This chapter of the author, among the rest, has been obnoxious to severe strictures. I am sensible that the young require the exercise of cautious discretion in few questions more than in this, ‘How far is it wise to disregard public opinion?’ To press the point too far is to incur the reputation of eccentricity and arrogant confidence in our own judgment. Implicitly to copy the expressions and habits of the multitude precludes all pursuit of happiness by system; and reduces the whole inquiry to the injunction, to walk with the rest, and add our ennui and disappointment to the mass of the unhappiness of all those who have gone before. If certain modes appear to me, after the most deliberate examination, conducive to my happiness, why should I be deterred from adopting them, because I am not countenanced by the general opinion and example of a crowd, each individual of which I should altogether reject as a teacher and an example? If I avow that the ten thousand, in all time, have formed the most erroneous judgments, touching the wisdom of human pursuits, why should I continue blindly to copy their errors? He is certainly the most fortunate man who, if an exact account of his sensations and thoughts could be cast into a sum at his last hour, would be found to have enjoyed the greatest number of agreeable moments, pleasurable sensations and happy reflections. If to court retirement, repose, the regulation of the desires and passions, and the cultivation of those affections which are best nurtured in the shade, be the most certain route to happiness, why should I be swayed from choosing that path by the suggestions of ambition, avarice and the spirit of the world, which enjoin the common course?
Yet every one is, more or less, a slave to the prevalent fashions of thinking and acting. How much vile hypocrisy does this slavery which covers the face of society with a vast mask of semblance, engender? Contemplate the routine of all the professions which we make and infringe in a single day, in the manifest violation of our inward thought and belief; and we must admit that the world agrees to enact a general lie, alike deceiving and deceived, through terror of being the first to revolt against the thraldom of opinion. The very persons, too, who cherish the profoundest secret contempt for the judgment of the multitude, are generally the loudest and the first in decrying any departure from the standard of public opinion almost as an immorality.
I would by no means desire to see those most dear to me arrogantly setting at defiance received ideas and usages. These have, as the author justly remarks, a salutary moral sway in repressing the influence of the impudent and abandoned. I am not insensible to the danger of following our independent judgment beyond the limits of a regulated discretion. But there is no trait in the young for which I feel a more profound respect, than the fixed resolve to consult their own light, in setting the rules of their conduct and selecting their alternatives. A calm and reflecting independence, an unshaken firmness in encountering vulgar prejudices, is what I admire as the evidence of strong character, fearless thinking and capability of self-direction.
How often must every reflecting mind have been led to similar views of human nature! To form just estimates and entertain right sentiments of our kind, we must not contemplate men under the action of the narrowness of sectarian hate, or through the jaundiced vision of party feeling. We must see them in positions like those so happily presented by the author, when great and sweeping calamities level men to the consciousness and the sympathies of a common nature, and a sense of common exposure to misery, and open the fountains of generous feeling. Who has not seen men, on such occasions, forget their pride, their miserable questions of rank and precedence, and meet with open arms and the mingled tears of gratitude and relief, persons, the view of whom under other circumstances, would have called forth only feelings of scornful comparison and reckless contempt?
The incident of the hostile French and German posts is a singularly touching one. In what a horrid light does it place the character and passions of princes, generals, conquerors and warriors, in all time, who for their measureless cupidity, or the whim of their ambition, have used these amiable beings, formed with natural sympathies to aid and love each other, as the mechanical engines of their purposes, to meet breast to breast as enemies, and plunge the murderous steel into each others’ hearts! Hence, rivers of life blood have flowed as uselessly as rain falls upon the ocean! It is difficult to determine whether we ought most to execrate the accursed ambition of the few, or despise the weak stupidity of the many who have been led, unresistingly, like animals to the slaughter, only the more firmly to rivet the chains of the survivors. What a view does war present, of the miserable ignorance, the brute stupidity of the mass of the species, and the detestable passions of those called the great, in all time! Who does not exult to see the era, every day approaching, when men will be too wise, too vigilant and careful of their rights to become instruments in the hands of others; when the rational consciousness of their own predominant physical power shall be guided by wisdom, self-watchfulness and self-respect? Then, instead of being tamely led out to slay each other, when invoked to this detestable sport of kings, they will show their steel to their oppressors.