Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia
The sage endeavoured to amuse them, that they might prolong their visits,
for he found his thoughts grow brighter in their company; the clouds of
solitude vanished by degrees as he forced himself to entertain them, and
he grieved when he was left, at their departure, to his old employment of
regulating the seasons.
The Princess and her favourite had now watched his lips for several
months, and could not catch a single word from which they could judge
whether he continued or not in the opinion of his preternatural
commission. They often contrived to bring him to an open declaration;
but he easily eluded all their attacks, and, on which side soever they
pressed him, escaped from them to some other topic.
As their familiarity increased, they invited him often to the house of
Imlac, where they distinguished him by extraordinary respect. He began
gradually to delight in sublunary pleasures. He came early and departed
late; laboured to recommend himself by assiduity and compliance; excited
their curiosity after new arts, that they might still want his
assistance; and when they made any excursion of pleasure or inquiry,
entreated to attend them.
By long experience of his integrity and wisdom, the Prince and his sister
were convinced that he might be trusted without danger; and lest he
should draw any false hopes from the civilities which he received,
discovered to him their condition, with the motives of their journey, and
required his opinion on the choice of life.
“Of the various conditions which the world spreads before you which you
shall prefer,” said the sage, “I am not able to instruct you. I can only
tell that I have chosen wrong. I have passed my time in study without
experience—in the attainment of sciences which can for the most part be
but remotely useful to mankind. I have purchased knowledge at the
expense of all the common comforts of life; I have missed the endearing
elegance of female friendship, and the happy commerce of domestic
tenderness. If I have obtained any prerogatives above other students,
they have been accompanied with fear, disquiet, and scrupulosity; but
even of these prerogatives, whatever they were, I have, since my thoughts
have been diversified by more intercourse with the world, begun to
question the reality. When I have been for a few days lost in pleasing
dissipation, I am always tempted to think that my inquiries have ended in
error, and that I have suffered much, and suffered it in vain.”
Imlac was delighted to find that the sage’s understanding was breaking
through its mists, and resolved to detain him from the planets till he
should forget his task of ruling them, and reason should recover its
original influence.
From this time the astronomer was received into familiar friendship, and
partook of all their projects and pleasures; his respect kept him
attentive, and the activity of Rasselas did not leave much time
unengaged. Something was always to be done; the day was spent in making
observations, which furnished talk for the evening, and the evening was
closed with a scheme for the morrow.
The sage confessed to Imlac that since he had mingled in the gay tumults
of life, and divided his hours by a succession of amusements, he found
the conviction of his authority over the skies fade gradually from his
mind, and began to trust less to an opinion which he never could prove to
others, and which he now found subject to variation, from causes in which
reason had no part. “If I am accidentally left alone for a few hours,”
said he, “my inveterate persuasion rushes upon my soul, and my thoughts
are chained down by some irresistible violence; but they are soon
disentangled by the Prince’s conversation, and instantaneously released
at the entrance of Pekuah. I am like a man habitually afraid of
spectres, who is set at ease by a lamp, and wonders at the dread which
harassed him in the dark; yet, if his lamp be extinguished, feels again
the terrors which he knows that when it is light he shall feel no more.
But I am sometimes afraid, lest I indulge my quiet by criminal
negligence, and voluntarily forget the great charge with which I am
entrusted. If I favour myself in a known error, or am determined by my
own ease in a doubtful question of this importance, how dreadful is my
crime!”
“No disease of the imagination,” answered Imlac, “is so difficult of cure
as that which is complicated with the dread of guilt; fancy and
conscience then act interchangeably upon us, and so often shift their
places, that the illusions of one are not distinguished from the dictates
of the other. If fancy presents images not moral or religious, the mind
drives them away when they give it pain; but when melancholy notions take
the form of duty, they lay hold on the faculties without opposition,
because we are afraid to exclude or banish them. For this reason the
superstitious are often melancholy, and the melancholy almost always
superstitious.
“But do not let the suggestions of timidity overpower your better reason;
the danger of neglect can be but as the probability of the obligation,
which, when you consider it with freedom, you find very little, and that
little growing every day less. Open your heart to the influence of the
light, which from time to time breaks in upon you; when scruples
importune you, which you in your lucid moments know to be vain, do not
stand to parley, but fly to business or to Pekuah; and keep this thought
always prevalent, that you are only one atom of the mass of humanity, and
have neither such virtue nor vice as that you should be singled out for
supernatural favours or afflictions.”
CHAPTER XLVII
THE PRINCE ENTERS, AND BRINGS A NEW TOPIC.
“ALL this,” said the astronomer, “I have often thought; but my reason has
been so long subjugated by an uncontrollable and overwhelming idea, that
it durst not confide in its own decisions. I now see how fatally I
betrayed my quiet, by suffering chimeras to prey upon me in secret; but
melancholy shrinks from communication, and I never found a man before to
whom I could impart my troubles, though I had been certain of relief. I
rejoice to find my own sentiments confirmed by yours, who are not easily
deceived, and can have no motive or purpose to deceive. I hope that time
and variety will dissipate the gloom that has so long surrounded me, and
the latter part of my days will be spent in peace.”
“Your learning and virtue,” said Imlac, “may justly give you hopes.”
Rasselas then entered, with the Princess and Pekuah, and inquired whether
they had contrived any new diversion for the next day. “Such,” said
Nekayah, “is the state of life, that none are happy but by the
anticipation of change; the change itself is nothing; when we have made
it the next wish is to change again. The world is not yet exhausted: let
me see something to-morrow which I never saw before.”
“Variety,” said Rasselas, “is so necessary to content, that even the
Happy Valley disgusted me by the recurrence of its luxuries; yet I could
not forbear to reproach myself with impatience when I saw the monks of
St. Anthony support, without complaint, a life, not of uniform delight,
but uniform hardship.”
“Those men,” answered Imlac, “are less wretched in their silent convent
than the Abyssinian princes in their prison of pleasure. Whatever is
done by the monks is incited by an adequate and reasonable motive. Their
labour supplies them with necessaries; it therefore cannot be omitted,
and is certainly rewarded. Their devotion prepares them for another
state, and reminds them of its approach while it fits them for it. Their
time is regularly distributed; one duty succeeds another, so that they
are not left open to the distraction of unguided choice, nor lost in the
shades of listless inactivity. There is a certain task to be performed
at an appropriated hour, and their toils are cheerful, because they
consider them as acts of piety by which they are always advancing towards
endless felicity.”
“Do you think,” said Nekayah, “that the monastic rule is a more holy and
less imperfect state than any other? May not he equally hope for future
happiness who converses openly with mankind, who succours the distressed
by his charity, instructs the ignorant by his learning, and contributes
by his industry to the general system of life, even though he should omit
some of the mortifications which are practised in the cloister, and allow
himself such harmless delights as his condition may place within his
reach?”
“This,” said Imlac, “is a question which has long divided the wise and
perplexed the good. I am afraid to decide on either part. He that lives
well in the world is better than he that lives well in a monastery. But
perhaps everyone is not able to stem the temptations of public life, and
if he cannot conquer he may properly retreat. Some have little power to
do good, and have likewise little strength to resist evil. Many are
weary of the conflicts with adversity, and are willing to eject those
passions which have long busied them in vain. And many are dismissed by
age and diseases from the more laborious duties of society. In
monasteries the weak and timorous may be happily sheltered, the weary may
repose, and the penitent may meditate. Those retreats of prayer and
contemplation have something so congenial to the mind of man, that
perhaps there is scarcely one that does not purpose to close his life in
pious abstraction, with a few associates serious as himself.”
“Such,” said Pekuah, “has often been my wish, and I have heard the
Princess declare that she should not willingly die in a crowd.”
“The liberty of using harmless pleasures,” proceeded Imlac, “will not be
disputed, but it is still to be examined what pleasures are harmless.
The evil of any pleasure that Nekayah can image is not in the act itself
but in its consequences. Pleasure in itself harmless may become
mischievous by endearing to us a state which we know to be transient and
probatory, and withdrawing our thoughts from that of which every hour
brings us nearer to the beginning, and of which no length of time will
bring us to the end. Mortification is not virtuous in itself, nor has
any other use but that it disengages us from the allurements of sense.
In the state of future perfection to which we all aspire there will be
pleasure without danger and security without restraint.”
The Princess was silent, and Rasselas, turning to the astronomer, asked
him whether he could not delay her retreat by showing her something which
she had not seen before.
“Your curiosity,” said the sage, “has been so general, and your pursuit
of knowledge so vigorous, that novelties are not now very easily to be
found; but what you can no longer procure from the living may be given by
the dead. Among the wonders of this country are the catacombs, or the
ancient repositories in which the bodies of the earliest generations were
lodged, and where, by the virtue of the gums which embalmed them, they
yet remain without corruption.”
“I know not,” said Rasselas, “what pleasure the sight of the catacombs
can afford; but, since nothing else is offered, I am resolved to view
them, and shall place this with my other things which I have done because
I would do something.”
They hired a guard of horsemen, and the next day visited the catacombs.
When they were about to descend into the sepulchral caves, “Pekuah,” said
the Princess, “we are now again invading the habitations of the dead; I
know that you will stay behind. Let me find you safe when I return.”
“No, I will not be left,” answered Pekuah, “I will go down between you
and the Prince.”
They then all descended, and roved with wonder through the labyrinth of