Gems of beauty

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Preface

Introducing Foster to the church at Frome, Robert Hall says: "His manner is not very popular, but his conceptions are most extraordinary and original ; his disposition very amiable, his piety unquestionable, and his sentiments moderately orthodox — about the level of Watts and Doddridge." In another communication to the same church, he pronounces him a " young man of the most extraordinary genius." At a later period he said of Foster's writings, "They are like a great lumber-wagon loaded with gold."

The eminent American reviewer of his "Life anl Correspondence," ranking him with Hall, says: "Of the English minds that have departed from our world within a few years, none have excited a deeper interest, or wielded for a season a loftier power, than John Foster and Robert Hall." And Harris, the distinguished author of " Prize Essays," reviewing the same work, says : " He will retain the reputation of gifts that

have rarely fallen to the lot of mortals."

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CONTENTS-

Letter I. Jut Dear Feiknd

We have several times talked of this bold quality and acknowledged its great importance. Without it, a human being, with powers at best but feeble and surrounded by innumerable things tending to perplex, to divert, and to frustrate their operations, is indeed a pitiable atom, the sport of divers and casual impulses. It is a poor and disgraceful thing, not to be able to reply, with some degree of certa,infy, to the simple questions, What will you be? Wiiat will you do ?

A little acquaintance with mankind will supply numberless illustrations of the importance of this qualification. You will often see a person anxiously hesitating a long time between diflferent, or opposite determinations, though impatient of the pain of such a state, and ashamed of the debUity. A faint impulse of preference alternates toward the one, and toward the otl^er ; and the mind, while thug held in a trembling balance, is vexed that it cannot get some new thought, or feeling, or motive; that it has not more sense, more resolution, more of anything that would save it from envying even the decisive instinct of brutes. It wishes that any circumstance might happen, or any person might appear, that could deliver it from the miserable suspense.

In many instances, when a determination is adopted, it is frustrated by this temperament. A man, for example, resolves on a journey to-morrow, which he is not under an absolute necessity to undertake, but the inducements appear, this evening, so strong, that he does not think it

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possible he can hesitate in the morning. In the morning, however, these inducements have unaccountably lost much of their force. Like the sun that is rising at the same time, they appear dim through a mist ; and the sky lowers, or he fancies that it does, and almost wishes to see darker clouds than there actually are; recollections of toils and fatigues, ill repaid in past expeditions, rise and pass into anticipation; and he lingers, uncertain, till an advanced hour determines the question for him, by the certainty that it is now too late to go.

Perhaps a man has conclusive reasons for wishing to remove to another place of residence. But when he is going to take the first actual step towards executing his purpose, he is met by a new train of ideas, presenting the possible, and magnifying the unquestionable, disadvantages and uncertainties of a new situation ; awakening the natural reluctance to quit a place to which habit has accommodated his feelings, and which has grown warm to him (if I may so express it), by his having been in it so long ; giving a new impulse to his affection for the friends whom he must leave ; and so detaining him still lingering, long after his judgment may have dictated to him to be gone.

A man may think of some desirable alteration in his plan of life ; perhaps in the arrangements of his family, or in the mode of his intercourse with society — Would it be a good thing? He thinks it would be a good thing. It certainly would be a very good thing. He wishes it were done. He will attempt it almost immediately. The following day, he doubts whether it would be quite prudent. Many things are to be considered. May there not be in the change some evil of which he is not aware? Is this a proper time? "What will people say ? And thus, though he does not formally renounce his purpose, he shrinks out of it, with an irksome wish that he could be fully satisfied of the propriety of renouncing it. Perhaps he wishes that the thought had never occurred to him, since it has diminished his self-complacency, without promoting his virtue. But next week, his conviction of the wisdom and advantage of such a reform comes again with great force. Then — Is it so practicable as I was at first willing to imagine ? Why not ? Other men have done much greater things ; a resolute mind may brave and accomplish every thing ; difficulty is a stimulus and a triumph to a strong spirit ; " the joys of conquest are the joys of man," What need I care for people's opinion ? It shall be done. He makes the first attempt. But some unexpected obstacle presents itself; he feels the awkwardness of attempting an unaccustomed manner of acting; the questions or the ridicule of his friends disconcert him ; his ardor abates and expires. He again begins to question, whether it be wise, whether it be necessary, whether it be possible ; and at last surrenders his purpose, to be perhaps resunied when the same feelings return, and to be in the same manner again relinquished.

While animated by some magnanimous sentiments which he has heard or read, or while musing on some great example, a man may conceive the design, and partly sketch the plan, of a generous enterprise ; and his imagijiation revels in the felicity, to others and himself, that would follow from its accomplishment. The splendid representation always centres in himself as the hero who is to realize it.

In a moment of remitted excitement, a faint whisper from within may doubtfully ask. Is this more than a dream ; or am I really destined to achieve such an enterprise? Destined! — and why are not this conviction of its excellence, this conscious duty of performing the noblest things that are possible, and this passionate ardor, enough to constitute a destiny? He feels indignant that there should be a failing part of his nature to defraud the nobler, and cast him below the ideal model and the actual examples which he is admiring ; and this feeling assists him to resolve, that he will undertake this enterprise, that he certainly will, though the Alps or the Ocean lie between him and the object. Again his ardor slackens ; distrustful of himself, he wishes to know how the design would appear to other minds; and when he speaks of it to his associates, one of them wonders, another laughs, and another frowns. His pride, while wdth them, attempts a manful defence ; but his resolution gradually crumbles down toward their level ; he becomes in a little while ashamed to entertain a visionary project, which therefore, hke a rejected friend, desists from intruding on him, or following him, except at lingering distance ; and he subsides, at last, into what he labors to believe a man too rational for, the schemes of ill- calculating enthusiasm. And it were strange if the effort to make out this favorable estimate of himself did not succeed, while it is so much more pleasant to attribute one's defect of enterprise to -wisdom, whicji on maturer thought disapproves it, than to inabecility, which shrinks from it.

A person of undecisive character wonders how all the embarrassments in the world happened to meet exactly in his way, to place him just in that one situation for which he is peculiarly unadapted, but in which he is also willing to think no other man could have acted with facility or confidence. Incapable of setting up a firm purpose on the basis of things as they are, he is often employed in vain speculations on some different supposable state of things, which would have saved him from all this perplexity and irresolution. He thinks what a determined course he could have pursued, i/his talents, his health, his age, had been different ; if he had been acquainted with some one person sooner; if his friends were, in this or the other point, different from what they are; or if fortune had showered her favors on him. And he gives himself as much license to complain, as if all these advantages had been among the rights of his nativity, but refused, by a malignant or capricious fate, to his life. Thus he is occupied — instead of marking with a vigilant eye, and seizing with a strong hand, all the possibilities of his actual situation.

A man without decision can never be said to belong to himself; since, if he dared to assert that he did, the puny force of some cause, about as powerful, you would have supposed, as a spider, may make a seizure of the hapless boaster the very next moment, and contemptuously exhibit the futility of the determinations by which he was to have proved the independence of his understanding and his will. He belongs to whatever can make capture of him ; and one thing after another vindicates its right to him, by arresting him while he is trying to go on ; as twigs and chips, floating near the edge of a river, are intercepted by every weed, and whirled in every little eddy. Having concluded on a design, he may pledge himself to accomplish it — if the hundred diversities of feeling which may come within the week, will let him. His character precluding all foresight of his conduct, he may sit and wonder what form and direction his views and actions are destined to take to-morrow ; as a farmer lias often to acknowledge that next day's proceedings are at the disposal of its winds and clouds.

This man's notions and determinations always depend very much on other human beings ; and what chance for

DECISION OF CHARACTER. IJ

consistency and stability, while the persons with whom he may converse, or transact, are so various ? This very evening, he may talk with a man wJiose sentiments will melt away the present form and outline of his purposes, however firm and defined he may have fancied them to be. A succession of persons whose faculties were stronger than his own, might, in spite of his irresolute re-action, take him and dispose of him as they pleased. Such infirmity of spirit practically confesses him made for subjection, and he passes, like a slave, from owner to owner. Sometimes indeed it happens, that a person so constituted falls into the train, and under the permanent ascendency of some one stronger mind, which thus becomes through life the oracle and guide, and ^ves the inferior a steady will and plan. This, when the governing spirit is wise and virtuous, is a fortunate relief to the feeling, and an advantage gained to the utility of the subordinate, and as it were, appended mind.

The regulation of every man's plan must greatly depend on the course of events, which come in an order not to be foreseen or prevented. But in accommodating the plans of conduct to the train of events, the difference between two men may be no less than that, in the one instance, the man is subservient to the events, and in the other, the events are made subservient to the man. Some men seem to have been taken along by a succession of events, and, as it were, handed forward in helpless passiveness from one to another ; having no determined principle in their own characters, by which they could constrain those events to serve a design formed antecedently to them, or apparently in defiance of them. The events seized them as a neutral material, not they the events. Others, advancing through life with an internal invincible determination, have seemed to make the train of circumstances, whatever they were, conduce as much to their chief design as if they had, by some directing interposition, been brought about on purpose. It is wonderful how even the casualties of life seem to bow to a spirit that will not bow to them, and yield to subserve a design which they may, in- their first apparent tendency, threaten to frustrate.

You may have known such examples, though they are comparatively not numerous. You may have seen a man of this vigorous character in a state of indecision concerning some affair in which it was necessary for him to determine* bepause it was necessary for him to act. But in this case, his manner would assure you that he would not remain long undecided ; you would wonder if you found him still balancing and hesitating the next day. If he explained his thoughts, you would perceive that their clear process, evidently at each effort gaining something toward the result, must certainly reach it ere long. The deliberation of such a mind is a very different thing from the fluctuation of one whose second thinking only upsets the first, and whose third confounds both. To Jcnow how to obtain a determination, is one of the first requisites and indications of a rationally decisive character.

When the decision was arrived at, and a plan of action approved, you would feel an assurance that something would absolutely be done. It is characteristic of such a mind, to think for effect; and the pleasure of escaping from temporary doubt gives an additional impulse to tlie force with which it is carried into action. The man will not re-examine his conclusions with endless repetition, and he will not be delayed long by consulting other persons, after he -had ceased to consult himself. He cannot bear to sit still among unexecuted decisions and unattempted projects. We wait to hear of his achievements, and are confident we shall not wait long. The possibility or the means may not be obvious to us, but we know that every thing will be attempted, and that a spirit of such determined will is like a river, which, in whatever manner it is obstructed^ will make its way- somewhere. It must have cost Caesar many anxious hours of deliberation, before he decided to pass the Rubicon ; but it is probable he suffered but few to elapse between the decision and the execution. And any one of his friends who should have been apprised of his determination, and understood his character, would have smiled contemptuously to hear it insinuated that though Caesar had resolved, Caesar would not dare ; or that though he might cross the Rubicon, whose opposite bank presented to him no hostile legions, he might come to other rivers, which he would not cross; or that either rivers, or any other obstacle, would deter him from prosecuting his determination from this ominous commencement to its very last consequence.

One signal advantage possessed by a mind of this character is, that its passions are not wasted. The whole measure of passion of which any one, with important transactions before him, is capable, is not more than enough to supply interest and energy for the required practical exertions ; therefore as little as possible of this costly flame should be expended in a way that does not augment the force of action. But nothing can less contribute or be more destructive to vigor of action, than protracted anxious fluctuation, through resolutions adopted, rejected, resumed, suspended; while yet nothing causes a greater expense of feeling. The heart is fretted and exhausted by being subjected to an alternation of contrary excitements, with the ultimate mortifying consciousness of their contributing to no end. The long- wavering deliberation, whether to perform some bold action of difficult virtue, has often cost more to feeling than the action itself, or a series of such actions, would have cost ; with the great disadvantage too of not being relieved by any of that invigoration which the man in action finds in tlie activity itself, that spirit created to renovate the energy which the action is expending. \Yhen the passions are not consumed among dubious musings and abortive resolutions, their utmost value and use can be secured by throwing all their animating force into effective operation.

Another advantage of this character is, that it exempts from a great deal of interference and obstructive annoyance, which an irresolute man may be almost sure to encounter. Weakness, in every form, tempts arrogance; and a man may be allowed to wish for a kind of character with which stupidity and impertinence may not make so free. . "When a firm, decisive spirit is recognized, it is curious to see how the space clears around a man, and leaves him room and freedom. The disposition to interrogatdj dictate, or banter, preserves a respectful and politic distance, judging it not unwise to keep the peace with a person of so much energy. A conviction that he understands, and that he wills with extraordinary force^ silences the conceit that intended to perplex or instruct him, and intimidates the malice that was disposed to attack him. There is a feeling, as in respect to Fate, that the decrees of so inflexible a spirit must be right, or that, at least, they will be accomplished.

But not only will he secure the freedom of acting for 2 himself, he will obtain also by degrees the coincidence of those in whose company he is to transact the business of life. If the manners of such a man be free from arrogance, •and he can qualify his firmness with a moderate degree of insinuation; and if his measures have partly lost the appearance of being the dictates of his will, under the wider and softer sanction of some experience that they are reasonable; both competition and fear will be laid to sleep, and his will may acquire an unresisted ascendency over many who will be pleased to fall into the mechanism of a system, which they find makes them more successful and happy than they could have been amidst the anxiety of adjusting plans and expedients of their own, and the consequences of often adjusting them ill. T have known several parents, both fathers and mothers, whose management of their families has answered this description ; and has displayed a striking example of the facile complacency with which a number of persons, of different ages and dispositions, will yield to the decisions of a firm mind, acting on an equitable and enlightened system.

The last resource of this character is hard, inflexible pertinacity, on which it may be allowed to rest its strength after finding it can be effectual in none of its milder forms. I remember admiring an instance of this kind, in a firm, sagacious, and estimable old man, whom I well knew, and who has long been dead. Being on a jury, in a trial of life and death, he was satisfied of the innocence of the prisoner ; the other eleven were of the opposite opinion. But he was resolved the man should not be condemned ; and as the first effort for preventing it, very properly made application to the minds of his associates, spending severaljiours in laboring to convince them. But he found he made no impression, while he was exhausting the strength which it was necessary to reserve for another mode of operation. He then calmly told them that it should now be a trial who could endure confinement and fiimine the longest, and that they might be quite assured he would sooner die than release them, at the expense of the prisoner's life. In this situation they spent about twenty-four hours; when at length all acceded to his verdict of acquittal.

It is not necessary to amplify on the indispensable ipiportance of this quality, in order to the accomplishment of any thing eminently good. We instantly see, that every path to signal excellence is so obstructed and beset, that none but a spirj^t so qualified can pass. But it is time to examine what are the elements of that mental constitution which is displayed in the character in question.

Letter II

Perhaps the best mode would be, to bring into our thoughts, in succession, the most remarkable examples of this character that we have known in real life, or that we have read of in history, or even in fiction; and attentively to observe, in their conversations, manners, and actions, what principles appear to produce, or to constitute, this commanding distinction. You will easily pursue this investigation yourself. I lately made a partial attempt, an.d shall oflfer you a number of suggestions.

As a previous observation, it is beyond all doubt that very much depends on the constitution of the body. It would be for physiologists to explain, if it were explicable, the manner in which corporeal organization atfects the mind ; I only assume it as a fact, that there is in the material construction of some persons, much more than of others, some quality which augments, if it do not create, both the stability of their resolution, and the energy of their active tendencies. There is something that, like the ligatures which one class of the Olympic combatants bound on their hands and wrists, braces round, if I may so describe it, and compresses the powers of the mind, giving them a steady forcible spring and reaction, which they would presently lose if they could be transferred into a constitution of soft, yielding, treacherous debility. The action of strong character seems to demand something firm in its material basis, as massive engines require, for their weight and for their working, to be fixed on a solid foundation. Accordingly, I believe it would be found, that a majority of the persons most remarkable for decisive character, have possessed great constitutional physical firmness. I do not mean an exemption from disease and pain, nor any certain measure of mechanical strength, but a tone of vigor the opposite to lassitude, and adapted to great exertion and endurance. This is clearly evinced in respect to many of them, by the prodipous labors and deprivations which they have borne in prosecuting their designs. The physical nature has seemed a proud ally of the moral one, and with a hardness that would never shrink, has sustained the energy that could never remit.

A view of the disparities between the different races of animals inferior to man, will show the effect of organization on disposition. Compare, for instance, a lion with the common beasts of our fields, many of them larger in bulk of animated substance. What a vast superiority of courage, and impetuous and determined action; which difference we attribute to some great dissimilarity of modification in the composition of the animated material. Now it is probable that a difference somewhat analogous subsists between some human beings and others in point of wliat we may call mere physical constitution; and that this is no small part of the cause of the striking inequalities in respect to decisive character. A man who excels in the power of decision has probably more of the physical quality of a lion in his composition than other men.

It is observable that women in general have less inflexibility of character than men ; and though many moral influences contribute to this difference, the principal cause may probably be something less firm in the corporeal constitution, Now that physical quality, whatever it is, from the smaller measure of which in the constitution of the frame, women have less firmness than men, may be possessed by one man more than by men in general in a greater degree of difference than that by which men in general exceed women.

If there have been found some resolute spirits powerfully asserting themselves in feeble vehicles, it is so much the better; since this would authorize a hope, that if all the other grand requisites can be combined, they may form a strong character, in spite of an unadapted constitution. And on the other hand, no constitutional hardness will form a true character, without tliose superior pi'operties ; though it may produce that false and contemptible kind of decision which we term obstinacy ; a stubbornness of temper, which can assign no reasons but mere will, for a constancy which acts in the nature of dead weight rather than

DECISION OT CHARACTER. l7

of strength ; resembling less the reaction of a powerful spring than the gravitation of a big stone.

The first prominent mental characteristic of the person •whom I describe is, a complete confidence in his own judgment. It will perhaps be said, that this is not so uncommon a qualification. I however think it is uncommon. It is indeed obvious enough, that almqgt all men have a flattering estimate of their own understanding, and that as long as this understanding has no harder task than to form opinions which are not to be tried in action, they have a most self-complacent assurance of being right. This assurance extends to the judgments which they pass on the proceedings of others. But let them be brought into the necessity of adopting actual measures in an untried situation, where, unassisted by any previous example or practice, they are reduced to depend on the bare resources of judgment alone, and you will see, in many cases, this confidence of opinion vanish away. The mind seems all at once placed in a misty vacuity, where it reaches round on all sides, but can find nothing to take hold of. Or if not lost in vacuity, it is overwhelmed in confusion ; and feels as if its faculties were annihilated in the attempt to think of schemes and calculations among the possibilities, chances, and hazards which overspread a wide untrodden field ; and this conscious imbecility becomes severe distress, when it is believed that consequences, of serious or unknown good or evil, are depending on the decisions which are to be formed amidst so much uncertainty. The thought painfully recurs at each step and turn, I may by chance be right, but it is fully as probable I am wrong. It is like the case of a rustic walking in London, who, having no certain direction through tlie vast confusion of streets to the place where he wishes to be, advances, and hesitates, and turns, and inquires, and becomes, at each corner, still more inextricably perplexed.* A man in tliis situation feels he shall be unfortunate if he cannot accomplish more than he can understand. Is not this frequently, when brought to the practical test, the

* "Why does not the man call a hackney-coach?" a gay reader, I am aware, will say of the person so bemazed in the great town. So he might, certainly (that is, if he knew where to find one) ; and the gay reader and I have only to deplore that there is no parallel convenience for the assistance of perplexed understandings.

state of a mind not disposed in general to underralne its own judgment ?

In c:v<es where judgment is not so completely bewildered, von will yet perceive a great practical distrust of it, A man has perha|^ advanced a considerable way towards a decision, but then lingers at a small distance from it, till necessity, with a stronger hand than conviction, impels him upon it. He cannot see the whole length of the question, and suspects the part Wyond his sight to be the nn^st important^ for the most essential point and stress of it may be there. He fears that certain i^ossible con;sequences, if they should follow, would cause him to reproach himself for his present determination. He wonders how this or the other person would have acted in the same circumstances; eiigerly catches at any thing like a respectable precedent ; would be perfectly willing to forego the pride of setting an example, for the safety of following one ; and looks anxiously round to know what each person may think on the subject ; while the various .and opposite opinions to which he listens, perh,aps only serve to confound his perception of the track of thought by which he had hc»ped to reach his conclusion. Even when that conclusion is obtained, there are not many minds that might not be brought a few degrees back into dubious hesitation, by a man of re^^pected understanding saying, in a confident tone, Your plan is injudicious ; your selection is unfortunate; the event will disappoint yon.

It cannot be supposed that I am maintaining such an absurdity as that a man's complete reliance on his own judgment is a proof of its strength and rectitude. Iritense stupidity may be in this point the rival of clear-sighted ■wisdom. I had once some knowledge of a person whom no mortal could have surpassed, not Cromwell or Strafford, in confidence in his own judgment and consequent inflexibility of conduct; while at the same time his successive schemes were ill-judged to a degree that made his disappointments ridiculous still more than pitiable. He was not f>n example of that simph obstinacy which 1 have mentioned before ; for he considered his measures, and did not want for reasons which seriously satisfied himself of their being most judicious. This confidence of opinion may be possessed by a person in whom it will be contemptible or mischievous ; but its proper place is in a very different character, and without it there can be no dignified actors in human affairs.