In vain, dear Caroline, you urge me to think; I profess only to feel.
“Reflect upon my own feelings! Analyze my notions of happiness! explain to you my system!”—My system! But I have no system: that is the very difference between us. My notions of happiness cannot be resolved into simple, fixed principles. Nor dare I even attempt to analyze them; the subtle essence would escape in the process: just punishment to the alchymist in morality!
You, Caroline, are of a more sedate, contemplative character. Philosophy becomes the rigid mistress of your life, enchanting enthusiasm the companion of mine. Suppose she lead me now and then in pursuit of a meteor; am not I happy in the chase? When one illusion vanishes, another shall appear, and, still leading me forward towards an horizon that retreats as I advance, the happy prospect of futurity shall vanish only with my existence.
“Reflect upon my feelings!”—Dear Caroline, is it not enough that I do feel?—All that I dread is that apathy which philosophers call tranquillity. You tell me that by continually indulging, I shall weaken my natural sensibility;—are not all the faculties of the soul improved, refined by exercise? and why shall this be excepted from the general law?
But I must not, you tell me, indulge my taste for romance and poetry, lest I waste that sympathy on fiction which reality so much better deserves. My dear friend, let us cherish the precious propensity to pity! no matter what the object; sympathy with fiction or reality arises from the same disposition.
When the sigh of compassion rises in my bosom, when the spontaneous tear starts from my eye, what frigid moralist shall “stop the genial current of the soul?” shall say to the tide of passion, So far shall thou go, and no farther?—Shall man presume to circumscribe that which Providence has left unbounded?
But oh, Caroline! if our feelings as well as our days are numbered; if, by the immutable law of nature, apathy be the sleep of passion, and languor the necessary consequence of exertion; if indeed the pleasures of life are so ill proportioned to its duration, oh, may that duration be shortened to me!—Kind Heaven, let not my soul die before my body!
Yes, if at this instant my guardian genius were to appear before me, and offering me the choice of my future destiny; on the one hand, the even temper, the poised judgment, the stoical serenity of philosophy; on the other, the eager genius, the exquisite sensibility of enthusiasm: if the genius said to me, “Choose”—the lot of the one is great pleasure, and great pain—great virtues, and great defects—ardent hope, and severe disappointment—ecstasy, and despair:—the lot of the other is calm happiness unmixed with violent grief—virtue without heroism—respect without admiration—and a length of life, in which to every moment is allotted its proper portion of felicity:—Gracious genius! I should exclaim, if half my existence must be the sacrifice, take it; enthusiasm is my choice.
Such, my dear friend, would be my choice were I a man; as a woman, how much more readily should I determine!
What has woman to do with philosophy? The graces flourish not under her empire: a woman’s part in life is to please, and Providence has assigned to her success, all the pride and pleasure of her being.