"If we turn to the moral world, where, strange as it seems, we meet with less clearness and grandeur, yet there our deep interest in its truths supplies a different, perhaps a more powerful attraction. While we wonder and hope, the general laws of sentient existence give us glimpses of their harmony with those of inanimate nature. The latter seems assuredly made for the use of the former. The identity of benevolence with wisdom presents itself to our minds as a necessary truth, and, notwithstanding our perplexities, brings peace to our hearts. Social distinctions sink to insignificance when contemplating our place in existence, and the privilege of reading the book of nature, and sharing the thoughts and the sentiments of the distinguished among men, atones for obscurity and neglect; neither would the troubled power of a throne nor the flushing of victory repay us for the sacrifice of those pleasures."
The second volume opens with a dissertation on luxury, in which the subject is treated with the depth and perspicuity that the extracts we have already made will have prepared our readers to anticipate. Luxury is a word of relative, and therefore of ambiguous signification; it may be the test of prosperity—it may be the harbinger of decay: according to the state of society in which it prevails, its signification will, of course, be different. The effect of civilization is to increase the number of our wants. The same degree of education which, during the last century, was considered, even by the upper classes, a superfluity, is now a necessary for the middling class, and will soon become a necessary for the lowest, or all but the lowest, members of society. Most of our readers are acquainted with the story of the Highland chief who rebuked his son indignantly for making a pillow of a snowball. Sumptuary laws have always been inefficient, or efficient only for the purposes of oppression. Public morality has been their pretext—the private gratification of jealousy their aim. In republics they were intended to allay the envy of the poor—in monarchies to flatter the arrogance of the great. The first of these motives produced, as Say observes, the law Orchia at Rome, which prohibited the invitation of more than a certain number of guests. The second was the cause of an edict passed in the reign of Henry II. of France, by which the use of silken shoes and garments was confined to princes and bishops. States are ruined by the extravagance, not of their subjects, but of their rulers.
Luxury is pernicious when it is purchased at an excessive price, or when it stands in the way of advantages greater and more attainable. The worse a government is, the more effect does it produce upon the manners and habits of its subjects. The influence of a government of favourites and minions over the community, is as prodigious as it is baneful. Every innocent pleasure is a blessing. Luxury is innocent, nay, it is desirable, as far as it can contribute to health and cleanliness—to rational enjoyment; as far as it serves to prevent gross debauchery; and, as one of our poets has expressed it,
"When sensual pleasures cloy,
To fill the languid pause with finer joy,"
it should be encouraged. It does not follow, because the materials for luxury are wanted, that the bad passions and selfishness, which are its usual companions, will be wanted also. A Greenlander may display as much gluttony over his train oil and whale blubber as the most refined epicure can exhibit with the Physiologie du Goût in his hand, and with all Monsieur Ude's science at his disposal. When the gratification of our taste and senses interferes with our duty to our country, or our neighbours, or our friends—when, for the sake of their indulgence, we sacrifice our independence—or when, rather than abandon it, we neglect our duties sacred and imperative as they may be—the most favourable casuists on the side of luxury allow that it is criminal. But even when it stops far short of this scandalous excess, the habit of immoderate self-indulgence can hardly long associate in the same breast with generous, manly, and enlightened sentiments: its inevitable effect is to stifle all vigorous energy, as well as to eradicate every softer virtue. It is the parent of that satiety which is the most unspeakable of all miseries—a short satisfaction is purchased by long suffering, and the result is an addition to our stock, not of pleasure, but of pain.
The next topic to which our attention is directed is the influence of habit. Habit is thus defined:—
"Habit is the aptitude for any actions or impressions produced by frequent repetition of them."
The word impressions is used to designate affections of mind and body that are involuntary, in contradistinction to those which we can originate and control. For instance, we may choose whether or not we will enter into any particular enquiry; but when we have entered upon it, we cannot prevent the result that the evidence concerning it will produce upon our minds. A person conversant with mathematical studies can no more help believing that the diagonal of a square is incommensurable with its side, than, if his hand had been thrust in the fire, he could help feeling heat. The remarks which follow are ingenious and profound:—
"The more amusements," continues the writer, "partake of an useful character, the more lasting they are. This is never the case with trifles; when the enjoyment is over, they leave little or nothing in the mind. They are not steps to something else, they have no connexion with other and further results, to be brought out by further endeavours. The attempt to make life a series of quickly succeeding emotions, will ever prove a miserable failure; whereas, when the chief part of our time is spent in labour, active power increases—the exertion of it becomes habit—the mind gathers strength; and emotion being husbanded, retains its freshness, and the spirits preserve their alacrity through life. It follows that the most agreeable labours are those which superadd to an object of important and lasting interest a due mixture of intermediate and somewhat diversified results. To a mechanic, making a set of chairs and tables, for example, is more agreeable than working daily at a sawpit. But nothing can deprive the industrious man (however undiversified his employment) of the advantage of having a constant and important pursuit—viz. earning the necessaries and comforts of life; and when we consider the uneasiness of a life without any steady pursuit, and how slight is the influence that such as one merely voluntary has over most men, it seems certain that, as a general rule, we do not err in representing the necessity of labour as a safeguard of happiness."
Active habits are such as action gives: passive habits are such as our condition qualifies us to receive. In emotion, however violent, we may be passive, the forgiving and the vindictive man are for a time equally passive in their emotions. It is when the vindictive man proceeds to retaliation upon an adversary that he becomes a voluntary agent. It is often difficult to analyse the ingredients of our thought, and to determine how far they are involuntary and how far they are spontaneous. Nor is this an enquiry the solution of which can ever affect the majority of mankind: it is not with such subtleties that the practice of the moralist is concerned. It is a psychological fact, which never can be repeated too often, that habit deadens impression and fortifies activity. It gives energy to that power which depends on the sanction of the will—it renders the sensations which are nearly passive every day more languid and insignificant.