Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia
in gardens of fragrance, and slept in the fortresses of security. Every
art was practised to make them pleased with their own condition. The
sages who instructed them told them of nothing but the miseries of public
life, and described all beyond the mountains as regions of calamity,
where discord was always racing, and where man preyed upon man. To
heighten their opinion of their own felicity, they were daily entertained
with songs, the subject of which was the Happy Valley. Their appetites
were excited by frequent enumerations of different enjoyments, and
revelry and merriment were the business of every hour, from the dawn of
morning to the close of the evening.
These methods were generally successful; few of the princes had ever
wished to enlarge their bounds, but passed their lives in full conviction
that they had all within their reach that art or nature could bestow, and
pitied those whom nature had excluded from this seat of tranquillity as
the sport of chance and the slaves of misery.
Thus they rose in the morning and lay down at night, pleased with each
other and with themselves, all but Rasselas, who, in the twenty-sixth
year of his age, began to withdraw himself from the pastimes and
assemblies, and to delight in solitary walks and silent meditation. He
often sat before tables covered with luxury, and forgot to taste the
dainties that were placed before him; he rose abruptly in the midst of
the song, and hastily retired beyond the sound of music. His attendants
observed the change, and endeavoured to renew his love of pleasure. He
neglected their officiousness, repulsed their invitations, and spent day
after day on the banks of rivulets sheltered with trees, where he
sometimes listened to the birds in the branches, sometimes observed the
fish playing in the streams, and anon cast his eyes upon the pastures and
mountains filled with animals, of which some were biting the herbage, and
some sleeping among the bushes. The singularity of his humour made him
much observed. One of the sages, in whose conversation he had formerly
delighted, followed him secretly, in hope of discovering the cause of his
disquiet. Rasselas, who knew not that any one was near him, having for
some time fixed his eyes upon the goats that were browsing among the
rocks, began to compare their condition with his own.
“What,” said he, “makes the difference between man and all the rest of
the animal creation? Every beast that strays beside me has the same
corporal necessities with myself: he is hungry, and crops the grass; he
is thirsty, and drinks the stream; his thirst and hunger are appeased; he
is satisfied, and sleeps; he rises again, and is hungry; he is again fed,
and is at rest. I am hungry and thirsty, like him, but when thirst and
hunger cease, I am not at rest. I am, like him, pained with want, but am
not, like him, satisfied with fulness. The intermediate hours are
tedious and gloomy; I long again to be hungry that I may again quicken
the attention. The birds peck the berries or the corn, and fly away to
the groves, where they sit in seeming happiness on the branches, and
waste their lives in tuning one unvaried series of sounds. I likewise
can call the lutist and the singer; but the sounds that pleased me
yesterday weary me to-day, and will grow yet more wearisome to-morrow. I
can discover in me no power of perception which is not glutted with its
proper pleasure, yet I do not feel myself delighted. Man surely has some
latent sense for which this place affords no gratification; or he has
some desire distinct from sense, which must be satisfied before he can be
happy.”
After this he lifted up his head, and seeing the moon rising, walked
towards the palace. As he passed through the fields, and saw the animals
around him, “Ye,” said he, “are happy, and need not envy me that walk
thus among you, burdened with myself; nor do I, ye gentle beings, envy
your felicity; for it is not the felicity of man. I have many distresses
from which you are free; I fear pain when I do not feel it; I sometimes
shrink at evils recollected, and sometimes start at evils anticipated:
surely the equity of Providence has balanced peculiar sufferings with
peculiar enjoyments.”
With observations like these the Prince amused himself as he returned,
uttering them with a plaintive voice, yet with a look that discovered him
to feel some complacence in his own perspicacity, and to receive some
solace of the miseries of life from consciousness of the delicacy with
which he felt and the eloquence with which he bewailed them. He mingled
cheerfully in the diversions of the evening, and all rejoiced to find
that his heart was lightened.
CHAPTER III
THE WANTS OF HIM THAT WANTS NOTHING.
ON the next day, his old instructor, imagining that he had now made
himself acquainted with his disease of mind, was in hope of curing it by
counsel, and officiously sought an opportunity of conference, which the
Prince, having long considered him as one whose intellects were
exhausted, was not very willing to afford. “Why,” said he, “does this
man thus intrude upon me? Shall I never be suffered to forget these
lectures, which pleased only while they were new, and to become new again
must be forgotten?” He then walked into the wood, and composed himself
to his usual meditations; when, before his thoughts had taken any settled
form, he perceived his pursuer at his side, and was at first prompted by
his impatience to go hastily away; but being unwilling to offend a man
whom he had once reverenced and still loved, he invited him to sit down
with him on the bank.
The old man, thus encouraged, began to lament the change which had been
lately observed in the Prince, and to inquire why he so often retired
from the pleasures of the palace to loneliness and silence. “I fly from
pleasure,” said the Prince, “because pleasure has ceased to please: I am
lonely because I am miserable, and am unwilling to cloud with my presence
the happiness of others.” “You, sir,” said the sage, “are the first who
has complained of misery in the Happy Valley. I hope to convince you
that your complaints have no real cause. You are here in full possession
of all the Emperor of Abyssinia can bestow; here is neither labour to be
endured nor danger to be dreaded, yet here is all that labour or danger
can procure or purchase. Look round and tell me which of your wants is
without supply: if you want nothing, how are you unhappy?”
“That I want nothing,” said the Prince, “or that I know not what I want,
is the cause of my complaint: if I had any known want, I should have a
certain wish; that wish would excite endeavour, and I should not then
repine to see the sun move so slowly towards the western mountains, or to
lament when the day breaks, and sleep will no longer hide me from myself.
When I see the kids and the lambs chasing one another, I fancy that I
should be happy if I had something to pursue. But, possessing all that I
can want, I find one day and one hour exactly like another, except that
the latter is still more tedious than the former. Let your experience
inform me how the day may now seem as short as in my childhood, while
nature was yet fresh, and every moment showed me what I never had
observed before. I have already enjoyed too much: give me something to
desire.” The old man was surprised at this new species of affliction,
and knew not what to reply, yet was unwilling to be silent. “Sir,” said
he, “if you had seen the miseries of the world, you would know how to
value your present state.” “Now,” said the Prince, “you have given me
something to desire. I shall long to see the miseries of the world,
since the sight of them is necessary to happiness.”
CHAPTER IV
THE PRINCE CONTINUES TO GRIEVE AND MUSE.
AT this time the sound of music proclaimed the hour of repast, and the
conversation was concluded. The old man went away sufficiently
discontented to find that his reasonings had produced the only conclusion
which they were intended to prevent. But in the decline of life, shame
and grief are of short duration: whether it be that we bear easily what
we have borne long; or that, finding ourselves in age less regarded, we
less regard others; or that we look with slight regard upon afflictions
to which we know that the hand of death is about to put an end.
The Prince, whose views were extended to a wider space, could not
speedily quiet his emotions. He had been before terrified at the length
of life which nature promised him, because he considered that in a long
time much must be endured: he now rejoiced in his youth, because in many
years much might be done. The first beam of hope that had been ever
darted into his mind rekindled youth in his cheeks, and doubled the
lustre of his eyes. He was fired with the desire of doing something,
though he knew not yet, with distinctness, either end or means. He was
now no longer gloomy and unsocial; but considering himself as master of a
secret stock of happiness, which he could only enjoy by concealing it, he
affected to be busy in all the schemes of diversion, and endeavoured to
make others pleased with the state of which he himself was weary. But
pleasures can never be so multiplied or continued as not to leave much of
life unemployed; there were many hours, both of the night and day, which
he could spend without suspicion in solitary thought. The load of life
was much lightened; he went eagerly into the assemblies, because he
supposed the frequency of his presence necessary to the success of his
purposes; he retired gladly to privacy, because he had now a subject of
thought. His chief amusement was to picture to himself that world which
he had never seen, to place himself in various conditions, to be
entangled in imaginary difficulties, and to be engaged in wild
adventures; but, his benevolence always terminated his projects in the
relief of distress, the detection of fraud, the defeat of oppression, and
the diffusion of happiness.
Thus passed twenty months of the life of Rasselas. He busied himself so
intensely in visionary bustle that he forgot his real solitude; and
amidst hourly preparations for the various incidents of human affairs,
neglected to consider by what means he should mingle with mankind.
One day, as he was sitting on a bank, he feigned to himself an orphan
virgin robbed of her little portion by a treacherous lover, and crying
after him for restitution. So strongly was the image impressed upon his
mind that he started up in the maid’s defence, and ran forward to seize
the plunderer with all the eagerness of real pursuit. Fear naturally
quickens the flight of guilt. Rasselas could not catch the fugitive with
his utmost efforts; but, resolving to weary by perseverance him whom he
could not surpass in speed, he pressed on till the foot of the mountain
stopped his course.
Here he recollected himself, and smiled at his own useless impetuosity.
Then raising his eyes to the mountain, “This,” said he, “is the fatal
obstacle that hinders at once the enjoyment of pleasure and the exercise
of virtue. How long is it that my hopes and wishes have flown beyond
this boundary of my life, which yet I never have attempted to surmount?”
Struck with this reflection, he sat down to muse, and remembered that
since he first resolved to escape from his confinement, the sun had
passed twice over him in his annual course. He now felt a degree of
regret with which he had never been before acquainted. He considered how
much might have been done in the time which had passed, and left nothing
real behind it. He compared twenty months with the life of man. “In
life,” said he, “is not to be counted the ignorance of infancy or