Chapter XXVI: Letter XXVI: The Choice of a Profession (1)

The considerate Knight of La Mancha would not dismiss his follower and friend to the government of Barataria, without a few more last words, and without arming him for his high functions with a copious homily of counsels and admonitions. Before I leave you to the stern encounter of the painful emergencies of life, to unravel its intricacies, and settle its innumerable perplexing and difficult alternatives, I do not mean to oppress your memory with the thousand and one particular directions, to meet every imaginable occurrence with the right mode of conduct. Innumerable cases of perplexity will be continually occurring, that can only be settled by extempore judgment and prudence. I shall limit my counsels to a single one among the many questions of universal application, each one of which present a great variety of aspects and alternatives; questions of difficult solution for the young; and yet on the right disposal of which depend their character, success and happiness in life. Among the subjects to which I refer, are, the choice of a profession--decision in regard to our plans and projects--the selection of our company--the dispositions with which we should regard the place assigned us in society--the deportment appropriate to gentlemen and ladies--the proper selection of books--the mode and place of worship, and what are the best evidences of true wisdom in character. The first of these is the only one upon which I shall offer you my remarks.

In the choice of a profession, the first point to be consulted is our physical and mental temperament and endowment, or aptitude. That some are constituted for sedentary and inactive pursuits, others to beat the anvil, follow the plough, or mount the reeling mast with a firm step in the uproar of a tempest; some for the bar, others for the pulpit, and still others to be musicians, painters, poets or engineers, I consider a truth so universally and obviously taught by observation and experience, that I shall not deem it necessary to pause to prove it to such as would contest it. I am sufficiently informed that there are those who contend that all minds are formed equal and alike--and that all the after differences result from education and circumstances. With them, Virgil and Byron had no constitutional aptitudes to poetry, and the same training that gave Handel and Gluck their preëminence in music, would have imparted to any other mind equal skill. According to their system, La Place and Zerah Colburn were no earlier or more strongly inclined to mathematics, than other children. These sapient physiologists in descending to the animal tribes, ought to find, that web-footed animals had no natural aptitude for water, the canine tribes for animal food, and the ruminating, to feed on grass and vegetables. I shall leave those who hold this dogma to retain it unquestioned so far as I am concerned; and they will be obliged to leave me to mine, which is, that there are immense differences in the physical and mental constitution, differences which every enlightened parent discovers in his children from the very dawn of their faculties--differences which every intelligent instructer notes in his pupils, as soon as he becomes intimately acquainted with them--differences which, to keen and close observation, distinguish more or less each individual in the immense mass of society. No matter how much alike these persons are reared and trained; the most striking diversities of endowment are often observed in members of the same family, reared and educated with all possible uniformity. This is, no doubt, a beautiful trait of that general impress of variety, which providence has marked upon every portion of the animate and inanimate creation. Nature has willed, that not only men should possess an untiring diversity of form, countenance and mind, but that not two pebbles on the shore, or insects in the air, should be found precisely alike. The sign manual of the Creator on his works is a grand and infinite variety.

The physiological inquiry whence these differences of temperament and aptitude arise, is one, which belongs to another subject; though I have no wish to conceal my belief, that the fundamental positions of phrenology are as immovably founded in fact, and as certainly follow from observation, as the leading axioms of any physical science. It is enough for my present purpose, that the order of every form of society calls for an infinite variety of aptitude, talent and vocation, and that nature has furnished the requisite variety of endowment, adequately to meet those calls.

The ancient system, still in use, goes on the supposition, that all minds are originally alike; and that all children are equally fit to be trained for each of the vocations. Hence we see tailors at the anvil, and blacksmiths on the shopboard, innumerable excellent ploughmen generating prose, and sleeping at the bar and pulpit, and ingenious fiddlers ruined as engineers; in a word, all that ludicrous disarrangement and seeming play at cross purposes, in virtue of which, men, who would have been borne, by a strong current, to the first place in the profession for which nature designed them, become dull and useless in another. A great part of the whole labor of instruction has thus been worse than thrown away. It has been the hard effort of poetic fiction, laboring the huge stone up an acclivity, to see it recoil and hear it thunder back again; the effort to circumvent, and cross the purposes of nature.

It seems to me to be among the most responsible inquiries of a parent and a conscientious instructor, what pursuit or calling is indicated for his child by his temperament and aptitude? The boy, who, like Pope, even in childhood lisps in numbers, because the numbers come, will probably be found to have not only an ear for the peculiar harmony of rhythm, but an inventive mind, stored with images, and a quick eye to catch the various phases of nature and society. If placed under favorable circumstances, and judicious training, this child will become a poet, while ninety-nine in a hundred of those, who make verses, could by no forcing of nature ever rise higher than rhymers. Thus may be detected the embryo germs of temperament, endowment and character, which give the undeveloped promise of the future orator, lawyer, mathematician, naturalist, mechanician, in a word, of the mind fitted to attain distinction in any walk in society. I am aware of the mistakes, which fond and doting parents are likely to make, in interpreting an equivocal, perhaps an accidental sally of the cherished child, to be a sure proof of genius and endowment. No judicious and intelligent parent will be in much danger of being led astray by fondness so weak and misguided.--Wherever real endowment exists, it never fails to put forth continual indications. It is the elastic vigor of nature working at the root, to which no foolish partiality will be blind.

It is true, that nature, equally beneficent in what she has granted, and what she has withheld, forms the million for the common duties and undistinguished employments; stamps them at once with a characteristic uniformity and variety; and sends them forth with specific adaptations, but not so strongly marked, as not to be mistaken with comparative impunity. Hence the ordinary pursuits and employments of life are conducted with general success, notwithstanding these smaller mistakes in regard to endowment.

Not so in those rarer instances, where she has seen fit to stamp the clear and strong impress of peculiar endowment and aptitude, in which the embryo poet, painter, mathematician, naturalist, and orator are indicated by such unequivocal signs, as cannot easily be overlooked, or mistaken by any competent judge. Hence, in the biography of most of those who have truly and greatly distinguished themselves, we are informed that the most ordinary people about them were perfectly aware of the harbingers of their future greatness. I am confident, that to keen and faithful observation these harbingers are as palpable in the germ, as in the development. To mistake in such a case, and not only to withdraw the youthful aspirant from the career to which nature beckons him, but to force him into one, in which every effort must be rowing against the stream, is to consign him to an Egyptian bondage, a slavery of the soul, by which many a spirit of firmer mould has been broken down, and lost to society, and others worse than lost, rendered the scourge and curse of all with whom their lot was cast.

Such as have arrived at a maturity of reason and years, to have the responsibility of the choice of a profession cast upon themselves, will infer, what are my views in regard to the first element, by which they ought to be directed. It involves a previous question, for what pursuit or calling their temperament, faculties and powers best fit them? By long and close observation, pursued with a fidelity proportioned to its importance, by intent study of themselves, as called out by the changes of their health and prospects, the fluctuations of their spirits, their collisions with society, in all the contingencies that befall them, they can scarcely fail to form some conception of the peculiar cast of their powers, and the walk in life, for which their capabilities are best adapted. If they select wisely in this respect, habit and time will certainly render it the profession of their inclinations.

As soon as the mind begins to survey the professions, in regard to the honors, emolument and success, which they respectively offer, there is great danger, lest imagination, taking the place of reason, should look at the scene through a prism, and see all the chances of an illusive brilliancy of promise, which sober experience will be sure to disappoint. There are the immense promises of the law, alluring a crowd of aspirants and competitors, the greater portion of whom must fail to realize their expectations. There are the honors of the physician, binding him, by the strongest of all ties, to the confidence and affection of the families that employ him. He exercises the only profession that does not depend upon the caprice of fashion, or the vibrations of transient feeling.--There is the ministry, with its time-honored claims, its peculiar title to be admitted to the privacy of affection, sickness and death, and its paramount capability of the highest forms of that only eloquence that swells and softens the heart, by coming home to men’s business and bosoms. There is the varied range, and the rapidly acquired fortunes of merchandize and commerce; the growing interest and importance of the new portico to a new order of nobility, manufactures. There is agriculture, always seen to be the most satisfactory and useful of employments, and now rapidly coming to be viewed in the light of scientific investigation and of a liberal pursuit. To adjust and settle the respective views, which the judgment and imagination will take of the chances of these various pursuits, and their contiguity to love, marriage, wealth, and distinction, will be found to be no easy task. Sometimes one view will predominate--sometimes another; and the mind appears like a pendulum vibrating between them.

Reason presents one decisive view of the subject. All these chances--all these balances of advantage and disadvantage have long since settled to their actual and natural level. If the law presents more tempting baits, and more rich and glittering prizes, over-crowded competition, heart-wearing scramble, difficulty of rising above the common level, into the sun and air of distinction, are appended, as inevitable weights, in the opposing scale. The advantages and disadvantages of all the professions are adjusted by the level of society, exactly in the same way. He who is guided in this inquiry by common sense, will comprehend at a glance, that it is impossible, in the nature of things, to combine all the advantages and evade all the disadvantages of any one pursuit. No expectation more irrational and disappointing can be indulged, than to unite incompatible circumstances of happiness. The inquirer must reflect, that such a pursuit connects a series of fortunate chances; but there are the counterbalancing evils. Such another has a different series of both. It is folly to expect to form an amalgam of these immiscible elements. Reason can expect no more than that we unite in the calling, finally fixed upon, as many fortunate circumstances as possible, and avoid, as far as may be, its inconveniences and evils.

NOTES.

NOTES.

Note 1, page 39.

The history of circumstances under which I commenced reading the book of M. Droz, _sur l’ art d’ étre heureux_, the substance of the first chapter of which is given as above, will not be irrelevant, I would hope, _to you_, if to others. It was a beautiful April morning, and I had wandered away from the town, with the book in my hand, among the hills. I inhaled a bland atmosphere that just ruffled half formed leaves, and shook from trees, shrubs and flowers the pearly drops and the delicious aroma of the season. A dun, purple, smoky vapor veiled the brilliancy of the sun and gave the face of nature its most exquisite coloring. A repose, like sleep, seemed to rest upon the earth, only interrupted by the ruminating of the flocks and herds on the hill sides. The bees sped away to their nectar cells from tree and flower, leaving upon the dark and fleeting line of their passage through the air a lulling hum like the tones of an Eolian harp. A large town, with its ceaseless and heavy roll of mingled sounds, lay outstretched beneath my feet. Painted boats were slowly wending their way along a canal from the town, and winding their course round the foot of the hills. Before me was a vast panorama of activity, business, commerce and all the accompaniments of a busy town. A few paces behind me, and I was plunged in a forest where town and commerce and life were hidden as if by the shifting of a scene, and the jay screamed, and the woods showed as to the red man who had seen them centuries before. A beautiful spring branch murmured by me in its deep and flood-worn channel down the glen. A little advance spread the town before me. A little retreat gave me back to the wildness of nature in the forest. Here I had often enjoyed much of the little that life allows us to enjoy, in quiet communion with nature and my own thoughts. I had never experienced it in higher measures than at this moment. Could I, by a volition, have arrested the flight of time and the succession of sensations, here would I have fixed the _punctum stans_ of existence, and been content to have this scene always around me, and the enjoyment of this union of meditation and repose, perpetual.

But a change came over my thoughts, as I read the quaint axiom, laid down with such mathematical precision, _man is formed to be happy_. What I saw and what I felt, my own consciousness assented to the proposition. But, startled by a transient feeling of pain, a new train of ideas succeeded. I have only to pass, said I, the short interval between this repose, verdure, quietness and internal satisfaction, to reach the scene of dust and smoke before me. Besides spires and mansions, I shall see hovels, poor, blind, lame, squalid, blaspheming youth, imbecile age, prostitutes, beggars, haunts of felons and outlaws; and even in the abodes of what shows external comfort and opulence, the sick and dying hanging in agonies of suspense upon the countenance of their physician and friends, as they catch gleams of hope or shades of despair from their aspect. Many of these sick, even if they recover, will only be restored to trembling age, to perpetual and incurable infirmity, and to evils worse than death. Yet, unhappy in living, and afraid to die, they cling to this wretched existence as though it were the highest boon. These varied shades of misery that the picture before me will present to the slightest inspection, in ten thousand forms and combinations, are visible in every part of our world. I, too, shall soon add to the deepness of the shading. My friends will depart in succession; and in my turn, on the bed of death, I shall look in the faces of those most dear to me, as I am compelled to depart out of life. What an affecting contrast with what I see and what I am!

Why there is this partial evil in the world is not a question which I shall here attempt to vex; for I could add nothing to what has already been said upon the subject. It is enough that the evil does actually exist. Is it remediless? Can life be so spent as to leave a balance of enjoyment set over against the evil? These are my questions. There will always be inequality, ignorance, vice, disease, a measureless amount of misery and death. What portion of the evils of life can be cured? What portion must be manfully, piously endured? What transient gleams of joy can be made to illumine the depth of shade?

I yield entire faith to the doctrine before you, that, estimate these evils as highly as you may, a balance of enjoyment may still be struck in favor of life. I do not doubt, that more than one half the suffering and sorrow which every individual endures is simply of his own procuring, and not only that it might have been wholly avoided, but that positive enjoyment might have been substituted in its place. An inconceivable mass of misery would at once be struck from the sum if, as I have already remarked, we knew the physical, organic and moral laws of our being, and conformed ourselves to them. A uniform, consistent and thorough education would cure us of innumerable errors of opinion, injurious habits, and a servile conformity to established and prescribed prejudices, and would impart to us wisdom, force of character and resignation, to enable us to sustain, as we ought, those that are unavoidable. Imperfection, pain, decay and death, in the inevitable measures belonging to organized beings, would remain. The dignity of true philosophy, the stern consciousness of the necessity of courage, profound and filial submission to the divine will, and the well defined and investigated hopes of religion would accomplish the remainder.

Consider one single evil--fear, unnecessary fear, an entirely gratuitous infusion of bitterness in the cup of life. I ask the man who has seen fourscore winters to tell me, were all that he has suffered in his pilgrimage cast into one account, what would be the greatest item in the sum? I believe that almost every one might answer, that more than half might be charged to one single source of suffering--fear--fear of opinion, reproach, shame, poverty, pain, danger, disease and death. I pause not to consider the usual dull illustrations of the wisdom and utility of assigning to us the instinct of fear, to put us on our guard and to enable us to ward off evils. It is not this instinctive shrinking and vigilance to avoid evil that I consider. Let education have its most perfect work in raising us superior to this servile and tormenting passion, and too much of it would still remain. Of all that we have suffered from fear, what portion has been of any service in shielding us from that which we apprehended? Not only have we avoided no evil in consequence, but the enervating indulgence of this passion has taken from us our quickness of foresight, our coolness of deliberation, our firmness of action and resolve, by the exercise of which, we might have escaped all that we dreaded. We may calculate then, that every pang we have felt from this source has been just so much gratuitous agony.

Not only natural instincts, but acquired habits are transmitted; and this evil of fearfulness, this foreboding of apprehension, shaping the fashion of uncertain ills, has been the growing inheritance of countless generations; and a shrinking and effeminate timidity has been woven into our mental constitution by nature. Education, instead of resisting, or counteracting, or diminishing the transmitted mischief, has labored with terrible effect, to make it a principle and a motive to action, and the most efficient engine of the inculcated systems of morality and religion. Fear of death, and a slavish terror, springing from misapprehensions of the character of the divine being, and unmanly and debilitating horrors in regard to the unknown future in another life, these have been the chief sources of this evil. Terribly have the father and the mother, the minister and the school-master, and general prescription and example concurred, to strengthen this barbarous instrument of governing, which never inspired a good action, and which it would be cruel to apply to a slave. Horrible have been the bondage, the mean abjectness of spirit, the long agony of the soul, which this inculcation has inspired.--We have been sedulously trained in a course of discipline which has made us afraid of our own shadows in the dark, and inspired us with shrinking and terror in view of a silent and peaceful corpse, which, in the eye of sober reason, should originate associations no more fearful, than a waxen figure. We, who are the victims of this inborn and instinctive inheritance, we, who have had it inwoven by precept, education and example, and the prevalent impression, that it is one of the purest and most religious motives of action, are best able from our own consciousness, and the memory of what we have suffered from it, to present just views of it to others.--It may be in us an ingrafted principle, too deep to be uprooted by any rules, or reasons, or system of discipline; a habit too unyieldingly become a part of our nature, to be overcome. But with minds more docile, with temperaments more pliant, with habits less fixed, it may be otherwise. The next generation may transmit a more manly and less timid nature to the generations to come. Education, building on the basis of minds of more force, may then accomplish its perfect work, imbuing them with a filial confidence in the Almighty, a sense of the beauty of well-doing, and a perfect fearlessness in regard to everything, but doing wrong. The happier generation of that era, will be spared the agony of all deaths, but the single one of nature; and will be fortified by discipline, and the force of general opinion and example, to regard this inevitable law of our being, this merciful provision of providence, this rest for the worn and weary, as the hireling regards the evening shade, when he reposes from his labors and receives his reward. I shall elsewhere advert to this evil in more detail, and point out such remedies, as appear to me to be suggested by reason, education and religion.

Note 2, page 41.

This classification of the great divisions of our species, as they are occupied in the pursuit of happiness, seems to me to unite truth with poetry and philosophy, and to be both happy and just. The disappointed, who affirm that the earth offers no happiness, the gloomy, who view life as a place of penance, austerity and tears, the dissipated and voluptuous, who seek only pleasure, and whose doctrine is, that life offers no happiness but in unbridled indulgence, the ambitious, who consider happiness to consist only in wealth, power and distinction, and a very numerous class, who have no object in view, but to vegetate through life by chance, constitute the great mass of mankind. The number of those who have lived by system, and disciplined themselves to the wise and calculating pursuit of happiness, has always been small. But there have still been some, enough to prove the practicability of the art.--Wherever we find a person, who declares that he has lived happily, if his enjoyments have been of a higher kind, than the mere vegetative easiness of a felicitous temperament and an unthinking joyousness, we shall find on inquiry, that he has been a philosopher in the highest and best sense. He may scarcely understand the import of the term; but, however ignorant of systems, and the learning of the schools, if he have made it his chief business, to learn by the study of himself, and general observation, how to be happy, he is the true sage. He may well be content, let others regard him as they may; for he has put in requisition the best wisdom of life. No one maxim, especially, ever included more important and practical truth, than that, to be happy, we must assiduously train ourselves to retain through life a keen and juvenile freshness of sensibility to enjoyment, and must early learn to anticipate the effect of experience and years in cultivating a stern indifference, a strong spirit of endurance, and unshrinking obtuseness to pain. It has been my fortune to see examples of persons who enjoyed life even to old age with all the ardor and the quick perception of the young, and who had always been as remarkable for their impassive and heroic endurance of pain.

Note 3, page 43.

We are told, in ridicule of this study, that men have been very happy without rules, and before any system had been laid down, and will continue to be happy, unconscious of the means by which they arrived at their enjoyment. So have men reasoned without acquaintance with the rules of logic; but this proves not the inutility of the study. Let the objector convince us that the happy without thought and rules would not have been happier if they had sought enjoyment with the keen and practical intelligence of a Franklin.

Whatever men do well without definite aim and without rules, it is clear to me, they would do better with these advantages. The same argument equally militates with all means of moral instruction. ‘The world,’ the objector may say, ‘will proceed as before, say what we may.’ But this would be deemed no just ground of objection to an attempt to improve the age, though the efforts may have little visible and apparent effect.

Note 4, page 44.

No term has been more hackneyed, in these days, than education. We have had system upon system, and treatise upon treatise; and more has been written and declaimed upon this subject than almost any other. And yet, scarcely a word has been said upon a grand and radical defect in all existing systems which reduces to a very humble scale the results of the best concerted efforts. I lay out of the question all other incongruities, that I might easily mention, and come directly to that which I have chiefly in my mind. Each of the different instructors, through whose forming hands the pupil passes, communicates to him different, militant and incompatible impulses; so that, instead of a continuous operation and an onward movement, it seems to be the work of each successive teacher to undo that of all the others. The father and mother, besides various minor inculcations, labor, as their highest object, to infuse into the mind of their child, ambition, the desire of preëminence and distinction. The school-master instils the same principles under such different circumstances as to render the envy, rivalry and competition of the school-room almost another series of impulses. The minister and the catechism enjoin humility, meekness and a disposition to prefer others in honor before themselves. ‘Be honest and high-minded,’ say the parents and teachers. ‘Be adroit, and circumvent those who are watching to take advantage of your weakness and inexperience,’ says the master at the counting-desk. The elder friends teach one class of maxims, and the younger another. The actual world inculcates rules different from all the rest. Thus the parents, the school-master, the minister, the politician, society and the world are continually varying the direction of the youthful traveller. No wonder that most people either have no character, or one that is a compound of the most incongruous elements. A pupil, to have a strong, wise, marked and efficient character, should have had it steadily trained to one end; and every impulse ought to have been in a right line and concurrent with every other. Such must be the case before honest and uniform characters will be formed.

There is little force in the objection, that he who has not been constantly happy himself ought not to presume to teach others to be happy. On the contrary, as the author beautifully suggests, none can discuss, with so much experience and force of truth, the dangers of shipwreck, as they who have themselves suffered it. If the art of happiness can be taught, the teacher must necessarily have paid the price of a qualification to impart it, in having been himself unhappy. Conscious that he had the susceptibility of enjoyment, and wanted only the right direction of the means, he will be able to set up way-marks, as a warning to others, at the points where he remembers that he went astray himself.

Note 6, page 45.

The necessity of moderating our desires and reducing them within the limits of what we may reasonably hope to acquire, has been the beaten theme of prose and song for so many ages that the triteness of repetition has finally caused the great truth to be almost disregarded by moralists. Yet, who can calculate the sum of torment that has been inflicted by wild and unreasonable desires, by visionary and puerile expectations, beyond all probable bounds of means to realize them, indulged and fostered until they have acquired the force of habit! Whose memory cannot recur to sufferings from envy and ill will, generated by cupidity, for the possessions and advantages of others that we have not! Who can count the pangs which he has endured from extravagant and unattainable wishes! Poetry calls our mortal sojourn a vale of tears; yet what ingenuity to multiply the gratuitous means of self-torment! Has another health, wealth, beauty, fortune, endowment, which I have not? Envy will neither take them from him, nor transfer them to me. Why, then, should I allow vultures to prey upon my spirit? Learn neither to regret what you want and cannot supply, nor to hate him who is more fortunate. With all his apparent advantages over you, he wants, perhaps, what you may possess, a tranquil mind. There is little doubt that you are the happier person if you contemplate his advantages and his possessions with a cheerful and unrepining spirit.

I present two considerations only, as inducements to control and regulate your desires. 1. In indulging them beyond reason you are fostering internal enemies and becoming a self-tormentor. In the quaint language of the ancient divines, they are like fire, good servants but terrible masters. 2d. The higher gifts of fortune, the common objects of envious desire, are awarded to but a few. The number of those who may entertain any reasonable hope of reaching them is very small. But every one can moderate his desires. Every one can set bounds to his ambition. Every one can limit his expectations. What influence can fortune, events, or power exercise over a person, who has learned to be content with a little, and who has acquired courage to resign even that without repining? Franklin might well smile at the impotent malice of those who would deprive him of his means and his business, when he proved to them that he could live on turnips and rain water. It is not the less true or important, because it has been a million times said, that happiness, the creature of the mind, dwells not in external things.

Note 7, page 47.

Wherever civilized man has been found, the first effort of his mind, beyond the attainment of his animal wants, has been to travel into the regions of imagination, to create a nobler and more beautiful world than the dull and common-place existing one, to assign to man a higher character and purer motives than belong to the actual race. To possess a frame inaccessible to pain and decay, and to dwell in eternal spring, surrounded by beauty and truth, is an instinctive desire. A mind of any fertility can create and arrange such a scene; and in this dreaming occupation the sensations are tranquillizing and pleasant beyond the more exciting enjoyment of actual fruition. With the author, I deem the propensity for this sort of meditation neither unworthy in itself, nor tending to consequences to be deprecated. So far as my own experience goes, and I am not without my share, it neither enervates nor satiates. It furnishes enjoyment that is calm and soothing; and such enjoyment, instead of enfeebling, invigorates the mind to sustain trials and sorrows. Why should we not enter into every enjoyment that is followed by no painful consequences? Why should we not be happy when we may? Is he not innocently employed who is imagining a fairer scene--a better world--more benevolence, and more joy than this ‘visible diurnal sphere’ affords? Addison is never presented to me in a light so amiable as when he relates his day-dreams, his universal empire, in which he puts down all folly and all wickedness, and makes all his personages good and happy. Every writer who has produced a romance worth reading, has been endowed in this way, as a matter of course; and I confidently believe that the greatest and best of men have been most strongly inclined to this sort of mental creation. May not their noblest achievements have been the patterns of those archetypes? I have no doubt that imaginings infinitely more interesting than any recorded in romances, Arabian tales, or any other work of fiction, have imparted their transient exhilaration to meditative minds, and have passed away with the things that never grew into the material and concrete grossness of sensible existence. If ink and paper and printing could have been created as cheaply and readily as a new earth and better men and women, and scenes more like what we hope for at last, the world would have had bequeathed to it more volumes, than would have weighed down all the ponderous dulness of by-gone romance. I cannot assure myself, that you would have been amused, or instructed in reading; but you would then have been able to form some idea of the hours of pain, embarrassment, lack of all external means of pleasant occupation, journeying, cold and watching, that have been beguiled by this employment. I only add that, so far as my experience extends, the first calm days of spring, and the period of Indian summer in autumn are most propitious to this sort of revery.

Note 8, page 48.

These and the subsequent views of ambition in this essay of M. Droz, have been the theme of severe and sweeping strictures upon the general tendency of his book. Ambitious and aspiring men will find it ridiculous, of course, to exact, as a pre-requisite to the pursuit of happiness, the abandonment, or the moderation of ambitious thoughts, especially in such a country as ours, where some boon is held out to tempt these aspirings in almost every condition, from the mansion to the cabin. It may not be amiss for men, who are themselves aspirants, and to whom the access to distinction and power is easy, and the attainment probable, to declaim against the tendency of these maxims. I know well, that in every rank and position, the inculcation of aspiring thoughts, emulation and rivalry is the first and last lesson, the grand and beaten precept, upon which the million are acting. I am well aware how many hearts are wrung by all the fierce and tormenting passions, associated with this devouring one. I affirm nothing in regard to my own interior views, respecting what the world calls fame, glory and immortality. Those who are most dear to me, will not understand me to be entering my _caveat_ to dissuade them from this _last infirmity of noble minds_. Could I do it with more eloquence than ever yet flowed from tongue or pen, there will always be a hundred envious competitors for every single niche in the temple of fame. It can be occupied but by one; and he who gains it will exult in his elevation only during its freshness and novelty. The rest, to the torment of fostered and devouring desires, will add the bitterness of disappointment.

Since it is a fact out of question, that the greater portion of the species can never secure the objects of their ambition, is it ill-judged in one who treats upon the science of happiness, to write for the million instead of the few favorites of fortune? The principles of a philosophic investigation ought not to be narrowed down to meet the wishes of the few. The question is, whether, taking into view ambition and all the associated feelings, the toil of pursuit, and the difficulty and unfrequency of the attainment of its objects, it is, on the whole, favorable to happiness to cherish the passion, or not? I am clear, that even the successful aspirants, if their rivalry were more generous and philanthropic, and their indulgence of the cankering and corroding of ill-concealed envy, derision, hate and scorn, were regulated, would be not the less rapid in reaching the goal, or happy in the fruition of their attainment. I have little doubt, if an exact balance of enjoyment and suffering could be struck, at the last hour between two persons, whose circumstances in other respects had been similar, one of whom had been distinguished in place and power, in consequence of cultivating ambition; and the other obscure in peaceful privacy, in consequence of having chosen that condition, that the scale of happiness would decidedly incline in favor of the latter. In a word, it is the index of sound calculation, to prepare for the fate of the million, rather than that of the few. Repress ambition, as much as we may, there will always remain enough to render the world an aceldama, and the human heart a place of concentrated torment.

It is clear, therefore, to me, that in making up the debt and credit account of life, in relation to happiness, most of the sentiments associated with ambition, and its prolific family of self-tormenting passions, may be set down as gratuitous items of misery, superinduced by our own voluntary discipline. I shall be asked, what is to stimulate to exertion, to study, toil and sacrifice, to great and noble actions, and what shall lead to fame and renown, if this incentive be taken away? I answer, that, what is ordinarily dignified with the appellation of ambition, is a vile mixture of the worst feelings of our nature. There is in all minds, truly noble, a sufficient impulse towards great actions, apart from these movements, which are generally the excitements of little and mean spirits. Take the whole nature of man into the calculation, and there can never be a want of sufficient impulse towards distinction, without a particle of those contemptible motives, which are generally put to the account of praiseworthy incitement. Truly great men have been remarkable for their exemption from envy, the inseparable concomitant of conscious deficiency; and for a certain calm and tranquil spirit, indicating moderation and comparative indifference in the struggle of emulation. They are able to say, in regard to the highest boon of ambition,

‘I neither spurn, nor for the favor call,
It comes unasked-for, if it comes at all.’

Why, then, in a world, and in an order of society, where ambition, with its associated passions, brings in an enormous amount to the mass of human self-inflicted torment, should he be censured, who advises, that in the philosophic and calculating pursuit of happiness, this element of misery should be, as much as possible, repressed? The question may be more strongly urged, when we take into the account, the consideration, that the far greater portion of the species must calculate on the bitterness of disappointment, in addition to the miseries which are inseparable from the indulgence of this passion. All the inordinate thirst for power and fame of the countless aspirants, who desire to be Alexanders, Cæsars and Napoleons, not only is so much subtracted from their enjoyment, and added to their misery, but has little tendency to aid them to attainments, which, after all, are as frequently the award of contingency, as of calculation.

Let the evils of retirement and obscurity, be fairly balanced with those of gratified ambition, and let the aspirant feel, that they are absolutely incompatible, the one with the other.--Let him then make his election, in view of the consequences, and not foolishly expect that he can unite incompatible advantages. If he chooses the dust and scramble of the arena, and the intoxicating pleasures at the goal, let him not repine, that he cannot unite with them those of repose, retirement and a tranquil mind. If, on the contrary, he prefers to hold on the noiseless tenor of his way, in peace and privacy, let not the serpents of envy sting him, when he sees the car of the fortunate aspirant drawn forward by the applauding million. Let not murmurs arise in his heart, when he hears, or reads of the rewards, honors and immortality of those whom he may believe to be endowed no higher than himself with talents or virtues. Let him say, ‘no one can show me the mind, or paint me the consciousness of that man. Fortune and my own choice have assigned me the shade. Let me not embitter its coolness and its satisfactions, by idle desires to unite advantages, that are, in their nature, incongruous. Let me remember, that mine is the condition of the million. My Creator cannot have doomed so vast a proportion of his creatures to a state, which is necessarily miserable. All that remains to me, is to make the best of the common lot.’

Note 9, page 50.

Severe strictures have, also, been passed upon this maxim. I well know, that the common rules proposed to the young, in commencing their serious and more advanced studies, lead them to look forward to happiness, as a garland suspended from the goal, an object only in remote expectation, the fruition of which should be hoped for only at a period of life, when few are capable of enjoyment, even if the means were in their power. To calculate on comfort and repose, early in life, has been considered as a sort of effeminate weakness.

These unphilosophic views of education have, more than almost any other, thrown over the whole course of preparatory discipline for life, a repulsive gloom, tending to fill the mind of the pupil with dismay and disgust in view of his studies.--The young should be early imbued with the sentiment, that God sent them here to be happy, not in indolence, intoxication, voluptuousness or insanity; but in earnest and vigorous discipline for coming duties. And at this bright epoch, when nature spreads a charm over existence, a philosophic teacher may easily train them to invest their studies, labors, and pursuits, and perhaps even their privations and severer toils, with a coloring of cheerfulness and gayety, when contemplated as the only means of discipline by which they may hope to reach a desired end. They should be trained to meet events, and brave the shock of adversity with a firm and searching purpose, to find either a way to mitigate the pressure, or to increase self-respect by the noble pride of manifesting to themselves, with how much calmness and patient endurance they can overcome the inevitable ills of their condition. In other words, they should make enjoyment a means, as well as an end, that they may carry onward, from their first days, an accumulating stock of happiness, with which courage and cheerfulness may paint future anticipations in the mellow lustre of past remembrances. In this way the bow of promise may be made to bend its brilliant arch over every period of this transient existence, connecting what has been, and what will be, in the same radiant span.

Entertaining such views of the direction which might be given to the juvenile mind, I mourn over those weak parents, who are nursing their children with effeminate fondness, not allowing the _winds to visit them too roughly_, pampering their wishes, instead of teaching them to repress them: and rather striving to ward from them all pains and privations, than teaching them that they must encounter innumerable sorrows and disappointments, and disciplining them to breast the ills of life with a conquering fortitude. Opulence generally gives birth to this injudicious plan of parental education. Penury, as little directed by sound views, but impelled by the stern teaching of necessity, imparts to the children of the poor, a much more salutary discipline, and they ordinarily come forward with a more robust spirit, with more vigor, power and elasticity; and it is in this way, that providence adjusts the balance of advantages between these different conditions.

We have all admired the practical philosophy of the man, who, when sick of a painful disease, thanked God that he was not subject to a still more painful one; and when under the pressure of the latter, found cause for cheerfulness, that he was not visited with both diseases at the same time. Akin to this was the noble fortitude of the mariner, who, when a limb was carried away by a cannon-ball, congratulated himself that it was not his head. I do not say that any one can find cheerfulness in contemplating such Spartan spirits, but that a philosophy of this sort would disarm the common ills of life of much of their power, and would even enable the sufferer to find enjoyment in the midst of them.

It would be no disadvantage even to the ambitious and aspiring to abstract, from the toils of their pursuit, the bitter and corroding spirit of rivalry and envy, and in its stead to cultivate sentiments of kindness, complacency and moderation. Let their ends be so noble, as to give an air of dignity to the means that they employ, and they will throw a splendor of self-respect over their course. Let the aspirant say, ‘I struggle not for myself, but to procure competence for aged parents, to gild their declining years with the view of my success. It is for dependent relatives, orphans, the poor and friendless, whom Providence has given particular claims on me, that I struggle. It is to benefit and gladden those who are dearer to me than life, and not for my own sordid vanity and ambition, that I strive to toil up the ascent of fame.

In fine, the author, while he inculcates the maxim that we should, from the beginning, study to number happy days, would not teach, as he has been charged with teaching, that we may give labor and study and the toil of preparation to the winds, and consult only the indolent leading of our passions; for he knows, as do we all, that this course results in anything but ‘happy days.’ He would send us, on the contrary, in pursuit of happiness, to the teaching of wisdom and experience, that never bestow impracticable lessons. He would only inculcate, that while others have taught us to seek ultimate happiness through means of pain, we should make the means themselves immediate sources of enjoyment. It is a fact out of question, that we may train ourselves to find enjoyment in those toils and privations, which are to others, sources of disgust and sorrow. Who has not thrilled, as he read of the author, who, oppressed with cares, infirmities and years, took leave of a book, the result of the most laborious and protracted study, that was to be published only after his death, with a pleasant ode of thankfulness to it, as having furnished him agreeable occupation, and beguiled years of sorrow and pain? On this subject, I too can speak experimentally. I have often experienced an inward conscious satisfaction in realizing the pleasure and enjoyment, which I found in the same pursuits and labors, which were the most painful drudgery to others, equally qualified to pursue them with myself. The bee extracts honey from the same flower which to the spider yields only poison.

Nothing but experience can teach us to what extent force of character, and a capacity without cowardly shrinking, to face danger, pain and death, may be acquired.--Compare, for example, a militia-man torn from the repose of his retreat, and forced into immediate battles, with the same person in the same predicament, when he shall have become a trained veteran. Compare the only child of weak, fond and opulent parents, as he is seen in the hour of apprehended shipwreck, or of fierce conflict with the enemy, with the sailor-boy, born in the same vicinity, but compelled by the rough discipline of poverty, to encounter the elements, and the aspect of danger and death from boyhood.

I shall take occasion hereafter, to remark on the stubborn and invincible apathy of the red men of our forests, in the endurance of slow fire, and all the forms of torture, which the ingenuity of Indian revenge can devise. I no longer trace this apparent insensibility to pain and fear, as I formerly did, to a more callous frame, and nerves of obtuser feeling. I see in it the astonishing result of their institutions, and the influence of public opinion upon them. In the same connexion, I shall remark upon the testimony which the conduct of martyrs bears to the same point. Place a sufficient motive before the sufferer, and the proper witnesses around him, and he may be disciplined to endure anything without showing a subdued spirit. The most timid woman will not shrink from a surgical operation, when those she loves and respects, surround her and applaud her courage. Leave her alone with the surgeon, and the very sight of his instrument will produce shrieks and faintings. The mad personage who leaped the Genesee falls, fell a victim, to the influence which encouraged vanity and ambition exert upon their subject to spur him on to any degree of daring. If the right application of a motive, so little worthy as the mere gratification of a moment’s vanity, can harden the spirit for such attempts, what might not be effected by a discipline, wisely guided by a simple purpose to impart force, energy and unshrinking courage, to meet and vanquish the inevitable evils of life? To me there is nothing incredible in the story of the Spartan boy, who had stolen the fox, and allowed the animal, while concealed under his mantle, to tear his entrails, rather than, by uttering a groan, to commit his character for hardihood and capability of adroit thieving. Parents, your children will be compelled to encounter fatigue, privation and pain, under any circumstances in which they can be placed. You can easily pamper them to an effeminacy that will shrink from any effort, and, if I may so quote, ‘to die of a rose in aromatic pain;’ to be feeble, timid, repining, and yet voluptuous. You can as easily teach them to find pleasure in labor, and in the sentiment of that force of mind, with which they can firmly meet pain, privation, danger and death. Train them for the world in which they are destined to live. Teach them to _quit themselves like men, and be strong_.

Note 10, page 51.

It is impossible to present a better summary of the essentials of happiness. As the author remarks, they are difficult to unite. Yet, whoever lacks either, must be peculiarly unfortunate, or indulgent to himself, if he cannot trace the want to some aberration or neglect of his own. Health, perhaps, is the least within our power; for, by the fault of our ancestors, we may have inherited a constitution and temperament essentially vitiated and unhealthy. We may lose health by casualty or by the influence of causes utterly beyond our knowledge or our control. But for one person thus afflicted with want of health, it is notorious that a hundred are so from causes which they may trace to their own mismanagement. Tranquillity of mind, is certainly a frame, on which we have a controlling influence. Whoever, in our country, has not competence, must assuredly seek the cause, if he have health, in his own want of industry or management. Most of the complaints of the caprice, infidelity and unworthiness of friends would have a more equitable application to our own want of temper, truth and disinterestedness. These things, indispensable to happiness, are far more subject to our command, than our self-flattery will allow us to imagine. The greater portion of those about us might unite all these advantages. Yet, if all misery, other than that which arises from want of being able to unite all these numerous and difficult requisites to happiness, were abstracted from human nature, I am confident that a moiety of the sorrows of earth would be removed; in other words, that a philosophic pursuit of happiness, would at once deliver us from more than half of our suffering here below.

Note 11, page 59.