Chapter III: Part 3

The priest, too, is a kind of prophet. In him, also, there is required to be a light of inspiration. He presides over the worship of the people, and is the uniter of them with the unseen Holy. He is their spiritual captain, as the prophet is their spiritual king with many captains.

Luther and Knox were by express vocation priests, yet it will suit us better here to consider them chiefly in their historical character as reformers. The battling reformer is from time to time a needful and inevitable phenomenon. Obstructions are never wanting; the very things that were once indispensable furtherances become obstructions, and need to be shaken off and left behind us--a business often of enormous difficulty.

We are to consider Luther as an idol-breaker, a bringer back of men to reality, for that is the function of great men and teachers. Thus it was that Luther said to the Pope, "This thing of yours that you call a pardon of sins, is a bit of rag-paper with ink. It, and so much like it, is nothing else. God alone can pardon sins. God's Church is not a semblance, Heaven and Hell are not semblances. Standing on this, I, a poor German monk, am stronger than you all."

The most interesting phase which the Reformation anywhere assumes is that of Puritanism, which even got itself established as a Presbyterianism and National Church among the Scotch, and has produced in the world very notable fruit. Knox was the chief priest and founder of that faith which became the faith of Scotland, of New England, of Oliver Cromwell; and that which Knox did for his nation we may really call a resurrection as from death. The people began to live. Scotch literature and thought, Scotch industry, James Watt, David Hume, Walter Scott, Robert Burns--I find Knox and the Reformation acting in the heart's core of every one of these persons and phenomena; I find that without the Reformation they would not have been.

Knox could not live but by fact. He is an instance to us how a man, by sincerity itself, becomes heroic. We find in Knox a good, honest, intellectual talent, no transcendent one; he was a narrow, inconsiderable man as compared with Luther; but in heartfelt, instinctive adherence to truth, in real sincerity, he has no superior. His heart is of the true prophet cast. "He lies there," said the Earl of Morton, at his grave, "who never feared the face of man."

_V.--The Hero as Man of Letters_

The hero as man of letters is a new and singular phenomenon. Living in his squalid garret and rusty coat; ruling from his grave after death whole nations and generations; he must be regarded as our most important modern person. Such as he may be, he is the soul of all. Intrinsically it is the same function which the old generations named a prophet, priest, or divinity for doing.

The three great prophets of the eighteenth century, that singular age of scepticism, were Johnson, Rousseau, and Burns; they were not, indeed, heroic bringers of the light, but heroic seekers of it, struggling under mountains of impediment.

As for Johnson, I have always considered him to be, by nature, one of our great English souls. It was in virtue of his sincerity, of his speaking still in some sort from the heart of nature, though in the current artificial dialect, that Johnson was a prophet. The highest gospel he preached was a kind of moral prudence, coupled with this other great gospel, "Clear your mind of cant!" These two things, joined together, were, perhaps, the greatest gospel that was possible at that time.

Of Rousseau and his heroism I cannot say so much. He was not a strong man; but a morbid, excitable, spasmodic man; at best, intense rather than strong. Yet, at least he was heartily in earnest, if ever man was; his ideas possessed him like demons.

The fault and misery of Rousseau was egoism, which is the source and summary of all faults and miseries whatsoever. He had not perfected himself into victory over mere desire; a mean hunger was still his motive principle. He was a very vain man, hungry for the praises of men. The whole nature of the man was poisoned; there was nothing but suspicion, self-isolation, and fierce, moody ways.

And yet this Rousseau, with his celebrations of nature, even of savage life in nature, did once more touch upon reality and struggle towards reality. Strangely through all that defacement, degradation, and almost madness, there is in the inmost heart of poor Rousseau a spark of real heavenly fire. Out of all that withered, mocking philosophism, scepticism, and persiflage of his day there has arisen in this man the ineradicable feeling and knowledge that this life of ours is true, not a theorem, but a fact.

The French Revolution found its evangelist in Rousseau. His semi-delirious speculations on the miseries of civilised life, and such like, helped to produce a delirium in France generally. It is difficult to say what the governors of the world could do with such a man. What he could do with them is clear enough--guillotine a great many of them.

The tragedy of Burns's life is known to all. The largest soul of all the British lands appeared under every disadvantage; uninstructed, poor, born only to hard manual toil; and writing, when it came to that, in a rustic special dialect, known only to a small province of the country he lived in.

We find in Burns a noble, rough genuineness, the true simplicity of strength, and a deep and earnest element of sunshine and joyfulness; yet the chief quality, both of his poetry and of his life, is sincerity--a wild wrestling with the truth of things.

_VI.--The Hero as King_

The commander over men, to whose will our wills are to be subordinated and loyally surrender themselves, and find their welfare in doing so, may be reckoned the most important of great men. He is called _Rex_, "Regulator"; our own name is still better--king, which means "can-ning," "able-man."

In rebellious ages, when kingship itself seems dead and abolished, Cromwell and Napoleon step forth again as kings. The old ages are brought back to us; the manner in which kings were made, and kingship itself first took rise, is again exhibited in the history of these two.

The war of the Puritans was a section of that universal war which alone makes up the true history of the world--the war of Belief against Unbelief; the struggle of men intent on the real essence of things, against men intent on the semblances and forms of things. And among these Puritans Cromwell stood supreme, grappling like a giant, face to face, heart to heart, with the naked truth of things. Yet Cromwell alone finds no hearty apologist anywhere. Selfish ambition, dishonesty, duplicity; a fierce, coarse, hypocritical Tartuffe; turning all that noble struggle for constitutional liberty into a sorry farce played for his own benefit. This, and worse, is the character they give him.

From of old, this theory of Cromwell's falsity has been incredible to me. All that we know of him betokens an earnest, hearty sincerity. Everywhere we have to note his decisive, practical eye, how he drives towards the practicable, and has a genuine insight into what is fact. Such an intellect does not belong to a false man; the false man sees false shows, plausibilities, expediences; the true man is needed to discern even practical truth.

Napoleon by no means seems to me so great a man as Cromwell. His enormous victories which reached over all Europe, while Cromwell abode mainly in our little England, are but as the high stilts on which the man is seen standing; the stature of the man is not altered thereby. I find in him no such sincerity as in Cromwell; only a far inferior sort.

"False as a bulletin," became a proverb in Napoleon's time. Yet he had a sincerity, a certain instinctive, ineradicable feeling for reality; and did base himself upon fact, so long as he had any basis. He had an instinct of Nature better than his culture was. His companions, we are told, were one evening busily occupied arguing that there could be no God; they had proved it by all manner of logic. Napoleon, looking up into the stars, answers, "Very ingenious, Messieurs; but who made all that?" The atheistic logic runs off from him like water; the great fact stares him in the face. So, too, in practice; he, as every man that can be great, sees, through all entanglements, the practical heart of the matter, and drives straight towards that.

Accordingly, there was a faith in him, genuine so far as it went. That this new, enormous democracy is an insuppressible fact, which the whole world cannot put down--this was a true insight of his, and took his conscience and enthusiasm along with it. And did he not interpret the dim purport of it well? _La carrière ouverte aux talents_--"the implements to him who can handle them"--this actually is the truth, and even the whole truth; it includes whatever the French Revolution or any revolution could mean. It is a great, true message from our last great man.

Sartor Resartus

"Sartor Resartus," first published in "Frazer's Magazine" in
1833-34, is Thomas Carlyle's most popular work, and is largely
autobiographical.

I.--_The Philosophy of Clothes_

Considering our present advanced state of culture, and how the torch of science has now been brandished and borne about, with more or less effect, for five thousand years and upwards, it is surprising that hitherto little or nothing of a fundamental character, whether in the way of philosophy or history, has been written on the subject of clothes. Every other tissue has been dissected, but the vestural tissue of woollen or other cloth, which man's soul wears as its outmost wrappage, has been quite overlooked. All speculation has tacitly figured man as a clothed animal, whereas he is by nature a naked animal, and only in certain circumstances, by purpose and device, masks himself in clothes.

But here, as in so many other cases, learned, indefatigable, deep-thinking Germany comes to our aid. The editor of these sheets has lately received a new book from Professor Teufelsdröckh, of Weissnichtwo, treating expressly of "Clothes, their Origin and Influence" (1831). This extensive volume, a very sea of thought, discloses to us not only a new branch of philosophy, but also the strange personal character of Professor Teufelsdröckh, which is scarcely less interesting. We were just considering how the extraordinary doctrines of this book might best be imparted to our own English nation, when we received a letter from Herr Hofrath Heuschrecke, our professor's chief associate, offering us the requisite documents for a biography of Teufelsdröckh. This was the origin of our "Sartor Resartus," now presented in the vehicle of "Frazer's Magazine."

Professor Teufelsdröckh, when we knew him at Weissnichtwo, lived a still and self-contained life, devoted to the higher philosophies and to a certain speculative radicalism. The last words that he spoke in our hearing were to propose a toast in the coffee-house--"The cause of the poor, in heaven's name and the devil's." But we looked for nothing moral from him, still less anything didactico-religious.

Brave Teufelsdröckh, who could tell what lurked in thee? In thine eyes, deep under thy shaggy brows, and looking out so still and dreamy, have we not noticed gleams of an ethereal or else a diabolic fire? Our friend's title was that of Professor of Things in General, but he never delivered any course. We used to sit with him in his attic, overlooking the town; he would contemplate that wasp-nest or bee-hive spread out below him, and utter the strangest thoughts. "That living flood, pouring through these streets, is coming from eternity, going onward to eternity. These are apparitions. What else?" Thus he lived and meditated with Heuschrecke as Boswell for his Johnson.

"As Montesquieu wrote a 'Spirit of Laws,'" observes our professor, "so could I write a 'Spirit of Clothes,' for neither in tailoring nor in legislating does man proceed by mere accident, but the hand is ever guided by the mysterious operations of the mind." And so he deals with Paradise and fig-leaves, and proceeds to view the costumes of all mankind, in all countries, in all times.

The first purpose of clothes, he imagines, was not warmth or decency, but ornament. "Yet what have they not become? Increased security and pleasurable heat soon followed; divine shame or modesty, as yet a stranger to the anthropophagous bosom, arose there mysteriously under clothes, a mystic shrine for the holy in man. Clothes gave us individuality, distinctions, social polity; clothes have made men of us; they are threatening to make clothes-screens of us."

Teufelsdröckh dwells chiefly on the seams, tatters, and unsightly wrong-side of clothes, but he has also a superlative transcendentalism. To him, man is a soul, a spirit, and divine apparition, whose flesh and senses are but a garment. He deals much in the feeling of wonder, insisting that wonder is the only reasonable temper for the denizen of our planet. "Wonder," he says, "is the basis of worship," and that progress of science, which is to destroy wonder and substitute mensuration and numeration, finds small favour with him. "Clothes, despicable as we think them, are unspeakably significant."

_II.--Biography of Teufelsdröckh_

So far as we can gather from the disordered papers which have been placed in our hands, the genesis of Diogenes Teufelsdröckh is obscure. We see nothing but an exodus out of invisibility into visibility. In the village of Entepfuhl we find a childless couple, verging on old age. Andreas Futteral, who has been a grenadier sergeant under Frederick the Great, is now cultivating a little orchard. To him and Gretchen his wife there entered one evening a stranger of reverend aspect, who deposited a silk-covered basket, saying, "Good people, here is an invaluable loan; take all heed thereof; with high recompense, or else with heavy penalty, will it one day be required back." Therein they found, as soon as he had departed, a little infant in the softest sleep. Our philosopher tells us that this story, told him in his twelfth year, produced a quite indelible impression. Who was his unknown father, whom he was never able to meet?

We receive glimpses of his childhood, schooldays, and university life, and then meet with him in that difficulty, common to young men, of "getting under way." "Not what I have," he says, "but what I do, is my kingdom; and we should grope throughout our lives from one expectation and disappointment to another were we not saved by one thing--our hunger." He had thrown up his legal profession, and found himself without landmark of outward guidance; whereby his previous want of decided belief, or inward guidance, is frightfully aggravated. So he sets out over an unknown sea; but a certain Calypso Island at the very outset falsifies his whole reckoning.

"Nowhere," he says, "does Heaven so immediately reveal itself to the young man as in the young maiden. The feeling of our young forlorn towards the queens of this earth was, and indeed is, altogether unspeakable. A visible divinity dwelt in them; to our young friend all women were holy, were heavenly. And if, on a soul so circumstanced, some actual air-maiden should cast kind eyes, saying thereby, 'Thou too mayest love and be loved,' and so kindle him--good Heaven, what an all-consuming fire were probably kindled!"

Such a fire of romance did actually burst forth in Herr Diogenes. We know not who "Blumine" was, nor how they met. She was young, hazel-eyed, beautiful, high-born, and of high spirit, but unhappily dependent and insolvent, living perhaps on the bounty of moneyed relatives. "To our friend the hours seemed moments; holy was he and happy; the words from those sweetest lips came over him like dew on thirsty grass. At parting, the Blumine's hand was in his; in the balmy twilight, with the kind stars above them, he spoke something of meeting again, which was not contradicted; he pressed gently those soft, small fingers, and it seemed as if they were not hastily, not angrily withdrawn."

Poor Teufelsdröckh, it is clear to demonstration thou art smit! Flame-clad, thou art scaling the upper Heaven, and verging towards insanity, for prize of a high-souled brunette, as if the earth held but one and not several of these! "One morning, he found his morning-star all dimmed and dusky-red; doomsday had dawned; they were to meet no more!" Their lips were joined for the first time and the last, and Teufelsdröckh was made immortal by a kiss. And then--"thick curtains of night rushed over his soul, and he fell, through the ruins as of a shivered universe, towards the abyss."

He quietly lifts his pilgrim-staff, and begins a perambulation and circumambulation of the terraqueous globe. We find him in Paris, in Vienna, in Tartary, in the Sahara, flying with hunger always parallel to him, and a whole infernal chase in his rear. He traverses mountains and valleys with aimless speed, writing with footprints his sorrows, that his spirit may free herself, and he become a man. Vain truly is the hope of your swiftest runner to escape from his own shadow! We behold him, through these dim years, in a state of crisis, of transition; his aimless pilgrimings are but a mad fermentation, wherefrom, the fiercer it is, the clearer product will one day evolve itself.

Man has no other possession but hope; this world of his is emphatically the "Place of Hope"; yet our professor, for the present, is quite shut out from hope. As he wanders wearisomely through this world he has now lost all tidings of another and higher. "Doubt," says he, "had darkened into unbelief." It is all a grim desert, this once fair world of his; and no pillar of cloud by day, and no pillar of fire by night, any longer guides the pilgrim. "Invisible yet impenetrable walls, as of enchantment, divided me from all living; was there, in the wide world, any true bosom I could press trustfully to mine? O Heaven, no, there was none! To me the universe was all void of life, of purpose, of volition, even of hostility; it was one huge, dead, immeasurable steam-engine, rolling on, in its dead indifference, to grind me limb from limb. O, the vast, gloomy, solitary Golgotha, and mill of death!

"Full of such humour, and perhaps the miserablest man in the whole French capital or suburbs, was I, one sultry dog-day, after much perambulation, toiling along the dirty little Rue Saint Thomas de l'Enfer, among civic rubbish enough, in a close atmosphere, and over pavements hot as Nebuchadnezzar's furnace; whereby doubtless my spirits were a little cheered; when, all at once, there rose a thought in me, and I asked myself, 'What _art_ thou afraid of? Wherefore, like a coward, dost thou forever pip and whimper, and go cowering and trembling? Despicable biped! what is the sum-total of the worst that lies before thee? Death? Well, death; and say the pangs of Tophet too, and all that the devil and man may, will, or can do against thee! Hast thou not a heart; canst thou not suffer whatever it be; and, as a child of freedom, though outcast, trample Tophet itself under thy feet, while it consumes thee? Let it come, then; I will meet it and defy it!' And, as I so thought, there rushed like a stream of fire over my whole soul; and I shook base fear away from me for ever. Ever from that time, the temper of my misery was changed; not fear or whining sorrow was it, but indignation and grim fire-eyed defiance.

"Thus had the _Everlasting No_ pealed authoritatively through all the recesses of my being, of my _Me_; and then was it that my whole _Me_ stood up, in native God-created majesty, and with emphasis recorded its protest. The Everlasting No had said, 'Behold, thou art fatherless, outcast, and the universe is mine, the devil's'; to which my whole _Me_ now made answer, 'I am not thine, but free, and for ever hate thee!'

"It is from this hour that I incline to date my spiritual new-birth, or Baphometic Fire-baptism; perhaps I directly thereupon began to be a man."

Our wanderer's unrest was for a time but increased. "Indignation and defiance are not the most peaceable inmates," yet it was no longer a quite hopeless unrest. He looked away from his own sorrows, over the many-coloured world, and few periods of his life were richer in spiritual culture than this. He had reached the Centre of Indifference wherein he had accepted his own nothingness. "I renounced utterly, I would hope no more and fear no more. To die or to live was to me alike insignificant. Here, then, as I lay in that Centre of Indifference, cast by benignant upper influence into a healing sleep, the heavy dreams rolled gradually away, and I awoke to a new heaven and a new earth. I saw that man can do without happiness and instead thereof find blessedness. Love not pleasure; love God. This is the _Everlasting Yea_, wherein all contradiction is solved; wherein whoso walks and works, it is well with him. In this poor, miserable, hampered, despicable Actual, wherein thou even now standest, here or nowhere is thy Ideal; work it out therefrom; and working, believe, live, be free! Produce! produce! Work while it is called to-day."

_III.--The Volume on Clothes_

In so capricious a work as this of the professor's, our course cannot be straightforward, but only leap by leap, noting significant indications here and there. Thus, "perhaps the most remarkable incident in modern history," he says, "is George Fox's making to himself a suit of leather, when, desiring meditation and devout prayer to God, he took to the woods, chose the hollow of a tree for his lodging and wild berries for his food, and for clothes stitched himself one perennial suit of leather. Then was there in broad Europe one free man, and Fox was he!"

Under the title "Church-Clothes," by which Teufelsdröckh signifies the forms, the vestures, under which men have at various periods embodied and represented for themselves the religious principle, he says, "These are unspeakably the most important of all the vestures and garnitures of human existence. Church-clothes are first spun and woven by society; outward religion originates by society; society becomes possible by religion."

Of "symbols," as means of concealment and yet of revelation, thus uniting in themselves the efficacies at once of speech and of silence, our professor writes, "In the symbol proper there is ever, more or less distinctly and directly, some embodiment and revelation of the Infinite; the Infinite is made to blend itself with the finite; to stand visible, and, as it were, attainable there. Of this sort are all true works of art; in them, if thou know a work of art from a daub of artifice, wilt thou discern eternity looking through time; the God-like rendered visible. But nobler than all in this kind are the lives of heroic God-inspired men, for what other work of art is so divine?" And again, "Of this be certain, wouldst thou plant for eternity, then plant into the deep infinite faculties of man, his fantasy and heart; wouldst thou plant for year and day, then plant into his shallow superficial faculties, his self-love and arithmetical understanding."

As for Helotage, or that lot of the poor wherein no ray of heavenly nor even of earthly knowledge visits him, Teufelsdröckh says, "That there should one man die ignorant who had capacity for knowledge, this I call a tragedy, were it to happen more than twenty times in the minute."

In another place, our professor meditates upon the awful procession of mankind. "Like a God-created, fire-breathing spirit-host, we emerge from the inane; haste stormfully across the astonished earth; then plunge again into the inane. But whence?--O Heaven, whither? Sense knows not; Faith knows not; only that it is through mystery to mystery, from God and to God.

"We are such stuff
As dreams are made of, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep!"

MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO

Concerning Friendship

The dialogue "Concerning Friendship" was composed immediately
after the assassination of Julius Cæsar, and was suggested by the
conduct of certain friends of the mighty dead, who were trying,
in the name of friendship, to inflame the populace against the
cause of the conspirators. (Cicero biography, see Vol. IX, p.
155, and also p. 274 of the present volume.)

_A Dialogue_

FANNIUS: I agree with you, Lælius; never was man better known for justice or for glory than Scipio Africanus. That is why everyone in Rome is looking to you; everyone is asking me, and Scævola here, how the wise Lælius is bearing the loss of his dead friend. For they call you wise, you know, in the same sense as the oracle called Socrates wise, because you believe that your happiness depends on yourself alone, and that virtue can fortify the soul against every calamity. May we know, then, how you bear your sorrow?

SCÆVOLA: He says truly; many have asked me the same question. I tell them that you are composed and patient, though deeply touched by the death of your dearest friend, and one of the greatest of men.

LÆLIUS: You have answered well. True it is that I sorrow for a friend whose like I shall never see again; but it is also true that I need no consolations, since I believe that no evil has befallen Scipio. Whatever misfortune there is, is my misfortune, and any immoderate distress would show self-love, not love for him. What a man he was! Well, he is in heaven; and I sometimes hope that the friendship of Scipio and Lælius may live in human memory.

FANNIUS: Yes--your friendship: what do you believe about friendship?

SCÆVOLA: That's what we want to know.

LÆLIUS: Who am I, to speak on such a subject all on a sudden? You should go to these Greek professionals, who can spin you a discourse on anything at a moment's notice. For my part, I can only advise this--prize friendship above all earthly things. We seem to be made for friendship; it is our great stand-by whether in weal or woe. Yet I can say this too: friendship cannot be except among the good. I don't mean a fantastical and unattainable pitch of goodness such as the philosophers prate about; I mean the genuine, commonplace goodness of flesh and blood, that actually exists. I mean such men as live in honour, justice, and liberality, and are consistent, and are neither covetous nor licentious, nor brazen-faced; such men are good enough for us, because they follow Nature as far as they can.

Friendship consists of a perfect conformity of opinion upon all subjects, divine and human, together with a feeling of kindness and attachment. And though some prefer riches, health, power, honours, or even pleasure, no greater boon than friendship, with the single exception of wisdom, has been given by the gods to man. It is quite true that our highest good depends on virtue; but virtue inevitably begets and nourishes friendship. What a part, for instance, friendship has played in the lives of the good men we have known--the Catos, the Galli, the Scipios, and the like!

How manifold, again, are its benefits! What greater delight is there than to have one with whom you may talk as if with yourself? One who will joy in your good fortune, and bear the heaviest end of your burdens! Other things are good for particular purposes, friendship for all; neither water nor fire has so many uses. But in one respect friendship transcends everything else: it throws a brilliant gleam of hope over the future, and banishes despondency. Whoever has a true friend sees in him a reflection of himself; and each is strong in the strength and rich in the wealth of the other.

If you consider that the principle of harmony and benevolence is necessary to the very existence of families and states, you will understand how high a thing is friendship, in which that harmony and benevolence reach their perfect flower. There was a philosopher of Agrigentum who explained the properties of matter and the movements of bodies in terms of affection and repulsion; and however that may be, everyone knows that these are the real forces in human life. Who does not applaud the friendship that shares in mortal dangers, whether in real life or in the play?

SCÆVOLA: You speak highly of friendship. What are its principles and duties?

LÆLIUS: Do we desire a friend because of our own weakness and deficiency, in order that we may obtain from him what we lack ourselves, repaying him by reciprocal service? Or is all that only an incident of friendship, and does the bond derive from a remoter and more beautiful origin, in the heart of Nature herself? For my part, I take the latter view. Friendship is a natural emotion, and not an arrangement of convenience. Its character may be recognised even in the lower animals, and much more plainly in the love of human parents for their children, and, most of all, in our affection for a congenial friend, whom we see in an atmosphere of virtue and worth.

The other is not an ignoble theory, but it leaves us in the difficulty that if it were true, the weakest, meanest, and poorest of humanity would be the most inclined to friendship. But it is the strong, rich, independent, and self-reliant man, deeply founded in wisdom and dignity, who makes great friendships. What did Africanus need of me, or I of him? Advantages followed, but they did not lead. But there are people who will always be referring everything to the one principle of self-advantage; they have no eyes for anything great and god-like. Let us leave such theorists alone; the plain fact is, that whenever worth is seen, love for it is enkindled. Associations founded upon interest presently dissolve, because interest changes; but Nature never changes, and therefore true friendships are imperishable.

Scipio used to say that it was exceedingly difficult to carry on a friendship to the end of life, because the paths of interest so often diverge. There may be competition for office, or a dishonorable request may be refused, or some other accident may be fatal to the bond. This refusal to join in a nefarious course of action is often the end of a friendship, and it is worth inquiring how far the claims of affection ought to extend. Tiberius Gracchus, when he troubled the state, was deserted by almost all his friends; one of them who had assisted him told me that he had such high regard for Gracchus that he could refuse him nothing. "But what," said I, "if he had asked you to set fire to the capitol?" "I would have done it!"

What an infamous confession! No degree of friendship can justify a crime; and since virtue is the foundation of friendship, crime must inevitably undermine it. Let this, then, be the rule of friendship--never to make disgraceful requests, and never to grant them when they are made.

Among the perverse, over-subtle ideas of certain Greek philosophers is the maxim that we should be very cool in the matter of friendship. They say that we have enough to do with our own affairs, without taking on other people's affairs too; and that our minds cannot be serenely at leisure if we are liable to be tortured by the sorrows of a friend. They advise, also, that friendships should be sought for the sake of protection, and not for the sake of kindliness. O noble philosophy! They put out the sun in the heavens, and offer us instead a freedom from care that is worse than worthless. Virtue has not a heart of stone, but is gentle and compassionate, rejoicing with the joyful and weeping with those who mourn. True virtue is never unsocial, never haughty.

With regard to the limits of friendship, I have heard three several maxims, but disapprove them all. First, that we ought to feel towards our friend exactly as we feel towards ourselves. That would never do; for we do many things for our friends that we should never think of doing for ourselves. We ask favours and reprehend injuries for a friend, where we would not solicit for, or defend, ourselves. Secondly, that our kindness to a friend should be meted out in precise equipoise to his kindness to us. This is too miserable a theory: friendship is opulent and generous. The third is, that we should take our friend's own estimate of himself, and act upon it. This is the worst principle of the three; for if our friend is over-humble, diffident or despondent, it is the very business of friendship to cheer him and urge him on. But Scipio used to condemn yet another principle that is worse still. Some one--he thought it must have been a bad man--once said that we ought to remember in friendship that some day the friend might be an enemy. How, in that state of mind, could one be a friend at all?

A sound principle, I think, is this. In the friendship of upright men there ought to be an unrestricted communication of every interest, every purpose, every inclination. Then, in any matter of importance to the life or reputation of your friend, you may deviate a little from the strictest line of conduct so long as you do not do anything that is actually infamous. Then, with regard to the choice of friends, Scipio used to say that men were more careful about their sheep and goats than about their friends. Choose men of constancy, solidity, and firmness; and until their trustworthiness has been tested, be moderate in your affection and confidence. Seek first of all for sincerity. Your friend should also have an open, genial, and sociable temper, and his sympathies should be the same as yours. He must not be ready to believe accusations. Lastly, his talk and manner should be debonair; we don't want austerities and solemnities in friendship.

I have heard it suggested that we ought perhaps to prefer new friends to old, as we prefer a young horse to an old one. Satiety should have no place in friendship. Old wines are the best, and so are the friends of many years. Do not despise the acquaintance that promises to ripen into something better; but do not sacrifice for it the deeply rooted intimacy. Even inanimate things take hold of our hearts by long custom; we love the mountains and forests of our youth.

There is often a great disparity in respect of rank or talent between intimate friends. Whenever that is so, let the superior place himself on the level of the inferior; let him share all his advantages with his friend. The best way to reap the full harvest of genius, or of merit, or of any other excellence, is to encourage all one's kindred and associates to enjoy it too. But if the superior ought to condescend to the inferior, so the inferior ought to be free from envy. And let him not make a fuss about such services as he has been able to render.

To pass from the noble friendships of the wise to more commonplace intimacies, we cannot leave out of account the necessity that sometimes arises of breaking off a friendship. A man falls into scandalous courses, his disgrace is reflected on his companions, and their relation must come to an end. Well, the end had best come gradually and gently, unless the offence is so detestable that an abrupt and final cutting of the acquaintance is absolutely inevitable. Disengage, if possible, rather than cut. And let the matter end with estrangement; let it not proceed to active animosity and hostility. It is very unbecoming to engage in public war with a man who has been known as one's friend. On two separate occasions Scipio thought it right to withdraw his confidence from certain friends. In each case he kept his dignity and self-command; he was grieved, but never bitter. Of course, the best way to guard against such unfortunate occurrences is to take the greatest care in forming friendships. All excellence is rare, and that moral excellence which makes fit objects for friendship is as rare as any.

On the other hand, it would be unreasonable and presumptuous in anyone to expect to find a friend of a quality to which he himself can never hope to attain, or to demand from his friend an indulgence which he is not prepared himself to offer. Friendship was given us to be an incentive to virtue, and not as an indulgence to vice or to mediocrity; in order that, since a solitary virtue cannot scale the peaks, it may do so with the loyal help of a comrade. A comradeship of this kind includes within it all that men most desire.

Think nobly of friendship, and conduct yourselves wisely in it, for in one way or another it enters into the life of every man. Even Timon of Athens, whose one impulse was a brutal misanthropy, must needs seek a confidant into whose mind he may instil his detestable venom. I have heard, and I agree with it, that though a man should contemplate from the heavens the universal beauty of creation, he would soon weary of it without a companion for his admiration.

Of course, there are rubs in friendship which a sensible man will learn to avoid, or to ignore, or to bear them cheerfully. Admonitions and reproofs must have their part in true amity, and it is as difficult to utter them tactfully as it is to receive them in good part. Complaisance seems more propitious to friendship than are these naked truths. But though truth may be painful, complaisance is more likely in the long run to prove disastrous. It is no kindness to allow a friend to rush headlong to ruin. Let your remonstrances be free from bitterness and from insult; let your complaisance be affable, but never servile. As for adulation, there are no words bad enough for it. Even the populace have only contempt for the politician who flatters them. Despise the insinuations of the sycophant, for what is more shameful than to be made a fool of?

I tell you, sirs, that it is virtue that lasts; that begets real friendships and maintains them. Lay, therefore, while you are young, the foundations of a virtuous life.

WILLIAM COBBETT

Advice to Young Men

William Cobbett, the celebrated English political writer, was
born in March, 1762, at Farnham in Surrey. He took a dislike to
rural occupations, and at an early age went to London, where
he was employed for a few months as a copying clerk. This work
was distasteful to him, and he enlisted in the army, and went
with his regiment to Nova Scotia. On returning to England in
1791, he obtained his discharge, married, and went to America.
In Philadelphia he commenced his career as a political writer.
Cobbett's "Advice to Young Men" was published in 1830. It has
always been the most popular of his books, partly because of
its subject, and partly because it illustrates so well the bold
and forceful directness of his style. An intensely egotistical
and confident man, Cobbett believed that his own strangely
inconsistent life was a model for all men. Yet, contrary to what
might have been expected, he was a delightful man in the domestic
circle, and the story of his marriage--which has been narrated
in his "Rural Rides"--is one of the romances of literary life.
The original introduction to the "Advice" contained personal
reference incredible in anyone except Cobbett. Said he, "Few will
be disposed to question my fitness for the task. If such a man be
not qualified to give advice, no man is qualified." And he went
on to claim for himself "genius and something more." He certainly
had a remarkable fund of commonsense, except when his subject was
himself. Cobbett died June 18, 1835.

_I.--To a Youth_

You are arrived, let us suppose, at the age of from fourteen to nearly twenty, and I here offer you my advice towards making you a happy man, useful to all about you, and an honour to those from whom you sprang. Start, I beseech you, with a conviction firmly fixed in your mind that you have no right to live in this world without doing work of some sort or other. To wish to live on the labour of others is to contemplate a fraud.

Happiness ought to be your great object, and it is to be found only in independence. Turn your back on what is called interest. Write it on your heart that you will depend solely on your own merit and your own exertions, for that which a man owes to favour or to partiality, that same favour or partiality is constantly liable to take from him.

The great source of independence the French express in three words, "_Vivre de peu_." "To live upon little" is the great security against slavery; and this precept extends to dress and other things besides food and drink. Extravagance in dress arises from the notion that all the people in the street will be looking at you as you walk out; but all the sensible people that happen to see you will think nothing at all about you. Natural beauty of person always will and must have some weight, even with men, and great weight with women; but this does not want to be set off by expensive clothes.

A love of what is called "good eating and drinking," if very unamiable in a grown-up person, is perfectly hateful in a youth. I have never known such a man worthy of respect.

Next, as to amusements. Dancing is at once rational and healthful; it is the natural amusement of young people, and none but the most grovelling and hateful tyranny, or the most stupid and despicable fanaticism, ever raised its voice against it. As to gaming, it is always criminal, either in itself or in its tendency. The basis of it is covetousness; a desire to take from others something for which you have given, and intend to give, no equivalent.

Be careful in choosing your companions; and lay down as a rule never to be departed from that no youth or man ought to be called your friend who is addicted to indecent talk.

In your manners be neither boorish nor blunt, but even these are preferable to simpering and crawling. Be obedient where obedience is due; for it is no act of meanness to yield implicit and ready obedience to those who have a right to demand it at your hands. None are so saucy and disobedient as slaves; and, when you come to read history, you will find that in proportion as nations have been free has been their reverence for the laws.

Let me now turn to the things which you ought to do. And, first of all, the husbanding of your time. Young people require more sleep than those that are grown up, and the number of hours cannot well be, on an average, less than eight. An hour in bed is better than an hours spent over the fire in an idle gossip.

Money is said to be power; but superior sobriety, industry, and activity are still a more certain source of power. Booklearning is not only proper, but highly commendable; and portions of it are absolutely necessary in every case of trade or profession. One of these portions is distinct reading, plain and neat writing, and arithmetic. The next thing is the grammar of your own language, for grammar is the foundation of all literature. Excellence in your own calling is the first thing to be aimed at. After this may come general knowledge. Geography naturally follows grammar; and you should begin with that of this kingdom. When you come to history, begin also with that of your own country; and here it is my bounded duty to put you well on your guard. The works of our historians are, as far as they relate to former times, masses of lies unmatched by any others that the world has ever seen.

_II.--To a Young Man_

To be poor and independent is very nearly an impossibility; though poverty is, except where there is an actual want of food and raiment, a thing much more imaginary than real. Resolve to set this false shame of being poor at defiance. Nevertheless, men ought to take care of their names, ought to use them prudently and sparingly, and to keep their expenses always within the bounds of their income, be it what it may.

One of the effectual means of doing this is to purchase with ready money. Innumerable things are not bought at all with ready money which would be bought in case of trust; it is so much easier to order a thing than to pay for it. I believe that, generally speaking, you pay for the same article a fourth part more in the case of trust than you do in the case of ready money. The purchasing with ready money really means that you have more money to purchase with.

A great evil arising from the desire not to be thought poor is the destructive thing honoured by the name of "speculation," but which ought to be called gambling. It is a purchasing of something to be sold again with a great profit at a considerable hazard. Your life, while you are thus engaged, is the life of a gamester: a life of general gloom, enlivened now and then by a gleam of hope or of success.

In all situations of life avoid the trammels of the law. If you win your suit and are poorer than you were before, what do you accomplish? Better to put up with the loss of one pound than with two, with all the loss of time and all the mortification and anxiety attending a law suit.

Unless your business or your profession be duly attended to there can be no real pleasure in any other employment of a portion of your time. Men, however, must have some leisure, some relaxation from business; and in the choice of this relaxation much of your happiness will depend.

Where fields and gardens are at hand, they present the most rational scenes for leisure. Nothing can be more stupid than sitting, sotting over a pot and a glass, sending out smoke from the head, and articulating, at intervals, nonsense about all sorts of things.

Another mode of spending the leisure time is that of books. To come at the true history of a country you must read its laws; you must read books treating of its usages and customs in former times; and you must particularly inform yourselves as to prices of labour and of food. But there is one thing always to be guarded against, and that is not to admire and applaud anything you read merely because it is the fashion to admire and applaud it. Read, consider well what you read, form your own judgments, and stand by that judgment until fact or argument be offered to convince you of your error.

_III.--To a Lover_

There are two descriptions of lovers on whom all advice would be wasted, namely, those in whose minds passion so wholly overpowers reason as to deprive the party of his sober senses, and those who love according to the rules of arithmetic, or measure their matrimonial expectations by the claim of the land-surveyor.

I address myself to the reader whom I suppose to be a real lover, but not so smitten as to be bereft of reason. You should never forget that marriage is a thing to last for life, and that, generally speaking, it is to make life happy or miserable.

The things which you ought to desire in a wife are chastity, sobriety, industry, frugality, cleanliness, knowledge of domestic affairs, good temper and beauty.

Chastity, perfect modesty, in word, deed, and even thought, is so essential that without it no female is fit to be a wife. If prudery mean false modesty, it is to be despised; but if it mean modesty pushed to the utmost extent, I confess that I like it. The very elements of jealousy ought to be avoided, and the only safeguard is to begin well and so render infidelity and jealousy next to impossible.

By sobriety I mean sobriety of conduct. When girls arrive at that age which turns their thoughts towards the command of a house it is time for them to cast away the levity of a child. Sobriety is a title to trustworthiness, and that is a treasure to prize above all others. But in order to possess this precious trustworthiness you must exercise your reason in the choice of a partner. If she be vain, fond of flattery, given to gadding about, coquettish, she will never be trustworthy, and you will be unjust if you expect it at her hands. But if you find in her that innate sobriety of which I have been speaking, there requires on your part confidence and trust without any limit.

An ardent-minded young man may fear that sobriety of conduct in a young woman argues a want of warmth; but my observation and experience tell me that levity, not sobriety, is, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the companion of a want of ardent feeling.

There is no state in life in which industry in the wife is not necessary to the happiness and prosperity of the family. If she be lazy there will always be a heavy arrear of things unperformed, and this, even among the wealthy, is a great curse. But who is to tell whether a girl will make an industrious woman? There are certain outward signs, which, if attended to with care, will serve as pretty sure guides.

If you find the tongue lazy you may be nearly certain that the hands and feet are the same. The pronunciation of an industrious person is generally quick, distinct, and firm. Another mark of industry is a quick step and a tread showing that the foot comes down with a hearty good will.

Early rising is another mark of industry. It is, I should imagine, pretty difficult to keep love alive towards a woman who never sees the dew, never beholds the rising sun.

Frugality. This means the contrary of extravagance. It does not mean stinginess; it means an abstaining from all unnecessary expenditure. The outward and vulgar signs of extravagance are all the hardware which women put upon their persons. The girl who has not the sense to perceive that her person is disfigured, and not beautified by parcels of brass, tin, and other hardware stuck about her body, is too great a fool to be trusted with the purse of any man.

Cleanliness is a capital ingredient. Occasional cleanliness is not the thing that an English or American husband wants; he wants it always. A sloven in one thing is a sloven in all things. Make up your mind to a rope rather than to live with a slip-shod wife.

Knowledge of domestic affairs is so necessary in every wife that the lover ought to have it continually in his eye. A wife must not only know how things ought to be done, but how to do them. I cannot form an idea of a more unfortunate being than a girl with a mere boarding-school education and without a future to enable her to keep a servant when married. Of what use are her accomplishments?

Good temper is a very difficult thing to ascertain beforehand--smiles are so cheap. By "good temper" I do not mean easy temper--a serenity which nothing disturbs is a mark of laziness. Sulkiness, querulousness, cold indifference, pertinacity in having the last word, are bad things in a young woman, but of all the faults of temper your melancholy ladies are the worst. Most wives are at times misery-makers, but the melancholy carry it on as a regular trade.

The great use of female beauty is that it naturally tends to keep the husband in good humour with himself, to make him pleased with his bargain.

As to constancy in lovers, even when marriage has been promised, and that, too, in the most solemn manner, it is better for both parties to break off than to be coupled together with the reluctant assent of either.

_IV.--To a Husband_

It is as a husband that your conduct will have the greatest effect on your happiness. All in a wife, beyond her own natural disposition and education, is, nine times out of ten, the work of her husband.

First convince her of the necessity of moderation in expense; make her clearly see the justice of beginning to act upon the presumption that there are children coming. The great danger of all is beginning with a servant. The wife is young, and why is she not to work as well as her husband? If the wife be not able to do all the work to be done in the house, she ought not to have been able to marry.