From Hogg's Instructor.
ILLUSTRATIONS OF MOTIVES.
Certain it is, that in the universe there can be but one infallible Judge of motives. None but its Maker can see into the secret springs, and clearly comprehend the motions, of the mind. Nevertheless, "the will for the deed" is an old understanding among mankind, in virtue of that inward life whose world and workings they know to extend so far beyond the visible. It is, indeed, the privilege, and in some sense a necessity of human reason, to inquire after, at least, obvious motives, since the smallest acquaintance with character or history cannot be formed without taking them into account. Thus, in the biographies of notable men, in the histories of nations, and in the gossip which constitutes the current history of most neighborhoods, and is relished alike by the denizens of court and hamlet, nobody is satisfied with knowing merely what was done, for the demand invariably follows, Why they did it? That query is often necessary to legal, and always to moral justice. It must be, so to speak, a most mechanical and surface life, whose daily doings the beholder can fully explain, independent of any reference to inward feelings, unuttered memories, or concealed hopes. How many deeds and whole courses of action, chameleon-like, utterly change their complexions, according to the light of attributed motives! Through that medium, the patriot of one party becomes the heartless and designing knave of another; and the fanatical revolutionists of their own generation turn to fearless reformers with the next. Many an act, on the details of which most historians are agreed, is held up by one to the world's praise, and by another to universal censure. Henri Quatre, says the first, conformed to Catholicism rather than continue a civil war in his kingdom; while a second remarks of the same monarch, that he sacrificed his faith for a crown. When Frederick-William of Prussia was just at the hottest of that persecution of his celebrated son, for which, together with his love of tall soldiers, he is best known to the world, the grand dispute amongst his favorite guards at Potsdam was, whether the kicks, cuffs, and imprisonments, which the old king bestowed so liberally on his heir-apparent, were intended to prevent young Fritz turning an infidel, or arose from his father's fears that he might be a greater man than himself! On no subject are mankind more apt to differ, probably because there are few on which observation affords so much inferential and so little direct evidence.
Approaching the innermost circles of private life, we find that the views entertained of motives exercise a still greater influence in determining our estimation of kindred, friends, or lovers. Volpone, in Ben Jonson's play, even had he been capable of it, could have no cause for gratitude to his numerous friends for all their gifts and attentions, knowing so perfectly as he did, that they came but in expectation of a legacy; and many a well-portioned dame has seen cause for applying to her most attentive suitor those lines of a homely Scottish song—
"My lad is sae muckle in love wi' my siller,
He canna hae love to spare for me."
There is a strange difference of opinion existing at times between the principals and the spectators of these particular affairs. Few, it has been said, can penetrate the motives of others in matters regarding themselves. Yet most people are wonderfully sharp-sighted where their neighbors are concerned; and the world—as every one of us is apt to call that fraction of society in which we live, and move, and have our associations—though generally not over charitable, is rarely wrong in its conclusions.
He was a keen observer of life who remarked that the rapid changes to which most of human friendships and enmities are liable, could be no matter of surprise to one who took note of the motives from which they generally originate. Poor and unsubstantial enough these doubtless are, in many a case. There have been friendships that owed their growth solely to showers of flattery, and bitter enmities have spontaneously sprung up in the soil of envy. It was said of Goldsmith, that he could never hear a brother poet, or, indeed, any citizen of the world of letters, praised, without entertaining a temporary aversion to that individual, and a similar effect was always produced by the smallest sign of increasing literary consequence. A report that M—— had been taken particular notice of by such a nobleman of those patronizing times, or that his works had been admired in some segment of the fashionable circle, was sufficient to make the author of the "Deserted Village" find all manner of faults with him and his, till time, or his habitual good nature, wiped the circumstance out of Goldsmith's remembrance.
This reminds one of Madame de Montespan, a belle of that order which reigned most triumphantly at the court of Louis XIV., who never could forgive her rival, even when disgraced and dead, because she had once got a ride in the royal carriage. It is curious that the learned and the fair, far as their general pursuits, and visibilities, too, are known to be apart, should, according to common report, approximate so nearly in their motives to enmity or friendship. George Colman used to say, that, if one had any interest in getting up a quarrel between either two fine ladies or two literary men, he had nothing to do but to praise the one energetically to the other, and the higher his enthusiasm rose, the fiercer would be the war.
It was asserted of both the elder and younger Scaliger, that they never applauded any scholar with all their might, but one who was manifestly inferior to themselves; and of Madame de Maintenon, that she never honored any one with her special friendship who was not, in some considerable point, beneath her. There is still a large class of characters, in all whose attachments a something to despise seems the indispensable ingredient. The perpetual triumph of being always "king of the company" has a binding attraction for such minds. It confers a kind of dictatorship to have the advantage of one's friends. Nothing else can explain the amount of patronage and befriending generally lavished on the most worthless members of families or societies; and the half-grudge, half-surveillance, which, under the covert of mere mouth-honor, often surrounds great or successful abilities.
A strange motive to enmity is illustrated in the life of General Loudoun, one of the Scotch Jacobites, who, on the defeat of his party, entered the Austrian service, and rose to the rank of field-marshal in the wars of Maria Theresa. He had taken the town of Seidlitz from the Prussians. It was a great stroke in favor of the empress queen, and might have been rewarded with a coronet, but, in his haste to send her majesty the intelligence, Loudoun transmitted it through her husband, the Emperor Francis, who had a private interest in the matter, having long carried on a speculation of his own in victualling not only his wife's troops, but those of her Prussian enemy. King Maria, as she was styled by her Hungarian subjects, had also some special reasons for allowing him to have neither hand nor voice in her concerns—a fact which the marshal had never learned, or forgotten; and her majesty was so indignant at receiving the news through such a channel, that, though she struck a medal to commemorate the taking of Seidlitz, Loudoun was rewarded only with her peculiar aversion throughout the remaining seventeen years of her reign, for which the good wishes of that imperial speculator in forage and flour afforded but poor consolation.
Of all the important steps of human life, that by which two are made one appears to be taken from the greatest variety of motives. Doubtless, from the beginning it was not so; but manifold and heterogeneous are those which have been alleged for it in the civilized world. Goethe said he married to attain popular respectability. Wilkes, once called the Patriot, when sueing his wife, who chanced to have been an heiress, for the remains of her property, declared that he had wedded at twenty-two, solely to please his friends; and Wycherly the poet, in his very last days, worshipped and endowed with all his worldly goods, as the English service hath it, a girl whom poverty had made unscrupulous, in order to be revenged on his relations.
Princes of old were in the habit of marrying to cement treaties, which were generally broken as soon after as possible; and simple citizens are still addicted to the same method of amending their fortunes and families. There was an original motive to double blessedness set forth in the advice of a veteran sportsman in one of the border counties. His niece was the heiress of broad lands, which happened to adjoin an estate belonging to a younger brother of the turf; and the senior gentleman, when dilating to her on the exploits they had performed together by wood and wold, wound up with the following sage counsel—"Maria, take my advice, and marry young Beechwood, and you'll see this county hunted in style."
The numbers who, by their own account, have wedded to benefit society, in one shape or another, would furnish a strong argument against the accredited selfishness of mankind, could they only be believed. The general good of their country was the standing excuse of classic times, and philosophers have occasionally reproduced it in our own. Most people seem to think some apology necessary, but none are so ingenious in showing cause why they should enter the holy state, as those with whom it is the second experiment. The pleas of the widowed for casting off their weeds are generally prudent, and often singularly commendable. Domestic policy or parental affection supply the greater part of them; and the want of protectors and step-mothers felt by families of all sizes is truly marvellous, considering the usual consequences of their instalment.
It is to be admired, as the speakers of old English would say, for what noble things men will give themselves credit in the way of motives, and how little resemblance their actions bear to them. Montaigne was accustomed to tell of a servant belonging to the Archbishop of Paris, who, being detected in privately selling his master's best wine, insisted that it was done out of pure love to his grace, lest the sight of so large a stock in his cellar might tempt him to drink more than was commendable for a bishop. A guardian care of their neighbors' well-being, somewhat similar, is declared by all the disturbers of our daily paths. Tale-bearers and remarkers, of every variety, have the best interests of their friends at heart; and what troublesome things some people can do from a sense of duty is matter of universal experience. Great public criminals, tyrants, and persecutors in old times, and the abusers of power in all ages, have, especially in the fall of their authority, laid claim to most exalted motives. Patriotism, philanthropy, and religion itself, have been quoted as their inspirers. The ill-famed Judge Jeffries said, his judicial crimes were perpetrated to maintain the majesty of the law. Robespierre affirmed that he had lived in defence of virtue and his country. But perhaps the most charitable interpretation that ever man gave to the motives of another, is to be found in the funeral sermon of Frederick, Prince of Wales, and father of George III. The preacher, after several judicious remarks on the virtues of the royal deceased, concludes, "That in the extreme to which these were carried, they appeared like vices; for so great was his generosity, that he ruined half the tradesmen in London; and so extraordinary his condescension, that he kept all sorts of bad company."
It is strange, that while motives abstractly virtuous have produced large additions to the sum of mortal ills, little of private, and still less of public, good has sprung, even casually, from those that are evil in themselves. "If either the accounts of history, or the daily reports of life, are to be at all credited," said one who had learned and thought much on this subject, "the greatest amount of crime and folly has been committed from motives of religion and love, as men, for the most part, know them; while those of avarice, revenge, and fear, have originated the most extraordinary actions and important events."
The sins of revenge have usually a leaven of what Bacon calls "wild justice" in them. Those of avarice are, from their very nature, notorious; but perhaps no motive has ever prompted men to such varied and singular actions as that of fear. The working of fear was singularly exhibited in the conduct of a certain Marquis of Montferrat, who lived at the period of the famous Italian wars, waged between Charles V. of Germany and Francis I. of France. The marquis was an Alpine feudatory of the former, and served him long and faithfully, till a German astrologer of high repute in those days assured him, from the stars, that the emperor would be eventually overthrown, and all his partisans utterly ruined. To avoid his probable share in that prediction, the marquis turned traitor to his friend and sovereign, for Charles had trusted him beyond most men; but the next year, the emperor was completely victorious, by both sea and land. The marquis had fallen, fighting in vain for Francis, and his fief was bestowed on a loyal vassal of the emperor.
Divines and philosophers have had many controversies concerning motives. A great dispute on this subject is said to have engaged the learned of Alexandria, about the accession of the emperor Julian, whom, says a biographer, "some of his subjects named the Apostate, and some the Philosopher." The controversy occupied not only the Christian Platonists, for whose numbers that city was so celebrated, but also the Pagan wisdom, then shedding its last rays under favor of the new emperor. Yet neither Christians nor Pagans could entirely agree with each other, and such a division of opinion had never been heard, even in Alexandria. Things were in this state, says the tradition, when there arrived in the capital of Egypt a Persian, whose fame had long preceded him. He had been one of the Magi, at the base of the Caucasus, till the Parthians laid waste his country, when he left it, and travelled over the world in search of knowledge, and, in both east and west, they called him Kosro the Wise. Scarce was the distinguished stranger fairly within their gates when the chiefs of the parties determined to hear his opinion on matter; and a deputation, consisting of a Christian bishop, a Jewish rabbi, a Platonist teacher, and a priest of Isis, waited on the Persian one morning, when he sat in the portico of a long-deserted temple, which some forgotten Egyptian had built to Time, the instructor. The rabbi and the priest were for actions. The Platonist and the bishop were motive men, but in the manner of those times, for even philosophy has its fashions, the four had agreed that each should propose a question to Kosro, as his own wisdom dictated. Accordingly, after some preparatory compliments, touching the extent of his fame and travels, the Platonist, who was always notable for circumlocution, opened the business by inquiring what he considered the chief movers of mankind.
"Gain and vanity," replied Kosro.
"Which is strongest?" interposed the rabbi, in whom the faculty of beating about in argument was scarcely less developed.
"Gain was the first," said the Persian. "Its worship succeeded the reign of Ormuz, which western poets call the golden age, and I know not when it was; but, in later ages, vanity has become the most powerful, for every where I have seen men do that for glory which they would not do for gain; and many even sacrifice gain to glory, as they think it."
"But, wise Kosro," demanded the priest, impatient with what he considered a needless digression, "tell us your opinion—Should men be judged by their motives or their actions?"
"Motives," said Kosro, "are the province of divine, and actions of human, judgment. Nevertheless, because of the relation between them it is well to take note of the former when they become visible in our light, yet not to search too narrowly after them, but take deeds for their value; seeing, first, that the inward labyrinth is beyond our exploring; secondly, that most men act from mingled motives; and, thirdly, that if, after the thought of a western poet, there were a crystal pane set in each man's bosom, it would mightily change the estimation of many."
And the bishop made answer—"Kosro, thou hast seen the truth; man must at times perceive, but God alone can judge of, motives."