Solitude / With the Life of the Author. In Two Parts

by Johann Georg Zimmermann

And live in rapture or not live at all;”

will, instead of lasting and satisfactory fruition, meet only with sorrowful disappointment. This mode of seeking society is not a rational indulgence of that natural passion which heaven, in its benevolence to man, has planted in the human heart; but merely a factitious desire, an habitual pruriency, produced by restless leisure, and encouraged by vanity and dissipation. Social happiness, true and essential social happiness, resides only in the bosom of love and in the arms of friendship, and can only be really enjoyed by congenial hearts and kindred minds, in the domestic bowers of privacy and retirement. Affectionate intercourse produces an inexhaustible fund of delight. It is the perennial sunshine of the mind. With what extreme anxiety do we all endeavor to find an amiable being with whom we may form a tender tie and close attachment, who may inspire us with unfading bliss, and receive increase of happiness from our endearments and attention! How greatly do such connexions increase the kind and benevolent dispositions of the heart! and how greatly do such dispositions, while they lead the mind to the enjoyment of domestic happiness, awaken all the virtues, and call forth the best and strongest energies of the soul! Deprived of the chaste and endearing sympathies of love and friendship, the species sink into gross sensuality or mute indifference, neglect the improvement of their faculties, and renounce all anxiety to please; but incited by these propensities, the sexes mutually exert their powers, cultivate their talents, call every intellectual energy into action; and, by endeavoring to promote each other’s happiness, mutually secure their own.

Adverse circumstances, however, frequently prevent well disposed characters, not only from making the election which their hearts would prompt, and their understandings approve, but force them into alliances which both reason and sensibility reject. It is from the disappointments of love or of ambition that the sexes are generally repelled from society to solitude. The affection, the tenderness, the sensibility of the heart, are but too often torn and outraged by the cruelty and malevolence of an unfeeling world, in which vice bears on its audacious front the mask of virtue, and betrays innocence into the snares of unsuspected guilt. The victims, however, whether of love or of ambition, who retire from society to recruit their depressed spirits, and repair their disordered minds, cannot, without injustice, be stigmatized as misanthropists, or arraigned as anti-social characters. All relish for scenes of social happiness may be lost by an extreme and over ardent passion for the enjoyments of them; but it is only those who seek retirement from an aversion to the company of their fellow creatures, that can be said to have renounced, or be destitute of, the common sympathies of nature.

The present age, however, is not likely to produce many such unnatural characters, for the manners of the whole world, and particularly of Europe, were never, perhaps, more disposed to company. The rage for public entertainments seems to have infected all the classes of society. The pleasures of private life seem to be held in universal detestation and contempt; opprobrious epithets, defame the humble enjoyments of domestic love, and those whose hours are not consumed in unmeaning visits, or unsocial parties, are regarded as censors of the common conduct of the world, or as enemies to their fellow creatures; but although mankind appear so extremely social, they certainly were never less friendly and affectionate. Neither rank, nor sex, nor age, is free from this pernicious habit. Infants, before they can well lisp the rudiments of speech, are initiated into the idle ceremonies and parade of company: and can scarcely meet their parents or their playmates without being obliged to perform a punctilious salutation. Formal card parties, and petty treats, engross the time that should be devoted to healthful exercise and manly recreation. The manners of the metropolis are imitated with inferior splendor, but with greater absurdity, in the country; every village has its routs and its assemblies, in which the curled darlings of the place blaze forth in feathered lustre and awkward magnificence; and while the charming simplicity of one sex is destroyed by affectation, the honest virtues of the other by dissolute gallantry, and the passions of both inflamed by vicious and indecent mirth, the grave elders of the districts are trying their tempers and impoverishing their purses at sixpenny whist and cassino.

The spirit of dissipation has reached even the vagrant tribe. The Gypsies of Germany suspend their predatory excursions, and on one previously-appointed evening in every week, assemble to enjoy their guilty spoils in the fumes of strong waters and tobacco. The place of rendezvous is generally the vicinity of a mill, the proprietor of which, by affording to these wandering tribes an undisturbed asylum, not only secures his property from their depredations, but, by the idle tales with which they contrive to amuse his ear, respecting the characters and conduct of his neighbors, furnishes himself with new subjects of conversation for his next evening coterie.

Minds that derive all their pleasure from the levity and mirth of promiscuous company, are seldom able to contribute, in any high degree, to their own amusement. Characters like these search every place for entertainment, except their own bosoms and the bosoms of their surrounding families, where by proper cultivation, real happiness, the happiness arising from love and friendship, is alone capable of being found.

The wearied pleasurist, sinking under the weight that preys upon his spirits, flies to scenes of public gayety or private splendor, in fond but vain expectation that they will dispel his discontent, and recreate his mind; but he finds, alas! that the fancied asylum affords him no rest. The ever-craving appetite for pastime grows by what it feeds on; and the worm, which devoured his delight amidst his sylvan scenery of solitude, still accompanies him to crowded halls of elegance and festivity. While he eagerly embraces every object that promises to supply the dreadful vacancy of his mind, he exhausts his remaining strength; enlarges the wound he is so anxiously endeavoring to heal; and by too eagerly grasping at the phantom pleasure, loses, perhaps for ever, the substantial power of being happy.

Men whose minds are capable of higher enjoyments always feel these perturbed sensations, when deluded into a fashionable party, they find nothing to excite curiosity, or interest their feelings! and where they are pestered by the frivolous importunities of those for whom they cannot entertain either friendship or esteem. How, indeed, is it possible for a sensible mind to feel the slightest approbation, when a coxcomb enamored of his own eloquence, and swoln with the pride of self-conceited merit, tires by his loquacious nonsense, all around him?

The great Leibnitz was observed by his servant frequently to take notes while he sat at church; and the domestic very rationally conceived that he was making observations on the subject of the sermon: but it is more consistent with the character of this philosopher to conclude, that he was indulging the powers of his own capacious and excursive mind, when those of the preacher ceased to interest him. Thus it happens, that while the multitude are driven from solitude to society, by being tired of themselves, there are some, and those not a few, who seek refuge in rational retirement from the frivolous dissipation of company.

An indolent mind is as irksome to itself as it is intolerable to others; but an active mind feels inexhaustible resources in its own power. The first is forced to fly from itself for enjoyment, while the other calmly resigns itself to its own suggestions, and always meets with the happiness it has vainly sought for in its communion with the world.