LETTER VII. OF MISFORTUNE.

If we wish our precepts to be followed, we must avoid the extremes to which moralists and philosophers are too much inclined to press their doctrines, for they are impracticable in real life. It is useless to deny that there are evils against which the aids of reason and friendship are powerless. Let us leave him who is about to lose a being whose life is blended with his own, to groan unreproved. Time alone can enfeeble his remembrances and assuage his pain. To render man inaccessible to suffering would be to change his nature. Those austere moralists who treat our feebleness with disdain, and who would render us indifferent to the most terrible blows of destiny, would at the same time leave us no sensibility to taste pleasure. Nothing can be more absurd than the vain harangues by which common-place consolation is offered to those who mourn a wife, a child, a friend. All reasonings are ineffectual when opposed to these words, ‘I have lost the loved one. You inform me that my misfortune is without a remedy. Oh! if there were a remedy, instead of unavailing tears, I would employ it. It is precisely because there is none, that I grieve.’ ‘Your tears are useless.’ ‘Still they[59] serve to solace me.’ ‘God has done it.’ ‘True, and God has formed my heart to suffer from his blow.’ ‘Your child is happy, and knew neither the errors nor the sorrows of life.’ ‘A parent’s instinctive love inspired the desire that I might teach it to avoid both and obtain happiness.’ ‘In the course of a long career your friend gave an example of all the virtues.’ ‘It is because the loss of these virtues is irreparable to me that I must deplore his death.’[11]

The greater portion of men, I admit, exaggerating their regrets, pay a tribute of dissembled grief rather to opinion, than to nature; and cold declamation and frivolous distractions are sufficient to console them. But the orators of consolation sometimes press their lessons on hearts which are really bleeding. Let such groan at liberty, and attempt not to contradict nature. Solitude may exalt the imagination; but it also inspires consoling ideas. In the silence of its refuge the desolate mourner brings himself to a nearer communion with him he regrets. He invokes, sees, and addresses him. Grief is more ingenious than we imagine in finding consolation, and has learned to employ different remedies according as the wounds are slight or deep. Two persons have each lost a dear friend. The one studiously avoids the places where he used to meet his friend. The other repairs to his desolate haunts, and surrounding himself by monuments associated with his memory, he seeks, if I may so say, to restore him to life.

The death of a beloved wife is, perhaps, the most inconsolable of evils. Let this follow a series of other misfortunes, and it so effaces their remembrance that the sufferer feels he has not until then known real grief.[60] But if this affliction be one under which our strength is broken, let it be the only one to obtain this fatal triumph. Under all other misfortunes we may find in ourselves resources for sustaining them; and may invariably either evade or assuage them, or mitigate their bitterness by resignation.

Moralists have expatiated upon the manner in which a sage ought to contemplate the evils of life. Instead of subscribing to their trite maxims, often more imposing than practicable, I sketch a summary of my philosophy. I caution the feeble and erring beings that surround me, not to dream of unmixed happiness. I invite them to partake promptly of all innocent pleasures. The evils too often appended to them may follow. Know nothing of those which have no existence except in opinion. Struggle with courage to escape all that may be evaded. But if it become inevitable to meet them, let resignation, closing your eyes on the past, secure the repose of patient endurance when happiness exists for you no longer.

Permit me to give these ideas some development. If I may believe the most prevalent modern philosophy, tranquillity of mind is the result of organization, or temperament, and of circumstances. It is the burden of my inculcation, that it may be of our own procuring; and that we owe it still more to the masculine exercise of our reason, discipline, and mental energy, than to our temperament or condition.

We have reason to deplore that unhappy being, who, yielding to dreams of pleasure, forgets to forearm himself against a fatal awakening. The history of great political convulsions, and, more than all, that of the[61] French revolution furnishes impressive examples of this spectacle. It offers more than one instance, in the feebler sex, of persons, who seemed created only to respire happiness. To the advantages of youth, talent and beauty, were united the most exalted rank, and wealth, pleasure and power, apparently to the extent of their wishes. To the dazzling fascination, with which a brilliant crowd surrounded their inexperience, many of them united the richer domestic enjoyments of the wife and mother. In the midst of their illusions, the revolutionary shout struck their ear, like a thunderstroke. Executioners bade them ascend the scaffold.[12]

These great catastrophes, I know, are rare. But there will never cease to be sorrows, which will receive their last bitterness only in death. They are all too painful to be sustained, unless they have been wisely foreseen. Let us think of misfortune, as of certain characters, with whom our lot may one day compel us to consort.

It is novelty alone, which gives our emotions extreme keenness. Whoever has strength of character, may learn to endure anything. The red men of the American wilderness are most impressive examples of this truth. Time, however, is the most efficacious teacher of the lesson of endurance. Poussin, in his painting of Eudomidas, has delineated the human heart with fidelity. The young girl of the piece abandons herself to despair. Half stretched upon the earth, her head falls supinely on the knees of the aged mother of the dying. This mother is sitting. Her attitude announces mingled meditation and grief. Amidst her tears, we trace firmness on her visage. One of the two women is taking her first[62] lesson of misery. The other has already passed through a long apprenticeship of grief.[13]

Reflection imparts anticipated experience. It takes from misery that air of novelty, which renders it terrible. When a wise man experiences a reverse, his new position has been foreseen. He has measured the sorrows, and prepared the consolations. Into whatever scene of trial he is brought, he will show in no one the embarrassment of a stranger.

Taught to be conscious that we are feeble combatants, thrown upon an arena of strife, let us not calculate that destiny has no blows in store for us. Let us prepare for wounds, painful and slow to heal. Let us blunt the darts of misfortune in advance. Then, if they strike they will not penetrate so deep. But in premeditating the trials, which may be in reserve for our courage, let not anticipated solicitude disturb the present. Of all mental efforts, foresight is the most difficult to regulate. If we have it not, we fall into reverses unprepared. If we exercise it too far, we are perpetually miserable by anticipation.

The philosopher prepares himself for contingent perils by processes which impart a keener pleasure to present enjoyment. He better understands the value of the moments of joy, and learns to dispel the fears, which might mar their tranquillity. That is a gloomy wisdom, which condemns the precepts that invite us to draw, from the uncertainty of our lot, a motive to embellish the moment of actual happiness. Transient beings, around whom everything is changing and in motion, adopt my maxims. Let us aid those who surround us, to put them in practice. Let us render those who[63] are happy today more happy. Tomorrow the opportunity may have passed forever.

As though nature had not sowed sufficient sorrows in our path during our short career, we have added to the mass by our own invention. The offspring of our vanity and puerile prejudices, these factitious pains seem sometimes more difficult to support, than real evils. A warrior, who has shown fearless courage in the deadly breach, has passed a sleepless night, because he was not invited to a party, or a feast; or because a riband, or a diploma has not been added to the many, with which he is already decorated. I had been informed, that the wife and son of a distinguished acquaintance were dangerously sick. I met him pale, and thoughtful. I was meditating, how to give him hope in regard to the objects of his supposed anxiety. While I was hesitating how to address him, he made known the subject of his real inquietude. He was in expectation of a high employment. The man of power, in whose hand was the gift, had just received him coldly a second time. He was anxiously calculating his remaining chances, and striving to divine the causes of his discouraging reception.

To avoid such ridiculous agonies, let us adopt a maxim, not the less true, because the phrase, in which I express it, may seem trivial. Three quarters and half the remaining quarter of our vexations are not worth wasting a thought upon their cause. I add, that even in expectations which appear important, we ought to fear trusting too little to chance. The order of events, which we call by this name, is often more sage than any that human calculation can arrange. If it decides[64] in a manner which at first view seems greatly against us, let us defer our accusations, until we have more thoroughly tested the event. I have met a man, who had long been an aspirant for a certain place, with a radiant countenance, having just obtained it. Three months afterwards, he would have purchased at any price the power of recalling events. I have seen another friend in desolation, because he could not obtain the hand of the daughter of a man, whose enterprises promised an immense fortune. He had been rejected. The speculations of her father all failed; and the reputation of his integrity and good faith with them. The despairing lover would have shared the poverty and disgrace of a helpless family; and would have been tormented, besides, with an incompatible union, of itself sufficient to have rendered him miserable in the midst of all the expected prosperity. One event is contemplated with a charmed eye; another with despair. The issue alone can declare, which of the two we ought to have desired.

I grant, that we are surrounded by real dangers. I pretend not to be above suffering; and I attach no merit to becoming the reckless dupe of men or chance. The highest philosophy is at the same time the most simple and practicable. There is no error more common than one, which is taken for profound wisdom. Most men look too deep for the springs of events, and the motives of action. In many alternatives, we shall be most wise in giving the reins to chance. When we are menaced by an evident peril, let us summon all our energy, and courageously struggle to ward it off. If, after all, neither wisdom can evade it, nor bravery vanquish it,[65] let us see, how true wisdom ordains us to sustain it.

How many are ignorant of the value of resignation, or confound it with weakness! The courage of resignation is, perhaps, the most high and rare of all the forms of that virtue. Man received the gift directly from the Author of his being. His desires, inquietudes, misguided opinions, the fruits of an ambitious and incongruous education, have weakened its force in the soul. Who can read the anecdote of the American wilderness without thrilling emotion? An Indian, descending the Niagara river, was drawn into the rapids above the sublime cataract. The nursling of the desert rowed with incredible vigor at first, in an intense struggle for life. Seeing his efforts useless, he dropped his oars, sung his death song, and floated in calmness down the abyss. His example is worthy of imitation. While there is hope, let us nerve all our force, to avail ourselves of all the chances it suggests. When hope ceases, and the peril must be braved, wisdom counsels calm resignation.[14]

In regard to unconquerable evils, the true doctrine is not vain resistance, but profound submission. It conceals the outline of what we have to suffer, as with a veil. It hastens to bring us the fruit of consoling time. It opens our eyes to a clearer view of the possessions which remain to us. It precedes hope, as twilight ushers in the day.

It is by laying down certain well ascertained principles of conduct, and re-examining them every day, that a new empire is given to reason, and that we learn to select the most eligible point in all situations in life. The[66] Greek philosophers were, incontestably, the men, who best understood the art of becoming happy. Their studies led them to the unwearied contemplation of the true good, the advantages of elevation of mind, the danger of the passions, and a calm submission to inevitable ills. Such were the habitual subjects of their meditations and discourses. They suffered less from the evils of life, only because they cultivated habits of profound reflection.

Among the moderns, in pursuit of happiness, some study only to multiply their physical enjoyments; and limited to gross sensations, differ little from brutes, except in discoursing about what they eat. Others, higher in the scale of thought, cultivate the pleasures of literature and the fine arts. But disciplining but a single class of their powers, with a view to distinguish themselves from the vulgar, they are not always more happy. True philosophy is chiefly conversant about that kind of acquisition, which pre?minently constitutes the rational man, forms his reason, and places him, as a master, in the midst of an unreflecting world surrounded by children full of ignorance and fatuity.