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

by Johann Georg Zimmermann

Nor stoops to think his injurer his foe;

But looks with gentle pity round, to find

How he can best relieve another’s wo,

Or hush the vicious passions into peace.”

Those who have passed their lives in the domestic privacies of retirement; who have been only used to the soft and gentle offices of friendship, and to the tender endearments of love; who have formed their notion of virtue from those bright images which the purity of religion, the perfection of moral sentiments, and the feelings of an affectionate heart, have planted in their minds, are too apt to yield to the abhorrence and disgust they must unavoidably feel on a first view of the artificial manners and unblushing vices of the world. Issuing from the calm retreats of simplicity and innocence, and fondly hoping to meet with more enlarged perfection in the world, their amiable, just and benevolent dispositions are shocked at the sour severities, the sordid selfishness, the gross injustice, the base artifices, and the inhuman cruelties, which deform the fairest features of social life, and disgrace the best famed fabric of human polity. Revolting, however, as this disappointment must certainly be, and grievously as the feelings of such characters be wounded on their entering the world, it is a cowardly desertion of their duty to shrink from the task, and withdraw their services from their fellow creatures. Constituted as society is, human happiness, and the improvement of the species, materially depend upon the active concurrence of every individual in the general scheme of nature; and the man who withholds his assistance to promote the public good, loosens or destroys a link in that chain of things, by which the whole is intended to be kept together and preserved. The doctrine, therefore cannot be too forcibly inculcated, that is indispensably incumbent on every individual so to accommodate himself to the manners of his contemporaries, and the temper of the times, that he may have an opportunity of promoting the happiness of others, while he increases, his own; of extending the scale of human knowledge by his social industry; of relieving distress by his bounty; and of exhibiting the deformities of vice, and the beauties of virtue, both by his precept and example. And this sacred obligation, by which every good man feels himself so firmly bound to promote the welfare and happiness of his fellow creatures, of course enjoins him to shun, with equal perseverance, the giddy multitude in their pursuits of lawless pleasure, and to avoid the thoughtless votaries, and baneful orgies, of wit, intemperance, and sensual debauchery. This is best effected by every individual forming a rational scheme of domestic enjoyment, and engaging in some useful occupation, in which neither the frivolous pursuits of the vainly busy, the ostentatious parade of the richly proud, the faithless pleasures of the unthinking gay, the insatiable anxieties of avarice, nor the distracting compunctions of vice, shall form any part; but in which, with a few amiable and faithful friends, he shall pass the intervals of virtuous industry, or charitable exertion, in the bosom of a fond and cheerful family, whose mutual endearments and affections will confer on each other the highest happiness human nature is capable of enjoying.

Active in indolence, abroad who roam

In quest of happiness, which dwells at home,

With vain pursuits fatigued, at length will find

Its real dwelling is a virtuous mind.