Chapter VIII: Section IV (4)

But there are further two distinct states or kinds of mental indolence. The first is that which we frequently experience during a walk or any other species of bodily exercise, where, when the whole is at an end, we scarcely recollect any thing in which the mind has been employed, but have been in what I may call a healthful torpor, where our limbs have been sufficiently in action to continue our exercise, we have felt the fresh breeze playing on our cheeks, and have been in other respects in a frame of no unpleasing neutrality. This may be supposed greatly to contribute to our bodily health. It is the holiday of the faculties: and, as the bow, when it has been for a considerable time unbent, is said to recover its elasticity, so the mind, after a holiday of this sort, comes fresh, and with an increased alacrity, to those occupations which advance man most highly in the scale of being.

But there is a second state of mental indolence, not so complete as this, but which is still indolence, inasmuch as in it the mind is passive, and does not assume the reins of empire. Such is the state in which we are during our sleepless hours in bed; and in this state our ideas, and the topics that successively occur, appear to go forward without remission, while it seems that it is this busy condition of the mind, and the involuntary activity of our thoughts, that prevent us from sleeping.

The distinction then between these two sorts of indolence is, that in the latter our ideas are perfectly distinct, are attended with consciousness, and can, as we please, be called up to recollection. This therefore is not what we understand by reverie. In these waking hours which are spent by us in bed, the mind is no less busy, than it is in sleep during a dream. The other and more perfect sort of mental indolence, is that which we often experience during our exercise in the open air. This is of the same nature as the condition of thought which seems to be the necessary precursor of sleep, and is attended with no precise consciousness.

By the whole of the above statement we are led to a new and a modified estimate of the duration of human life.

If by life we understand mere susceptibility, a state of existence in which we are accessible at any moment to the onset of sensation, for example, of pain--in this sense our life is commensurate, or nearly commensurate, to the entire period, from the quickening of the child in the womb, to the minute at which sense deserts the dying man, and his body becomes an inanimate mass.

But life, in the emphatical sense, and par excellence, is reduced to much narrower limits. From this species of life it is unavoidable that we should strike off the whole of the interval that is spent in sleep; and thus, as a general rule, the natural day of twenty-four hours is immediately reduced to sixteen.

Of these sixteen hours again, there is a portion that falls under the direction of will and attention, and a portion that is passed by us in a state of mental indolence. By the ordinary and least cultivated class of mankind, the husbandman, the manufacturer, the soldier, the sailor, and the main body of the female sex, much the greater part of every day is resigned to a state of mental indolence. The will does not actively interfere, and the attention is not roused. Even the most intellectual beings of our species pass no inconsiderable portion of every day in a similar condition. Such is our state for the most part during the time that is given to bodily exercise, and during the time in which we read books of amusement merely, or are employed in witnessing public shews and exhibitions.

That portion of every day of our existence which is occupied by us with a mind attentive and on the alert, I would call life in a transcendant sense. The rest is scarcely better than a state of vegetation.

And yet not so either. The happiest and most valuable thoughts of the human mind will sometimes come when they are least sought for, and we least anticipated any such thing. In reading a romance, in witnessing a performance at a theatre, in our idlest and most sportive moods, a vein in the soil of intellect will sometimes unexpectedly be broken up, "richer than all the tribe" of contemporaneous thoughts, that shall raise him to whom it occurs, to a rank among his species altogether different from any thing he had looked for. Newton was led to the doctrine of gravitation by the fall of an apple, as he indolently reclined under the tree on which it grew. "A verse may find him, who a sermon flies." Polemon, when intoxicated, entered the school of Xenocrates, and was so struck with the energy displayed by the master, and the thoughts he delivered, that from that moment he renounced the life of dissipation he had previously led, and applied himself entirely to the study of philosophy. --But these instances are comparatively of rare occurrence, and do not require to be taken into the account.

It is still true therefore for the most part, that not more than eight hours in the day are passed by the wisest and most energetic, with a mind attentive and on the alert. The remainder is a period of vegetation only. In the mean time we have all of us undoubtedly to a certain degree the power of enlarging the extent of the period of transcendant life in each day of our healthful existence, and causing it to encroach upon the period either of mental indolence or of sleep.--With the greater part of the human species the whole of their lives while awake, with the exception of a few brief and insulated intervals, is spent in a passive state of the intellectual powers. Thoughts come and go, as chance, or some undefined power in nature may direct, uninterfered with by the sovereign will, the steersman of the mind. And often the understanding appears to be a blank, upon which if any impressions are then made, they are like figures drawn in the sand which the next tide obliterates, or are even lighter and more evanescent than this.

Let me add, that the existence of the child for two or three years from the period of his birth, is almost entirely a state of vegetation. The impressions that are made upon his sensorium come and go, without either their advent or departure being anticipated, and without the interference of the will. It is only under some express excitement, that the faculty of will mounts its throne, and exercises its empire. When the child smiles, that act is involuntary; but, when he cries, will presently comes to mix itself with the phenomenon. Wilfulness, impatience and rebellion are infallible symptoms of a mind on the alert. And, as the child in the first stages of its existence puts forth the faculty of will only at intervals, so for a similar reason this period is but rarely accompanied with memory, or leaves any traces of recollection for our after-life.

There are other memorable states of the intellectual powers, which if I did not mention, the survey here taken would seem to be glaringly imperfect. The first of these is madness. In this humiliating condition of our nature the sovereignty of reason is deposed:

Chaos umpire sits,
And by decision more embroils the fray.

The mind is in a state of turbulence and tempest in one instant, and in another subsides into the deepest imbecility; and, even when the will is occasionally roused, the link which preserved its union with good sense and sobriety is dissolved, and the views by which it has the appearance of being regulated, are all based in misconstruction and delusion.

Next to madness occur the different stages of spleen, dejection and listlessness. The essence of these lies in the passiveness and neutrality of the intellectual powers. In as far as the unhappy sufferer could be roused to act, the disease would be essentially diminished, and might finally be expelled. But long days and months are spent by the patient in the midst of all harassing imaginations, and an everlasting nightmare seems to sit on the soul, and lock up its powers in interminable inactivity. Almost the only interruption to this, is when the demands of nature require our attention, or we pay a slight and uncertain attention to the decencies of cleanliness and attire.

In all these considerations then we find abundant occasion to humble the pride and vain-glory of man. But they do not overturn the principles delivered in the preceding Essay respecting the duration of human life, though they certainly interpose additional boundaries to limit the prospects of individual improvement.

ESSAY IX. OF LEISURE.

The river of human life is divided into two streams; occupation and leisure--or, to express the thing more accurately, that occupation, which is prescribed, and may be called the business of life, and that occupation, which arises contingently, and not so much of absolute and set purpose, not being prescribed: such being the more exact description of these two divisions of human life, inasmuch as the latter is often not less earnest and intent in its pursuits than the former.

It would be a curious question to ascertain which of these is of the highest value.

To this enquiry I hear myself loudly and vehemently answered from all hands in favour of the first. "This," I am told by unanimous acclamation, "is the business of life."

The decision in favour of what we primarily called occupation, above what we called leisure, may in a mitigated sense be entertained as true. Man can live with little or no leisure, for millions of human beings do so live: but the species to which we belong, and of consequence the individuals of that species, cannot exist as they ought to exist, without occupation.

Granting however the paramount claims that occupation has to our regard, let us endeavour to arrive at a just estimate of the value of leisure.

It has been said by some one, with great appearance of truth, that schoolboys learn as much, perhaps more, of beneficial knowledge in their hours of play, as in their hours of study.

The wisdom of ages has been applied to ascertain what are the most desirable topics for the study of the schoolboy. They are selected for the most part by the parent. There are few parents that do not feel a sincere and disinterested desire for the welfare of their children. It is an unquestionable maxim, that we are the best judges of that of which we have ourselves had experience; and all parents have been children. It is therefore idle and ridiculous to suppose that those studies which have for centuries been chosen by the enlightened mature for the occupation of the young, have not for the most part been well chosen. Of these studies the earliest consist in the arts of reading and writing. Next follows arithmetic, with perhaps some rudiments of algebra and geometry. Afterward comes in due order the acquisition of languages, particularly the dead languages; a most fortunate occupation for those years of man, in which the memory is most retentive, and the reasoning powers have yet acquired neither solidity nor enlargement. Such are the occupations of the schoolboy in his prescribed hours of study.

But the schoolboy is cooped up in an apartment, it may be with a number of his fellows. He is seated at a desk, diligently conning the portion of learning that is doled out to him, or, when he has mastered his lesson, reciting it with anxious brow and unassured lips to the senior, who is to correct his errors, and pronounce upon the sufficiency of his industry. All this may be well: but it is a new and more exhilarating spectacle that presents itself to our observation, when he is dismissed from his temporary labours, and rushes impetuously out to the open air, and gives free scope to his limbs and his voice, and is no longer under the eye of a censor that shall make him feel his subordination and dependence.

Meanwhile the question under consideration was, not in which state he experienced the most happiness, but which was productive of the greatest improvement.

The review of the human subject is conveniently divided under the heads of body and mind.

There can be no doubt that the health of the body is most promoted by those exercises in which the schoolboy is engaged during the hours of play. And it is further to be considered that health is required, not only that we may be serene, contented and happy, but that we may be enabled effectually to exert the faculties of the mind.

But there is another way, in which we are called upon to consider the division of the human subject under the heads of body and mind.

The body is the implement and instrument of the mind, the tool by which most of its purposes are to be effected. We live in the midst of a material world, or of what we call such. The greater part of the pursuits in which we engage, are achieved by the action of the limbs and members of the body upon external matter.

Our communications with our fellow-men are all of them carried on by means of the body.

Now the action of the limbs and members of the body is infinitely improved by those exercises in which the schoolboy becomes engaged during his hours of play. In the first place it is to be considered that we do those things most thoroughly and in the shortest time, which are spontaneous, the result of our own volition; and such are the exercises in which the schoolboy engages during this period. His heart and soul are in what he does. The man or the boy must be a poor creature indeed, who never does any thing but as he is bid by another. It is in his voluntary acts and his sports, that he learns the skilful and effective use of his eye and his limbs. He selects his mark, and he hits it. He tries again and again, effort after effort, and day after day, till he has surmounted the difficulty of the attempt, and the rebellion of his members. Every articulation and muscle of his frame is called into action, till all are obedient to the master-will; and his limbs are lubricated and rendered pliant by exercise, as the limbs of the Grecian athleta were lubricated with oil.

Thus he acquires, first dexterity of motion, and next, which is of no less importance, a confidence in his own powers, a consciousness that he is able to effect what he purposes, a calmness and serenity which resemble the sweeping of the area, and scattering of the saw-dust, upon which the dancer or the athlete is to exhibit with grace, strength and effect.

So much for the advantages reaped by the schoolboy during his hours of play as to the maturing his bodily powers, and the improvement of those faculties of his mind which more immediately apply to the exercise of his bodily powers.

But, beside this, it is indispensible to the well-being and advantage of the individual, that he should employ the faculties of his mind in spontaneous exertions. I do not object, especially during the period of nonage, to a considerable degree of dependence and control. But his greatest advancement, even then, seems to arise from the interior impulses of his mind. The schoolboy exercises his wit, and indulges in sallies of the thinking principle. This is wholsome; this is fresh; it has twice the quickness, clearness and decision in it, that are to be found in those acts of the mind which are employed about the lessons prescribed to him.

In school our youth are employed about the thoughts, the acts and suggestions of other men. This is all mimicry, and a sort of second-hand business. It resembles the proceeding of the fresh-listed soldier at drill; he has ever his eye on his right-hand man, and does not raise his arm, nor advance his foot, nor move his finger, but as he sees another perform the same motion before him. It is when the schoolboy proceeds to the playground, that he engages in real action and real discussion. It is then that he is an absolute human being and a genuine individual.

The debates of schoolboys, their discussions what they shall do, and how it shall be done, are anticipations of the scenes of maturer life. They are the dawnings of committees, and vestries, and hundred-courts, and ward-motes, and folk-motes, and parliaments. When boys consult when and where their next cricket-match shall be played, it may be regarded as the embryo representation of a consult respecting a grave enterprise to be formed, or a colony to be planted. And, when they enquire respecting poetry and prose, and figures and tropes, and the dictates of taste, this happily prepares them for the investigations of prudence, and morals, and religious principles, and what is science, and what is truth.

It is thus that the wit of man, to use the word in the old Saxon sense, begins to be cultivated. One boy gives utterance to an assertion; and another joins issue with him, and retorts. The wheels of the engine of the brain are set in motion, and, without force, perform their healthful revolutions. The stripling feels himself called upon to exert his presence of mind, and becomes conscious of the necessity of an immediate reply. Like the unfledged bird, he spreads his wings, and essays their powers. He does not answer, like a boy in his class, who tasks his understanding or not, as the whim of the moment shall prompt him, where one boy honestly performs to the extent of his ability, and others disdain the empire assumed over them, and get off as cheaply as they can. He is no longer under review, but is engaged in real action. The debate of the schoolboy is the combat of the intellectual gladiator, where he fences and parries and thrusts with all the skill and judgment he possesses.

There is another way in which the schoolboy exercises his powers during his periods of leisure. He is often in society; but he is ever and anon in solitude. At no period of human life are our reveries so free and untrammeled, as at the period here spoken of. He climbs the mountain-cliff; and penetrates into the depths of the woods. His joints are well strung; he is a stranger to fatigue. He rushes down the precipice, and mounts again with ease, as though he had the wings of a bird. He ruminates, and pursues his own trains of reflection and discovery, "exhausting worlds," as it appears to him, "and then imagining new." He hovers on the brink of the deepest philosophy, enquiring how came I here, and to what end. He becomes a castle-builder, constructing imaginary colleges and states, and searching out the businesses in which they are to be employed, and the schemes by which they are to be regulated. He thinks what he would do, if he possessed uncontrolable strength, if he could fly, if he could make himself invisible. In this train of mind he cons his first lessons of liberty and independence. He learns self-reverence, and says to himself, I also am an artist, and a maker. He ruffles himself under the yoke, and feels that he suffers foul tyranny when he is driven, and when brute force is exercised upon him, to compel him to a certain course, or to chastise his faults, imputed or real.

Such are the benefits of leisure to the schoolboy: and they are not less to man when arrived at years of discretion. It is good for us to have some regular and stated occupation. Man may be practically too free; this is frequently the case with those who have been nurtured in the lap of opulence and luxury. We were sent into the world under the condition, "In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread." And those who, by the artificial institutions of society, are discharged from this necessity, are placed in a critical and perilous situation. They are bound, if they would consult their own well-being, to contrive for themselves a factitious necessity, that may stand them in the place of that necessity which is imposed without appeal on the vast majority of their brethren.

But, if it is desirable that every man should have some regular and stated occupation, so it is certainly not less desirable, that every man should have his seasons of relaxation and leisure.

Unhappy is the wretch, whose condition it is to be perpetually bound to the oar, and who is condemned to labour in one certain mode, during all the hours that are not claimed by sleep, or as long as the muscles of his frame, or the fibres of his fingers will enable him to persevere. "Apollo himself," says the poet, "does not always bend the bow." There should be a season, when the mind is free as air, when not only we should follow without restraint any train of thinking or action, within the bounds of sobriety, and that is not attended with injury to others, that our own minds may suggest to us, but should sacrifice at the shrine of intellectual liberty, and spread our wings, and take our flight into untried regions. It is good for man that he should feel himself at some time unshackled and autocratical, that he should say, This I do, because it is prescribed to me by the conditions without which I cannot exist, or by the election which in past time I deliberately made; and this, because it is dictated by the present frame of my spirit, and is therefore that in which the powers my nature has entailed upon me may be most fully manifested. In addition to which we are to consider, that a certain variety and mutation of employments is best adapted to humanity. When my mind or my body seems to be overwrought by one species of occupation, the substitution of another will often impart to me new life, and make me feel as fresh as if no labour had before engaged me. For all these reasons it is to be desired, that we should possess the inestimable privilege of leisure, that in the revolving hours of every day a period should arrive, at which we should lay down the weapons of our labour, and engage in a sport that may be no less active and strenuous than the occupation which preceded it.

A question, which deserves our attention in this place, is, how much of every day it behoves us to give to regular and stated occupation, and how much is the just and legitimate province of leisure. It has been remarked in a preceding Essay(17), that, if my main and leading pursuit is literary composition, two or three hours in the twenty-four will often be as much as can advantageously and effectually be so employed. But this will unavoidably vary according to the nature of the occupation: the period above named may be taken as the MINIMUM.

(17) See above, Essay 7.

Such, let us say, is the portion of time which the man of letters is called on to devote to literary composition.

It may next be fitting to enquire as to the humbler classes of society, and those persons who are engaged in the labour of the hands, how much time they ought to be expected to consume in their regular and stated occupations, and how much would remain to them for relaxation and leisure. It has been said(18), that half an hour in the day given by every member of the community to manual labour, might be sufficient for supplying the whole with the absolute necessaries of life. But there are various considerations that would inevitably lengthen this period. In a community which has made any considerable advance in the race of civilisation, many individuals must be expected to be excused from any portion of manual labour. It is not desirable that any community should be contented to supply itself with necessaries only. There are many refinements in life, and many advances in literature and the arts, which indispensibly conduce to the rendering man in society a nobler and more exalted creature than he could otherwise be; and these ought not to be consigned to neglect.

(18) Political Justice, Book VIII, Chap. VI.

On the other hand however it is certain, that much of the ostentation and a multitude of the luxuries which subsist in European and Asiatic society are just topics of regret, and that, if ever those improvements in civilisation take place which philosophy has essayed to delineate, there would be a great abridgment of the manual labour that we now see around us, and the humbler classes of the community would enter into the inheritance of a more considerable portion of leisure than at present falls to their lot.

But it has been much the habit, for persons not belonging to the humbler classes of the community, and who profess to speculate upon the genuine interests of human society, to suppose, however certain intervals of leisure may conduce to the benefit of men whose tastes have been cultivated and refined, and who from education have many resources of literature and reflection at all times at their beck, yet that leisure might prove rather pernicious than otherwise to the uneducated and the ignorant. Let us enquire then how these persons would be likely to employ the remainder of their time, if they had a greater portion of leisure than they at present enjoy.--I would add, that the individuals of the humbler classes of the community need not for ever to merit the appellation of the uneducated and ignorant.

In the first place, they would engage, like the schoolboy, in active sports, thereby giving to their limbs, which, in rural occupation and mechanical labour, are somewhat too monotonously employed, and contract the stiffness and experience the waste of a premature old age, the activity and freedom of an athlete, a cricketer, or a hunter. Nor do these occupations only conduce to the health of the body, they also impart a spirit and a juvenile earnestness to the mind.

In the next place, they may be expected to devote a part of the day, more than they do at present, to their wives and families, cultivating the domestic affections, watching the expanding bodies and minds of their children, leading them on in the road of improvement, warning them against the perils with which they are surrounded, and observing with somewhat of a more jealous and parental care, what it is for which by their individual qualities they are best adapted, and in what particular walk of life they may most advantageously be engaged. The father and the son would grow in a much greater degree friends, anticipating each other's wishes, and sympathising in each other's pleasures and pains.

Thirdly, one infallible consequence of a greater degree of leisure in the lower classes would be that reading would become a more common propensity and amusement. It is the aphorism of one of the most enlightened of my contemporaries, "The schoolmaster is abroad:" and many more than at present would desire to store up in their little hoard a certain portion of the general improvement. We should no longer have occasion to say,

But knowledge to their eyes her ample page,
Rich with the spoils of time, did ne'er unrol.

Nor should we be incited to fear that ever wakeful anticipation of the illiberal, that, by the too great diffusion of the wisdom of the wise, we might cease to have a race of men adapted to the ordinary pursuits of life. Our ploughmen and artificers, who obtained the improvements of intellect through the medium of leisure, would have already received their destination, and formed their habits, and would be disposed to consider the new lights that were opened upon them, as the ornament of existence, not its substance. Add to which, as leisure became more abundant, and the opportunities of intellectual improvement increased, they would have less motive to repine at their lot. It is principally while knowledge and information are new, that they are likely to intoxicate the brain of those to whose share they have fallen; and, when they are made a common stock upon which all men may draw, sound thinking and sobriety may be expected to be the general result.

One of the scenes to which the leisure of the laborious classes is seen to induce them to resort, is the public-house; and it is inferred that, if their leisure were greater, a greater degree of drunkenness, dissipation and riot would inevitably prevail.

In answer to this anticipation, I would in the first place assert, that the merits and demerits of the public-house are very unjustly rated by the fastidious among the more favoured orders of society.

We ought to consider that the opportunities and amusements of the lower orders of society are few. They do not frequent coffee-houses; theatres and places of public exhibition are ordinarily too expensive for them; and they cannot engage in rounds of visiting, thus cultivating a private and familiar intercourse with the few whose conversation might be most congenial to them. We certainly bear hard upon persons in this rank of society, if we expect that they should take all the severer labour, and have no periods of unbending and amusement.

But in reality what occurs in the public-house we are too much in the habit of calumniating. If we would visit this scene, we should find it pretty extensively a theatre of eager and earnest discussion. It is here that the ardent and "unwashed artificer," and the sturdy husbandman, compare notes and measure wits with each other. It is their arena of intellectual combat, the ludus literarius of their unrefined university. It is here they learn to think. Their minds are awakened from the sleep of ignorance; and their attention is turned into a thousand channels of improvement. They study the art of speaking, of question, allegation and rejoinder. They fix their thought steadily on the statement that is made, acknowledge its force, or detect its insufficiency. They examine the most interesting topics, and form opinions the result of that examination. They learn maxims of life, and become politicians. They canvas the civil and criminal laws of their country, and learn the value of political liberty. They talk over measures of state, judge of the intentions, sagacity and sincerity of public men, and are likely in time to become in no contemptible degree capable of estimating what modes of conducting national affairs, whether for the preservation of the rights of all, or for the vindication and assertion of justice between man and man, may be expected to be crowned with the greatest success: in a word, they thus become, in the best sense of the word, citizens.

As to excess in drinking, the same thing may be expected to occur here, as has been remarked of late years in better company in England. In proportion as the understanding is cultivated, men are found to be less the victims of drinking and the grosser provocatives of sense. The king of Persia of old made it his boast that he could drink large quantities of liquor with greater impunity than any of his subjects. Such was not the case with the more polished Greeks. In the dark ages the most glaring enormities of that kind prevailed. Under our Charles the Second coarse dissipation and riot characterised the highest circles. Rochester, the most accomplished man and the greatest wit of our island, related of himself that, for five years together, he could not affirm that for any one day he had been thoroughly sober. In Ireland, a country less refined than our own, the period is not long past, when on convivial occasions the master of the house took the key from his door, that no one of his guests might escape without having had his dose. No small number of the contemporaries of my youth fell premature victims to the intemperance which was then practised. Now wine is merely used to excite a gayer and livelier tone of the spirits; and inebriety is scarcely known in the higher circles. In like manner, it may readily be believed that, as men in the lower classes of society become less ignorant and obtuse, as their thoughts are less gross, as they wear off the vestigia ruris, the remains of a barbarous state, they will find less need to set their spirits afloat by this animal excitement, and will devote themselves to those thoughts and that intercourse which shall inspire them with better and more honourable thoughts of our common nature.

ESSAY X. OF IMITATION AND INVENTION.

Of the sayings of the wise men of former times none has been oftener repeated than that of Solomon, "The thing that hath been, is that which is; and that which is done, is that which shall be done; and there is no new thing under the sun."

The books of the Old Testament are apparently a collection of the whole literary remains of an ancient and memorable people, whose wisdom may furnish instruction to us, and whose poetry abounds in lofty flights and sublime imagery. How this collection came indiscriminately to be considered as written by divine inspiration, it is difficult to pronounce. The history of the Jews, as contained in the Books of Kings and of Chronicles, certainly did not require the interposition of the Almighty for its production; and the pieces we receive as the compositions of Solomon have conspicuously the air of having emanated from a conception entirely human.

In the book of Ecclesiastes, from which the above sentence is taken, are many sentiments not in accordance with the religion of Christ. For example; "That which befalleth the sons of men, befalleth beasts; as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath, so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: all go to one place; all are of the dust, and turn to dust again. Wherefore I perceive that there is nothing better, than that a man should rejoice in his works." And again, "The living know that they shall die; but the dead know not any thing; their love, and their hatred, and their envy are perished; neither have they any more a reward." Add to this, "Wherefore I praise the dead which are already dead, more than the living which are yet alive: yea, better is he than both they, which hath not yet been." There can therefore be no just exception taken against our allowing ourselves freely to canvas the maxim cited at the head of this Essay.

It certainly contains a sufficient quantity of unquestionable truth, to induce us to regard it as springing from profound observation, and comprehensive views of what is acted "under the sun."

A wise man would look at the labours of his own species, in much the same spirit as he would view an ant-hill through a microscope. He would see them tugging a grain of corn up a declivity; he would see the tracks that are made by those who go, and who return; their incessant activity; and would find one day the copy of that which went before; and their labours ending in nothing: I mean, in nothing that shall carry forward the improvement of the head and the heart, either in the individual or society, or that shall add to the conveniences of life, or the better providing for the welfare of communities of men. He would smile at their earnestness and zeal, all spent in supplying the necessaries of the day, or, at most, providing for the revolution of the seasons, or for that ephemeral thing we call the life of man.

Few things can appear more singular, when duly analysed, than that articulated air, which we denominate speech. It is not to be wondered at that we are proud of the prerogative, which so eminently distinguishes us from the rest of the animal creation. The dog, the cat, the horse, the bear, the lion, all of them have voice. But we may almost consider this as their reproach. They can utter for the greater part but one monotonous, eternal sound.

The lips, the teeth, the palate, the throat, which in man are instruments of modifying the voice in such endless variety, are in this respect given to them in vain: while all the thoughts that occur, at least to the bulk of mankind, we are able to express in words, to communicate facts, feelings, passions, sentiments, to discuss, to argue, to agree, to issue commands on the one part, and report the execution on the other, to inspire lofty conceptions, to excite the deepest feeling of commiseration, and to thrill the soul with extacy, almost too mighty to be endured.

Yet what is human speech for the most part but mere imitation? In the most obvious sense this stands out on the surface. We learn the same words, we speak the same language, as our elders. Not only our words, but our phrases are the same. We are like players, who come out as if they were real persons, but only utter what is set down for them. We represent the same drama every day; and, however stale is the eternal repetition, pass it off upon others, and even upon ourselves, as if it were the suggestion of the moment. In reality, in rural or vulgar life, the invention of a new phrase ought to be marked down among the memorable things in the calendar. We afford too much honour to ordinary conversation, when we compare it to the exhibition of the recognised theatres, since men ought for the most part to be considered as no more than puppets. They perform the gesticulations; but the words come from some one else, who is hid from the sight of the general observer. And not only the words, but the cadence: they have not even so much honour as players have, to choose the manner they may deem fittest by which to convey the sense and the passion of what they speak. The pronunciation, the dialect, all, are supplied to them, and are but a servile repetition. Our tempers are merely the work of the transcriber. We are angry, where we saw that others were angry; and we are pleased, because it is the tone to be pleased. We pretend to have each of us a judgment of our own: but in truth we wait with the most patient docility, till he whom we regard as the leader of the chorus gives us the signal, Here you are to applaud, and Here you are to condemn.

What is it that constitutes the manners of nations, by which the people of one country are so eminently distinguished from the people of another, so that you cannot cross the channel from Dover to Calais, twenty-one miles, without finding yourself in a new world? Nay, I need not go among the subjects of another government to find examples of this; if I pass into Ireland, Scotland or Wales, I see myself surrounded with a new people, all of whose characters are in a manner cast in one mould, and all different from the citizens of the principal state and from one another. We may go further than this. Not only nations, but classes of men, are contrasted with each other. What can be more different than the gentry of the west end of this metropolis, and the money-making dwellers in the east? From them I will pass to Billingsgate and Wapping. What more unlike than a soldier and a sailor? the children of fashion that stroll in St. James's and Hyde Park, and the care-worn hirelings, that recreate themselves, with their wives and their brats, with a little fresh air on a Sunday near Islington? The houses of lords and commons have each their characteristic manners. Each profession has its own, the lawyer, the divine, and the man of medicine. We are all apes, fixing our eyes upon a model, and copying him, gesture by gesture. We are sheep, rushing headlong through the gap, when the bell-wether shews us the way. We are choristers, mechanically singing in a certain key, and giving breath to a certain tone.

Our religion, our civil practices, our political creed, are all imitation. How many men are there, that have examined the evidences of their religious belief, and can give a sound "reason of the faith that is in them?" When I was a child, I was taught that there were four religions in the world, the Popish, the Protestant, the Mahometan, the Pagan. It is a phenomenon to find the man, who has held the balance steadily, and rendered full and exact justice to the pretensions of each of these. No: tell me the longitude and latitude in which a man is born, and I will tell you his religion.

By education most have been misled;
So they believe, because they so were bred:
The priest continues what the nurse began,
And thus the child imposes on the man.

And, if this happens, where we are told our everlasting salvation is at issue, we may easily judge of the rest.

The author, with one of whose dicta I began this Essay, has observed, "One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh; but the earth abideth for ever." It is a maxim of the English constitution, that "the king never dies;" and the same may with nearly equal propriety be observed of every private man, especially if he have children. "Death," say the writers of natural history, "is the generator of life:" and what is thus true of animal corruption, may with small variation be affirmed of human mortality. I turn off my footman, and hire another; and he puts on the livery of his predecessor: he thinks himself somebody; but he is only a tenant. The same thing is true, when a country-gentleman, a noble, a bishop, or a king dies. He puts off his garments, and another puts them on. Every one knows the story of the Tartarian dervise, who mistook the royal palace for a caravansera, and who proved to his majesty by genealogical deduction, that he was only a lodger. In this sense the mutability, which so eminently characterises every thing sublunary, is immutability under another name.

The most calamitous, and the most stupendous scenes are nothing but an eternal and wearisome repetition: executions, murders, plagues, famine and battle. Military execution, the demolition of cities, the conquest of nations, have been acted a hundred times before. The mighty conqueror, who "smote the people in wrath with a continual stroke," who "sat in the seat of God, shewing himself that he was God," and assuredly persuaded himself that he was doing something to be had in everlasting remembrance, only did that which a hundred other vulgar conquerors had done in successive ages of the world, whose very names have long since perished from the records of mankind.

Thus it is that the human species is for ever engaged in laborious idleness. We put our shoulder to the wheel, and raise the vehicle out of the mire in which it was swallowed, and we say, I have done something; but the same feat under the same circumstances has been performed a thousand times before. We make what strikes us as a profound observation; and, when fairly analysed, it turns out to be about as sagacious, as if we told what's o'clock, or whether it is rain or sunshine. Nothing can be more delightfully ludicrous, than the important and emphatical air with which the herd of mankind enunciate the most trifling observations. With much labour we are delivered of what is to us a new thought; and, after a time, we find the same in a musty volume, thrown by in a corner, and covered with cobwebs and dust.

This is pleasantly ridiculed in the well known exclamation, "Deuce take the old fellows who gave utterance to our wit, before we ever thought of it!"

The greater part of the life of the mightiest genius that ever existed is spent in doing nothing, and saying nothing. Pope has observed of Shakespear's plays, that, "had all the speeches been printed without the names of the persons, we might have applied them with certainty to every speaker." To which another critic has rejoined, that that was impossible, since the greater part of what every man says is unstamped with peculiarity. We have all more in us of what belongs to the common nature of man, than of what is peculiar to the individual.

It is from this beaten, turnpike road, that the favoured few of mankind are for ever exerting themselves to escape. The multitude grow up, and are carried away, as grass is carried away by the mower. The parish-register tells when they were born, and when they died: "known by the ends of being to have been." We pass away, and leave nothing behind. Kings, at whose very glance thousands have trembled, for the most part serve for nothing when their breath has ceased, but as a sort of distance-posts in the race of chronology. "The dull swain treads on" their relics "with his clouted shoon." Our monuments are as perishable as ourselves; and it is the most hopeless of all problems for the most part, to tell where the mighty ones of the earth repose.

All men are aware of the frailty of life, and how short is the span assigned us. Hence every one, who feels, or thinks he feels the power to do so, is desirous to embalm his memory, and to be thought of by a late posterity, to whom his personal presence shall be unknown. Mighty are the struggles; everlasting the efforts. The greater part of these we well know are in vain. It is Aesop's mountain in labour: "Dire was the tossing, deep the groans:" and the result is a mouse. But is it always so?

This brings us back to the question: "Is there indeed nothing new under the sun?"

Most certainly there is something that is new. If, as the beast dies, so died man, then indeed we should be without hope. But it is his distinguishing faculty, that he can leave something behind, to testify that he has lived. And this is not only true of the pyramids of Egypt, and certain other works of human industry, that time seems to have no force to destroy. It is often true of a single sentence, a single word, which the multitudinous sea is incapable of washing away:

Quod non imber edax, non Aquilo impotens
Possit diruere, aut innumerabilis
Annorum series, et fuga temporum.

It is the characteristic of the mind and the heart of man, that they are progressive. One word, happily interposed, reaching to the inmost soul, may "take away the heart of stone, and introduce a heart of flesh." And, if an individual may be thus changed, then his children, and his connections, to the latest page of unborn history.

This is the true glory of man, that "one generation doth not pass away, and another come, velut unda supervenit undam;" but that we leave our improvements behind us. What infinite ages of refinement on refinement, and ingenuity on ingenuity, seem each to have contributed its quota, to make up the accommodations of every day of civilised man; his table, his chair, the bed he lies on, the food he eats, the garments that cover him! It has often been said, that the four quarters of the world are put under contribution, to provide the most moderate table. To this what mills, what looms, what machinery of a thousand denominations, what ship-building, what navigation, what fleets are required! Man seems to have been sent into the world a naked, forked, helpless animal, on purpose to call forth his ingenuity to supply the accommodations that may conduce to his well-being. The saying, that "there is nothing new under the sun," could never have been struck out, but in one of the two extreme states of man, by the naked savage, or by the highly civilised beings among whom the perfection of refinement has produced an artificial feeling of uniformity.

The thing most obviously calculated to impress us with a sense of the power, and the comparative sublimity of man, is, if we could make a voyage of some duration in a balloon, over a considerable tract of the cultivated and the desert parts of the earth. A brute can scarcely move a stone out of his way, if it has fallen upon the couch where he would repose. But man cultivates fields, and plants gardens; he constructs parks and canals; he turns the course of rivers, and stretches vast artificial moles into the sea; he levels mountains, and builds a bridge, joining in giddy height one segment of the Alps to another; lastly, he founds castles, and churches, and towers, and distributes mighty cities at his pleasure over the face of the globe. "The first earth has passed away, and another earth has come; and all things are made new."

It is true, that the basest treacheries, the most atrocious cruelties, butcheries, massacres, violations of all the restraints of decency, and all the ties of nature, fields covered with dead bodies, and flooded with human gore, are all of them vulgar repetitions of what had been acted countless times already. If Nero or Caligula thought to perpetrate that which should stand unparalleled, they fell into the grossest error. The conqueror, who should lay waste vast portions of the globe, and destroy mighty cities, so that "thorns should come up in the palaces, and nettles in the fortresses thereof, and they should be a habitation of serpents, and a court for owls, and the wild beasts of the desert should meet there," would only do what Tamerlane, and Aurengzebe, and Zingis, and a hundred other conquerors, in every age and quarter of the world, had done before. The splendour of triumphs, and the magnificence of courts, are so essentially vulgar, that history almost disdains to record them.

And yet there is something that is new, and that by the reader of discernment is immediately felt to be so.

We read of Moses, that he was a child of ordinary birth, and, when he was born, was presently marked, as well as all the male children of his race, for destruction. He was unexpectedly preserved; and his first act, when he grew up, was to slay an Egyptian, one of the race to whom all his countrymen were slaves, and to fly into exile. This man, thus friendless and alone, in due time returned, and by the mere energy of his character prevailed upon his whole race to make common cause with him, and to migrate to a region, in which they should become sovereign and independent. He had no soldiers, but what were made so by the ascendancy of his spirit no counsellors but such as he taught to be wise, no friends but those who were moved by the sentiment they caught from him. The Jews he commanded were sordid and low of disposition, perpetually murmuring against his rule, and at every unfavourable accident calling to remembrance "the land of Egypt, where they had sat by the fleshpots, and were full." Yet over this race he retained a constant mastery, and finally made of them a nation whose customs and habits and ways of thinking no time has availed to destroy. This was a man then, that possessed the true secret to make other men his creatures, and lead them with an irresistible power wherever he pleased. This history, taken entire, has probably no parallel in the annals of the world.

The invasion of Greece by the Persians, and its result, seem to constitute an event that stands alone among men. Xerxes led against this little territory an army of 5,280,000 men. They drank up rivers, and cut their way through giant-mountains. They were first stopped at Thermopylae by Leonidas and his three hundred Spartans. They fought for a country too narrow to contain the army by which the question was to be tried. The contest was here to be decided between despotism and liberty, whether there is a principle in man, by which a handful of individuals, pervaded with lofty sentiments, and a conviction of what is of most worth in our nature, can defy the brute force, and put to flight the attack, of bones, joints and sinews, though congregated in multitudes, numberless as the waves of the sea, or the sands on its shore. The flood finally rolled back: and in process of time Alexander, with these Greeks whom the ignorance of the East affected to despise, founded another universal monarchy on the ruins of Persia. This is certainly no vulgar history.