December 14th.
As I have been unwell for several days and unable to go out, I have no interesting news to give you. You must therefore receive with indulgence a few detached thoughts, the offspring of solitude; or if they tire you, leave them unread.
PARLOUR PHILOSOPHY.
What is good or evil fortune? As the former has seldom fallen to my lot, I have often proposed the question to myself. Blind and accidental, it certainly is not; but necessary, and part of a series, like every thing else in the universe, though its causes do not always depend on ourselves. How far, however, we really have it in our power to bring it on ourselves, is a salutary inquiry for every one. Lucky and unlucky occasions present themselves to every man in the course of his life; and the art of seizing the one and averting the other with address, is commonly what procures for a man the reputation of fortunate. It cannot however be denied that, in the case of some men, the most powerful and the wisest combinations continually fail, by what we call accident; nay, that there is a sort of secret foreboding or presentiment, which gives us the dim feeling that our project will not succeed. I have often been tempted to think that luckiness and unluckiness are a sort of subjective properties which we bring with us into the world, like health, strength, a finely organized brain, and so on; and whose preponderating power must always attract things magnetically to themselves. Like all other properties, this of luckiness may be cultivated or let to lie dormant, may be increased or diminished. The will does much; and thence the proverbs, Nothing venture nothing have, (Wagen gewinnt:) Boldness and luck go together, (Kühnheit gehört zum Glück.) It is also observable that luckiness, like the other faculties, falls off with age, that is, with the vigour of the material. This is certainly not the consequence of weaker or more ill-advised plans or rules, but appears truly to be the decline of a secret power which, so long as it is young and vigorous, governs fortune, but in later years is no longer able to hold her in. High play affords very good studies on this subject; and perhaps this is the only poetical side of that dangerous passion: for nothing affords so true a picture of life as the hazard-table; nothing affords a better criterion to the observer, by which to try his own character, and that of others. All rules which avail in the struggle of life, avail also in this; and penetration combined with energy is always sure, if not to conquer, at least to make a very able defence. But if it is combined with the talent or gift of luckiness, a sort of Napoleon of the gaming-table is the result. I am not now speaking of that class of gentlemen ‘qui corrigent la fortune.’ But even here the resemblance is still true: for how often in the world do you meet men who govern fortune by fraud?—the most unfortunate, be it said by the by, of all speculators. Their occupation is truly drawing water in a sieve; the collecting of rotten nuts. For what is enjoyment without security? and what can outward fortune avail where the internal equilibrium is destroyed?
There are men who, although endowed with distinguished qualities, never know how to make them available in the world, unless they have been from the beginning of their career placed by fate in their right position. They can never reach it by their own efforts; because a too feminine fancy, liable to the constant impression of extraneous forms, prevents them from seeing things as they really are, and causes them to live in a world of airy floating phantasms. They set about their projects with ardour and talent; but their fancy hurries after, mounted on her poetical steed, and conducts them so rapidly through her kingdom of dreams, to their end, that they can no longer endure the slow and weary journey through the difficulties and obstacles of the real road. Thus they suffer one project after another to fall to the ground before it has attained to maturity. And yet, like every thing else in the world, this unfortunate turn of mind has its advantages. It prevents a man, indeed, from making his fortune, as it is commonly called, but affords incalculable comfort under misfortune, and an elasticity of spirit that nothing can entirely crush,—for the race of pleasure-giving creatures of the imagination is absolutely inexhaustible. A whole city of castles in the air is always at the command of mortals of this class, and they enjoy, in hope, an everlasting variety of realities. Such people may be of infinite use to other more sedate, reflecting, and matter-of-fact men, if these latter do but understand the art of awakening their enthusiasm. Their intellectual faculties derive from a positive steady purpose, and from the constraint which it imposes, a degree of constancy and persevering energy which their own interest could never have inspired; and their ardour is more durable for the good of others than for their own. From similar causes, if they are placed by some superior power on the summit of the hill from the commencement of their lives, they will accomplish great things by themselves; for in this case the most grand and varied materials are already furnished; and along with them, the enthusiasm which persons of this character want, is produced, and fixed on some adequate and determinate object. There is nothing entirely new, uncertain, and baseless to create or to found;—only to employ, to improve, to elevate, to adorn, what already lies under their eye and hand, with the acuteness and address of a skilful artist. From such an eminence, which is their proper station, their keen, far-sighted glance, supported by a thousand executive heads and hands, strengthened by their own inward poetic eye, will reach further than that of more everyday natures. But at the foot or on the slope of the hill this acuteness of the mental sight is of no use to them, because their horizon is bounded; and for climbing the toilsome ascent, their indolent limbs will not serve them, nor could they resist the airy phantoms which would tempt them from their path. They live and die, therefore, on the hill, without ever reaching its summit, and consequently without ever being fully conscious of their own power. Of such men, the well-known saying might be reversed, and we might say with truth, ‘Tel brille au premier rang qui s’éclipse au second.’
However beautiful and noble the words Morality and Virtue may sound, the universal distinct recognition of them as the useful is the only thing that will be truly salutary and beneficial to human society. He who clearly sees that the sinner is like the savage who hews down the whole tree in order to come at the fruit, often sour, or tasteless, or unwholesome; while the virtuous man is like the prudent gardener who, waiting their maturity, gathers all the sweet produce, with the joyful consciousness that he has destroyed no future crop;—this man’s virtue will probably stand on the most secure basis. The more enlightened men in general are, as to what is good or profitable for them, the better and more humane will their manners and conduct towards each other become. Action and reaction will then proceed in a beneficent circle;—enlightened individuals will establish better forms of government and better institutions, and these again will increase the intelligence of all who live under them. If matters once reached such a point, that a truly rational and elevating system of education freed us from the chimeras of dark times, dismissed all constraint on religious opinions among other obsolete absurdities, while it clearly demonstrated the inward and outward necessity of Love and Virtue to the happy existence of human society; while by the establishment of wise, firm, and consistent laws and political institutions, sprung from the conviction of this necessity, it imposed sufficient restraint to ensure the permanent adherence to these by the salutary habits produced,—Paradise would exist on earth.
Mere penal laws, whether for here or hereafter, without this profound conviction,—all worldly policy, in the sense of clever, adroit knaves,—all prophets, all superhuman extra-revelations, heaven, hell, and priests,—will never bring us to this:[154] indeed, so long as all these hang on the spokes, the wheel of improvement will revolve but slowly and painfully. For this reason, so many strive with all their might against such a result; nay, even Protestants protest backwards, and many desire to establish a new continental embargo to shut out foreign light.
‘Au reste,’ one cannot take it amiss of any man ‘qu’il prêche pour sa paroisse.’ To require from an English archbishop with 50,000l. a year that he should be an enlightened man, is as preposterous as to expect from the Shah of Persia that he should transform himself into a constitutional monarch of his own free will. There are few men who would voluntarily refuse a rich and splendid sinecure, where nothing is required of them but to fling a little dust in the people’s eyes, or to be a despot ruling millions with his nod. It is the business of human society, if possible, to put things upon such a footing that none of us, be our good-will for it ever so great, can either get such a sinecure or become such a despot.
When I was a child, it often happened to me that I could get no rest for thinking of the fate of Hannibal, or that I was in despair at the battle of Pultawa;—now I am grieving over Columbus. We are greatly indebted to the distinguished American, Washington Irving, for this history. It is a beautiful tribute to the great navigator, brought from the land which he gave to the civilized world, and which appears destined to be the last station traversed by the cycle of human perfectibility.
What a man was this sublime endurer! Too great for his age: for forty years he was deemed by it but a madman; during the rest of his life he was the victim of its hatred and jealousy, under which he sank at length in want and misery. But such is the world: and it would be enough to make us mad, did we fix our minds upon particulars, and did not reflection soon teach us that for wise Nature the individual is nothing, the species every thing. We live for and through mankind, and every thing finds its compensation in the great whole. This reflection suffices to tranquillize any reasonable man; for every seed springs up,—if not exactly for the hand that sowed it, yet be it evil or good, not one is lost to the human race.