Essays in a series of letters, on the following subjects; On a man's writing memoirs of himself

Front matter

DD0D31t,flflE7

"oV^ f^

^4^9^

Preface

Perhaps it will be thought that pieces written so much in the manner of set compositions as the following, should not have been denominated Letters ; it may, therefore, be proper to say, that they are so called because they were actually addressed to a friend. They were written, however, with the intention to print them, if, when they were finished, the writer could persuade himself that they deserved it ; and the character of authors is too well known for any one to be surprised that he could persuade himself of this.

When he began these letters, his intention was to confine himself within such limits, that essays on twelve or fifteen subjects might have been comprised in a volume. But he soon found that an interesting subject could not be so fully unfolded as he wished, in such a narrow space. It appeared to him that many things which would be excluded, as much belonged to the purpose of the essay as those which would be introduced.

iv author's preface.

It will not seem a very natural manner of commencing a course of letters to a friend to enter formally on a subject, in the first sentence. In excuse for this abruptness it may be mentioned, that an introductory letter went before that which appears first in the series ; but as it was written in the presumption that a considerable variety of subjects would be treated in the compass of a moderate number of letters, it is omitted, as being less adapted to precede wl^t is executed in a manner so different from the design.

When writing which has occupied a considerable length, and has been interrupted by considerable intervals, of time, which is also on very different subjects, and was, perhaps, meditated under the influence of different circumstances, is at last all read over in one short space, this immediate succession and close comparison make the writer sensible of some things of which he was not aware in the slow separate stages of his progress. On thus bringing the following essays under one review, the writer perceives some reason to apprehend that the spirit of the third may appear so different from that of the second as to give an impression of something like inconsistency. The second may seem to represent that a man may effect almost every thing ; the third, that he can effect scarcely any thing. The writer, however, persuades himself that the one does not assert the efficacy of human resolution and effort under the same conditions under which the other asserts their inefficacy ; and that, therefore, there is no real contrariety between the principles of the two essays. From the evidence of history and familiar experience we know that under certain conditions, and within certain limits, (very contracted ones indeed,) an author's preface. V-

enlightened and resolute human spirit has great power, this greatness being relative, of course, to the measures of things Avithin a small sphere ; while it is equally obvious that this enlightened and resolute spirit, disregarding these conditions, and attempting to extend its agency over a much wider sphere, shall find its power baffled and annihilated, till it draws back again within the contracted boundary. Now the great power of the human mind within the narrow limit may be distinctly illustrated at one time, and its impotence beyond that limit, at another ; but the assemblage of sentiments and exemplifications most adapted to illustrate, and without any very material exaggeration, that power alone, will form apparently so strong a contrast with the assemblage of thoughts and facts proper for illustrating that imbecility alone, that on a superficial view the tvv^o representations may appear contradictory. And the author appeals to the experience of such thinking men as are accustomed to commit their thoughts to writing, whether they have not sometimes, on comparing the pages in which they had endeavoured to place one truth in the strongest light, with those in which they have endeavoured a strong but yet not extravagant exhibition of another, felt a momentary difficulty to reconcile them, even while satisfied of the substantial justness of both. The whole doctrine on any extensive moral subject necessarily includes two views which may be considered as its extremes ; and if these are strongly stated quite apart from their relations to each other, both the representations may be perfectly true, and yet may require, in order to the reader's perceiving their consistency, a recollection of many intermediate ideas.

VI AUTHOR'S PREFACE.

In the fourth essay, it was not intended to take a comprehensive or systematic view of the causes contributing to prevent the candid attention and the cordial admission due to evangelical religion, but simply to select a very few which had particularly attracted the author's observation. One or two more would have been specified and slightly illustrated, if that the essay had not been already too long.

Contents

ESSAY I.

On a Man's writing Memoirs of Himself, 9

ESSAY II.

Letter I

Affectionate Interest with which we revert to our past Life. ...It deserves a brief Record for our own use. ...Very few thing-s to be noted of the Multitude that have occurred..., Direction and Use of such a Review as would be required for writing a Memoir.. ..Importance of our past Life considered as the Beginning of an endless Duration of Existence. ...General Deficiency of Self-Obsei-vation..., Oblivion of the greatest Number of our past Feelings. ...Occasional Glhnpses of vivid Recollection. ...Associations with Things and Places. ...The different and unknown Associations of different Persons with the same Places.

MT DEAR FRIEND,

Every one knows with what interest it is natural to retrace the course of our own lives. The past states and periods of a man's being are retained in a connexion with the present by that principle of self-love, which is unwilling to relinquish its hold on what has once been his. Though he cannot but be sensible of how little consequence his life can have been in the creation, compared with many other trains of events, yet he has felt it more important to himself than all other trains together ; and you will very rarely find him tired of narrating again the little history, or at least the favourite parts of the little history, of himself

To turn this partiality to some account, I recollect having proposed to two or three of my friends that they should write, each principally however for his own use, memoirs of their own lives, endeavouring not so much to enumerate the mere facts and events of life, as to discriminate the successive states of the mind, and the progress of character. It is in this progress that we acknowledge the chief importance of life to consist : but even as supplying a constant series of interests to the passions, and separately from every consideration of moral and intellectual discipline, we have all accounted our life an inestimable possession, which it deserved incessant cares and labours to retain, and Avhich continues in most cases to be still held with anxious attachment. What has been the object of so much partiality, and has been delighted and pained by so many emotions, might claim, even if the highest interest were out of the question, that a short memorial should be retained by him who has possessed it, has seen it all to this moment depart, and can never recal it.

To write memoirs of many years, as twenty, thirty, or forty, seems, at the first glance, a ponderous task. To reap the products of so many acres of earth indeed might, to one person, be an undertaking of mighty toil. But the materials of any value that all past life can supply to a recording pen, would be reduced by a discerning selection to a very small and modest amount. Would as much as one page of moderate size be deemed by any man's self-importance to be due, on an average, to each of the days that he has lived ? No man would judge more than one in ten thousand of all his thoughts, sayings, and actions, worthy to be mentioned, if memory were capable of recalling them. Necessarily a very large portion of what has occupied the successive years of life was of a kind to be utterly useless for a history of it ; because it was merely for the accommodation of the time. Perhaps in the space of forty years, millions of sentences are proper to be uttered, and many thousands of affairs requisite to be transacted, or of journeys to be performed, which it would be ridiculous to record. They are a kind of material for the common expenditure and waste of the day. And yet it is often by a detail of this subordinate economy of life, that the works of fiction, the narratives of age, the journals of travellers, and even grave biographical accounts, are made so unreasonablylong. As well might a chronicle of the coats that a man has worn, with the colour and date of each, be called his life, for any important uses of relating its history. As well might a man, of whom I inquire the dimensions, the internal divisions, and the use, of some remarkable building, begin to tell me how much wood was employed in the scaffolding-, where the mortar was prepared, or how often it rained while the work was proceeding.

But, in a deliberate review of all that we can remember of. past life, it will be possible to select a certain proportion which may with the most propriety be deemed the history of the man. What I am recommending is, to follow the order of time, and reduce your recollections, from the earliest period to the present, into as simple a statement and explanation as you can, of your feelings, opinions, and habits, and of the principal circumstances through each stage that have influenced them, till they have become at last what they now are.

Whatever tendencies nature may justly be deemed to have imparted in the first instance, you would probably find the greater part of the moral constitution of your being composed of the contributions of many years and events, consolidated by degrees into what we call character ; and by investigating the progress of the accumulation, you would be assisted to judge more clearly how far the materials are valuable,"the mixture congruous, and the whole conformation worthy to remain unaltered. With respect to any friend that greatly interests us, we have always a curiosity to obtain an accurate account of the past train of his life and feelings ; and though there may be several reasons for such a wish, it partly springs from a consciousness how much this retrospective knowledge would assist to decide or confirm our estimate of that friend ; but our estimate of ourselves is of more serious consequence.

12 ON A man's whiting

The elapsed periods of life acquire importance too from the prospect of its continuance. The smallest thing becomes respectable, when regarded as the commencement of what has advanced, or is advancing, into magnificence. The first rude settlement of Romulus would have been an insignificant circumstance, and might justly have sunk into oblivion, if Rome had not at length commanded the world. The little rill, near the source of one of the great American rivers, is an interesting object to the traveller, who is apprised, as he steps across it, or walks a few miles along its bank, that this is the stream which runs so far, and which gradually swells into so immense a flood. So, while I anticipate the endless progress of life, and wonder through what unknown scenes it is to take its course, its past years lose that character of vanity which would seem to belong to a train of fleeting perishing moments, and I see them assuming the dignity of a commencing eternity. In them I have begun to be that conscious existence which I am to be through infinite duration : and I feel a strange emotion of curiosity about this little life, in which I am setting out on such a progress ; I cannot be content without an accurate sketch of the windings thus far of a stream which is to bear me on forever. I try to imagine how it will be to recollect, at a far distant point of my era, what I was when here ; and wish, if it were possible, to retain, as I advance, the whole course of my existence within the scope of clear reflection ; to fix in my mind so strong an idea of what I have been in this original period of my time, that I shall possess this idea in ages too remote for calculation.

The review becomes still more important, when I learn the influence which this first part of the progress will have on the happiness or misery of the next.

One of the greatest difficulties in the way of executing the proposed task will have been caused by the extreme deficiency of that self-observation, which, to any extent, is no common employment either of youth or any later age. Men realize their existence in the surrounding objects that act upon them, and form the interests of self, rather than in that very self, that interior being that is thus acted upon. So that this being itself, with its thoughts and feelings, as distinct from the objects of those thoughts and feelings, but rarely occupies its own deep and patient attention. Men carry their minds as they carry their watches, content to be ignorant of the mechanism of their movements, and satisfied with attending to the little exterior circle of things, to which the passions, like indexes, are pointing. It is surprising to see how little self-knowledge a person not watchfully observant of himself may have gained, in the whoJe course of an active, or even an inquisitive life. He may have lived almost an age, and traversed a continent, minutely examining its curiosities, and interpreting the half-obliterated characters on its monuments, unconscious the while of a process operating on his own mind, to impress or to erase characteristics of much more importance to him than all the figured brass or marble that Europe contains. After having explored many a cavern or dark ruinous avenue, he may have left undetected a darker recess in his character. He may have conversed with many people, in different languages, on numberless subjects ; but, having neglected those conversations with himself by which his whole moral being should have been kept continually disclosed to his view, he is better qualified perhaps to describe the intrigues of a foreign court, or the progress of a foreign trade ; to represent the manners of the Italians, or the Turks ; to narrate the proceedings of the Jesuits, or the adventures of the gypsies ; than to write the history of his own mind.

If we had practised habitual self-observation, we could not have failed to make important discoveries. There have been thousands of feelings, each of which, if strongly seized upon, and made the subject of reflection, would have shown us what our character was, and what it was likely to become. There have been numerous incidents, which operated on us as tests, and so fully brought out our prevalent quality, that another person, who should have been discriminately observing us, would instantly have formed a decided estimate. But unfortunately the mind is generally too much occupied by the feeling or the incident itself, to have the slightest care or consciousness that any thing could be learnt, or is disclosed. In very early youth it is almost inevitable for it to be thus lost to itself even amidst its own feelings, and the external objects of attention ; but it seems a contemptible thing, and certainly is a criminal and dangerous thing, for a man in mature life to allow himself this thoughtless escape from self-examination.

We have not only neglected to observe what our feelings indicated, but have also in a very great degree ceased to remember what they were. We may justly wonder how our minds could pass away successively from so many scenes and moments which seemed to us important, each in its time, and retain so light an impression, that we have now nothing to tell about what once excited our utmost emotion. As to my own mind, I perceive that it is becoming uncertain of the exact nature of many feelings of considerable interest, even of comparatively recent date ; of course, the remembrance of what was felt in early life is exceedingly faint. I have just been observing several children of eight or ten years old, in all the active vivacity which enjoys the plenitude of the moment without 'looking before or after ;' and while observing, I attempted, but without success, to recollect what I was at that age. I can indeed remember the principal events oif the period, and the actions and projects to which my feelings impelled me : but the feelings themselves, in their own pure juvenility,cannot be revived, so as to be described and placed in comparison with those of maturity. What is become of all those vernal fancies which had so much power to touch the heart 7 ■ What a ijumber of sentiments have lived and revelled in the soul that are now irrevocably gone ! They died, like the singing birds of that time, which now sing no more.

The life that we then had, now seems almost as if it could not have been our own. When we go back to it in thought, and endeavour to recal the interests which animate it, they will not come. We are like p man returning, after the absence of many years, to visit the embowered cottage where he passed the morning of his life, and finding only a relic of its ruins.

But many of the propensities which still continue, probably originated then : and our not being able to explore them up to those remote sources renders a complete investigation of our moral and intellectual characters forever impossible. How little, in those years, we were aware, when we met with the incident, or heard the conversation, or saw the spectacle or felt the emotion, which were the first causes of some of the chief permanent tendencies of future life, how much and how vainly we might, long afterward, wish to ascertain the origin ofthose tendencies. But if we cannot absolutely reach their origin, it will however be interesting to trace them back through all the circumstances which have increased their strength.

In some occasional states of the mind, we can look back much more clearly, and to a much greater distance, than at other times. I would advise to seize those short intervals of illumination which sometimes occur without our knowing the cause, and in which the genuine aspect of some remote event, or long-forgotten image, is recovered with extreme distinctness by vivid spontaneous glimpses of thought, such as no effort could have commanded ; as the sombre features and minute objects of a distant ridge of hills become strikingly visible in the strong gleams of light which transiently fall on them. An instance of this kind occurred to me but a few hours since, while reading what had no perceptible connexion with a circumstance of my early youth, which probably I have not recollected for many years, and which had no unusual interest at the time that it happened. That circumstance came suddenly to ray mind with a clearness of representation which I was not able to retain for the length of an hour, and which I could not by the strongest effort at this instant renew. I seemed almost to see the walls and windows of a particular room, with four or five persons in it, who were so perfectly restored to my imagination, that I could recognise not only the features, but even the momentary expressions of their countenances, and the tones of their voices.

According to different states of the mind too, retrospect appears longer or shorter. It may happen that some memorable circumstance of very early life shall be so powerfully recalled, as to contract the "wide intervening space, by banishing from the view, a little while, all the series of intermediate remembrances ; but when this one object of memory retires again to its remoteness and indifference, and all the others resume their proper places and distances, the retrospect appears long.

Places and things which have an association with any of the events or feelings of past life, will greatly assist the recollection of them. A man of strong associations finds memoirs of himself already written on the places where he has conversed with happiness or misery. If an old man wished to animate for a moment the languid and faded ideas which he retains of his youth, he might walk with his crutch across the green, where he once played with companions who are now probably laid to repose in another spot not far off. An aged saint may meet again some of the affecting ideas of his early piety, in the place where he first thought it happy to pray. A walk in a meadow, the sight of a bank of flowers, perhaps even of some one flower, a landscape with the tints of autumn, the descent into a valley, the brow of a mountain, the house where a friend has been met, or has residedj or has died, have often produced a much more lively recollection of our past feelings, and of the objects and events which caused them, than the most perfect description could have done ; and we have lingered a considerable time for the pensive luxury of thus resuming the departed state.

But there are many to whom local associations present images which they fervently wish they could forget ; images which haunt the places where crimes had been perpetrated, and which seem to approach and glare on the criminal as he hastily passes by, especially if in the evening or the night. No local associations are so impressive as those of guilt. It may here be observed, that as each one has his own separate remembrances, giving to some places an aspect and a significance which he alone can perceive, there must be an unknown number of pleasing, or mournful, or dreadful associations, spread over the scenes inhabited or visited by men. We pass without any awakened consciousness by the bridge, or the wood, or the house, where there is something to excite the most painful or frightful ideas in the next man that shall come that way, or possibly the companion that Avalks along with us. How much there is in a thousand spots of the earth, that is invisible and silent to all but the conscious individual !

I hear a voice j'ou cannot hear j I see a hand you cannot see.

Letter II

All past Life an Education. ..Discipline and influence from.... direct Instruction..,. Companionship... .Books... .Scenes of Nature. ...and the State of Society.

We may regard our past life as a continued though irregular course of education ; and the discipline has consisted of instruction, companionship, reading, and the diversified influences of the world. The young mind eagerly came forward to meet the operation of some or all of these modes of discipline, though without the possibility of a thought concerning the important process under which it was beginning to pass. In some certain degree we have been influenced by each of these parts of the great system of education ; it will be worth while to inquire how far, and in what manner.

Few persons can look back to the early period when they were most directly the subjects of instruction, without a regret for themselves, (which may be extended to the human race,) that the result of instruction, excepting that which leads to evil, bears so small a proportion to its compass and repetition. Yet some good consequences will follow the diligent inculcation of truth and precept on the youthful mind; and our consciousness of possessing certain advantages derived from it will be a partial consolation in the review that will comprise so many proofs of its comparative inefficacy. You can recollect, perhaps, the instructions to which you feel yourself permanently the most indebted, and some of those which produced the greatest effect at the time, those which surprised, delighted, or mortified you. You can remember the facility or difficulty of understanding, the facility or difficulty of believing, and the practical inferences which you drew from principles, on the strength of your own reason, and sometimes in variance with those made by your instructors. You can remember what views of truth and duty were most frequently and cogently presented, what passions were appealed to, what arguments were employed, and which had the greatest influence. Perhaps your present idea of the most convincing and persuasive mode of instruction, may be derived from your early experience of the manner of those persons with whose opinions you felt it the most easy and delightful to harmonize, who gave you the most agreeable consciousness of your faculties expanding \q tjie light, like moi-ning flowers, and who, assuming the least of dictation, exerted the greatest degree of power. You can recollect the submissiveness with which your mind yielded to instructions as from an oracle, or the hardihood with which you dared to examine and oppose them. You can remember how far they became, as to your own conduct, an internal authority of reason and conscience, when you were not under the inspection of those who inculcated them ; and what classes of persons or things around you they induced you to dislike or approve. And you can perhaps imperfectly trace the manner and the particulars in which they sometimes aided, or sometimes counteracted, those other influences which have a far stronger efficacy on the character than instruction can boast.

Most persons, I presume, can recollect some few sentences or conversations which made so deep an impression, perhaps in some instances they can scarcely tell why, that they have been thousands of times recalled, while all the rest have been forgotten ; or they can advert to some striking incident, coming in aid of instruction, or being of itself a forcible instruction, which they seem even now to see as clearly as when it happened, and of which they will retain a perfect idea to the end of life. The most remarkable circumstances of this kind deserve to be recorded in the supposed memoirs. In some instances, to recollect the instructions of a former period, will be to recollect too the excellence, the affection, and the death, of the persons who gave them. Amidst the sadness of such a remembrance, it will be a consolation that they are not entirely lost to us. Wise monitions, when they return on us with this melancholy charm, have more pathetic cog-ency than when they were first uttered by the voice of a living friend. It will be an interesting occupation of the pensive hour, to recount the advantages which we have received from the beings who have left the world, and to reinforce our virtues from the dust of those who first taught them.

In Qur review, we ghe^ll fi^d that the gprnpanions of our childhood, and of each succeeding period, have had a great influence on our characters. A creature so conformable as man, and at the same time so capable of being moulded into partial dissimilarity by social antipathies, cannot have conversed with his fellow beings thousands of hours, walked with them thousands of miles, undertaken with them numberless enterprises, smaller and greater, and had every passion, by turns, awakened in their company, without being immensely affected by all this association. A large share, indeed, of the social interest may have been of so common a kind, and with persons of so common an order, that the effect on the character has been too little peculiar to be strikingly perceptible during the progress. We were not sensible of it, till we came to some of those circumstances and changes in life, which make us aware of the state of our minds by the manner in which new objects are acceptable or repulsive to them. On removing into a new circle of society, for instance, we could perceive, by the number of things in which we found ourselves uncongenial with ttie new acquaintance, the modification which our sentiments had received in the preceding social intercourse. But in some instances we have been sensible, in a very short time, of a powerful force operating on our opinions, tastes and habits, and throwing them into a new order. This effect is inevitable, if a young susceptible mind happens to become familiarly acquainted with a person in whom a strongly individual cast of character is sustained and dignified by uncommon mental resources ; and it may be found that, generally, the greatest measure of effect has been produced by the influence of a very small number of persons ; often of one only, whose extended and interesting mind had more power to surround and assimilate a'young, ingenuous being, than the collective influence of a multitude of the persons, whose characters were moulded in the manufactory of custom, and sent forth like images of clay of kindred shape and varnish from a pottery. I am supposing, all along, that the person who writes memoirs of himself, is conscious of something more peculiar than a mere dull resemblance of that ordinary form of character for Avhich it would seem hardly worth while to have been a man. As to the crowd of those who are faithfully stamped, like bank notes, with the same marks, with the difference only of being worth more guineas or fewer, they are mere particles of a class, mere pieces and bits of the great vulgar or the small ; they need not write their history, it may be found in the newspaper chronicle, or the gossip's or the sexton's narrative.