Book: Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia

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With these girls she played as with inoffensive animals, and found
them proud of her countenance and weary of her company.

But her purpose was to examine more deeply, and her affability
easily persuaded the hearts that were swelling with sorrow to
discharge their secrets in her ear, and those whom hope flattered
or prosperity delighted often courted her to partake their
pleasure.

The Princess and her brother commonly met in the evening in a
private summerhouse on the banks of the Nile, and related to each
other the occurrences of the day. As they were sitting together
the Princess cast her eyes upon the river that flowed before her.
"Answer," said she, "great father of waters, thou that rollest thy
goods through eighty nations, to the invocations of the daughter of
thy native king. Tell me if thou waterest through all thy course a
single habitation from which thou dost not hear the murmurs of
complaint."

"You are then," said Rasselas, "not more successful in private
houses than I have been in Courts." "I have, since the last
partition of our provinces," said the Princess, "enabled myself to
enter familiarly into many families, where there was the fairest
show of prosperity and peace, and know not one house that is not
haunted by some fury that destroys their quiet.

"I did not seek ease among the poor, because I concluded that there
it could not be found. But I saw many poor whom I had supposed to
live in affluence. Poverty has in large cities very different
appearances. It is often concealed in splendour and often in
extravagance. It is the care of a very great part of mankind to
conceal their indigence from the rest. They support themselves by
temporary expedients, and every day is lost in contriving for the
morrow.

"This, however, was an evil which, though frequent, I saw with less
pain, because I could relieve it. Yet some have refused my
bounties; more offended with my quickness to detect their wants
than pleased with my readiness to succour them; and others, whose
exigencies compelled them to admit my kindness, have never been
able to forgive their benefactress. Many, however, have been
sincerely grateful without the ostentation of gratitude or the hope
of other favours."



CHAPTER XXVI--THE PRINCESS CONTINUES HER REMARKS UPON PRIVATE LIFE.



Nekayah, perceiving her brother's attention fixed, proceeded in her
narrative.

"In families where there is or is not poverty there is commonly
discord. If a kingdom be, as Imlac tells us, a great family, a
family likewise is a little kingdom, torn with factions and exposed
to revolutions. An unpractised observer expects the love of
parents and children to be constant and equal. But this kindness
seldom continues beyond the years of infancy; in a short time the
children become rivals to their parents. Benefits are allowed by
reproaches, and gratitude debased by envy.

"Parents and children seldom act in concert; each child endeavours
to appropriate the esteem or the fondness of the parents; and the
parents, with yet less temptation, betray each other to their
children. Thus, some place their confidence in the father and some
in the mother, and by degrees the house is filled with artifices
and feuds.

"The opinions of children and parents, of the young and the old,
are naturally opposite, by the contrary effects of hope and
despondency, of expectation and experience, without crime or folly
on either side. The colours of life in youth and age appear
different, as the face of Nature in spring and winter. And how can
children credit the assertions of parents which their own eyes show
them to be false?

"Few parents act in such a manner as much to enforce their maxims
by the credit of their lives. The old man trusts wholly to slow
contrivance and gradual progression; the youth expects to force his
way by genius, vigour, and precipitance. The old man pays regard
to riches, and the youth reverences virtue. The old man deifies
prudence; the youth commits himself to magnanimity and chance. The
young man, who intends no ill, believes that none is intended, and
therefore acts with openness and candour; but his father; having
suffered the injuries of fraud, is impelled to suspect and too
often allured to practise it. Age looks with anger on the temerity
of youth, and youth with contempt on the scrupulosity of age. Thus
parents and children for the greatest part live on to love less and
less; and if those whom Nature has thus closely united are the
torments of each other, where shall we look for tenderness and
consolations?"

"Surely," said the Prince, "you must have been unfortunate in your
choice of acquaintance. I am unwilling to believe that the most
tender of all relations is thus impeded in its effects by natural
necessity."

"Domestic discord," answered she, "is not inevitably and fatally
necessary, but yet it is not easily avoided. We seldom see that a
whole family is virtuous; the good and the evil cannot well agree,
and the evil can yet less agree with one another. Even the
virtuous fall sometimes to variance, when their virtues are of
different kinds and tending to extremes. In general, those parents
have most reverence who most deserve it, for he that lives well
cannot be despised.

"Many other evils infest private life. Some are the slaves of
servants whom they have trusted with their affairs. Some are kept
in continual anxiety by the caprice of rich relations, whom they
cannot please and dare not offend. Some husbands are imperious and
some wives perverse, and, as it is always more easy to do evil than
good, though the wisdom or virtue of one can very rarely make many
happy, the folly or vice of one makes many miserable."

"If such be the general effect of marriage," said the Prince, "I
shall for the future think it dangerous to connect my interest with
that of another, lest I should be unhappy by my partner's fault."

"I have met," said the Princess, "with many who live single for
that reason, but I never found that their prudence ought to raise
envy. They dream away their time without friendship, without
fondness, and are driven to rid themselves of the day, for which
they have no use, by childish amusements or vicious delights. They
act as beings under the constant sense of some known inferiority
that fills their minds with rancour and their tongues with censure.
They are peevish at home and malevolent abroad, and, as the outlaws
of human nature, make it their business and their pleasure to
disturb that society which debars them from its privileges. To
live without feeling or exciting sympathy, to be fortunate without
adding to the felicity of others, or afflicted without tasting the
balm of pity, is a state more gloomy than solitude; it is not
retreat but exclusion from mankind. Marriage has many pains, but
celibacy has no pleasures."

"What then is to be done?" said Rasselas. "The more we inquire the
less we can resolve. Surely he is most likely to please himself
that has no other inclination to regard."



CHAPTER XXVII--DISQUISITION UPON GREATNESS.



The conversation had a short pause. The Prince, having considered
his sister's observation, told her that she had surveyed life with
prejudice and supposed misery where she did not find it. "Your
narrative," says he, "throws yet a darker gloom upon the prospects
of futurity. The predictions of Imlac were but faint sketches of
the evils painted by Nekayah. I have been lately convinced that
quiet is not the daughter of grandeur or of power; that her
presence is not to be bought by wealth nor enforced by conquest.
It is evident that as any man acts in a wider compass he must be
more exposed to opposition from enmity or miscarriage from chance.
Whoever has many to please or to govern must use the ministry of
many agents, some of whom will be wicked and some ignorant, by some
he will be misled and by others betrayed. If he gratifies one he
will offend another; those that are not favoured will think
themselves injured, and since favours can be conferred but upon few
the greater number will be always discontented."

"The discontent," said the Princess, "which is thus unreasonable, I
hope that I shall always have spirit to despise and you power to
repress."

"Discontent," answered Rasselas, "will not always be without reason
under the most just and vigilant administration of public affairs.
None, however attentive, can always discover that merit which
indigence or faction may happen to obscure, and none, however
powerful, can always reward it. Yet he that sees inferior desert
advanced above him will naturally impute that preference to
partiality or caprice, and indeed it can scarcely be hoped that any
man, however magnanimous by Nature or exalted by condition, will be
able to persist for ever in fixed and inexorable justice of
distribution; he will sometimes indulge his own affections and
sometimes those of his favourites; he will permit some to please
him who can never serve him; he will discover in those whom he
loves qualities which in reality they do not possess, and to those
from whom he receives pleasure he will in his turn endeavour to
give it. Thus will recommendations sometimes prevail which were
purchased by money or by the more destructive bribery of flattery
and servility.

"He that hath much to do will do something wrong, and of that wrong
must suffer the consequences, and if it were possible that he
should always act rightly, yet, when such numbers are to judge of
his conduct, the bad will censure and obstruct him by malevolence
and the good sometimes by mistake.

"The highest stations cannot therefore hope to be the abodes of
happiness, which I would willingly believe to have fled from
thrones and palaces to seats of humble privacy and placid
obscurity. For what can hinder the satisfaction or intercept the
expectations of him whose abilities are adequate to his
employments, who sees with his own eyes the whole circuit of his
influence, who chooses by his own knowledge all whom he trusts, and
whom none are tempted to deceive by hope or fear? Surely he has
nothing to do but to love and to be loved; to be virtuous and to be
happy."

"Whether perfect happiness would be procured by perfect goodness,"
said Nekayah, "this world will never afford an opportunity of
deciding. But this, at least, may be maintained, that we do not
always find visible happiness in proportion to visible virtue. All
natural and almost all political evils are incident alike to the
bad and good; they are confounded in the misery of a famine, and
not much distinguished in the fury of a faction; they sink together
in a tempest and are driven together from their country by
invaders. All that virtue can afford is quietness of conscience
and a steady prospect of a happier state; this may enable us to
endure calamity with patience, but remember that patience must
oppose pain."



CHAPTER XXVIII--RASSELAS AND NEKAYAH CONTINUE THEIR CONVERSATION.



"Dear Princess," said Rasselas, "you fall into the common errors of
exaggeratory declamation, by producing in a familiar disquisition
examples of national calamities and scenes of extensive misery
which are found in books rather than in the world, and which, as
they are horrid, are ordained to be rare. Let us not imagine evils
which we do not feel, nor injure life by misrepresentations. I
cannot bear that querulous eloquence which threatens every city
with a siege like that of Jerusalem, that makes famine attend on
every flight of locust, and suspends pestilence on the wing of
every blast that issues from the south.

"On necessary and inevitable evils which overwhelm kingdoms at once
all disputation is vain; when they happen they must be endured.
But it is evident that these bursts of universal distress are more
dreaded than felt; thousands and tens of thousands flourish in
youth and wither in age, without the knowledge of any other than
domestic evils, and share the same pleasures and vexations, whether
their kings are mild or cruel, whether the armies of their country
pursue their enemies or retreat before them. While Courts are
disturbed with intestine competitions and ambassadors are
negotiating in foreign countries, the smith still plies his anvil
and the husbandman drives his plough forward; the necessaries of
life are required and obtained, and the successive business of the
season continues to make its wonted revolutions.

"Let us cease to consider what perhaps may never happen, and what,
when it shall happen, will laugh at human speculation. We will not
endeavour to modify the motions of the elements or to fix the
destiny of kingdoms. It is our business to consider what beings
like us may perform, each labouring for his own happiness by
promoting within his circle, however narrow, the happiness of
others.

"Marriage is evidently the dictate of Nature; men and women were
made to be the companions of each other, and therefore I cannot be
persuaded but that marriage is one of the means of happiness."

"I know not," said the Princess, "whether marriage be more than one
of the innumerable modes of human misery. When I see and reckon
the various forms of connubial infelicity, the unexpected causes of
lasting discord, the diversities of temper, the oppositions of
opinion, the rude collisions of contrary desire where both are
urged by violent impulses, the obstinate contest of disagreeing
virtues where both are supported by consciousness of good
intention, I am sometimes disposed to think, with the severer
casuists of most nations, that marriage is rather permitted than
approved, and that none, but by the instigation of a passion too
much indulged, entangle themselves with indissoluble compact."

"You seem to forget," replied Rasselas, "that you have, even now
represented celibacy as less happy than marriage. Both conditions
may be bad, but they cannot both be worse. Thus it happens, when
wrong opinions are entertained, that they mutually destroy each
other and leave the mind open to truth."

"I did not expect," answered, the Princess, "to hear that imputed
to falsehood which is the consequence only of frailty. To the
mind, as to the eye, it is difficult to compare with exactness
objects vast in their extent and various in their parts. When we
see or conceive the whole at once, we readily note the
discriminations and decide the preference, but of two systems, of
which neither can be surveyed by any human being in its full
compass of magnitude and multiplicity of complication, where is the
wonder that, judging of the whole by parts, I am alternately
affected by one and the other as either presses on my memory or
fancy? We differ from ourselves just as we differ from each other
when we see only part of the question, as in the multifarious
relations of politics and morality, but when we perceive the whole
at once, as in numerical computations, all agree in one judgment,
and none ever varies in his opinion."

"Let us not add," said the Prince, "to the other evils of life the
bitterness of controversy, nor endeavour to vie with each other in
subtilties of argument. We are employed in a search of which both
are equally to enjoy the success or suffer by the miscarriage; it
is therefore fit that we assist each other. You surely conclude
too hastily from the infelicity of marriage against its
institution; will not the misery of life prove equally that life
cannot be the gift of Heaven? The world must be peopled by
marriage or peopled without it."

"How the world is to be peopled," returned Nekayah, "is not my care
and need not be yours. I see no danger that the present generation
should omit to leave successors behind them; we are not now
inquiring for the world, but for ourselves."



CHAPTER XXIX--THE DEBATE ON MARRIAGE (continued).



"The good of the whole," says Rasselas, "is the same with the good
of all its parts. If marriage be best for mankind, it must be
evidently best for individuals; or a permanent and necessary duty
must be the cause of evil, and some must be inevitably sacrificed
to the convenience of others. In the estimate which you have made
of the two states, it appears that the incommodities of a single
life are in a great measure necessary and certain, but those of the
conjugal state accidental and avoidable. I cannot forbear to
flatter myself that prudence and benevolence will make marriage
happy. The general folly of mankind is the cause of general
complaint. What can be expected but disappointment and repentance
from a choice made in the immaturity of youth, in the ardour of
desire, without judgment, without foresight, without inquiry after
conformity of opinions, similarity of manners, rectitude of
judgment, or purity of sentiment?

"Such is the common process of marriage. A youth and maiden,
meeting by chance or brought together by artifice, exchange
glances, reciprocate civilities, go home and dream of one another.
Having little to divert attention or diversify thought, they find
themselves uneasy when they are apart, and therefore conclude that
they shall be happy together. They marry, and discover what
nothing but voluntary blindness before had concealed; they wear out
life in altercations, and charge Nature with cruelty.

"From those early marriages proceeds likewise the rivalry of
parents and children: the son is eager to enjoy the world before
the father is willing to forsake it, and there is hardly room at
once for two generations. The daughter begins to bloom before the
mother can be content to fade, and neither can forbear to wish for
the absence of the other.

"Surely all these evils may be avoided by that deliberation and
delay which prudence prescribes to irrevocable choice. In the
variety and jollity of youthful pleasures, life may be well enough
supported without the help of a partner. Longer time will increase
experience, and wider views will allow better opportunities of
inquiry and selection; one advantage at least will be certain, the
parents will be visibly older than their children."

"What reason cannot collect," and Nekayah, "and what experiment has
not yet taught, can be known only from the report of others. I
have been told that late marriages are not eminently happy. This
is a question too important to be neglected; and I have often
proposed it to those whose accuracy of remark and comprehensiveness
of knowledge made their suffrages worthy of regard. They have
generally determined that it is dangerous for a man and woman to
suspend their fate upon each other at a time when opinions are
fixed and habits are established, when friendships have been
contracted on both sides, when life has been planned into method,
and the mind has long enjoyed the contemplation of its own
prospects.

"It is scarcely possible that two travelling through the world
under the conduct of chance should have been both directed to the
same path, and it will not often happen that either will quit the
track which custom has made pleasing. When the desultory levity of
youth has settled into regularity, it is soon succeeded by pride
ashamed to yield, or obstinacy delighting to contend. And even
though mutual esteem produces mutual desire to please, time itself,
as it modifies unchangeably the external mien, determines likewise
the direction of the passions, and gives an inflexible rigidity to
the manners. Long customs are not easily broken; he that attempts
to change the course of his own life very often labours in vain,
and how shall we do that for others which we are seldom able to do
for ourselves?"

"But surely," interposed the Prince, "you suppose the chief motive
of choice forgotten or neglected. Whenever I shall seek a wife, it
shall be my first question whether she be willing to be led by
reason."

"Thus it is," said Nekayah, "that philosophers are deceived. There
are a thousand familiar disputes which reason never can decide;
questions that elude investigation, and make logic ridiculous;
cases where something must be done, and where little can be said.
Consider the state of mankind, and inquire how few can be supposed
to act upon any occasions, whether small or great, with all the
reasons of action present to their minds. Wretched would be the
pair, above all names of wretchedness, who should be doomed to
adjust by reason every morning all the minute details of a domestic
day.

"Those who marry at an advanced age will probably escape the
encroachments of their children, but in the diminution of this
advantage they will be likely to leave them, ignorant and helpless,
to a guardian's mercy; or if that should not happen, they must at
least go out of the world before they see those whom they love best
either wise or great.

"From their children, if they have less to fear, they have less
also to hope; and they lose without equivalent the joys of early
love, and the convenience of uniting with manners pliant and minds
susceptible of new impressions, which might wear away their
dissimilitudes by long cohabitation, as soft bodies by continual
attrition conform their surfaces to each other.

"I believe it will be found that those who marry late are best
pleased with their children, and those who marry early with their
partners."

"The union of these two affections," said Rasselas, "would produce
all that could be wished. Perhaps there is a time when marriage
might unite them--a time neither too early for the father nor too
late for the husband."

"Every hour," answered the Princess, "confirms my prejudice in
favour of the position so often uttered by the mouth of Imlac, that
'Nature sets her gifts on the right hand and on the left.' Those
conditions which flatter hope and attract desire are so constituted
that as we approach one we recede from another. There are goods so
opposed that we cannot seize both, but by too much prudence may
pass between them at too great a distance to reach either. This is
often the fate of long consideration; he does nothing who
endeavours to do more than is allowed to humanity. Flatter not
yourself with contrarieties of pleasure. Of the blessings set
before you make your choice, and be content. No man can taste the
fruits of autumn while he is delighting his scent with the flowers
of the spring; no man can at the same time fill his cup from the
source and from the mouth of the Nile."



CHAPTER XXX--IMLAC ENTERS, AND CHANGES THE CONVERSATION.



Here Imlac entered, and interrupted them. "Imlac," said Rasselas,
"I have been taking from the Princess the dismal history of private
life, and am almost discouraged from further search."

"It seems to me," said Imlac, "that while you are making the choice
of life you neglect to live. You wander about a single city,
which, however large and diversified, can now afford few novelties,
and forget that you are in a country famous among the earliest
monarchies for the power and wisdom of its inhabitants--a country
where the sciences first dawned that illuminate the world, and
beyond which the arts cannot be traced of civil society or domestic
life.

"The old Egyptians have left behind them monuments of industry and
power before which all European magnificence is confessed to fade
away. The ruins of their architecture are the schools of modern
builders; and from the wonders which time has spared we may
conjecture, though uncertainly, what it has destroyed."

"My curiosity," said Rasselas, "does not very strongly lead me to
survey piles of stone or mounds of earth. My business is with man.
I came hither not to measure fragments of temples or trace choked
aqueducts, but to look upon the various scenes of the present
world."

"The things that are now before us," said the Princess, "require
attention, and deserve it. What have I to do with the heroes or
the monuments of ancient times--with times which can never return,
and heroes whose form of life was different from all that the
present condition of mankind requires or allows?"

"To know anything," returned the poet, "we must know its effects;
to see men, we must see their works, that we may learn what reason
has dictated or passion has excited, and find what are the most
powerful motives of action. To judge rightly of the present, we
must oppose it to the past; for all judgment is comparative, and of
the future nothing can be known. The truth is that no mind is much
employed upon the present; recollection and anticipation fill up
almost all our moments. Our passions are joy and grief, love and
hatred, hope and fear. Of joy and grief, the past is the object,
and the future of hope and fear; even love and hatred respect the
past, for the cause must have been before the effect.

"The present state of things is the consequence of the former; and
it is natural to inquire what were the sources of the good that we
enjoy, or the evils that we suffer. If we act only for ourselves,
to neglect the study of history is not prudent. If we are
entrusted with the care of others, it is not just. Ignorance, when
it is voluntary, is criminal; and he may properly be charged with
evil who refused to learn how he might prevent it.

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