Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia
“He that hath much to do will do something wrong, and of that wrong must
suffer the consequences, and if it were possible that he should always
act rightly, yet, when such numbers are to judge of his conduct, the bad
will censure and obstruct him by malevolence and the good sometimes by
mistake.
“The highest stations cannot therefore hope to be the abodes of
happiness, which I would willingly believe to have fled from thrones and
palaces to seats of humble privacy and placid obscurity. For what can
hinder the satisfaction or intercept the expectations of him whose
abilities are adequate to his employments, who sees with his own eyes the
whole circuit of his influence, who chooses by his own knowledge all whom
he trusts, and whom none are tempted to deceive by hope or fear? Surely
he has nothing to do but to love and to be loved; to be virtuous and to
be happy.”
“Whether perfect happiness would be procured by perfect goodness,” said
Nekayah, “this world will never afford an opportunity of deciding. But
this, at least, may be maintained, that we do not always find visible
happiness in proportion to visible virtue. All natural and almost all
political evils are incident alike to the bad and good; they are
confounded in the misery of a famine, and not much distinguished in the
fury of a faction; they sink together in a tempest and are driven
together from their country by invaders. All that virtue can afford is
quietness of conscience and a steady prospect of a happier state; this
may enable us to endure calamity with patience, but remember that
patience must oppose pain.”
CHAPTER XXVIII
RASSELAS AND NEKAYAH CONTINUE THEIR CONVERSATION.
“DEAR Princess,” said Rasselas, “you fall into the common errors of
exaggeratory declamation, by producing in a familiar disquisition
examples of national calamities and scenes of extensive misery which are
found in books rather than in the world, and which, as they are horrid,
are ordained to be rare. Let us not imagine evils which we do not feel,
nor injure life by misrepresentations. I cannot bear that querulous
eloquence which threatens every city with a siege like that of Jerusalem,
that makes famine attend on every flight of locust, and suspends
pestilence on the wing of every blast that issues from the south.
“On necessary and inevitable evils which overwhelm kingdoms at once all
disputation is vain; when they happen they must be endured. But it is
evident that these bursts of universal distress are more dreaded than
felt; thousands and tens of thousands flourish in youth and wither in
age, without the knowledge of any other than domestic evils, and share
the same pleasures and vexations, whether their kings are mild or cruel,
whether the armies of their country pursue their enemies or retreat
before them. While Courts are disturbed with intestine competitions and
ambassadors are negotiating in foreign countries, the smith still plies
his anvil and the husbandman drives his plough forward; the necessaries
of life are required and obtained, and the successive business of the
season continues to make its wonted revolutions.
“Let us cease to consider what perhaps may never happen, and what, when
it shall happen, will laugh at human speculation. We will not endeavour
to modify the motions of the elements or to fix the destiny of kingdoms.
It is our business to consider what beings like us may perform, each
labouring for his own happiness by promoting within his circle, however
narrow, the happiness of others.
“Marriage is evidently the dictate of Nature; men and women were made to
be the companions of each other, and therefore I cannot be persuaded but
that marriage is one of the means of happiness.”
“I know not,” said the Princess, “whether marriage be more than one of
the innumerable modes of human misery. When I see and reckon the various
forms of connubial infelicity, the unexpected causes of lasting discord,
the diversities of temper, the oppositions of opinion, the rude
collisions of contrary desire where both are urged by violent impulses,
the obstinate contest of disagreeing virtues where both are supported by
consciousness of good intention, I am sometimes disposed to think, with
the severer casuists of most nations, that marriage is rather permitted
than approved, and that none, but by the instigation of a passion too
much indulged, entangle themselves with indissoluble compact.”
“You seem to forget,” replied Rasselas, “that you have, even now
represented celibacy as less happy than marriage. Both conditions may be
bad, but they cannot both be worse. Thus it happens, when wrong opinions
are entertained, that they mutually destroy each other and leave the mind
open to truth.”
“I did not expect,” answered, the Princess, “to hear that imputed to
falsehood which is the consequence only of frailty. To the mind, as to
the eye, it is difficult to compare with exactness objects vast in their
extent and various in their parts. When we see or conceive the whole at
once, we readily note the discriminations and decide the preference, but
of two systems, of which neither can be surveyed by any human being in
its full compass of magnitude and multiplicity of complication, where is
the wonder that, judging of the whole by parts, I am alternately affected
by one and the other as either presses on my memory or fancy? We differ
from ourselves just as we differ from each other when we see only part of
the question, as in the multifarious relations of politics and morality,
but when we perceive the whole at once, as in numerical computations, all
agree in one judgment, and none ever varies in his opinion.”
“Let us not add,” said the Prince, “to the other evils of life the
bitterness of controversy, nor endeavour to vie with each other in
subtilties of argument. We are employed in a search of which both are
equally to enjoy the success or suffer by the miscarriage; it is
therefore fit that we assist each other. You surely conclude too hastily
from the infelicity of marriage against its institution; will not the
misery of life prove equally that life cannot be the gift of Heaven? The
world must be peopled by marriage or peopled without it.”
“How the world is to be peopled,” returned Nekayah, “is not my care and
need not be yours. I see no danger that the present generation should
omit to leave successors behind them; we are not now inquiring for the
world, but for ourselves.”
CHAPTER XXIX
THE DEBATE ON MARRIAGE (_continued_).
“THE good of the whole,” says Rasselas, “is the same with the good of all
its parts. If marriage be best for mankind, it must be evidently best
for individuals; or a permanent and necessary duty must be the cause of
evil, and some must be inevitably sacrificed to the convenience of
others. In the estimate which you have made of the two states, it
appears that the incommodities of a single life are in a great measure
necessary and certain, but those of the conjugal state accidental and
avoidable. I cannot forbear to flatter myself that prudence and
benevolence will make marriage happy. The general folly of mankind is
the cause of general complaint. What can be expected but disappointment
and repentance from a choice made in the immaturity of youth, in the
ardour of desire, without judgment, without foresight, without inquiry
after conformity of opinions, similarity of manners, rectitude of
judgment, or purity of sentiment?
“Such is the common process of marriage. A youth and maiden, meeting by
chance or brought together by artifice, exchange glances, reciprocate
civilities, go home and dream of one another. Having little to divert
attention or diversify thought, they find themselves uneasy when they are
apart, and therefore conclude that they shall be happy together. They
marry, and discover what nothing but voluntary blindness before had
concealed; they wear out life in altercations, and charge Nature with
cruelty.
“From those early marriages proceeds likewise the rivalry of parents and
children: the son is eager to enjoy the world before the father is
willing to forsake it, and there is hardly room at once for two
generations. The daughter begins to bloom before the mother can be
content to fade, and neither can forbear to wish for the absence of the
other.
“Surely all these evils may be avoided by that deliberation and delay
which prudence prescribes to irrevocable choice. In the variety and
jollity of youthful pleasures, life may be well enough supported without
the help of a partner. Longer time will increase experience, and wider
views will allow better opportunities of inquiry and selection; one
advantage at least will be certain, the parents will be visibly older
than their children.”
“What reason cannot collect,” said Nekayah, “and what experiment has not
yet taught, can be known only from the report of others. I have been
told that late marriages are not eminently happy. This is a question too
important to be neglected; and I have often proposed it to those whose
accuracy of remark and comprehensiveness of knowledge made their
suffrages worthy of regard. They have generally determined that it is
dangerous for a man and woman to suspend their fate upon each other at a
time when opinions are fixed and habits are established, when friendships
have been contracted on both sides, when life has been planned into
method, and the mind has long enjoyed the contemplation of its own
prospects.
“It is scarcely possible that two travelling through the world under the
conduct of chance should have been both directed to the same path, and it
will not often happen that either will quit the track which custom has
made pleasing. When the desultory levity of youth has settled into
regularity, it is soon succeeded by pride ashamed to yield, or obstinacy
delighting to contend. And even though mutual esteem produces mutual
desire to please, time itself, as it modifies unchangeably the external
mien, determines likewise the direction of the passions, and gives an
inflexible rigidity to the manners. Long customs are not easily broken;
he that attempts to change the course of his own life very often labours
in vain, and how shall we do that for others which we are seldom able to
do for ourselves?”
“But surely,” interposed the Prince, “you suppose the chief motive of
choice forgotten or neglected. Whenever I shall seek a wife, it shall be
my first question whether she be willing to be led by reason.”
“Thus it is,” said Nekayah, “that philosophers are deceived. There are a
thousand familiar disputes which reason never can decide; questions that
elude investigation, and make logic ridiculous; cases where something
must be done, and where little can be said. Consider the state of
mankind, and inquire how few can be supposed to act upon any occasions,
whether small or great, with all the reasons of action present to their
minds. Wretched would be the pair, above all names of wretchedness, who
should be doomed to adjust by reason every morning all the minute details
of a domestic day.
“Those who marry at an advanced age will probably escape the
encroachments of their children, but in the diminution of this advantage
they will be likely to leave them, ignorant and helpless, to a guardian’s
mercy; or if that should not happen, they must at least go out of the
world before they see those whom they love best either wise or great.
“From their children, if they have less to fear, they have less also to
hope; and they lose without equivalent the joys of early love, and the
convenience of uniting with manners pliant and minds susceptible of new
impressions, which might wear away their dissimilitudes by long
cohabitation, as soft bodies by continual attrition conform their