Chapter 17

There is always danger of this excrescence of speech, where the speaker is the umpire, and feels himself at liberty, unreproved, to say what he pleases. He is charmed with the sound of his own voice. The periods flow numerous from his tongue, and he gets on at his ease. There is in all this an image of empire; and the human mind is ever prone to be delighted in the exercise of unrestricted authority. The pupil in this case stands before his instructor in an attitude humble, submissive, and bowing to the admonition that is communicated to him. The speaker says more than it was in his purpose to say; and he knows not how to arrest himself in his triumphant career. He believes that he is in no danger of excess, and recollects the old proverb that "words break no bones."

But a syllable more than is necessary and justly measured, is materially of evil operation to ingenuous youth. The mind of such a youth is tender and flexible, and easily swayed one way or the other. He believes almost every thing that he is bid to believe; and the admonition that is given him with all the symptoms of friendliness and sincerity he is prompt to subscribe to. If this is wantonly aggravated to him, he feels the oppression, and is galled with the injustice. He knows himself guiltless of premeditated wrong. He has not yet learned that his condition is that of a slave; and he feels a certain impatience at his being considered as such, though he probably does not venture to express it. He shuts up the sense of this despotism in his own bosom; and it is his first lesson of independence and rebellion and original sin.

It is one of the grossest mistakes of which we can be guilty, if we confound different offences and offenders together. The great and the small alike appear before us in the many-coloured scene of human society, and, if we reprehend bitterly and rate a juvenile sinner for the fault, which he scarcely understood, and assuredly had not premeditated, we break down at once a thousand salutary boundaries, and reduce the ideas of right and wrong in his mind to a portentous and terrible chaos. The communicator of liberal knowledge assuredly ought not to confound his office with that of a magistrate at a quarter-sessions, who though he does not sit in judgment upon transgressions of the deepest and most atrocious character, yet has brought before him in many cases defaulters of a somewhat hardened disposition, whose lot has been cast among the loose and the profligate, and who have been carefully trained to a certain audacity of temper, taught to look upon the paraphernalia of justice with scorn, and to place a sort of honour in sustaining hard words and the lesser visitations of punishment with unflinching nerve.

If this is the judgment we ought to pass upon the bitter and galling and humiliating terms of reprehension apt to be made use of by the instructor to his pupil, it is unnecessary to say a word on the subject of chastisement. If such an expedient is ever to be had recourse to, it can only be in cases of contumaciousness and rebellion; and then the instructor cannot too unreservedly say to himself, "This is matter of deep humiliation to me: I ought to have succeeded by an appeal to the understanding and ingenuous feelings of youth; but I am reduced to a confession of my impotence."

But the topic which, most of all, I was desirous to bring forward in this Essay, is that of the language so customarily employed by the impatient and irritated preceptor, "Hereafter, in a state of mature and ripened judgment, you will thank me for the severity I now exercise towards you."

No; it may safely be answered: that time will never arrive.

As, in one of my earlier Essays(33), I undertook to shew that there is not so much difference between the talents of one man and another as has often been apprehended, so we are guilty of a gross error in the way in which we divide the child from the man, and consider him as if he belonged to a distinct species of beings.

(33) Essay II.

I go back to the recollections of my youth, and can scarcely find where to draw the line between ineptness and maturity. The thoughts that occurred to me, as far back as I can recollect them, were often shrewd; the suggestions ingenious; the judgments not seldom acute. I feel myself the same individual all through.

Sometimes I was unreasonably presumptuous, and sometimes unnecessarily distrustful. Experience has taught me in various instances a sober confidence in my decisions; but that is all the difference. So to express it, I had then the same tools to work with as now; but the magazine of materials upon which I had to operate was scantily supplied. Like the apothecary in Romeo and Juliet, the faculty, such as it was, was within me; but my shelves contained but a small amount of furniture:

A beggarly account of empty boxes, Remnants of packthread, and old cakes of roses, Which, thinly scattered, served to make a shew.

In speaking thus of the intellectual powers of my youth, I am however conceding too much. It is true, "Practice maketh perfect." But it is surprising, in apt and towardly youth, how much there is to commend in the first essays. The novice, who has his faculties lively and on the alert, will strike with his hammer almost exactly where the blow ought to be placed, and give nearly the precisely right force to the act. He will seize the thread it was fitting to seize; and, though he fail again and again, will shew an adroitness upon the whole that we scarcely know how to account for. The man whose career shall ultimately be crowned with success, will demonstrate in the beginning that he was destined to succeed.

There is therefore no radical difference between the child and the man. His flesh becomes more firm and sinewy; his bones grow more solid and powerful; his joints are more completely strung. But he is still essentially the same being that he was. When a genuine philosopher holds a new-born child in his arms, and carefully examines it, he perceives in it various indications of temper and seeds of character. It was all there, though folded up and confused, and not obtruding itself upon the remark of every careless spectator. It continues with the child through life, grows with his growth, and never leaves him till he is at last consigned to the tomb. How absurd then by artful rules and positive institutions to undertake to separate what can never be divided! The child is occasionally grave and reflecting, and deduces well-founded inferences; he draws on the past, and plunges into the wide ocean of the future. In proportion as the child advances into the youth, his intervals of gravity increase, and he builds up theories and judgments, some of which no future time shall suffice to overturn. It is idle to suppose that the first activity of our faculties, when every thing is new and produces an unbated impression, when the mind is uncumbered, and every interest and every feeling bid us be observing and awake, should pass for nothing. We lay up stores then, which shall never be exhausted. Our minds are the reverse of worn and obtuse. We bring faculties into the world with us fresh from the hands of the all-bounteous giver; they are not yet moulded to a senseless routine; they are not yet corrupted by the ill lessons of effrontery, impudence and vice. Childhood is beautiful; youth is ingenuous; and it can be nothing but a principle which is hostile to all that most adorns this sublunary scene, that would with violence and despotic rule mar the fairest flower that creation has to boast.

It happens therefore almost unavoidably that, when the man mature looks back upon the little incidents of his youth, he sees them to a surprising degree in the same light, and forms the same conclusions respecting them, as he did when they were actually passing. "The forgeries of opinion," says Cicero, "speedily pass away; but the rules and decisions of nature are strengthened." Bitter reproaches and acts of violence are the offspring of perturbation engendered upon imbecility, and therefore can never be approved upon a sober and impartial revision. And, if they are to be impeached in the judgment of an equal and indifferent observer, we may be sure they will be emphatically condemned by the grave and enlightened censor who looks back upon the years of his own nonage, and recollects that he was himself the victim of the intemperance to be pronounced upon. The interest that he must necessarily take in the scenes in which he once had an engrossing concern, will supply peculiar luminousness to his views. He taxes himself to be just. The transaction is over now, and is passed to the events that preceded the universal deluge. He holds the balance with a steadiness, which sets at defiance all attempts to give it a false direction one way or the other. But the judgment he made on the case at the time, and immediately after the humiliation he suffered, remains with him. It was the sentiment of his ripening youth; it was the opinion of his opening manhood; and it still attends him, when he is already fast yielding to the incroachments and irresistible assaults of declining years.

ESSAY XV. OF LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP.

Who is it that says, "There is no love but among equals?" Be it who it may, it is a saying universally known, and that is in every one's mouth. The contrary is precisely the truth, and is the great secret of every thing that is admirable in our moral nature.

By love it is my intention here to understand, not a calm, tranquil, and, as it were, half-pronounced feeling, but a passion of the mind. We may doubtless entertain an approbation of other men, without adverting to the question how they stand in relation to ourselves, as equals or otherwise. But the sentiment I am here considering, is that where the person in whom it resides most strongly sympathises with the joys and sorrows of another, desires his gratification, hopes for his welfare, and shrinks from the anticipation of his being injured; in a word, is the sentiment which has most the spirit of sacrifice in it, and prepares the person in whom it dwells, to postpone his own advantage to the advantage of him who is the object of it.

Having placed love among the passions, which is no vehement assumption, I then say, there can be no passion, and by consequence no love, where there is not imagination. In cases where every thing is understood, and measured, and reduced to rule, love is out of the question. Whenever this sentiment prevails, I must have my attention fixed more on the absent than the present, more upon what I do not see than on what I do see. My thoughts will be taken up with the future or the past, with what is to come or what has been. Of the present there is necessarily no image. Sentiment is nothing, till you have arrived at a mystery and a veil, something that is seen obscurely, that is just hinted at in the distance, that has neither certain outline nor colour, but that is left for the mind to fill up according to its pleasure and in the best manner it is able.

The great model of the affection of love in human beings, is the sentiment which subsists between parents and children.

Let not this appear a paradox. There is another relation in human society to which this epithet has more emphatically been given: but, if we analyse the matter strictly, we shall find that all that is most sacred and beautiful in the passion between the sexes, has relation to offspring. What Milton calls, "The rites mysterious of connubial love," would have little charm in them in reflection, to a mind one degree above the brutes, were it not for the mystery they include, of their tendency to give existence to a new human creature like ourselves. Were it not for this circumstance, a man and a woman would hardly ever have learned to live together; there scarcely could have been such a thing as domestic society; but every intercourse of this sort would have been "casual, joyless, unendeared;" and the propensity would have brought along with it nothing more of beauty, lustre and grace, than the pure animal appetites of hunger and thirst. Bearing in mind these considerations, I do not therefore hesitate to say, that the great model of the affection of love in human beings, is the sentiment which subsists between parents and children.

The original feature in this sentiment is the conscious feeling of the protector and the protected. Our passions cannot subsist in lazy indolence; passion and action must operate on each other; passion must produce action, and action give strength to the tide of passion. We do not vehemently desire, where we can do nothing. It is in a very faint way that I entertain a wish to possess the faculty of flying; and an ordinary man can scarcely be said to desire to be a king or an emperor. None but a madman, of plebeian rank, falls in love with a princess. But shew me a good thing within my reach; convince me that it is in my power to attain it; demonstrate to me that it is fit for me, and I am fit for it; then begins the career of passion. In the same manner, I cannot love a person vehemently, and strongly interest myself in his miscarriages or success, till I feel that I can be something to him. Love cannot dwell in a state of impotence. To affect and be affected, this is the common nature I require; this is the being that is like unto myself; all other likeness resides in the logic and the definition, but has nothing to do with feeling or with practice.

What can be more clear and sound in explanation, than the love of a parent to his child? The affection he bears and its counterpart are the ornaments of the world, and the spring of every thing that makes life worth having. Whatever besides has a tendency to illustrate and honour our nature, descends from these, or is copied from these, grows out of them as the branches of a tree from the trunk, or is formed upon them as a model, and derives from them its shape, its character, and its soul. Yet there are men so industrious and expert to strip the world we live in of all that adorns it, that they can see nothing glorious in these affections, but find the one to be all selfishness, and the other all prejudice and superstition.

The love of the parent to his child is nursed and fostered by two plain considerations; first, that the subject is capable of receiving much, and secondly, that my power concerning it is great and extensive.

When an infant is presented to my observation, what a wide field of sentiment and reflection is opened to me! Few minds are industrious and ductile enough completely to compass this field, if the infant is only accidentally brought under their view. But, if it is an infant with which I begin to be acquainted to-day, and my acquaintance with which shall not end perhaps till one of us ceases to exist, how is it possible that the view of its little figure should not lead me to the meditation of its future history, the successive stages of human life, and the various scenes and mutations and vicissitudes and fortunes through which it is destined to pass? The Book of Fate lies open before me. This infant, powerless and almost impassive now, is reserved for many sorrows and many joys, and will one day possess a power, formidable and fearful to afflict those within its reach, or calculated to diffuse blessings, wisdom, virtue, happiness, to all around. I conceive all the various destinations of which man is susceptible; my fancy at least is free to select that which pleases me best; I unfold and pursue it in all its directions, observe the thorns and difficulties with which it is beset, and conjure up to my thoughts all that it can boast of inviting, delightful and honourable.

But if the infant that is near to me lays hold of my imagination and affections at the moment in which he falls under my observation, how much more do I become interested in him, as he advances from year to year! At first, I have the blessing of the gospel upon me, in that, "having not seen, yet I believe." But, as his powers expand, I understand him better. His little eye begins to sparkle with meaning; his tongue tells a tale that may be understood; his very tones, and gestures, and attitudes, all inform me concerning what he shall be. I am like a florist, who has received a strange plant from a distant country. At first he sees only the stalk, and the leaves, and the bud having yet no other colour than that of the leaves. But as he watches his plant from day to day, and from hour to hour, the case which contains the flower divides, and betrays first one colour and then another, till the shell gradually subsides more and more towards the stalk, and the figure of the flower begins now to be seen, and its radiance and its pride to expand itself to the ravished observer.--Every lesson that the child leans, every comment that he makes upon it, every sport that he pursues, every choice that he exerts, the demeanour that he adopts to his playfellows, the modifications and character of his little fits of authority or submission, all make him more and more an individual to me, and open a wider field for my sagacity or my prophecy, as to what he promises to be, and what he may be made.

But what gives, as has already been observed, the point and the finish to all the interest I take respecting him, lies in the vast power I possess to influence and direct his character and his fortune. At first it is abstract power, but, when it has already been exerted (as the writers on politics as a science have observed of property), the sweat of my brow becomes mingled with the apple I have gathered, and my interest is greater. No one understands my views and projects entirely but myself, and the scheme I have conceived will suffer, if I do not complete it as I began.

And there are men that say, that all this mystery, the most beautiful attitude of human nature, and the crown of its glory, is pure selfishness!

Let us now turn from the view of the parental, to that of the filial affection.

The great mistake that has been made on this subject, arises from the taking it nakedly and as a mere abstraction. It has been sagely remarked, that when my father did that which occasioned me to come into existence, he intended me no benefit, and therefore I owe him no thanks. And the inference which has been made from this wise position is, that the duty of children to parents is a mere imposture, a trick, employed by the old to defraud the young out of their services.

I grant most readily, that the mere material ligament that binds together the father and the child, by itself is worthless, and that he who owes nothing more than this to his father, owes him nothing. The natural, unanimated relationship is like the grain of mustard-seed in the discourses of Jesus Christ, "which indeed is the least of all seeds; but, when it is unfolded and grows up, it becomes a mighty tree, so that the birds of the air may come and lodge in its branches."

The hard and insensible man may know little of the debt he owes to his father; but he that is capable of calling up the past, and beholding the things that are not as if they now were, will see the matter in a very different light. Incalculable are the privations (in a great majority of instances), the toils, the pains, the anxieties, that every child imposes on his father from the first hour of his existence. If he could know the ceaseless cares, the tender and ardent feelings, the almost incredible efforts and exertions, that have accompanied him in his father's breast through the whole period of his growth, instead of thinking that he owed his parent nothing, he would stand still and wonder that one human creature could do so much for another.

I grant that all this may be done for a child by a stranger, and that then in one sense the obligation would be greater. It is however barely possible that all this should be done. The stranger wants the first exciting cause, the consideration, "This creature by the great scheme of nature belongs to me, and is cast upon my care." And, as the tie in the case of the stranger was not complete in the beginning, so neither can it be made so in the sequel. The little straggler is like the duckling hatched in the nest of a hen; there is danger every day, that as the nursling begins to be acquainted with its own qualities, it may plunge itself into another element, and swim away from its benefactor.

Even if we put all these considerations out of the question, still the affection of the child to its parent of adoption, wants the kernel, and, if I may so speak, the soul, of the connection which has been formed and modelled by the great hand of nature. If the mere circumstance of filiation and descent creates no debt, it however is the principle of a very close connection. One of the most memorable mysteries of nature, is how, out of the slightest of all connections (for such, literally speaking, is that between father and child), so many coincidences should arise. The child resembles his parent in feature, in temperament, in turn of mind, and in class of disposition, while at the same time in many particulars, in these same respects, he is a new and individual creature. In one view therefore the child is merely the father multiplied and repeated. Now one of the indefeasible principles of affection is the partaking of a common nature; and as man is a species by himself, so to a certain degree is every nation and every family; and this consideration, when added to the moral and spiritual ties already treated of, undoubtedly has a tendency to give them their zest and perfection.

But even this is not the most agreeable point of view in which we may consider the filial affection. I come back to my first position, that where there is no imagination, there can be no passion, and by consequence no love. No parent ever understood his child, and no child ever understood his parent. We have seen that the affectionate parent considers his child like a flower in the bud, as a mine of power that is to be unfolded, as a creature that is to act and to pass through he knows not what, as a canvas that "gives ample room and verge enough," for his prophetic soul to hang over in endless visions, and his intellectual pencil to fill up with various scenes and fortunes. And, if the parent does not understand his child, certainly as little does the child understand his parent. Wherever this relation subsists in its fairest form, the parent is as a God, a being qualified with supernatural powers, to his offspring. The child consults his father as an oracle; to him he proposes all his little questions; from him he learns his natural philosophy, his morals, his rules of conduct, his religion, and his creed. The boy is uninformed on every point; and the father is a vast Encyclopedia, not merely of sciences, but of feelings, of sagacity, of practical wisdom, and of justice, which the son consults on all occasions, and never consults in vain. Senseless and inexpert is that parent, who endeavours to govern the mind by authority, and to lay down rugged and peremptory dogmas to his child; the child is fully and unavoidably prepared to receive every thing with unbounded deference, and to place total reliance in the oracle which nature has assigned him. Habits, how beautiful! Inestimable benefit of nature, that has given me a prop against which to sustain my unripened strength, and has not turned me loose to wander with tottering steps amidst the vast desert of society!