erted a much more extensive influence in modern times by means of the modern writers to whom they have communicated their moral spirit, than immediate ly by their own works. LETTER VII. To a man who had long observed the influences which tyrannize over human passions and opinions, it would not perhaps have appeared strange, that when the Grand Renovator came on earth, and during the succeeding ages, a number of the men whose superior talents were to carry on the course of literature, and promote and guide the progress of the human mind, should reject his religion. These I have placed out of the question, as it is not my object to show the in- juries done to Christianity by its avowed enemies. But it might have been expected, that all the intelligent men, from that hour to the end of time, who should really admit the truth of this religion, would perceive ihe sovereignty and universality of its claims, feel that every thing unconsonant with it ought instantly to vanish from the whole system of approved sentiments and the whole school of literature, and to keep as clearly aloof as the Israelites from the boundary that guarded the sanctity of Mount Sinai. It might have been presumed, that all principles which the new dis- 292 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTI3 pensation rendered obsoletej or declared or implied t4 bf! wrong, should no more be regarded as belonging to tlie system of principles to be henceforward received and taught, than dead bodies in their graves belong to the race of living men. To retain or recall them would therefore be as offensive to the judgment, as to take up these bodies and place them in the paths of men would be offensive to the senses ; and as ab surd as the practice of the ancient Egyptians, who made their embalmed ancestors their companions at their festivals. It might have been supposed, that whatever Christianity had actually substituted, abol- ished, or supplied, would therefore be 'practically re- garded by these believers of it as substituted, abolished, or supplied ; and that they would, in all their writings, be at least as careful of their fidelity in this great arti- cle, as an adherent to the Newtonian philosophy would be certain to exclude from his scientific discourse, all notions that seriously implied the Ptolemaic or the Tychonic system to be true. Necessarily, a number of these literary believers would write on subjects so completely foreign to what comes within the cognizance of Christianity, that a pure neutrality, which should avoid all interference with it, would be all that could be claimed from them in its behalf; though at the same time, one should feel some degree of regret to see a man of enlarged mind exhausting his ability and his life on these foreign subjects, without devoting some short interval to the service of that which he believes to be of far surpassing moment.* * I could not help feeling a degree of this regret in reading lately the memoirs of the admiral#le and estimable Sir William Jones. Some of his researches in Asia have incidentally served the cause of religion ; but did he think that nothing more remain- ed possible to be done in service to Christianity, that his accom- plished mind was left at leisure for hymns to the Hii'doo gods 1 TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 293 But the grea number who chose to wiite on sub- jects that come williin the relations of the chrisunn system, as on the various views of morals, the dibtmc- tions and judgments of human character, and the the- ory of happiness, with almost unavoidable references sometimes to our connexion with Deity, to death, and to a future state, ought to have written every page un- der the recollection, that these subjects are not left free for careless or arbitrary sentiment since the time that " God has spoken to us by his Son ;" and that the finest composition would be only so much eloquent im- piety, if essentially discordant with the dictates of the New Testament. Had this been a habitual and in- fluential recollection with the admired writers of the christian world, an ingenuous mind might have been conversant alternately with their works and those of evangelists and apostles, without being confounded in the conflict of antipathy between the inspirations of genius and the inspirations of heaven. I confine my view chiefly to the elegant literature of our own country. And there is a presumption in its favour, independently of actual comparison, that it is much less exceptionable than the belles lettres of the other countries of modern Europe ; for this plain rea- son, that the extended prevalence of the happy light of Was not this even a violation of the neutrality, and an offence, lot only against the gospel, but against theism itself^ I know what may be said about personification, license ot poetry, and so on; but should not a w^orshipper of God hold himself under a solemn obligation to abjure all tolerance of even poetical figures that can seriously seem, in any way whatever, to recognise the pagan divinities — or abominations, as the prophe's of Jehovah •would have called them 1 "What would Elijah have said to such an employment of talents in his time ? It would have availed little to have told him that these divinities were only peisonifications (with their appropriate representative idols) of objects in nature, of elements, or of abstractions. He would have sternly replied, And was not Baal, whose prophets I destroyed, the same 1 25* 294 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE the Reformation through almost the whole period oi the production of our works of genius and taste, must necessarily, by presenting the religion of Christ in an aspect more true to its genuine dignity, have compelled from the intellectual men who did not deny its truth, and could not be entirely ignorant of its most essential properties, a kind and degree of respect which nvould not be felt by the same order of men in popish coun- tries, whose belief in Christianity was no more than a deference to the authority of the church, and whose oc- casional allusions or testimonies to it would recognise it in no higher character than that in which it appears as degraded into a superstition ; so that there would be only a fallacious or equivocal glimmer of Christian- ity thrown occasionally on their pages of moral senti- ment. In this assumption in favour of our polite literature against that of the popish countries, I set out of view, on both sides, that portion which is of directly immoral or infidel tendency ; since it is not at all my object to comment on the antichristian effect of the palpably vicious part of our literature, but to indicate a certain moral and religious insalubrity in much of that which, in general account, is for the most part tolerably accor- dant, and in many instances actively subservient, to truth and virtue. Going over from the vicious and irreligious to the directly opposite quarter, neither do I include in the literature on which I am animadverting, any class of authors formerly theological, not even the most admired sermon writers in our language ; because it is probable that works specifically theological have not been ad- mitted to constitute more than a small part of that school of thinking and taste, in which the generality of cultivated men have acquired the moral habitude at .heir minds. That schoo'. is composed of poets, mora rO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 295 philosophers, liistoria:is, essayists, and you may add the wrilers of fiction. If the great majority of these authors have injured, and still injure their pupils in the most important of all their interests, it is a very serious con- sideration, both in respect to the accountableaess of the authors, and the final effect on their pupils. I main- tain that they are guilty of this injury. On so wide a field, my dear friend, it would be in vain to attempt making particular references and selec- tions to verify all these remarks. I must appeal for their truth to your own acquaintance with our popular fine writers. In the first place, and as a general observation, the alleged injury has been done, to a great extent, by Omission, or rather it should be called Exclusion. I do not refer so much to that unworthy care, maintained through the works of our ingenious authors to avoid formally treating on any topics of an expressly evan- gelical kii. i, as to the absence of that christian tinge and modification, (rendered perceptible partly by a plain recognition occasionally of some great christian truth, and partly by a solicitous, though it were a tacit conformity to every principle of the christian theory,) which should pervade universally the sentiments re- garding man as a moral being. Consider how small a portion of the serious subjects of thought can be de- tached from all connexion with the religion of Christ, without narrowing the scope to which he meant it to extend, and repelling its intervention where he required it should intervene. The book which unfolds it, has exaggerated its comprehensiveness, and the first dis- tinguished christians had a delusive view of it, if it does not actually claim to mingle its principles with the whole system of moral ideas, so as to give them a special modification; as the principle of fire, interfused through the various forms and combinations of tho 206 ON THE avi:rsion of men of taste elements, contributes essentially to constitute that con* diiion by whioh they are adapted to their important uses, which condition and adaptation therefore they would lose if that principle were no longer inherent And this claim for the extensive interference of the christian principles, made as a requirement frori au- thority, appears to be just in virtue of their own nature. For they are not of a nature which necessarily restricts them to a peculiar d':partment, like the principles ap- propriate I ) some of the sciences. We should at once perceive tl e absurdity of a man who should be pre- tending to adjust all his ideas on general subjects ac- cording to the rules of geometry, and should maintain (if any man could do so preposterous a thing) that geo- metrical laws ought to be taken as the basis of our rea- soning on politics and morals. Or, if this be too ex- treme a supposition, let any other class of principles, foreign to moral subjects, be selected, in order to show how absurd is the c%ct of an attempt to stretch them beyond their proper sphere, and force them into some connexion with ideat with which they have no natural relation. Let it be .shown how such principles can in no degree modify ihe subject to which they are at- tempted to be applied, nor mingle with the reasons concerning it, but refuse to touch it, like magnetism applied to brass. 1 -vould then show, on the contrary, that the christian principles are of a quality vv'hich puts them in relation with .something in the nature of almost all serious subjects. Their introduction into those sub- jects therefore is not an arbitrary and forced applica- tion of them ; it is merely permitting their cognizance and interfusion in whatever has some quality of a com- mon nature with them. It must be evident in a mo- ment that the most general doctrines of Christianity, such as those of a fu.ure judgment, and immortality, have a direct relation with erery thing that can be TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 297 comprehended within the widest range of moral specu lation and sentiment. It will also be found that the more particular doctrines such as those of the moral pravity of our nature, an atonement made by the sac rifice of Christ, the interference o( a special divine in fluence in renewing the human mind, and conducting it through the discipline for a future stale, togethei with all the inferences, conditions, and motives result- ing from them, cannot be admitted and religiously re- garded, without combining in numberless instances with a man's ideas on moral subjects. That writer must therefore have retired beyond the limits of an im- mense field of important and most interesting specula- tions, indeed beyond the limits of all the speculation most important to man, who can say that nothing ia the religion of Christ bears, in any manner, on any part of his subject, any more than if he were a philoso- pher of Saturn. In thus habitually interfering and combining with moral sentiments and speculations, the christian prin- ciples will greatly modify them. The ideas infused from those principles to be combined with the moral sentiments, will not appear as simply additional ideas in the train of thought, but as also affecting the char- acter of the rest. A writer whose mind is so possessed with the christian principles that they continually sug- gest themselves in connexion with his serious specu- lations, will unavoidably present a moral subject in a" .somewhat different aspect, even when he makes no ex- press references to the gospel, from that in which il would be presented by another writer, whose habits of thought were clear of evangelical recollections. Now in every train of thinking in which the recognition of those principles would effect this modification, it ought to be effected ; so that the very last idea within the compass of speculation which would have a differenl 298 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE cast as a ray of the gospel falls, or does not fall, upon It, should be faithfully presented in that light. The christian principles cannot be true, without determining what shall be true in the mode of representing every subject in which there is any thing belonging to them by essential relation. Obviously, as far as the gospel can go, and does by such relation with things claim to go, with a modifying action, it cannot be a matter of indifference whether it do go or not ; for nothing on which its application would have this effect, would be equally right as so modified and as not so modified. That which is made precisely correct by this qualified condition, must therefore, separately from it, be incor- rect. He who has sent a revelation to declare the the- ory of sacred truth, and to order the relations of all moral sentiment with that truth, cannot give his sanc- tion at once to this final constitution, and to that which refuses to be conformed to it. He therefore disowns that which disowns the religion of Christ. And what he disowns he condemns ; thus placing all moral sen- timents in the same predicament with regard to the christian economy, in which Jesus Christ placed his contemporaries, " He that is not with me is against me." — The order of ideas dissentient from the christian system, presumes the existence, or attempts the creation, of some other economy. Now, in casting a recollective glance over our ele- gant literature, as far as I am acquainted with it, I can- not help thinking that much the greater part falls under this condemnation. After a comparatively small num ber of names and books are excepted, what are called the British Classics, with the addition of very many works of great literary merit that have not quite at- tained that rank, present an immense vacancy of chris- tianized sentiment. The authors do not give signs of having ever deeply studied Christianity, or of having TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 299 boen aware that any such thing- is a duty. Whatever has strongly occupied a man's attention, L5e.cted his feelings, and filled his mind with ideas, will even un- intentionally show itself in the train and cast of his discourse ; these writers do not in this manner betray that their faculties have been occupied and interested by the special views unfolded in the evangelic dispen- sation. Of their coming from the contemplation of these views you discover no notices analogous, for in- stance, to those which appear in the writing or dis- course of a man, who has been passing some time amidst the wonders of Rome or Egypt, and who shows you, by almost unconscious allusions and images oc- curring in his language even on other subjects, how profoundly he has been interested in beholding tri- umphal arches, temples, pyramids, ahd cemeteries. Their minds are not naturalized, if I may so speak, to the images and scenery of the kingdom of Christ, or to that kind of light which the gospel throws on all ob- jects. They are somewhat like the inhabitants of those towns within the vast salt mines of Poland, who, see- ing every object in their region by the light of lamps and candles only, have in their conversation hardly any expressions describing things in such aspects as never appear but under the lights of heaven. You might observe, the next time that you open one of these works, how far you may read, without meeting with an idea of such a nature, or so expressed, as could not have been unless Jesus Christ had come into the world ;* though the subject in hand may be one of those which he came in a special manner to illuminate, and to enforce on the mind by new and most cogent * Except perhaps in respect to humanity and benevolence, on which subject his instructions have improved the sentiments of infiJcb themselves, in spite of the rejection of their divine author* My. 300 ON THt^ AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE arguments. And where so little of the light and rec* tifyiag influence of these communications has been ad- mitted into the hr.'jits of thought, there will be very few cordially reverential and animated references to the great Instructor himself. These will perhaps occur not oftener than a traveller in some parts of Africa, or Arabia, comes to a I'pot of green vegetation in the desert. You might have read a considerable number of vol- umes, without becoming clearly apprised of the exist- ence of the dispensation, or that such a sublime Min- ister of it had ever appeared among men. And you might have diligently read, for several years, and through several hundred volumes, w^ithout discovering its nature or importance, or that the writers, when al- luding to it, ackn;Avledged any peculiar and essential importance as belonging to it. You would only have conjectured it to be a scheme of opinions and discipline which had appeared, in its day, as many others had appeared, and lett us. as the others have left us, to fol- low our specuk*'ons very much in our own way, taking from those schemes, indifferently, any notions that we may approve, and facts or fictions that we may admire. You would have supposed that these writers had heard of one Jesus Christ, as they had heard of one Confucius, as a teacher whose instructions are admitted to contain manv excellent things, and to whose system a liberal mind will occasionally advert, well pleased to see China, Greece, and Judea, as well as England, producing their philosophers, of various degrees and modes of illumination, for the honour cif their respec- tive countries and periods, and for the concurrent pro- motion of human intelligence. All the information which they would have supplied to your understajtiding, and all the conjectures to which they might have ex- cited your curiosity, would have left you, if not instruct- TO EVANGELICAL RELIGIOX 301 ed from other sources, to meet the real religion itself, when at length disclosed to 3^0 u, as a thing of which you had but slight recognition, further than its name; as a wonderful novelty. How little you would have expected, from their literary and ethical glimpses, to find the case to be, that the system so insignificantly and carelessly acknowledged in the course of their fine sentiments, is the actual and sole economy by the pro- visions of which their happiness can be secured, by the laws of which they will be judged, which has declared the relations of man with his Creator, and specified the exclusive ground of acceptance ; which is therefore of infinite consequence to you, and to them, and to all their readers, as fixing the entire theory of the condi- tion and destinies of man on the final principles, to which all theories and sentiments are solemnly required to be " brought into obedience." Now, if the fine spirits, who have thus preset ved an ample, rich, diversified, crowded province of our litera- ture, clear of evangelical intrusion, are really t>ie chief instructors of persons of taste, and form, from early life, their habits of feelin^r and thouo^ht, the natuial result must be a state of mind very uncongenial with the gospel. Views habitually presented to the mind in its most susceptible periods, and during the prolonged course of its improvements, in the varied forms and ligl^ts of sublimity and beauty, with every fascination of the taste, ingenuity, and eloquence, which it has admired still more each year as its faculties have ex panded, will have become the settled order of its ideas. And it will feel the same complacency in this intellec- tual order, that we feel, as inhabitants of the material world, in the great arrangement of nature, iri the green blooming ©nth, and ihe splendid hemisphere of heaA'^eD 26 S02 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE LETTER Vril. It will be proper to specify, somewhat more di& tinctly, several of the particulars in which 1 considei the majority of our fine writers as at variance with the tenour of the christian revelation, and therefore beguiling their readers into a complacency in an order of sentiments that sometimes virtually, and sometimes directly, disowns it. One thing extremely obvious to remark is, that the good man^ the man of virtue, who is necessarily coming often in view in the volumes of these writers, in not a christian. His character could have been formed though the christian revelation had never been opened on the earth, or though the New Testament had per- ished ages since ; and it might have been a fine spec- tacle, but of no striking peculiarity. It has no such complexion and aspect as would have appeared foreign and unaccountable in the absence of the christian truth, and have excited wonder what it should bear relation to, and on what model, or in what school, such a con- formation of principles and feelings could have taken its consistence. Let it only be said, that this man of virtue had been conversant whole years with such oracles and examples as Socrates, Plato, Cicero, Anto- ninus, and Seneca, selecting what in any of them ap- peared the wisest or best, and all would be explained ; there would be nothing to suggest the question, " But if so, with whom has he conversed since^ to lose so strangely the proper character of his school, under the broad impression of some other mightier influence?" The good man of our polite literature never talks With aflJectionate devotion of Christ, as the great High Priest of his profession, as the exalted friend and lord, TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 303 whose injunctions are the laws of his virtues, whose I'/ork and sacrifice are the basis of his hopes, whose doctrines guide and awe his reasonings, and whose ex- ample is the pattern which he is earnestly aspiring to resemble. The last intellectual and moral designations in the world by which it would occur to you to describe' him, would be those by which the apostles so much exulted to be recognised, a disciple, and a servant, of Jesus Christ ; nor could you imagine him as at all gratified by being so described. You do not hear him express, that he accounts the habitual remembrance of Christ essential to the nature of that excellence which he is cukivating. He rather seems, with the utmost coolness of choice, adopting virtue as according with the dignity of a rational agent, than to be in the least degree impelled to the high attainment by any rela- tions with the Saviour of the world. If you suppose a person of such character to have fallen into the company of St. Paul, you can easily imagine the total want of congeniality. Though both avowedly devoted to truth, to virtue, and perhaps to religion, the difference in the cast of their sentiments would have been as great as that between the physical constitution and habitudes of a native of the country at the equator, and those of one from the arctic re- gions. Would not that determination of the apostle's mind, by which there was a continual intervention of ideas concerning one great object, in all subjects, places, and times, have appeared to this man of virtue and wisdom inconceivably mystical? In what manner would he have hstened to the emphatical expressions respecting the love of Christ constraining us, living not to ourselves, but to him that died for us and rose again, counting all things but loss for the knowledge of Christ, being ardent to win Christ and be found in him, and trusting that Christ should be magnified io 304 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE our body, whether by life or by death ? Perhap i Paul's energy of temperament, evidently comb leii with a vigorous intellect, might have awed him into silence. But amidst that silence, he must have dec/Jed, in order to defend his self-complacency, that the apos- tle's mind had fallen, notwithstanding its strength, un- der the dominion of an irrational association ; for he would have been conscious that no such ideas had ever kindled his affections, and that no such aflectiona had ever animated his actions ; and yet he was indubi- tably a good man, according to a generally approved standard, and could, in another style, be as eloquent for goodness as St. Paul himself. He would therefore have assured himself, either that it was not necessary to be a christian, or that this order of feelings was not necessary to that character. But if the apostle's sa- gacity had detected the cause of this reserve, and the nature of his associate's reflections, he would most cer- tainly have declared to him with emphasis that both these things were necessary — or that he had been de- ceived by inspiration ; and he would have parted from this self-complacent man with admonition and compas- sion. Would St. Paul have been wrong? But if he would have been right, what becomes of those authors, whose works, whether from neglect or design, tend to satisfy their readers of the perfection of a form of character which he would have pronounced essentially unsound ? Again, moral writings are instructions on the sub- ject of happiness. Now the doctrine of this subject is declared in the evangelical testimony : it had been strange indeed if it had not, when the happiness of man was expressly the object of the communication. And what, according to this communication, are the essential requisites to that condition of the mind without which no man ought to be called happy ; TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 305 «rithout which igr.orance or insensibility alone can be content, and folly alone can be cheerful? A simple reader of the christian scriptures will reply that they are — a change of heart, called conversion, the assu- rance of the pardon of sin through Jesus Christ, a habit of devotion approaching so near to intercourse with the Supreme Object of devotion that revelation has called it "communion with God," a process, named sanctification, of improvement in all internal and ex- ternal virtue, a confidence in the divine Providence that all things shall work together for good, and a conscious preparation for another life, including a firm hope of eternal felicity. And what else can he reply? Did the lamp of heaven ever shine more clearly since omnipotence lighted it, than these ideas display them- selves through the christian revelation 1 Is this then absolutely and exclusively the true account of hap- piness? It is not that which our accomplished writers in general have chosen to sanction. Your recollection will tell you that they have most certainly presumed to avow, or to insinuate, a doctrine of happiness which implies much of the christian doctrine to be a needless intruder on our speculations, or an imposition on our belief; and I wonder that this grave fact should so little have alarmed the christian students of elegant literature. The wide difference between the dictates of the two authorities is too evident to be overlooked ; for the writers in question have very rarely, amidst an immense assemblage of sentiments concerning happi- ness, made any reference to what the inspired teachers so explicitly declare to be its constituent and vital principles. How many times you might read the sun or the moon to its repose, before you would find an assertion or a recognition, for instance, of a change of the Ynind being requisite to happiness, in any terms eornmensurate with the significance which this article 26* 306 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE seems to bear, in all the varied propositions and notices respecting it in the New Testament ! Some of these writers appear hardly to have admitted or to have recollected even the maxim, that happiness must essen- tially consist in something so fixed in the mind itself, as to be substantially independent of worldly condition, for their most animated representations of it are merely descriptions of fortunate combinations of external cir- cumstances, and of the feelings so immediately de- pending on them, that they will expire the moment that these combinations are broken up. The greater number, however, have fully admitted so plain a truth, and have given their illustrations of the doctrine of happiness accordingly. And what appears in these illustrations as the brightest image of happiness? It is, probably, that of a man feeling an elevated com- placency in his own excellence, a proud consciousness of rectitude ; pvivileged with freedom of thought, and extended views, cleared from the mists of prejudice and superstition ; displaying the generosity of his na- ture in the exercise of benevolence, without feeling, however, any grateful incitement from remembrance of the transcendent generosity of the Son of Man ; maintaining, in respect to the events and bustle of the surrounding scene, a dignified indifference, which can let the world go its own way, undisturbed by its dis- ordered course ; temperately enjoying whatever good grows on his portion of the field of life, and living in a cool resignation to fate, without any strong expres- sions of a specific hope, or even solicitude, with regard to the termination of life and to all futurity. Now, notwithstanding a partial coincidence of this description with the christian theory of happiness,* it is evident * No one can be so absurd as to represent the notions which pervade the works of poUte literature as totally, and at -ill points, TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 307 Jiat on the whole the two modes are so different thai ao man can realize them both. The consequence 15 clear ; the natural effect of incompetent and fallacious schemes, prepossessing the mind by every grace and force of genius, will be an aversion to the christian scheme ; which will be seen to place happiness in elements and relations much less flattering to what will be called a noble pride ; to make it consist in some- thing of which it were a vain presumption for the man to fancy that himself c^n be the sovereign creator. It is, again, a prominent characteristic of the chris- tian revelation, that having declared this life to be but the introduction to another, it systematically preserves the recollection of this great truth through every rep- resentation of every subject ; so that the reader is not allowed to contemplate any of the interests of life in a view which detaches them from the grand object and conditions of life itself An apostle could not address his friends on the most common concerns, for the length of a page, without the final references. He is like a person whose eye. while he is conversing with you about an object, or a succession of objects, imme- diately near, should glance every moment toward some great spectacle appearing on the distant horizon. He seems to talk to his friends in somewhat of that man- ner of expression with which you can imagine that Elijah spoke, if he remarked to his companion any circumstance in the journey from Bethel to Jericho, and from Jericho to the Jordan ; a manner betraying the sublime anticipation which was pressing on his thoughts. The correct consequence of conversing with our Lord and his apostles would be, that the thought of immortality should become almost as habitually opposite to the principles of Christianity ; what I am asserting is, that in some important points they are substantially and essentially diflerent, and that in others they disown the christian modificati«»n. 308 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE present and familiarized to the mind as the countenance of a domestic friend ; that it should be the grand test of the value of all pursuits, friendships, and specula- tions ; and that it should mingle a certain noblenes? with every thing which it permitted to occupy oui time. NoWj how far will the discipline of modern po- lite literature coincide ? I should be pleased to hear a student of that litera- ture seriously profess that he is often and impressively reminded of futurity ; and to have it shown that ideas relating to this great subject are presented in sufficient number, and in a proper manner, Ig produce an effect which should form a respectable proportion of the whole effect produced by these authors on susceptible minds. But there is no ground for expecting this satisfaction. It is true that the idea of immortality is so exceed- ingl}'' grand, that many writers of genius who have felt but little genuine interest in religion, have been led by their perception of what is sublime to introduce an allusion which is one of the most powerful means of elevating the imagination : and, in point of energy and splendour, their language has been worthy of the subject. In these instances, however, it is seldom found that the idea is presented in that light which, while displaying it prominent in its individual gran- deur, shows also its extensive necessary connexion with other ideas : it appears somewhat like a majestic tower which a traveller in some countries may find standing m a solitary scene, no longer surrounded by the great assemblage of buildings, the ample city, of which it was raised to be the centre, the strength, and the orna- ment. Immortality has been had recourse to in one page of an ingenious work as a single topic of sublim- ity, in the same manner as a magnificent phejiomenon, or a brilliant achievement, has been described in an- TO EVANGELICAL RELIC,A)N. 309 Other. The authof's object might rather seem to have been to supply an occasional gratification, to taste, than to reduce the mind and all its feelings under the do- minion of a grand practical principle. It is true also, that a graver class of fine writers, who have expressed considerable respect for religion and for Christianity, and who, though not writing systemat- ically on morals, have inculcated high moral principles, have made references to a future state as the hope and sanction of virtue. But these references are made less frequently, and with less enforcement and emphasis, than the connexion between our present conduct and a future life must be acknowledged to claim. The manner in which they are made seems to betray either a deficiency of interest in the great subject, or a pusil- lanimous anxiety not to offend those readers who would think it loo directly religious. It is sometimes ad- verted to as if rather from a compelling sense, that if there is a future slate, moral speculation must be de- fective, even to a degree of absurdity, without some allusions to it, than from feeling a profound delight in the contemplation. When the idea of another life is introduced to aggravate the force of moral principles, and the authority of conscience, it is done so as to ap- pear like a somewhat reluctant acknowledgment of the deficiency of inferior sanctions. The consideration comes and vanishes in transient light, after the writer has eloquently expatiated on every circumstance by which the present life can supply motives to goodness. In some instances, a watchful reader will also perceive what appears too much like care to divest the idea, when it must be introduced, of all direct references to that sacred Person who first completely opened the prospect of immortality, or to some of those other doc- trines which he taught in immediate connexion with this great truth. There seems reason to suspect the 310 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE writer of being pleased that, though it is indeed to the gospel alone that we owe the positive assurance of immortalityj yet it was a subject so much in the con- jectures and speculation of the heathen sages, that he may mention it without therefore so expressly recog- nising the gospel, as he must in the case of introducing some truth of which not only the evidence, but even the first explicit conception, was communicated by that dispensation. Taking this defective kind of acknowledgment of a future state, together with that entire oblivion of the subject which prevails through an ample portion of elegant literature, I think there is no hazard in saying^ that a reader who is satisfied without any other in- structions, will learn almost every lesson sooner than the necessity of habitually living for eternity. Many of these writers seem to take as much care to guard against the inroad of ideas from that solemn quarter, as the inhabitants of Holland do against the irruption of the sea ; and their writings do really form a kind of moral dyke against the invasion from the other world. They do not instruct a man to act, to enjoy, and to suffer, as a being that may by to-morrow have finally abandoned this orb : every thing is done to beguile the feeling of his beinor a "stranorer and a pil^-rini on the earth." The relation which our nature bears to the circumstances of the present state, and which indi- viduals bear to one another, is mainly the ground on which their considerations of duty proceed and con- clude. And their schemes of happiness, though formed for beings at once immortal and departing, include little which avowedly relates to that world to which they are removing, nor reach beyond the period at which they will properly but begin to live. They endeavour to raise the groves of an earthly pa'adise, to TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 311 shade from sight that vista which opens to the distance of eternity. Another article in which the anti-christian tendency of a great part of our productions of taste and genius is apparent, is, the kind of consolation administered to distress, old age, and death. Things of a mournful kind make so large a portion of the lot of humanity, that it is impossible for writers who take human life and feelings for their subject to a.void, (nor indeed have they endeavoured to avoid,) contemplating man in those conditions in which he needs every benignant aid to save him from despair. And here, if any where, we may justly require an absolute coincidence of all moral instructions with the religion of Christ ; since consola- tion is eminently its distinction and its design; since a being in distress has peculiarly a right not to be trifled with by the application of unadapted expedients ; and since insufficient consolations are but to mock it, and deceptive ones are to betray. It should then be clearly ascertained by the moralist, and never forgotten, what are the consolations provided by this religion, and under what condition they are oftered. Chrisiianity offers even to the irreligious, who relent amidst their surlerings, the alleviation springing from inestimable promises made to penitence : any other system, which should attempt to console them, simply as suffering, and without any reference to the moral and religious state of their minds, would be mischiev- ous, if it were not inefficacious. What are the princi- pal sources of consolation to the pious, is immediately apparent. The subjects of adversity and sorrow are assured that God exercises his paternal wisdom and kindness in afflicting his children : that this necessary discipline is to refine and exalt them by making them " partakers of his holiness ;" that he mercifully regards their weakness and pains, and will not let them suffer 312 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE beyond what they shall be able to bear ; that their great Leader has suffered for them more than they can suffer, and compassionately sympathizes wiCh them stili ; that this short life was far less designed to confer a present happiness, than to mature them to a fitness for being happy for ever ; and that patient constancy shall receive a resplendent crown. An aged christian is soothed by the assurance that his Almighty Friend will not despise the enfeebled exertions, nor desert the op- pressed and fainting weakness, of the last stage of his servant's life. When advancing into the shade of death itself, he is animated by the faith that the great sacri- fice has taken the malignity of death away; and that the divine presence will attend the dark steps of this last and lonely enterprise, and shew the dying traveller and combatant that even this melancholy gloom is to hitn the utmost limit of the dominion of evil, the very confine of paradise, the immediate access to the region of eternal life. Now, in the greater number of the works under re- view, wdiat are the modes of consolation which sensi- bility, reason, and eloquence, have most generally ex- erted themselves to apply to the mournful circumstances of life, and to its close ? You will readily recollect such as these: a man is suffering — well, it is the common destiny, every one suffers sometimes, and some much more than he ; it is well it is no worse. If he is un- happy now, he has been happy, and he could not ex- pect to be so invariably. It were folly to complain that his nature was constituted capable of suffering, or placed in a world where it is exposed to the infliction. If it were not capable of pain, it would not of pleasure. Would he be willing to lose his being, to escape these ills? Or would he consent, if such a thing were pos- sible, to be any person else ? — The sympathy of each Kmd relation and friend will not be wanting. Hit TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 313 condition may probably change for the better ; there is hope in every situation ; and meanwhile, it is an oppor- tunity for displaying manly fortitude. A strong mind can proudly triumph over the oppression of pain, the vexations of disappointment, and the tyranny of for- tune. If the cause of distress is some irreparable depri- vation, it will be softened by the lenient hand of time.* The lingering months of an aged man are soothed almost, it is pretended, into cheerfulness, by the re- spectful attention of his neighbours; by the worldly prosperity and dutiful regard of the family he ha« brought up ; by the innocent gaiety and amusing activ- ity of their children ; and by the consideration of his fair character in society. If he is a man of thought, he has the added advantage of some philosophical con- siderations ; the cares and passions of his former life are calmed into a wise tranquillity; he thinks he has had a competent share of life ; it is as proper and necessary for mankind to have their '• exits," as their ^'entrances;'" and his business will now be to make a " well-graced"' retreat from the stage, like a man that has properly art«:d his part, and may retire with applause. As to the means sustaining the spirit in death, the general voice of these authors asserts the chief and only all-sufficient one to be the recollection of a well-spent life Some minor repellents of fear are added ; as for instance, that death is in fact a far less tremendous hing than that dire form of it by which 'magination ♦ Can it be necessary to notice here again, that every system of moral sentiments must inevitably contain some principles not dis- claimed by Christianity ; with whose dictates various particulars in this assemblage of consolations are not inconsistent if held in a subordinate rank 1 But the enumeration taken altogether, and exclusively of the grand christian principles, forms a scheme of consolation essentially different from that so beneficently displayed >D the religion of Clirist. 27 814 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE and superstition are haunted ; that the sufTerings in death are less than men often endure in the course of life; that it is only like one of those transformations with which the world of nature abounds ; and that it is easy to conceive, and reasonable to expect, a more cor.i modious vehicle and habitation. It would seem almost unavoidable to glance a thought toward what revela- tion has signified to us of " the house not made with hands," of the " better country, that is, the heavenljr." But the greater number of the writers of taste advert to the scene beyond this world with apparent reluctance, unless it can be done, on the one hand, in the manner of pure philosophical conjecture, or on the other, under the form of images, bearing some analogy to the visions of classical poetry.* The arguments for resignation to death are not so much draw^n from future scenes, as from a consideration of the evile of the present life ; the necessity of yielding to a general and irreve'*sible law ; the dignity of sub- mitting with that calmness which conscious vu'iue is entitled to feel ; and the improbability (as these writers sometimes intimate) that any formidable evils are to be apprehended after death, except by a few of the very worst of the human race. Those arguments are in general rather aimed to quiet fear than to animate hope. The pleaders of them seem more concerned to convey the dying man in peace and silence out of the world, ♦ I am very far from disliking philosophical speculation, or da- ring flights of fancy, on this high subject. On tho contrary, it ap- pears to me strange that any one firmly holding the belief of a life to come, should not have both the intellectual faculty and the imagina* tion excited to the utmost effort in the trial, however unavailing to give some outlines of definite form to the unseen realities. What I mean to censure in. the mode of referring to another life, is, the care to avoid any direct resemblance or recognition of the ideaa which the New Testament has given to guide, in some s'liall, verj ■mall degree, our conjectures. TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION 315 than to conduct him to the celestial felicity. Let us but see hini embarked on his unkuovn voyage in fair weather, and we are not accountable for what he may meet, or whither he may be carried, when he is gone out of sight. They seldom present a lively view of the distant happiness, especially in any of those images in which the christian revelation has intimated its nature. In which of these books, and by which of the real or fictitious characters whose last hours and thoughts they sometimes display, will you find, in terms or in spirit, the apostohc sentiments adopted, " To depart and be with Christ is far better ;" " Willing rather to be ab- sent from the body, and present with the Lord ?" The very existence of that sacred testimony which has given the only genuine consolations in death, and the only just conceptions of what is beyond it, seems to be scarce- ly recollected ; while the ingenious moralists are search- ing the exhausted common places of the stoic philosophy, or citing the treacherous maxims of a religion pervert- ed to accordance with the corrupt wishes of uiankindj or even recollecting the lively sayings of the few whose wit has expired only in the same moment with life, to fortify the pensive spirit for its last removal. " Is it not because there is not a God in Israel, that ye have sent to inquire of Baalzebub the God of Ekron?" Another order of sentiments concerning death, of a character too bold to be called consolations, has been represented as animating one class of human beings. In remarking on Lucan, I noticed that desire of death which has appeared in the expressions of great minds, sometimes while merely indulging soleniU' reflections when no danger or calamity immediately threatened, but often in the conscious approach toward.^ a fatal ca- tastrophe. Many writers of later times have exerted their whole strength, and have even excelled themselves in representing the high sentiments in which this de- 516 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN .F TASTE sire has displayed itself; genius has found its very gold mine in this Held. If this grandeur of sentiment had been of the genuine spirit to animate piety while it exalts the passions, some of the poets would have ranked among our greatest benefactors. Powerful ge- nius, aiding to inspire a christian triumph in the pros- pect of death, might be revered as a prophet, might be almost loved as a benignant angel. Few men's emo- tions can have approached nearer to enthusiasm than mine, in reading the sentiments made to be uttered by sages and reflective heroes in this prospect. I have felt these passages as the last and mightiest of the en- chantments of poetry, of power to inspire for a litile while a contempt of all ordinary interests, of the world