which we haTe become devoted. We ^^rise up earlj^ and lie down kte," tod have no leisure to trduble ourselves with th^ pursuits of others* Hence of ne<iessity it happens in a civilised coni'> munity, that a vast majority of the species are innocent, and have no inclination to molest or in^- tc^rrupt each other^s avoclitions.
But^ as this condition of human society pre- serves us in comparative innocence^ and renders the social arrangement in the midst of which we eitist^ to a certain degree a soothing and agreeable sped^ tacle, BO an the other hand it is not less true thsit its imniediate tendency is^ to clip the wings of the thinking principle within us, and plunge the mem^ bers of the community in which we live into a bar- ren and ungratifying mediocrity. Hen^e it should be the aim of those persons, who from theil* situa- tion have more or less the means of looking through the vast assemblage of their countrymen, of pene- trating " into the seeds " of character, and deter- mining "'^hich grain will grow, and which will hot," to apply themselves to the i^edeettiing such as are worthy of their bare from the oblivious gulph into which th^ ind,ss of the species is of necessity plunged. It is therefore an ill saying, when applied in the most rigorotis extent, " Let every man main- tain himself, £ind be his own provider: why shotild We help him?"
The help however that we should afford to our fellow-ttien retjuirels of us great discernment in iti 124 OF HUMAN INNOCENCE. [ESSAY administration. The deceitfulness of appearances is endless. And nothing can well be at the same time more lamentable and more ludicrous^ than the spectacle of those persons, the weaver, the thresher, and the mechanic, who by injudicious patronage are drawn from their proper sphere, only to exhibit upon a larger stage their imbecility and inanity, to shew those moderate powers, which in their proper application would have carried their possessors through life with respect, distorted into absurdity, and used in the attempt to make us look upon a dwarf, as if he were one of the Titans who in the commencement of recorded time astonished the earth.
It is also true to a great degree, that those eflforts of the human mind are most healthful and vigor- ous, in which the possessor of talents " administers to himself," and contends with the diflferent ob- stacles that arise, throwing them aside^ And stemming them with hearts of controversy.
Many illustrious examples however may be found in the annals of literature, of patronage judiciously and generously applied, where men have been raised by the kindness of others from the obscurest situa* tions, and placed on high, like beacons, to illumi- nate the world. And, independently of all examples, a sound application of the common sense of the hu- man mind would teach us, that the worthies of the earth, thoug^h miracles, arc not omnipotent, and TU] OF HUMAN INNOCENCE. 125 that a certain aid, from those who by counsel or opulence are enabled to afford it, have oft times produced the noblest effects, have carried on the generous impulse that works within us, and prompt- ed us manfully to proceed, when the weakness of our nature was ready to give in from despair.
But the thing that in this place it was most ap- propriate to say, is, that we ought not quietly to affirm, of the man whose mind nature or education has enriched with extraordinary powers, " Let him maintain himself, and be his own provider: why should we help him?" It is a thing deeply to be regretted, that such a man will frequently be com- pelled to devote himself to pursuits comparatively vulgar and inglorious, because he must live. Much of this is certainly inevitable. But what glorious things might a man with extraordinary powers effect, were he not hurried unnumbered miles awry by the unconquerable power of circumstances? The life of such a man is divided between the things which his internal monitor strongly prompts him to do, and those which the external power of nature and circumstances compels him to submit to. The struggle on the part of his better self is noble and admirable. The less he gives way, pro- vided he can accomplish the purpose to which he has vowed himself, the more he is worthy of the admiration of the world. If, in consequence of listening too much to the loftier aspirations of his nature^ he fails, it is deeply to be regretted^t is a man to a certain degree lo»t — but surely, if his miscarriage be not caused by undue presumption, or the clouds and unbealthful atmosphere of self-* conceit, he is entitled to the affectionate sympathy and sorrow of every generous mind.
y|I.] QW TH^ PURATION OF HUMAN LIFE. 127 ESSAY VII.
OF THE DURATION OF HUMAN LIFE.
The active and industrious portion of the hom^i) species in civilised countries^ is composed of those who are occupied in the labour of the hand^ and in the labour of the head.
The following remarks expressly apply only to the latter of these classes^ principally to such as are occupied in productive literature. They may how- ev^ have their use to all persons a considerable portion of whose time is employed in study and contemplation^ as, if well founded^ they will form no unimportant chapter in the science of the hu- man mind.
In relation to all the members of the second class then^ I should say^ that human life is made up of term and vacation, in other words, of hours that may be intellectually employed, and of hours that cannot be so employed.
Human life consists of years, months and days: each day contains twenty-four hours. Of these hours how many belong to the province of intel- lect?
" There is," as Solomon says, *^ a time for all lliings." There must be a time for sleep, a time for recreation, a time for exercise, a time for supplying M 128 OF THE DURATION OF HUMAN LIFB. [SSSAY the machine with nourishment^ and a time for di- gestion. When all these demands have been sup- plied^ how many hours will be left for intellectual ' occupation?
/ These remarks^ as I have said, are intended prin- cipally to apply to the subject of productive lite- rature. Now^ of the hours that remain when all the necessary demands of human life have been supplied^ it is but a portion^ perhaps a small por- tion, that can be beneficially, judiciously, employed in productive literature, or literary composition.
It is true, that there are many men who will occupy eight, ten, or twelve hours in a day, in the labour of composition. But it may be doubted whether they are wisely so occupied.
It is the duty of an author, inasmuch as he is an author, to consider, that he is to employ his pen in putting down that which shall be fit for other men to read. He is not writing a letter of business, a letter of amusement, or a letter of sentiment, to his private friend. He is writing that which shall be perused by as many men as can be prevailed on to become his readers. If he is an author of spirit and ambition, he wishes his productions to be read, not only by the idle, but by the busy, by those who cannot spare time to peruse them but at the ex- pence of some occupations which ought not to be suspended without an adequate occasion. He wishes to be read not only by the frivolous and the lounger, but by the wise, the elegant, and the fair, VII.] OF THE DURATION OF HUMAN LIFE. 129 by those who are qualified to appreciate the merit of a work, who are endowed with a quick sensibi- lity and a discriminating taste^ and are able to pass a sound judgment on its beauties and defects. He advances his claim to permanent honours^ and de- sires that his lucubrations should be considered by generations yet unborn.
A person^ so occupied^ and with such aims^ must not attempt to pass his crudities upon the public. If I may parody a celebrated aphorism of Quinti- lian, I would say, *^ Magna debetur hominibiis re-- verentia^:'' in other words, we should carefully examine what it is that we propose to deliver in a permanent form to the taste and understanding of our species. An author ought only to cdmmit to the press the first fruits of his field, his best and choicest thoughts. He ought not to take up the j pen, till he has brought his mind into a fitting j tone, and ought to lay it down, the instant his in- / tellect becomes in any degree clouded, and his vital spirits abate of their elasticity.
There are extraordinary cases. A man may have so thoroughly prepared himself by long meditation and study, he may have his mind so charged with an abundance of thought, that it may employ him for ten or twelve hours consecutively, merely to put down or to unravel the conceptions already matured in his soul. It was in some such way, that Dryden, we are told, occupied a whole night, ' Mankind is to be considered with reverence.
K 130 OF THE DURATION OF HUAiAN LIFE. [esSAT and to a late hour in the next morning, in penning his Alexander s Feast. But these are the exceptions. In most instances two or three hours are as much as an author can spend at a time in delivering the first fruits of his field, his choicest thoughts, before his intellect becomes in some degree clouded, and his vital spirits abate of their elasticity. r Nor is this all. He might go on perhaps for some time longer with a reasonable degree of clearr ness. But the fertility which ought to be his boast, \i^ exhausted. He no longer sports in the meadows of thought, or revels in the exuberance of imagina- tion, but becomes barren and unsatisfactory. Re- pose ii» necessary, and that the soil should bQ xe- Ireshed with the dews of another evening, the sleep of a night, and the freshness and revivifying influ- ence of another morning..^ (^ These observations lead, by a natural transition, to the question of the true estimate and value of human life, considered as the means of the opera*- tions of intellect.
A primary enquiry under this head is as to the duration of life: Is it long, or short?
The instant this question is proposed, I hear myself replied' to from all quarters: What is there so well known as the brevity of human life? " life is but a span." It is " as a tale that is told." ^' Man cometh forth like a flower, and is cut downz^Jiie fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not." We are ^^as a sleep; oi* as grass: in the, morning it Vll.] OF THE DURATION OF HUMAN LIFE. 131 flourisheth^ and groweth up; in the evening it is cut down^ and withereth."
The foundation of this sentiment is obvious. Men do not live for ever. The longest duration of human existence has an end: and whatever it is of which that may be affirmed^ may in some sense be pronounced to be short. The estimation of our existence' depends > upon the point of view from which. w« behold it. Hope is one of our greatest enjoyments. Possession is something. But* the past is 'as nothing. Remorse may give it a certain solidity; the recollection of a life spent in acts of virtue may be refreshing. But fruition^ and ho- nours^ and fame, and even pain, and privations, and torment, when they are departed, are but like a feather; we regard them as of no account. Ta«- ken in this sense, Dryden's celebrated verses are but a maniac's • rant: To-morrow, do thy worst, for I have lived to-day: Be fair,' or foul/or rain/ or shine, ■. The J03r8 I have possessedi in spite of fate are mine.
Not heaven itself upon the past has power. But what has been has been, and I have had my hour.
But this way of removing the picture of human life to a certain distance from us, and considering those things which were once in a high degree interesting as frivolous and unworthy of regard, is not the way by which we shall arrive at a true and just estimation of life. Whatever is now past, and is of little value, was once present: and he who K 2 i 132 OF TH£ DURATION OF HUMAN LIFE. [bSSAY would form a sound judgment, must look upon every part of our lives as present in its turn, and not suffer his opinion to be warped by the conside- ration of the nearness or remoteness of the object he contemplates.
One sentence, which has grown into a maxim for ever repeated, is remarkable for the grossest fallacy: Ars longa, vita brevts^. I would fain know, what art, compared with the natural duration of human life from puberty to old age, is long.
If it is intended to say, that no one man can be expected to master all possible arts, or all arts that have at one time or another been the subject of human industry, this indeed is true. But the cause of this does not lie in the limited duration of hu-* man life, but in the nature of the faculties of the^ mind. Human understanding and human industry' cannot embrace every thing. When we take hold of one thing, we must let go another. Science and art, if we would pursue them to the furthest extent of which we are capable, must be pursued without interruption. It would therefore be more to the purpose to say, Man cannot be for ever young. In the stream of human existence, different things have their appropriate period. The knowledge of languages can perhaps be most effectually acquired in the season of nonage. At riper years one man devotes himself to one science or art, and another man to another. This man is a mathematician; a* *» Art is long j life is sliort.
VII.] OF THj: DURATION OF HUMAN LIFB. 133 second studies music; a third painting. This man is a logician; and that man an orator. The same person cannot be expected to excel in the abstruse- ness of metaphysical science^ and in the ravishing effusions of poetical genius. When a man, who has arrived at great excellence in one department of art or science, would engage himself in another, he will be apt to find the freshness of his mind gone, and his faculties no longer distinguished by the same degree of tenacity and vigour that they formerly displayed. It is with the organs of the brain, as it is with the organs of speech, in the lat- ter of which we find the tender fibres of the child easily accommodating themselves to the minuter inflections and variations of sound, which the more rigid muscles of the adult will for the most part attempt in vain.
If again, by the maxim, ^rs ionga^ vita brei)tSy it is intended to signify, that we cannot in any art arrive at perfection; that in reality all the progress we can make is insignificant; and that, as St. Paul says, we must " not count ourselves to have already attained; but that, forgetting the things that are behind, it becomes us to press forward to the prize of our calling," — ^this also is true. But this is only ascribable to the limitation of our faculties, and that even the shadow of perfection which man is capa- ble to reach, can only be attained by the labour of successive generations. The cause does not lie in the shortness of human life, unless we would in- 134 OF THE DURATION OF HUMAN LIlfE. [kSSAY elude in it» protracted duration the privilege of beiiig for ev.Qr young; to whidb we ought perhaps to add^ that our activity should never be exhausted, the freshness of our minds never abate, and our £aumlties for ever retain the same degree of tenacity and vigour, as they had in the morning of life^ when every thing was new, when all that allured or de- lighted us was seen accompanied with charms inex^ pressible, and, as Dryden expresses it*^, '*^*the first sprightly running** of the wine of life aflforded = a zest never after to be hoped for.
I return then to the consideration of the aUeged shortness of life. I mentioned in the beginning of this Essay, that "human life consists >of years, months and days; each day containing twenty-fouir hours.** But, when I said this, I by no means car- ried on the division so far as it might he carried. It has been calculated that the human mind is ca- pable of being impressed with three hundred and twenty sensations in a second of time^.
" How infinitely rapid is the succession of thought! While I am speaking, perhaps no two ideas are in my mind at the same time, and yet with what facility do I slide from one to another! If my discourse be argumentative, how often do I pass in review the topics of which it consists, before I utter them; and, even while I am speaking, con- tinue the review at intervals, without producing any pause in my discourse! How many other sensa- * Aurengzebe. ^ See Watson on Time, Chapter II.
VII.] OP THE DURATION OF HUMAN LIF&. 135 tions are experienced by me during this period, without 30 much as interrupting, that is, without matBrially diverting, the train of my ideas! My eye successively remarks a thousand objects that present themselves. My mind wanders to the dif- ferent parts of my body, and receives a sensation from the chair on which I sit, or the table on which I lean. It reverts to a variety of things that oc- curred in the course of the morning, in the course of yesterday, the most remote from, the most un- connected with, the subject that might seem wholly to engross me. I see the window, the opening of a door, the snuffing of a candle. When these most perceptibly occur, my mind passes from one to the other, without feeling the minutest obstacle, or be- ing in any degree distracted by their multiplicity®."
If this statement should appear to some persons too subtle, it may however prepare us to form a due estimate of the following remarks.
^^ Art is long.*' No, certainly, no art is long^ compared with the natural duration of human life from puberty to old age. There is perhaps no art that may not with reasonable diligence be acquired in three years, that is, as to its essential members and its skilful exercise. We may improve after- wards, but it will be only in minute particulars, and only by fits. Our subsequent advancement less depends upon the continuance of our application, than upon the improvement of the mind generally, ^ Political Justice, Book IV, Chapter ix.
136 OF THE DURATION OF HUMAN LIFE, [essay the refining of our taste^ the strengthening our judgment, and the accumulation of our experience.
The idea which prevails among the vulgar of mankind is, that we must make haste to be wise. The erroneousness of this notion however has from time to time been detected by moraUsts and phi- losophers; and it has been felt that he who pro* ceeds in a hurry towards the goal, exposes himself to the imminent risk of never reaching it.
The consciousness of this danger has led to the adoption of the modified maxim, Festina lentCj Hasten, but with steps deliberate and cautious.
It would however be a more correct advice to the aspirant, to say. Be earnest in your application, but let your march be vigilant and slow.
There is a doggrel couplet which I have met with in a book on elocution: Learn to speak slow: all other graces Will follow in their proper places, I could wish to recommend a similar process to the student in the course of his reading.
Toplady, a celebrated methodist preacher of the last age, somewhere relates a story of a coxcomb, who told him that he had read over Euclid's Ele- ments of Geometry one afternoon at his tea, only leaving out the A's and B's and crooked lines, which seemed to be intruded merely to retard hia progress.
Nothing is more easy than to gabble through a work replete with the profoundest elements of VH.] OF THE DURATION OF HUMAN LIFE. 187 thinking, and to carry away almost nothing, when we have finished.
- The book does not deserve even to be read, which does not impose on us the duty of frequent pauses, much reflecting and inward debate, or require that we should often go back, compare one observation and statement with another, and does not call upon us to combine and knit together the disjecta membra.
It is an observation which has often been repeated, that, when we come to read an excellent author a second and a third time, we find in him a multitude of things, that we did not in the slightest degree perceive in a first reading. A careful first reading would have a tendency in a cpnsiderable degree to anticipate this following crop.
Nothing is more certain than that a schoolboy gathers much of his most valuable instruction when his lesson is not absolutely before him. In the same sense the more mature student will receive most im- portant benefit, when he shuts his book, and goes forth in the field, and ruminates on what he has read. It is with the intellectual, as with the corpo- real eye: we must retire to a certain distance from the object we would examine, before we can truly take in the whole. We must view it in every di- rection, " survey it," as Sterne says, " transversely, then foreright, then this way, and then that, in all its possible directions and foreshortenings^;** and ^ Tristram Shandy, Vol. IV, Chap. ii.
138 OF THE DURATION OF HUMAN LIFB^ [ESSAY thus only can it be expected that we should ade« quately comprehend it.
, But the thing, it was principally in my purpose to say is, that it is one of the great desiderata of hunian life, not to accomplish our purposes in the briefest time, to consider ^Mife as short, and art as long,*' and therefore to master our ends in the smallest number of days or of years, but rather to consider it as an ample field that is spread before us, and to examine how it is to be filled, with plea- sure, with advantage, and. with usefulness. Life is like a lordly garden, which it calls forth all the skill of the artist to adorn with exhaustless variety and beauty; or like a spacious park or pleasure-ground, all of whose inequalities are to be embellished, and whose various capacities of fertilisation, sublimity or grace, are to be turned to account, so that we may wander in it for ever, and never be wearied.
We shall perhaps understand this best, if we take up the subject on a limited scale, and, before we consider life in its assigned period of seventy years, first confine our attention to the space of a single day. And we will consider that day, not as it relates to the man who earns his subsistence by the labour pf his hands, or to him who is immersed in the endless details of commerce. But we will take the case of the man, the whole of whose day is to be disposed of at his own discretion.
The attention of the curious observer has often been called to the tediousness of existence, how our time hangs upon our hands^ and in how high esti- mation the s[rt is held, of giving wings to our hours, and tnaking them pass rapidly and cheerfully away. A!Dd moralists of a cynical disposition have poured forth many a sorrowful ditty upon the inconsistency of man, who complains of the shortness of life, at the same time that he is put to the greatest straits how to give an agri^eable and pleas&nt occupation to its separate portions. ^^Let us hear no more," say these moralists, ^^ of the transitoriness of human existence, from men to whom life is a burthen, and who are willing td assign a reward to him that shall auggest to them an occupation or an amusement untried before.'* But this inconsistency, if it merits the name, is not an affair of artificial and supersubtle refinement, butis based in the fundamental principles of our nature. It is unavoidable that, when we have reached the close of atiy great epoch of our existence, and gtiH more when we have arrived at its final term, we should regret its transitory nature, and lahient that we have made no more effectual use of it. And yet the periods and portions of the stream of tiine, as they pass by us, will often be felt by us as in- sufferably slow in their progress, and we would give no inconsiderable sum to procure that the present section of our lives might come to an end, and that we might turn over a new leaf in the volume of ex- istence.
I have heard various men profess that they never 140 OF THE DURATION OF HUMAN LIFE. [ESSAY knew the minutes that hung upon their hands^ and were totally unacquainted with what, borrowing a term from the French language, we call ennui. I own I have listened to these persons with a certain degree of incredulity, always excepting such as earn their subsistence by constant labour, or as, being placed in a situation of active engagement, have not the leisure to feel apathy and disgust.
But we are talking here of that numerous class of human beings, who are their own masters, and spend every hour of the day at the choice of their discretion. To these we may add the persons who are partially so, and who, having occupied three or four hours of every day in discharge of some func- tion necessarily imposed on the];n, at the striking of a given hour go out of school, and employ them- selves in a certain industry or sport purely of their own election.
To go back then to the consideration of the sin- gle day of a man, all of whose hours are at his dis- posal to spend them well or ill, at the bidding of his own judgment, or the impulse of his own caprice.
We will suppose that, when he rises from his bed, he has sixteen hours before him, to be em^ ployed in whatever mode his will shall decide. I bar the case of travelling, or any of those schemes for passing the day, which by their very nature take the election out of his hands, and fill up his time with a perpetual motion, the nature of which is ascertained from the beginning.
VII.] OF THE DURATION OF HUMAN LIFE. 141 With such a man then it is in the first place in-« dispensibly necessary, that he should have various successive occupations. There is no one study or intellectual enquiry to which a man can apply six- teen hours consecutively, unless in some extraordi-^ nary instances which can occur but seldom in the course of a life. And even then the attention will from time io time relax, and the freshness of mental zeal and activity give way, though perhaps, after the lapse of a few minutes, they may be revived and brought into action again.
In the ordinary series of human existence it is \ desirable that, in the course of the same day, a man should have various successive occupations. I my- self for the most part read in one language at one part of the day, and in another at another. I am then in the best health and tone of spirits, when I employ two or three hours, and no more, in the act of writing and composition. There must also in the sixteen hours be a time for meals. There should be a time for fresh air and bodily exercise. It is in the nature of man, that we should spend a part of every day in the society of our fellows, either at public spectacles and places of concourse, or in the familiar interchange of conversation with one, two, or more persons with whom we can give ourselves up to unrestrained communication. All human life, as I have said, every day of our existence, consists of term and vacation; and the perfection of practical wisdom is to interpose these one with another, so 142 OF THE DURATION OF HUMAN LIFE. [essAT as to produce a perpetual change, a well-chosen relief, and a freshness and elastic tone which may bid defiance to weariness.
Taken then*^ in i:his point of view, what an empire does the man of leisure possess in each single day of his life! He disposes of his hours much in.the same manner, as the commander of a company bf men whom it is his business to train in the disci- pline of war. This officer directs one party of his men to climb a mountain, and another to ford or swim a stream which rushes along the valley. He orders this set to rush forward with, headlong course, and the other to wheel, and approach by circuitous progress perhaps to the very same point. He marches them to the right and the left. He then dismisses them from the scene of exercise, to furb- ish their arms, to attend to their accoutrements, or to partake of necessary refection. Not inferioi: to this is the authority of the man of leisure in dis- posing of the hours of one single day of his ex- istence. And human life consists of many such days, there being three hundred and sixty-five in each year that we live.
How infinitely various may be the occupations of the life of man from puberty to old age! We may acquire languages; we may devote ourselves to arts; we may give ourselves up to the profound- ness of science. Nor is any one of these objects incompatible with the others, nor is there any reason why the same man should not embrace VII.] OF THE DURATION OF HUMAN LIFE. 143 many. We may devote one portion of the year to travelling, and another to all the abstr;actions of study. I remember when I was a boy, looking for- ward with terror to the ample field of human life, and saying, When I have read through all the books that have been written, what shall I do afterwards? And there is infinitely more sense in this, thaiv in the ludicrous exclamations of men who complain of the want of time, and say that life affords them nt) space in which to act their imaginings.
On the contrary, when a man has got to the end of one art or course of study, he is compelled to consider what he shall do next. And, when we have gone through a cycle of as many acquisitions^ aa, from the limitation of human faculties, are not destructive of each other, we shall find ourselves frequently reduced to the beginning some of them over again. • Nor is this the least agreeable occu- pation of human leisure. The book that I read when I was a boy, presents quite a new face to me as I advance in the vale of years. The same words and phrases suggest to me a new train of ideas. And it is no mean pleasure that I derive from the singular sensation of finding the same author and the same book, old and yet not old, presenting to me cherished and inestimable recollections, and at the same time communicating mines of wealth, the shaft of which was till now unexplored.
The result then of these various observations is to persuade the candid and ingenuous man, to con- 144 OF THE DURATION OF HUMAN LIFE. [eSSAY sider life as an important and ample possession, ta resolve that it shall be administered with as much judgment and deliberation as a person of true phi- lanthropy and wisdom would administer a splen- did income, and upon no occasion so much to think upon the point of in how short a time an interesting pursuit is to be accomplished, as by what means it shall be accomplished in a consummate and masterly style. Let us hear no more, from those who have to a considerable degree the command of their hours, the querulous and pitiful complaint that they have no time to do what they ought to do and would wish to do; but let them feel that they have a gigantic store of minutes and hours and days and months, abundantly sufficient to enable them tof eflfect what it is especially worthy of a noble mind to perform!
^ J •* VIII.] OF HUMAN VEGETATION. 145 ESSAY VIII.
OF HUMAN VEGETATION.
There i? another point of \iew from which we may look at the subject of time as it is concerned with the business of human Ufe^ that will lead us to con- clusions of a very different sort from those which are set down in the preceding Essay.