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more than they can perform, to enlarge their claims of advantage; some will perform less than they undertake, lest their labours should chiefly turn to the benefit of others.

The history of mankind informs us that a single power is very seldom broken by a confederacy. States of different interests, and aspects malevolent to each other, may be united for a time by common distress; and in the ardour of self-preservation fall unanimously upon an enemy, by whom they are all equally endangered. But if their first attack can be withstood, time will never fail to dissolve their union: success and miscarriage will be equally destructive: after the conquest of a province, they will quarrel in the division; after the loss of a battle, all will be endeavouring to secure themselves by abandoning the rest.

From the impossibility of confining numbers to the constant and uniform prosecution of a common interest arises the difficulty of securing subjects against the encroachment of governors. Power is always gradually stealing away from the many to the few, because the few are more vigilant and consistent; it still contracts to a smaller number, till in time it centres in a single person.

Thus all the forms of government instituted among mankind perpetually tend towards monarchy; and power, however diffused through the whole community, is, by negligence or corruption, commotion or distress, reposed at last in the chief magistrate. "There never appear," says "" Swift, 66 more than five or six men of genius in an age; but if they were united, the world could not stand before them." It is happy, therefore, for mankind, that of this union there is no probability. As men take in a wider compass of intellectual survey, they are more likely to choose different objects of pursuit; as they see

more ways to the same end, they will be less easily persuaded to travel together; as each is better qualified to form an independent scheme of private greatness, he will reject with greater obstinacy the project of another; as each is more able to distinguish himself at the head of a party, he will less readily be made a follower or an associate.

The reigning philosophy informs us that the vast bodies which constitute the universe are regulated, in their progress through the etherial spaces, by the perpetual agency of contrary forces; by one of which, they are restrained from deserting their orbits, and losing themselves in the immensity of Heaven; and held off by the other from rushing together, and clustering round their centre with everlasting cohesion.

The same contrariety of impulse may be perhaps discovered in the motions of men; we are formed for society, not for combination; we are equally unqualified to live in a close connection with our fellow beings, and in total separation from them; we are attracted towards each other by general sympathy, but kept back from contact by private in

terests.

Some philosophers have been foolish enough to imagine that improvements might be made in the system of the universe, by a different arrangement of the orbs of Heaven; and politicians, equally ignorant and equally presumptuous, may easily be led to suppose that the happiness of our world would be promoted by a different tendency of the human mind. It appears, indeed, to a slight and superficial observer, that many things, impracticable in our present state, might be easily effected, if mankind were better disposed to union and cooperation: but a little reflection will discover that if confederacies were easily formed, they would lose their efficacy, since numbers would be opposed to num

bers, and unanimity to unanimity; and instead of the present petty competitions of individuals or single families, multitudes would be supplanting multitudes, and thousands plotting against thousands.

There is no class of the human species, of which the union seems to have been more expected than of the learned: the rest of the world have almost always agreed to shut scholars up together in colleges and cloisters; surely not without hope that they would look for that happiness in concord, which they were debarred from finding in variety; and that such conjunctions of intellect would recompense the munificence of founders and patrons, by performances above the reach of any single mind.

But Discord, who found means to roll her apple into the banqueting chamber of the goddesses, has had the address to scatter her laurels in the seminaries of learning. The friendship of students and of beauties is for the most part equally sincere and equally durable; as both depend for happiness on the regard of others, on that of which the value arises merely from comparison, they are both exposed to perpetual jealousies, and both incessantly employed in schemes to intercept the praises of each other.

I am, however, far from intending to inculcate that this confinement of the studious to studious companions has been wholly without advantage to the public: neighbourhood, where it does not conciliate friendship, incites competition; and he that would contentedly rest in a lower degree of excellence, where he had no rival to dread, will be urged by his impatience of inferiority to incessant endeavours after great attainments.

These stimulations of honest rivalry are, perhaps, the chief effects of academies and societies; for what

ever be the bulk of their joint labours, every single piece is always the production of an individual that owes nothing to his colleagues but the contagion of diligence, a resolution to write because the rest are writing, and the scorn of obscurity while the rest are illustrious.

T.

No. 46. SATURDAY, APRIL 14, 1753.

Μισω μνημονα Συμπότην.

PROV. GR.

Far from my table be the tell-tale guest.

IT has been remarked, that men are generally kind in proportion as they are happy; and it is said even of the devil, that he is good-humoured when he is pleased. Every act, therefore, by which another is injured, from whatever motive, contracts more guilt and expresses greater malignity if it is committed in those seasons which are set apart to pleasantry and good-humour, and brightened with enjoyments peculiar to rational and social beings.

Detraction is among those vices which the most languid virtue has sufficient force to prevent; because, by detraction, that is not gained which is taken away: "he who filches from me my good name," says Shakspeare, "enriches not himself, but makes me poor indeed:" as nothing, therefore, degrades human nature more than detraction, nothing more disgraces conversation. The detractor, as he is the lowest moral character, reflects greater dishonour upon his company than the hangman; and he whose disposition is a scandal to his species. shall be more diligently avoided than he who is scandalous only by his office.

But for this practice, however vile, some have dared to apologize, by contending that the report, by which they injured an absent character, was true: this, however, amounts to no more than that they have not complicated malice with falsehood, and that there is some difference between detraction and slander. To relate all the ill that is true of the best man in the world would probably render him the object of suspicion and distrust: and if this practice was universal, mutual confidence and esteem, the comforts of society, and the endearments of friendship, would be at an end.

There is something unspeakably more hateful in those species of villany by which the law is evaded than in those by which it is violated and defied. Courage has sometimes preserved rapacity from abhorrence, as beauty has been thought to apologize for prostitution; but the injustice of cowardice is universally abhorred, and like the lewdness of deformity has no advocate. Thus hateful are the wretches who detract with caution; and while they perpetrate the wrong, are solicitous to avoid the reproach: they do not say that Chloe forfeited her honour to Lysander; but they say that such a report has been spread, they know not how true. Those who propagate these reports frequently invent them; and it is no breach of charity to suppose this to be always the case; because no man who spreads detraction would have scrupled to produce it: and he who should diffuse poison in a brook would scarce be acquitted of a malicious design, though he should allege that he received it of another who is doing the same elsewhere.

Whatever is incompatible with the highest dignity of our nature should indeed be excluded from our conversation: as companions, not only that which we owe to ourselves, but to others, is required of

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