Those who envy authority and office are worthy of commiseration. Men in power are happy, they think. They have but to wish, and it is accomplished. The epitaph of the Swedish minister is sublime, and the index of a great truth. He had run the career of power and fortune with success. When near the period of his death, he ordered this inscription for his tomb: Tandem Felix. At last I am happy.
We never leave the society of the great as we entered it. We have become either better or more perverse. Inexperience is easily dazzled with the superficial splendor. For a man of disciplined mind and a character of energy, it is the most useful of schools. Here he tests and confirms his principles. Here he observes, sometimes with terror, sometimes with disgust, the melancholy results of the seductive passions. He here sees those who seem to have reached all their aims enjoying the repose of happy privacy. I anticipate the objection, ‘that this is all absurdity; that not one will be so convinced of his misery as to resign his power and descend from his elevation to that obscurity for which he sighs.’ I believe it; and I see in this a deeper shade in his misery. He has so long experienced the pernicious excitement of this splendid torment, that he can no longer exist in repose.
Such is the lot of erring humanity, that the world naturally associates glory and happiness with ambition, and sees not that the association is formed by our own mental feebleness. To rise above vulgar errors and the common train of thinking, to form sage principles, and, still more, to have the courage and decision to follow them, this is the proof of real force of character. But, to feel the need of dazzling the vulgar, to be willing to creep in order to rise, to struggle and dispute for trinkets, this is the common standard by which the multitude estimate a great mind.
Philosophers are accused of having presented grandeur under an unfavorable aspect in order to console themselves for not having enjoyed it. History reads us another lesson. Aristotle instructed the son of Philip. Plato was received at the courts of kings. Cicero received the title of ‘father of his country’ by a decree of the senate. Boethius, thrice clad with the consular purple, when his locks were hoary, was dragged to a dungeon. He wrote ‘the consolations inspired by philosophy,’ and laid down his book at the foot of the scaffold. Marcus Aurelius honored the throne of the world by those modest virtues which shone still brighter in obscurity. Fenelon was raised to the highest dignities only to experience their bitterness, and, like his great predecessor, to owe his glory and his happy days only to wisdom and retirement. Franklin will be remembered in all time, not as the governor, legislator and ambassador, but as having trained himself to his admirable philosophy of common sense amidst the laborious occupations of a printer.
The certainty of acquiring the self-respect of conscious usefulness, a certainty which the great can seldom have, ought alone to determine a wise man to quit his obscurity. But if the emoluments and honors of a high station seduce us, let us value our independence and let us not exchange treasures for tinsel.
We have freedom to avoid every culpable action, and to contemplate with pity the chimeras of ambition. Let us see if in misfortune we can preserve tranquillity of mind.
[LETTER VII.]
OF MISFORTUNE.
If we wish our precepts to be followed, we must avoid the extremes to which moralists and philosophers are too much inclined to press their doctrines, for they are impracticable in real life. It is useless to deny that there are evils against which the aids of reason and friendship are powerless. Let us leave him who is about to lose a being whose life is blended with his own, to groan unreproved. Time alone can enfeeble his remembrances and assuage his pain. To render man inaccessible to suffering would be to change his nature. Those austere moralists who treat our feebleness with disdain, and who would render us indifferent to the most terrible blows of destiny, would at the same time leave us no sensibility to taste pleasure. Nothing can be more absurd than the vain harangues by which common-place consolation is offered to those who mourn a wife, a child, a friend. All reasonings are ineffectual when opposed to these words, ‘I have lost the loved one. You inform me that my misfortune is without a remedy. Oh! if there were a remedy, instead of unavailing tears, I would employ it. It is precisely because there is none, that I grieve.’ ‘Your tears are useless.’ ‘Still they serve to solace me.’ ‘God has done it.’ ‘True, and God has formed my heart to suffer from his blow.’ ‘Your child is happy, and knew neither the errors nor the sorrows of life.’ ‘A parent’s instinctive love inspired the desire that I might teach it to avoid both and obtain happiness.’ ‘In the course of a long career your friend gave an example of all the virtues.’ ‘It is because the loss of these virtues is irreparable to me that I must deplore his death.’[11]
The greater portion of men, I admit, exaggerating their regrets, pay a tribute of dissembled grief rather to opinion, than to nature; and cold declamation and frivolous distractions are sufficient to console them. But the orators of consolation sometimes press their lessons on hearts which are really bleeding. Let such groan at liberty, and attempt not to contradict nature. Solitude may exalt the imagination; but it also inspires consoling ideas. In the silence of its refuge the desolate mourner brings himself to a nearer communion with him he regrets. He invokes, sees, and addresses him. Grief is more ingenious than we imagine in finding consolation, and has learned to employ different remedies according as the wounds are slight or deep. Two persons have each lost a dear friend. The one studiously avoids the places where he used to meet his friend. The other repairs to his desolate haunts, and surrounding himself by monuments associated with his memory, he seeks, if I may so say, to restore him to life.