The instances of the pernicious influence of a total dereliction of society, may possibly appear to the understandings of the present generation extravagant and incredible; but they are certainly true; and many others of a similar nature might be adduced from the most authentic histories of the times. The species, when prevented from enjoying a free intercourse and rational society with each other, almost change their nature; and the mind, feeding continually on the melancholy musings of the imagination, in the cold and cheerless regions of solitude, engenders humors of the most eccentric cast. Excluded from those social communications which nature enjoins, with the means of gratifying the understanding, amusing the senses, or interesting the affections, fancy roves at large into unknown spheres, and endeavors to find in ideal forms entertainment and delight. Angelic visions, infernal phantoms, amazing prodigies, the delusions of alchemy, the frenzies of philosophy, and the madness of metaphysics, fill the disordered brain. The intellect fastens upon some absurd idea, and fosters it with the fondest affection, until its increasing magnitude subdues the remaining powers of sense and reason. The slightest retrospect into the conduct of the solitary professors of every religious system, proves the lamentable dangers to which they expose their mental faculties, by excluding themselves from the intercourse of rational society. From the prolific womb of solitude sprung all the mysterious ravings and senseless doctrines of the New Platonists. The same cause devoted the monks and anchorites of the Christian church to folly and fanaticism. Fakirs, Bramins, and every other tribe of religious enthusiasts, originated from the same source. By abandoning the pleasures of society, and renouncing the feelings of nature, they sacrificed reason upon the altar of superstition, and supplied its place with ecstatic fancies, and melancholy musings. There is nothing more evident, than that our holy religion, in its original constitution, was set so far apart from all refined speculations, that it seemed in a manner diametrically opposite to them. The great founder of Christianity gave one simple rule of life to all men; but his disciples, anxious to indulge the natural vanity of the human mind, and misled, in some degree, by the false philosophy which at that period overspread the heathen world, introduced various doctrines of salvation, and new schemes of faith. Bigotry, a species of superstition never known before, took place in men’s affections, and armed them with new jealousies against each other: barbarous terms and idioms were every day invented; monstrous definitions imposed, and hostilities, the fiercest imaginable, exercised on each other by the contending parties. Fanaticism, with all the train of visions, prophecies, dreams, charms, miracles, and exorcises, succeeded; and spiritual feats, of the most absurd and ridiculous nature, were performed in monasteries, or up and down, by their mendicant or itinerant priests and ghostly missionaries. Solitude impressed the principles upon which these extravagances were founded, with uncommon force on the imagination; and the mind, working itself into holy fervors and inspirations, give birth to new extravagances. The causes which operated on the minds of men to produce such ridiculous effects, acted with double force on the ardent temper, warm imagination, and excessive sensibility of the female world. That which was mere fantasy with the one sex, became frenzy with the other. Women, indeed, are, according to the opinion of Plato, the nurses of fanaticism; and their favorite theme is that which has been dignified by the appellation of a sublime passion for poetry: an ardent, refined love of heaven; but which, in fact, is only the natural effects of the heart, swollen intumescently by an unreined, prolific, and too ardent imagination. Instances of this kind are discoverable in all the accounts that have been published of the holy fervors of these penitents, particularly in those of Catherine of Sienna, of Joan of Cambray, of Angelina of Foligny, of Matilda of Saxony, of Maria of the Incarnation, of Mary Magdalen of Pazzio, of Gertrude of Saxony, and many others. The celebrated Armelle, who was born in the year 1606, at Campenac, in the diocese of St. Malo, and who died at Vannes in the year 1671, possessed great personal beauty, a quick and lively mind, and an uncommon tenderness of heart. Her parents, who were honest and industrious villagers, placed her as a menial servant in the house of a neighboring gentleman, with whom she lived for five and thirty years in the practice of the most exemplary piety and extraordinary virtue, at least, according to the accounts which he gave from time to time of her conduct. During the time she resided with this gentleman, his groom, finding the kitchen door fastened, had the curiosity to peep through the key-hole, where he discovered the pious maid, in a paroxysm of divine ecstacy, performing the humble office of spitting a capon. The agitation of this holy spirit so affected the mind of the astonished youth, that, it is said by the Ursuline sister who has written the life of this great luminary of French sanctity, under the title of The school for the love of God, he became immediately enamored with the beauties of religion, and renouncing the pomps and vanities of the world, entered into a monastery, at the same time that his holy companion thought proper to withdraw from future observation into the convent of Vannes, where she devoted the remainder of her life, and died, as it is reported, in an excess of divine love. The youthful days of Armelle had been passed in almost total solitude; for her occupation at the house in which she was placed by her parents, was confined entirely to the kitchen, and she had scarcely any other intercourse than with its furniture. It appears, however, from the history of her life, that she was from her childhood excessively fond of reciting an ave or paternoster; and while occupied in tending the flocks, her original employment, amused herself in telling her rosary; “by which means,” says the Ursuline sister, “she made, even in her pastoral state of simplicity and ignorance, such great advances in divine love that, the first moment she was allowed to pay her adoration to the crucifix the fervency of her pious passion burst forth with such ecstacy, that she eagerly snatched the holy object to her arms, and embraced it with a transport so warmly affectionate, that streams of tenderness rushed from her eyes.”
It is truly said by a celebrated English writer, to be “of the utmost importance to guard against extremes of every kind in religion. We must beware lest by seeking to avoid one rock we split upon another. It has been long the subject of remark, that superstition and enthusiasm are two capital sources of delusion: superstition, on the one hand, attaching men with immoderate zeal to the ritual and external points of religion; and enthusiasm, on the other, directing their whole attention to internal emotions and mystical communications with the spiritual world; while neither the one nor the other had paid sufficient regard to the great moral duties of the Christian life. But running with intemperate eagerness from these two great abuses of religion, men have neglected to observe that there are extremes opposite to each of them, into which they are in hazard of precipitating themselves. Thus the horror of superstition has sometimes reached so far as to produce contempt for all external institutions; as if it were possible for religion to subsist in the world without forms of worship, or public acknowledgment of God. It has also happened, that some, who, in the main are well affected to the cause of goodness, observing that persons of a devout turn have at times been carried away by warm affections into unjustifiable excesses, have thence hastily concluded that all devotion was akin to enthusiasm; and separating religion totally from the heart and affections, have reduced it to a frigid observance of what they call the rules of virtue.” These extremes are to be carefully avoided. True devotion is rational and well founded; and consists in the lively exercise of that affection which we owe to the Supreme Being, comprehending several emotions of the heart, which all terminate in the same great object.
These are among the evils which an irrational solitude is capable of producing upon an unrestrained and misdirected imagination; but I do not mean to contend indiscriminately, that solitude is generally to be considered as dangerous to the free indulgence of this delightful faculty of the mind. Solitude, well chosen, and rationally pursued, is so far from being either the open enemy, or the treacherous friend of a firm and fine imagination, that it ripens its earliest shoots, strengthens their growth, and contributes to the production of its richest and most valuable fruits. To him who has acquired the happy art of enjoying in solitude the charms of nature, and of indulging the powers of fancy without impairing the faculty of reason
… Whate’er adorns
The princely dome, the column, and the arch,
The breathing marble, and the sculptured gold,
Beyond the proud possessor’s narrow claim,
His happy breast enjoys. For him the spring
Distils her dews, and from the silken gem
Its lucid leaves unfolds: for him the hand