Samuel Johnson
The History of
Rasselas
Prince of Abissinia
In parentheses Publications
Orientalism Series
Cambridge, Ontario 1999
1. Description of a palace in a valley
Ye who listen with credulity to the whispers of fancy, and pursue
with eagerness the phantoms of hope; who expect that age will perform
the promises of youth, and that the deficiencies of the present day will be
supplied by the morrow; attend to the history of Rasselas prince of
Abissinia.
Rasselas was the fourth son of the mighty emperour, in whose
dominions the Father of waters begins his course; whose bounty pours
down the streams of plenty, and scatters over half the world the harvests
of Egypt.
According to the custom which has descended from age to age among
the monarchs of the torrid zone, Rasselas was confined in a private
palace, with the other sons and daughters of Abissinian royalty, till the
order of succession should call him to the throne.
The place, which the wisdom or policy of antiquity had destined for
the residence of the Abissinian princes, was a spacious valley in the
kingdom of Amhara, surrounded on every side by mountains, of which
the summits overhang the middle part. The only passage, by which it
could be entered, was a cavern that passed under a rock, of which it has
long been disputed whether it was the work of nature or of human
industry. The outlet of the cavern was concealed by a thick wood, and
the mouth which opened into the valley was closed with gates of iron,
forged by the artificers of ancient days, so massy that no man could,
without the help of engines, open or shut them.
From the mountains on every side, rivulets descended that filled all
the valley with verdure and fertility, and formed a lake in the middle
inhabited by fish of every species, and frequented by every fowl whom
nature has taught to dip the wing in water. This lake discharged its
superfluities by a stream which entered a dark cleft of the mountain on
the northern side, and fell with dreadful noise from precipice to precipice
till it was heard no more.
The sides of the mountains were covered with trees, the banks of the
brooks were diversified with flowers; every blast shook spices from the
rocks, and every month dropped fruits upon the ground. All animals that
bite the grass, or brouse the shrub, whether wild or tame, wandered in
2
this extensive circuit, secured from beasts of prey by the mountains
which confined them. On one part were flocks and herds feeding in the
pastures, on another all the beasts of chase frisking in the lawns; the
sprightly kid was bounding on the rocks, the subtle monkey frolicking in
the trees, and the solemn elephant reposing in the shade. All the
diversities of the world were brought together, the blessings of nature
were collected, and its evils extracted and excluded.
The valley, wide and fruitful, supplied its inhabitants with the
necessaries of life, and all delights and superfluities were added at the
annual visit which the emperour paid his children, when the iron gate
was opened to the sound of musick; and during eight days every one
that resided in the alley was required to propose whatever might
contribute to make seclusion pleasant, to fill up the vacancies of attention,
and lessen the tediousness of time. Every desire was immediately
granted. All the artificers of pleasure were called to gladden the
festivity; the musicians exerted the power of harmony, and the dancers
shewed their activity before the princes, in hope that they should pass
their lives in this blissful captivity to which these only were admitted
whose performance was thought able to add novelty to luxury. Such was
the appearance of security and delight which this retirement afforded,
that they to whom it was new always desired that it might be perpetual;
and as those, on whom the iron gate had once closed, were never
suffered to return, the effect of longer experience could not be known.
Thus every year produced new schemes of delight, and new competitors
for imprisonment. The palace stood on an eminence raised about thirty
paces above the surface of the lake. It was divided into many squares or
courts, built with greater or less magnificence according to the rank of
those for whom they were designed. The roofs were turned into arches
of massy stone joined with a cement that grew harder by time, and the
building stood from century to century, deriding the solstitial rains and
equinoctial hurricanes, without need of reparation.
This house, which was so large as to be fully known to none but some
ancient officers who successively inherited the secrets of the place, was
built as if suspicion herself had dictated the plan. To every room there
was an open and secret passage, every square had a communication with
the rest, either from the upper stories by private galleries, or by
3
subterranean passages from the lower apartments. Many of the columns
had unsuspected cavities, in which a long race of monarchs had reposited
their treasures. They then closed up the opening with marble, which was
never to be removed but in the utmost exigencies of the kingdom; and
recorded their accumulations in a book which was itself concealed in a
tower not entered but by the emperour, attended by the prince who
stood next in succession.
4
2. The discontent of Rasselas in the happy valley
Here the sons and daughters of Abissinia lived only to know the soft
vicissitudes of pleasure and repose, attended by all that were skilful to
delight, and gratified with whatever the senses can enjoy. They
wandered 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
publick life, and described all beyond the mountains as regions of
calamity, where discord was always raging, 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 was the business of every hour from the
dawn of morning to the close of even.
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 fate had excluded from this seat of tranquility, 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 their
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 musick. 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 stream, 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.
5
This 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 brousing among the rocks, began to compare
their condition with his own.
ÒWhat,Ó said he, Òmakes 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 my 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 lutanist 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 within me no
power of perception which is not glutted with its proper pleasure, yet I
do not feel myself delighted. Man has surely some latent sense for which
this place affords no gratification, or he has some desires distinct from
sense which must be satisfied before he can be happy.Ó
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, ÒYe,Ó said he, Òare happy, and need not envy me that walk
thus among you, burthened 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 ye 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 ballanced peculiar sufferings with peculiar
enjoyments.Ó
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
6
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.
7
3. 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: ÒWhy,Ó said he, Òdoes this
man thus intrude upon me; shall I be never suffered to forget those
lectures which pleased only while they were new, and to become new
again must be forgotten?Ó 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 persuer 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 enquire why he so often
retired from the pleasures of the palace, to loneliness and silence. ÒI fly
from pleasure,Ó said the prince, Òbecause pleasure has ceased to please; I
am lonely because I am miserable, and am unwilling to cloud with my
presence the happiness of others.Ó ÒYou, Sir,Ó said the sage, Òare 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 that the emperour of Abissinia 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?Ó
ÒThat I want nothing,Ó said the prince, Òor 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
mountain, or 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 persue. But,
possessing all that I can want, I find one day and one hour exactly like
8
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 shewed me
what I never had observed before. I have already enjoyed too much; give
me something to desire.Ó
The old man was surprized at this new species of affliction, and knew
not what to reply, yet was unwilling to be silent. ÒSir,Ó said he, Òif you
had seen the miseries of the world, you would know how to value your
present state.Ó ÒNow,Ó said the prince, Òyou 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.Ó
9
4. The prince continues to grieve and muse
At this time the sound of musick 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 born 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.
This 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 enjoy only by
concealing it, he affected to be busy in all schemes of diversion, and
endeavoured to make others pleased with the state of which he himself
was weary. But pleasures never can 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
10
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 and redress. So strongly was the image
impressed upon his mind, that he started up in the maidÕs defence, and
run forward to seize the plunderer with all the eagerness of real persuit.
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, ÒThis,Ó said he, Òis 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!Ó
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.
ÒIn life,Ó said he, Òis not to be counted the ignorance of infancy, or
imbecility of age. We are long before we are able to think, and we soon
cease from the power of acting. The true period of human existence may
be reasonably estimated as forty years, of which I have mused away the
four and twentieth part. What I have lost was certain, for I have certainly
possessed it; but of twenty months to come who can assure me?Ó
The consciousness of his own folly pierced him deeply, and he was
long before he could be reconciled to himself ÒThe rest of my time,Ó said
he, Òhas been lost by the crime or folly of my ancestors, and the absurd
institutions of my country; I remember it with disgust, yet without
remorse: but the months that have passed since new light darted into my
11
soul, since I formed a scheme of reasonable felicity, have been
squandered by my own fault. I have lost that which can never be
restored: I have seen the sun rise and set for twenty months, an idle
gazer on the light of heaven: In this time the birds have left the nest of
their mother, and committed themselves to the woods and to the skies:
the kid has forsaken the teat, and learned by degrees to climb the rocks
in quest of independant sustenance. I only have made no advances, but
am still helpless and ignorant. The moon by more than twenty changes,
admonished me of the flux of life; the stream that rolled before my feet
upbraided my inactivity. I sat feasting on intellectual luxury, regardless
alike of the examples of the earth, and the instructions of the planets.
Twenty months are past, who shall restore them!Ó
These sorrowful meditations fastened upon his mind; he past four
months in resolving to lose no more time in idle resolves, and was
awakened to more vigorous exertion by hearing a maid, who had broken
a porcelain cup, remark, that what cannot be repaired is not to be
regretted.
This was obvious; and Rasselas reproached himself that he had not
discovered it, having not known, or not considered, how many useful
hints are obtained by chance, and how often the mind, hurried by her
own ardour to distant views, neglects the truths that lie open before her.
He, for a few hours, regretted his regret, and from that time bent his
whole mind upon the means of escaping from the valley of happiness.
12
5. The prince meditates his escape
He now found that it would be very difficult to effect that which it
was very easy to suppose effected. When he looked round about him, he
saw himself confined by the bars of nature which had never yet been
broken, and by the gate, through which none that once had passed it
were ever able to return. He was now impatient as an eagle in a grate.
He passed week after week in clambering the mountains, to see if there
was any aperture which the bushes might conceal, but found all the
summits inaccessible by their prominence. The iron gate he despaired to
open; for it was not only secured with all the power of art, but was
always watched by successive sentinels, and was by its position exposed
to the perpetual observation of all the inhabitants.
He then examined the cavern through which the waters of the lake
were discharged; and, looking down at a time when the sun shone
strongly upon its mouth, he discovered it to be full of broken rocks,
which, though they permitted the stream to flow through many narrow
passages, would stop any body of solid bulk. He returned discouraged
and dejected; but, having now known the blessing of hope, resolved
never to despair.
In these fruitless searches he spent ten months. The time, however,
passed chearfully away: in the morning he rose with new hope, in the
evening applauded his own diligence, and in the night slept sound after
his fatigue. He met a thousand amusements which beguiled his labour,
and diversified his thoughts. He discerned the various instincts of
animals, and properties of plants, and found the place replete with
wonders, of which he purposed to solace himself with the contemplation,
if he should never be able to accomplish his flight; rejoicing that his
endeavours, though yet unsucessful, had supplied him with a source of
inexhaustible enquiry.
But his original curiosity was not yet abated; he resolved to obtain
some knowledge of the ways of men. His wish still continued, but his
hope grew less. He ceased to survey any longer the walls of his prison,
and spared to search by new toils for interstices which he knew could
not be found, yet determined to keep his design always in view, and lay
hold on any expedient that time should offer.
13
6. A dissertation on the art of flying
Among the artists that had been allured into the happy valley, to
labour for the accommodation and pleasure of its inhabitants, was a man
eminent for his knowledge of the mechanick powers, who had contrived
many engines both of use and recreation. By a wheel, which the stream
turned, he forced the water into a tower, whence it was distributed to all
the apartments of the palace. He erected a pavillion in the garden,
around which he kept the air always cool by artificial showers. One of
the groves, appropriated to the ladies, was ventilated by fans, to which
the rivulet that run through it gave a constant motion; and instruments of
soft musick were placed at proper distances, of which some played by
the impulse of the wind, and some by the power of the stream. This
artist was sometimes visited by Rasselas, who was pleased with every
kind of knowledge, imagining that the time would come when all his
acquisitions should be of use to him in the open world. He came one day
to amuse himself in his usual manner, and found the master busy in
building a sailing chariot: he saw that the design was practicable upon a
level surface, and with expressions of great esteem solicited its
completion. The workman was pleased to find himself so much regarded
by the prince, and resolved to gain yet higher honours. ÒSir,Ó said he,
Òyou have seen but a small part of what the mechanick sciences can
perform. I have been long of opinion, that, instead of the tardy
conveyance of ships and chariots, man might use the swifter migration of
wings; that the fields of air are open to knowledge, and that only
ignorance and idleness need crawl upon the ground.Ó
This hint rekindled the princeÕs desire of passing the mountains;
having seen what the mechanist had already performed, he was willing
to fancy that he could do more; yet resolved to enquire further before he
suffered hope to afflict him by disappointment. ÒI am afraid,Ó said he to
the artist, Òthat your imagination prevails over your skill, and that you
now tell me rather what you wish than what you know. Every animal
has his element assigned him; the birds have the air, and man and beasts
the earth.Ó ÒSo,Ó replied the mechanist, Òfishes have the water, in which
yet beasts can swim by nature, and men by art. He that can swim needs
not despair to fly: to swim is to fly in a grosser fluid, and to fly is to
14
swim in a subtler. We are only to proportion our power of resistance to
the different density of the matter through which we are to pass. You
will be necessarily upborn by the air, if you can renew any impulse upon
it, faster than the air can recede from the pressure.Ó
ÒBut the exercise of swimming,Ó said the prince, Òis very laborious;
the strongest limbs are soon wearied; I am afraid the act of flying will be
yet more violent, and wings will be of no great use, unless we can fly
further than we can swim.Ó
ÒThe labour of rising from the ground,Ó said the artist, Òwill be great,
as we see it in the heavier domestick fowls; but, as we mount higher, the
earthÕs attraction, and the bodyÕs gravity, will be gradually diminished,
till we shall arrive at a region where the man will float in the air without
any tendency to fall: no care will then be necessary, but to move
forwards, which the gentlest impulse will effect. You, Sir, whose
curiosity is so extensive, will easily conceive with what pleasure a
philosopher, furnished with wings, and hovering in the sky, would see
the earth, and all itÕs inhabitants, rolling beneath him, and presenting to
him successively, by itÕs diurnal motion, all the countries within the same
parallel. How must it amuse the pendent spectator to see the moving
scene of land and ocean, cities and desarts! To survey with equal security
the marts of trade, and the fields of battle; mountains infested by
barbarians, and fruitful regions gladdened by plenty, and lulled by
peace! How easily shall we then trace the Nile through all his passage;
pass over to distant regions, and examine the face of nature from one
extremity of the earth to the other!Ó
ÒAll this,Ó said the prince, Òis much to be desired, but I am afraid that
no man will be able to breathe in these regions of speculation and
tranquility. I have been told, that respiration is difficult upon lofty
mountains, yet from these precipices, though so high as to produce great
tenuity of the air, it is very easy to fall: therefore I suspect, that from any
height, where life can be supported, there may be danger of too quick
descent.Ó
ÒNothing,Ó replied the artist, Òwill ever be attempted, if all possible
objections must be first overcome. If you will favour my project I will try
the first flight at my own hazard. I have considered the structure of all
volant animals, and find the folding continuity of the batÕs wings most
15
easily accommodated to the human form. Upon this model I shall begin
my task to morrow, and in a year expect to tower into the air beyond the
malice or persuit of man. But I will work only on this condition, that the
art shall not be divulged, and that you shall not require me to make
wings for any but ourselves.Ó
ÒWhy,Ó said Rasselas, Òshould you envy others so great an
advantage? All skill ought to be exerted for universal good; every man
has owed much to others, and ought to repay the kindness that he has
received.Ó
ÒIf men were all virtuous,Ó returned the artist, ÒI should with great
alacrity teach them all to fly. But what would be the security of the good,
if the bad could at pleasure invade them from the sky? Against an army
sailing through the cloud neither walls, nor mountains, nor seas, could
afford any security. A flight of northern savages might hover in the
wind, and light at once with irresistible violence upon the capital of a
fruitful region that was rolling under them. Even this valley, the retreat
of princes, the abode of happiness, might be violated by the sudden
descent of some of the naked nations that swarm on the coast of the
southern sea.Ó
The prince promised secrecy, and waited for the performance, not
wholly hopeless of success. He visited the work from time to time,
observed its progress, and remarked many ingenious contrivances to
facilitate motion, and unite levity with strength. The artist was every day
more certain that he should leave vultures and eagles behind him, and
the contagion of his confidence seized upon the prince.
In a year the wings were finished, and, on a morning appointed, the
maker appeared furnished for flight on a little promontory: he waved his
pinions a while to gather air, then leaped from his stand, and in an
instant dropped into the lake. His wings, which were of no use in the air,
sustained him in the water, and the prince drew him to land, half dead
with terrour and vexation.
16
7. The prince finds a man of learning
The prince was not much afflicted by this disaster, having suffered
himself to hope for a happier event, only because he had no other means
of escape in view. He still persisted in his design to leave the happy
valley by the first opportunity.
His imagination was now at a stand; he had no prospect of entering
into the world; and, notwithstanding all his endeavours to support
himself, discontent by degrees preyed upon him, and he began again to
lose his thoughts in sadness, when the rainy season, which in these
countries is periodical, made it inconvenient to wander in the woods.
The rain continued longer and with more violence than had been ever
known: the clouds broke on the surrounding mountains, and the torrents
streamed into the plain on every side, till the cavern was too narrow to
discharge the water. The lake overflowed its banks, and all the level of
the valley was covered with the inundation. The eminence, on which the
palace was built, and some other spots of rising ground, were all that the
eye could now discover. The herds and flocks left the pastures, and both
the wild beasts and the tame retreated to the mountains.
This inundation confined all the princes to domestick amusements,
and the attention of Rasselas was particularly seized by a poem, which
Imlac rehearsed upon the various conditions of humanity. He
commanded the poet to attend him in his apartment, and recite his verses
a second time; then entering into familiar talk, he thought himself happy
in having found a man who knew the world so well, and could so
skilfully paint the scenes of life. He asked a thousand questions about
things, to which, though common to all other mortals, his confinement
from childhood had kept him a stranger. The poet pitied his ignorance,
and loved his curiosity, and entertained him from day to day with
novelty and instruction, so that the prince regretted the necessity of
sleep, and longed till the morning should renew his pleasure.
As they were sitting together, the prince commanded Imlac to relate
his history, and to tell by what accident he was forced, or by what
motive induced, to close his life in the happy valley. As he was going to
begin his narrative, Rasselas was called to a concert, and obliged to
restrain his curiosity till the evening.
17
8. The history of Imlac
The close of the day is, in the regions of the torrid zone, the only
season of diversion and entertainment, and it was therefore midnight
before the musick ceased, and the princesses retired. Rasselas then called
for his companion and required him to begin the story of his life.
ÒSir,Ó said Imlac, Òmy history will not be long: the life that is devoted
to knowledge passes silently away, and is very little diversified by
events. To talk in publick, to think in solitude, to read and to hear, to
inquire, and answer inquiries, is the business of a scholar. He wanders
about the world without pomp or terrour, and is neither known nor
valued but by men like himself.
ÒI was born in the kingdom of Goiama, at no great distance from the
fountain of the Nile. My father was a wealthy merchant, who traded
between the inland countries of Africk and the ports of the red sea. He
was honest, frugal and diligent, but of mean sentiments, and narrow
comprehension: he desired only to be rich, and to conceal his riches, lest
he should be spoiled by the governours of the province.Ó
ÒSurely,Ó said the prince, Òmy father must be negligent of his charge,
if any man in his dominions dares take that which belongs to another.
Does he not know that kings are accountable for injustice permitted as
well as done? If I were emperour, not the meanest of my subjects should
be oppressed with impunity. My blood boils when I am told that a
merchant durst not enjoy his honest gains for fear of losing them by the
rapacity of power. Name the governour who robbed the people, that I
may declare his crimes to the emperour.Ó
ÒSir,Ó said Imlac, Òyour ardour is the natural effect of virtue animated
by youth: the time will come when you will acquit your father, and
perhaps hear with less impatience of the governour. Oppression is, in the
Abissinian dominions, neither frequent nor tolerated; but no form of
government has been yet discovered, by which cruelty can be wholly
prevented. Subordination supposes power on one part and subjection on
the other; and if power be in the hands of men, it will sometimes be
abused. The vigilance of the supreme magistrate may do much, but much
will still remain undone. He can never know all the crimes that are
committed, and can seldom punish all that he knows.Ó
18
ÒThis,Ó said the prince, ÒI do not understand, but I had rather hear
thee than dispute. Continue thy narration.Ó
ÒMy father,Ó proceeded Imlac, Òoriginally intended that I should have
no other education, than such as might qualify me for commerce; and
discovering in me great strength of memory, and quickness of
apprehension, often declared his hope that I should be some time the
richest man in Abissinia.Ó
ÒWhy,Ó said the prince, Òdid thy father desire the increase of his
wealth, when it was already greater than he durst discover or enjoy? I
am unwilling to doubt thy veracity, yet inconsistencies cannot both be
true.Ó
ÒInconsistencies,Ó answered Imlac, Òcannot both be right, but,
imputed to man, they may both be true. Yet diversity is not
inconsistency. My father might expect a time of greater security.
However, some desire is necessary to keep life in motion, and he, whose
real wants are supplied, must admit those of fancy.Ó
ÒThis,Ó said the prince, ÒI can in some measure conceive. I repent that
I interrupted thee.Ó
ÒWith this hope,Ó proceeded Imlac, Òhe sent me to school; but when I
had once found the delight of knowledge, and felt the pleasure of
intelligence and the pride of invention, I began silently to despise riches,
and determined to disappoint the purpose of my father, whose grossness
of conception raised my pity. I was twenty years old before his
tenderness would expose me to the fatigue of travel, in which time I had
been instructed, by successive masters, in all the literature of my native
country. As every hour taught me something new, I lived in a continual
course of gratifications; but, as I advanced towards manhood, I lost much
of the reverence with which I had been used to look on my instructors;
because, when the lesson was ended, I did not find them wiser or better
than common men.
ÒAt length my father resolved to initiate me in commerce, and,
opening one of his subterranean treasuries, counted out ten thousand
pieces of gold. ÔThis, young man,Õ said he, Ôis the stock with which you
must negociate. I began with less than the fifth part, and you see how
diligence and parsimony have increased it. This is your own to waste or
to improve. If you squander it by negligence or caprice, you must wait
19
for my death before you will be rich: if, in four years, you double your
stock, we will thenceforward let subordination cease, and live together
as friends and partners; for he shall always be equal with me, who is
equally skilled in the art of growing rich.Õ
ÒWe laid our money upon camels, concealed in bales of cheap goods,
and travelled to the shore of the red sea. When I cast my eye on the
expanse of waters my heart bounded like that of a prisoner escaped. I
felt an unextinguishable curiosity kindle in my mind, and resolved to
snatch this opportunity of seeing the manners of other nations, and of
learning sciences unknown in Abissinia.
ÒI remembered that my father had obliged me to the improvement of
my stock, not by a promise which I ought not to violate, but by a penalty
which I was at liberty to incur; and therefore determined to gratify my
predominant desire, and by drinking at the fountains of knowledge, to
quench the thirst of curiosity.
ÒAs I was supposed to trade without connexion with my father, it
was easy for me to become acquainted with the master of a ship, and
procure a passage to some other country. I had no motives of choice to
regulate my voyage; it was sufficient for me that, wherever I wandered,
I should see a country which I had not seen before. I therefore entered a
ship bound for Surat, having left a letter for my father declaring my
intention.
20
9. The history of Imlac continued
ÒWhen I first entered upon the world of waters, and lost sight of
land, I looked round about me with pleasing terrour, and thinking my
soul enlarged by the boundless prospect, imagined that I could gaze
round for ever without satiety; but, in a short time, I grew weary of
looking on barren uniformity, where I could only see again what I had
already seen. I then descended into the ship, and doubted for a while
whether all my future pleasures would not end like this in disgust and
disappointment. ÔYet, surely,Õ said I, Ôthe ocean and the land are very
different; the only variety of water is rest and motion, but the earth has
mountains and vallies, desarts and cities: it is inhabited by men of
different customs and contrary opinions; and I may hope to find variety
in life, though I should miss it in nature.Õ
ÒWith this thought I quieted my mind; and amused myself during the
voyage, sometimes by learning from the sailors the art of navigation,
which I have never practised, and sometimes by forming schemes for my
conduct in different situations, in not one of which I have been ever
placed.
ÒI was almost weary of my naval amusements when we landed safely
at Surat. I secured my money, and purchasing some commodities for
show, joined myself to a caravan that was passing into the inland
country. My companions, for some reason or other, conjecturing that I
was rich, and, by my inquiries and admiration, finding that I was
ignorant, considered me as a novice whom they had a right to cheat, and
who was to learn at the usual expence the art of fraud. They exposed me
to the theft of servants, and the exaction of officers, and saw me
plundered upon false pretences, without any advantage to themselves,
but that of rejoicing in the superiority of their own knowledge.Ó
ÒStop a moment,Ó said the prince. ÒIs there such depravity in man, as
that he should injure another without benefit to himself? I can easily
conceive that all are pleased with superiority; but your ignorance was
merely accidental, which, being neither your crime nor your folly, could
afford them no reason to applaud themselves; and the knowledge which
they had, and which you wanted, they might as effectually have shewn
by warning, as betraying you.Ó
21
ÒPride,Ó said Imlac, Òis seldom delicate, it will please itself with very
mean advantages; and envy feels not its own happiness, but when it may
be compared with the misery of others. They were my enemies because
they grieved to think me rich, and my oppressors because they delighted
to find me weak.Ó
ÒProceed,Ó said the prince: ÒI doubt not of the facts which you relate,
but imagine that you impute them to mistaken motives.Ó
ÒIn this company,Ó said Imlac, ÒI arrived at Agra, the capital of
Indostan, the city in which the great Mogul commonly resides. I applied
myself to the language of the country, and in a few months was able to
converse with the learned men; some of whom I found morose and
reserved, and others easy and communicative; some were unwilling to
teach another what they had with difficulty learned themselves; and
some shewed that the end of their studies was to gain the dignity of
instructing.
ÒTo the tutor of the young princes I recommended myself so much,
that I was presented to the emperour as a man of uncommon knowledge.
The emperour asked me many questions concerning my country and my
travels; and though I cannot now recollect any thing that he uttered
above the power of a common man, he dismissed me astonished at his
wisdom, and enamoured of his goodness.
ÒMy credit was now so high, that the merchants, with whom I had
travelled, applied to me for recommendations to the ladies of the court. I
was surprised at their confidence of solicitation, and gently reproached
them with their practices on the road. They heard me with cold
indifference, and shewed no tokens of shame or sorrow.
ÒThey then urged their request with the offer of a bribe; but what I
would not do for kindness I would not do for money; and refused them,
not because they had injured me, but because I would not enable them to
injure others; for I knew they would have made use of my credit to cheat
those who should buy their wares.
ÒHaving resided at Agra till there was no more to be learned, I
travelled into Persia, where I saw many remains of ancient magnificence,
and observed many new accommodations of life. The Persians are a
nation eminently social, and their assemblies afforded me daily
22
opportunities of remarking characters and manners, and of tracing
human nature through all its variations.
ÒFrom Persia I passed into Arabia, where I saw a nation at once
pastoral and warlike; who live without any settled habitation; whose
only wealth is their flocks and herds; and who have yet carried on,
through all ages, an hereditary war with all mankind, though they
neither covet nor envy their possessions.
23
10. ImlacÕs history continued. A dissertation upon poetry
ÒWherever I went, I found that poetry was considered as the highest
learning, and regarded with a veneration somewhat approaching to that
which man would pay to the Angelick Nature. And it yet fills me with
wonder, that, in almost all countries, the most ancient poets are
considered as the best: whether it be that every other kind of knowledge
is an acquisition gradually attained, and poetry is a gift conferred at
once; or that the first poetry of every nation surprised them as a novelty,
and retained the credit by consent which it received by accident at first:
or whether, as the province of poetry is to describe Nature and passion,
which are always the same, the first writers took possession of the most
striking objects for description, and the most probable occurrences for
fiction, and left nothing to those that followed them, but transcription of
the same events, and new combinations of the same images. Whatever be
the reason, it is commonly observed that the early writers are in
possession of nature, and their followers of art: that the first excel in
strength and invention, and the latter in elegance and refinement.
ÒI was desirous to add my name to this illustrious fraterity. I read all
the poets of Persia and Arabia, and was able to repeat by memory the
volumes that are suspended in the mosque of Mecca. But I soon found
that no man was ever great by imitation. My desire of excellence
impelled me to transfer my attention to nature and to life. Nature was to
be my subject, and men to be my auditors: I could never describe what I
had not seen: I could not hope to move those with delight or terrour,
whose interests and opinions I did not understand.
ÒBeing now resolved to be a poet, I saw every thing with a new
purpose; my sphere of attention was suddenly magnified: no kind of
knowledge was to be overlooked. I ranged mountains and deserts for
images and resemblances, and pictured upon my mind every tree of the
forest and flower of the valley. I observed with equal care the crags of
the rock and the pinnacles of the palace. Sometimes I wandered along the
mazes of the rivulet, and sometimes watched the changes of the summer
clouds. To a poet nothing can be useless. Whatever is beautiful, and
whatever is dreadful, must be familiar to his imagination: he must be
conversant with all that is awfully vast or elegantly little. The plants of
24
the garden, the animals of the wood, the minerals of the earth, and
meteors of the sky, must all concur to store his mind with inexhaustible
variety: for every idea is useful for the inforcement or decoration of
moral or religious truth; and he, who knows most, will have most power
of diversifying his scenes, and of gratifying his reader with remote
allusions and unexpected instruction.
ÒAll the appearances of nature I was therefore careful to study, and
every country which I have surveyed has contributed something to my
poetical powers.Ó
ÒIn so wide a survey,Ó said the prince, Òyou must surely have left
much unobserved. I have lived, till now, within the circuit of these
mountains, and yet cannot walk abroad without the sight of something
which I had never beheld before, or never heeded.Ó
ÒThe business of a poet,Ó said Imlac, Òis to examine, not the
individual, but the species; to remark general properties and large
appearances: he does not number the streaks of the tulip, or describe the
different shades in the verdure of the forest. He is to exhibit in his
portraits of nature such prominent and striking features, as recal the
original to every mind; and must neglect the minuter discriminations,
which one may have remarked, and another have neglected, for those
characteristicks which are alike obvious to vigilance and carelessness.
ÒBut the knowledge of nature is only half the task of a poet; he must
be acquainted likewise with all the modes of life. His character requires
that he estimate the happiness and misery of every condition; observe
the power of all the passions in all their combinations, and trace the
changes of the human mind as they are modified by various institutions
and accidental influences of climate or custom, from the spriteliness of
infancy to the despondence of decrepitude. He must divest himself of the
prejudices of his age or country; he must consider right and wrong in
their abstracted and invariable state; he must disregard present laws and
opinions, and rise to general and transcendental truths, which will
always be the same: he must therefore content himself with the slow
progress of his name; contemn the applause of his own time, and commit
his claims to the justice of posterity. He must write as the interpreter of
nature, and the legislator of mankind, and consider himself as presiding
25
over the thoughts and manners of future generations; as a being
superiour to time and place.
ÒHis labour is not yet at an end: he must know many languages and
many sciences; and, that his stile may be worthy of his thoughts, must,
by incessant practice, familiarize to himself every delicacy of speech and
grace of harmony.Ó
26
11. ImlacÕs narrative continued. A hint on pilgrimage
Imlac now felt the enthusiastic fit, and was proceeding to aggrandize
his own profession, when the prince cried out, ÒEnough! Thou hast
convinced me, that no human being can ever be a poet. Proceed with thy
narration.Ó
ÒTo be a poet,Ó said Imlac, Òis indeed very difficult.Ó ÒSo difficult,Ó
returned the prince, Òthat I will at present hear no more of his labours.
Tell me whither you went when you had seen Persia.Ó
ÒFrom Persia,Ó said the poet, ÒI travelled through Syria, and for three
years resided in Palestine, where I conversed with great numbers of the
northern and western nations of Europe; the nations which are now in
possession of all power and knowledge; whose armies are irresistible,
and whose fleets command the remotest parts of the globe. When I
compared these men with the natives of our own kingdom, and those
that surround us, they appeared almost another order of beings. In their
countries it is difficult to wish for any thing that may not be obtained: a
thousand arts, of which we never heard, are continually labouring for
their convenience and pleasure; and whatever their own climate has
denied them is supplied by their commerce.Ó
ÒBy what means,Ó said the prince, Òare the Europeans thus powerful?
or why, since they can so easily visit Asia and Africa for trade or
conquest, cannot the Asiaticks and Africans invade their coasts, plant
colonies in their ports, and give laws to their natural princes? The same
wind that carries them back would bring us thither.Ó
ÒThey are more powerful, Sir, than we, answered Imlac, because they
are wiser; knowledge will always predominate over ignorance, as man
governs the other animals. But why their knowledge is more than ours, I
know not what reason can be given, but the unsearchable will of the
Supreme Being.Ó
ÒWhen,Ó said the prince with a sigh, Òshall I be able to visit Palestine,
and mingle with this mighty confluence of nations? Till that happy
moment shall arrive, let me fill up the time with such representations as
thou canst give me. I am not ignorant of the motive that assembles such
numbers in that place, and cannot but consider it as the center of wisdom
27
and piety, to which the best and wisest men of every land must be
continually resorting.Ó
ÒThere are some nations,Ó said Imlac, Òthat send few visitants to
Palestine; for many numerous and learned sects in Europe, concur to
censure pilgrimage as superstitious, or deride it as ridiculous.Ó
ÒYou know,Ó said the prince, Òhow little my life has made me
acquainted with diversity of opinions: it will be too long to hear the
arguments on both sides; you, that have considered them, tell me the
result.Ó
ÒPilgrimage,Ó said Imlac, Òlike many other acts of piety, may be
reasonable or superstitious, according to the principles upon which it is
performed. Long journies in search of truth are not commanded. Truth,
such as is necessary to the regulation of life, is always found where it is
honestly sought. Change of place is no natural cause of the increase of
piety, for it inevitably produces dissipation of mind. Yet, since men go
every day to view the fields where great actions have been performed,
and return with stronger impressions of the event, curiosity of the same
kind may naturally dispose us to view that country whence our religion
had its beginning; and I believe no man surveys those awful scenes
without some confirmation of holy resolutions. That the Supreme Being
may be more easily propitiated in one place than in another, is the dream
of idle superstition; but that some places may operate upon our own
minds in an uncommon manner, is an opinion which hourly experience
will justify. He who supposes that his vices may be more successfully
combated in Palestine, will, perhaps, find himself mistaken, yet he may
go thither without folly: he who thinks they will be more freely
pardoned, dishonours at once his reason and religion.Ó
ÒThese,Ó said the prince, Òare European distinctions. I will consider
them another time. What have you found to be the effect of knowledge?
Are those nations happier than we?Ó
ÒThere is so much infelicity,Ó said the poet, Òin the world, that scarce
any man has leisure from his own distresses to estimate the comparative
happiness of others. Knowledge is certainly one of the means of pleasure,
as is confessed by the natural desire which every mind feels of increasing
its ideas. Ignorance is mere privation, by which nothing can be produced:
it is a vacuity in which the soul sits motionless and torpid for want of
28
attraction; and, without knowing why, we always rejoice when we learn,
and grieve when we forget. I am therefore inclined to conclude, that, if
nothing counteracts the natural consequence of learning, we grow more
happy as our minds take a wider range.
ÒIn enumerating the particular comforts of life we shall find many
advantages on the side of the Europeans. They cure wounds and diseases
with which we languish and perish. We suffer inclemencies of weather
which they can obviate. They have engines for the despatch of many
laborious works, which we must perform by manual industry. There is
such communication between distant places, that one friend can hardly
be said to be absent from another. Their policy removes all publick
inconveniencies: they have roads cut through their mountains, and
bridges laid upon their rivers. And, if we descend to the privacies of life,
their habitations are more commodious, and their possessions are more
secure.Ó
ÒThey are surely happy,Ó said the prince, Òwho have all these
conveniencies, of which I envy none so much as the facility with which
separated friends interchange their thoughts.
ÒThe Europeans,Ó answered Imlac, Òare less unhappy than we, but
they are not happy. Human life is every where a state in which much is
to be endured, and little to be enjoyed.Ó
29
12. The story of Imlac continued
ÒI am not yet willing,Ó said the prince, Òto suppose that happiness is
so parsimoniously distributed to mortals; nor can believe but that, if I
had the choice of life, I should be able to fill every day with pleasure. I
would injure no man, and should provoke no resentment: I would relieve
every distress, and should enjoy the benedictions of gratitude. I would
choose my friends among the wise, and my wife among the virtuous; and
therefore should be in no danger from treachery, or unkindness. My
children should, by my care, be learned and pious, and would repay to
my age what their childhood had received. What would dare to molest
him who might call on every side to thousands enriched by his bounty,
or assisted by his power? And why should not life glide quietly away in
the soft reciprocation of protection and reverence? All this may be done
without the help of European refinements, which appear by their effects
to be rather specious than useful. Let us leave them and persue our
journey.Ó
ÒFrom Palestine,Ó said Imlac, ÒI passed through many regions of Asia;
in the more civilized kingdoms as a trader, and among the Barbarians of
the mountains as a pilgrim. At last I began to long for my native country,
that I might repose after my travels, and fatigues, in the places where I
had spent my earliest years, and gladden my old companions with the
recital of my adventures. Often did I figure to myself those, with whom I
had sported away the gay hours of dawning life, sitting round me in its
evening, wondering at my tales, and listening to my counsels.
ÒWhen this thought had taken possession of my mind, I considered
every moment as wasted which did not bring me nearer to Abissinia. I
hastened into Egypt, and, notwithstanding my impatience, was detained
ten months in the contemplation of its ancient magnificence, and in
enquiries after the remains of its ancient learning. I found in Cairo a
mixture of all nations; some brought thither by the love of knowledge,
some by the hope of gain, and many by the desire of living after their
own manner without observation, and of lying hid in the obscurity of
multitudes: for, in a city, populous as Cairo, it is possible to obtain at the
same time the gratifications of society, and the secrecy of solitude.
30
ÒFrom Cairo I travelled to Suez, and embarked on the Red sea,
passing along the coast till I arrived at the port from which I had
departed twenty years before. Here I joined myself to a caravan and
re-entered my native country.
ÒI now expected the caresses of my kinsmen, and the congratulations
of my friends, and was not without hope that my father, whatever value
he had set upon riches, would own with gladness and pride a son who
was able to add to the felicity and honour of the nation. But I was soon
convinced that my thoughts were vain. My father had been dead
fourteen years, having divided his wealth among my brothers, who were
removed to some other provinces. Of my companions the greater part
was in the grave, of the rest some could with difficulty remember me,
and some considered me as one corrupted by foreign manners.
ÒA man used to vicissitudes is not easily dejected. I forgot, after a
time, my disappointment, and endeavoured to recommend myself to the
nobles of the kingdom: they admitted me to their tables, heard my story,
and dismissed me. I opened a school, and was prohibited to teach. I then
resolved to sit down in the quiet of domestick life, and addressed a lady
that was fond of my conversation, but rejected my suit, because my
father was a merchant.
ÒWearied at last with solicitation and repulses, I resolved to hide
myself for ever from the world, and depend no longer on the opinion or
caprice of others. I waited for the time when the gate of the happy valley
should open, that I might bid farewell to hope and fear: the day came;
my performance was distinguished with favour, and I resigned myself
with joy to perpetual confinement.Ó
ÒHast thou here found happiness at last?Ó said Rasselas. ÒTell me
without reserve; art thou content with thy condition? or, dost thou wish
to be again wandering and inquiring? All the inhabitants of this valley
celebrate their lot, and, at the annual visit of the emperour, invite others
to partake of their felicity.Ó
ÒGreat prince,Ó said Imlac, ÒI shall speak the truth: I know not one of
all your attendants who does not lament the hour when he entered this
retreat. I am less unhappy than the rest, because I have a mind replete
with images, which I can vary and combine at pleasure. I can amuse my
solitude by the renovation of the knowledge which begins to fade from
31
my memory, and by recollection of the accidents of my past life. Yet all
this ends in the sorrowful consideration, that my acquirements are now
useless, and that none of my pleasures can be again enjoyed. The rest,
whose minds have no impression but of the present moment, are either
corroded by malignant passions, or sit stupid in the gloom of perpetual
vacancy.Ó
ÒWhat passions can infest those,Ó said the prince, Òwho have no
rivals? We are in a place where impotence precludes malice, and where
all envy is repressed by community of enjoyments.Ó
ÒThere may be community,Ó said Imlac, Òof material possessions, but
there can never be community of love or of esteem. It must happen that
one will please more than another; he that knows himself despised will
always be envious; and still more envious and malevolent, if he is
condemned to live in the presence of those who despise him. The
invitations, by which they allure others to a state which they feel to be
wretched, proceed from the natural malignity of hopeless misery. They
are weary of themselves, and of each other, and expect to find relief in
new companions. They envy the liberty which their folly has forfeited,
and would gladly see all mankind imprisoned like themselves.
ÒFrom this crime, however, I am wholly free. No man can say that he
is wretched by my persuasion. I look with pity on the crowds who are
annually soliciting admission to captivity, and wish that it were lawful
for me to warn them of their danger.Ó
ÒMy dear Imlac,Ó said the prince, ÒI will open to thee my whole heart.
I have long meditated an escape from the happy valley. I have examined
the mountains on every side, but find myself insuperably barred: teach
me the way to break my prison; thou shalt be the companion of my
flight, the guide of my rambles, the partner of my fortune, and my sole
director in the choice of life.Ó
ÒSir,Ó answered the poet, Òyour escape will be difficult, and, perhaps,
you may soon repent your curiosity. The world, which you figure to
yourself smooth and quiet as the lake in the valley, you will find a sea
foaming with tempests, and boiling with whirlpools: you will be
sometimes overwhelmed by the waves of violence, and sometimes
dashed against the rocks of treachery. Amidst wrongs and frauds,
32
competitions and anxieties, you will wish a thousand times for these
seats of quiet, and willingly quit hope to be free from fear.Ó
ÒDo not seek to deter me from my purpose,Ó said the prince: ÒI am
impatient to see what thou hast seen; and, since thou art thyself weary of
the valley, it is evident, that thy former state was better than this.
Whatever be the consequence of my experiment, I am resolved to judge
with my own eyes of the various conditions of men, and then to make
deliberately my choice of life.Ó
ÒI am afraid,Ó said Imlac, Òyou are hindered by stronger restraints
than my persuasions; yet, if your determination is fixed, I do not counsel
you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill.Ó
33
13. Rasselas discovers the means of escape
The prince now dismissed his favourite to rest, but the narrative of
wonders and novelties filled his mind with perturbation. He revolved all
that he had heard, and prepared innumerable questions for the morning.
Much of his uneasiness was now removed. He had a friend to whom
he could impart his thoughts, and whose experience could assist him in
his designs. His heart was no longer condemned to swell with silent
vexation. He thought that even the happy valley might be endured with
such a companion, and that, if they could range the world together, he
should have nothing further to desire.
In a few days the water was discharged, and the ground dried. The
prince and Imlac then walked out together to converse without the notice
of the rest. The prince, whose thoughts were always on the wing, as he
passed by the gate, said, with a countenance of sorrow, ÒWhy art thou so
strong, and why is man so weak?Ó
ÒMan is not weak,Ó answered his companion; Òknowledge is more
than equivalent to force. The master of mechanicks laughs at strength. I
can burst the gate, but cannot do it secretly. Some other expedient must
be tried.Ó
As they were walking on the side of the mountain, they observed
that the conies, which the rain had driven from their burrows, had taken
shelter among the bushes, and formed holes behind them, tending
upwards in an oblique line. ÒIt has been the opinion of antiquity,Ó said
Imlac, Òthat human reason borrowed many arts from the instinct of
animals; let us, therefore, not think ourselves degraded by learning from
the coney. We may escape by piercing the mountain in the same
direction. We will begin where the summit hangs over the middle part,
and labour upward till we shall issue out beyond the prominence.Ó
The eyes of the prince, when he heard this proposal, sparkled with
joy. The execution was easy, and the success certain.
No time was now lost. They hastened early in the morning to chuse a
place proper for their mine. They clambered with great fatigue among
crags and brambles, and returned without having discovered any part
that favoured their design. The second and the third day were spent in
the same manner, and with the same frustration. But, on the fourth, they
34
found a small cavern, concealed by a thicket, where they resolved to
make their experiment.
Imlac procured instruments proper to hew stone and remove earth
and they fell to their work on the next day with more eagerness than
vigour. They were presently exhausted by their efforts, and sat down to
pant upon the grass. The prince, for the moment, appeared to be
discouraged. ÒSir,Ó said his companion, Òpractice will enable us to
continue our labour for a longer time; mark, however, how far we have
advanced, and you will find that our toil will some time have an end.
Great works are performed, not by strength but perseverance: yonder
palace was raised by single stones, yet you see its height and
spaciousness. He that shall walk with vigour three hours a day will pass
in seven years a space equal to the circumference of the globe.Ó They
returned to their work day after day, and, in a short time, found a
fissure in the rock, which enabled them to pass far with very little
obstruction. This Rasselas considered as a good omen. ÒDo not disturb
your mind,Ó said Imlac, Òwith other hopes or fears than reason may
suggest: if you are pleased with prognosticks of good, you will be
terrified likewise with tokens of evil, and your whole life will be a prey
to superstition. Whatever facilitates our work is more than an omen, it is
a cause of success. This is one of those pleasing surprises which often
happen to active resolution. Many things difficult to design prove easy to
performance.Ó
35
14. Rasselas and Imlac receive an unexpected visit
They had now wrought their way to the middle, and solaced their
toil with the approach of liberty, when the prince, coming down to
refresh himself with air, found his sister Nekayah standing before the
mouth of the cavity. He started and stood confused, afraid to tell his
design, and yet hopeless to conceal it. A few moments determined him to
repose on her fidelity, and secure her secrecy by a declaration without
reserve.
ÒDo not imagine,Ó said the princess, Òthat I came hither as a spy: I
had long observed from my window, that you and Imlac directed your
walk every day towards the same point, but I did not suppose you had
any better reason for the preference than a cooler shade, or more
fragrant bank; nor followed you with any other design than to partake of
your conversation. Since then not suspicion but fondness has detected
you, let me not lose the advantage of my discovery. I am equally weary
of confinement with yourself, and not less desirous of knowing what is
done or suffered in the world. Permit me to fly with you from this
tasteless tranquility, which will yet grow more loathsome when you have
left me. You may deny me to accompany you, but cannot hinder me from
following.Ó
The prince, who loved Nekayah above his other sisters, had lost an
opportunity of shewing his confidence by a voluntary communication. It
was therefore agreed that she should leave the valley with them; and
that, in the mean time, she should watch, lest any other straggler should,
by chance or curiosity, follow them to the mountain.
At length their labour was at an end; they saw light beyond the
prominence, and, issuing to the top of the mountain, beheld the Nile, yet
a narrow current, wandering beneath them.
The prince looked round with rapture, anticipated all the pleasures of
travel, and in thought was already transported beyond his fatherÕs
dominions. Imlac, though very joyful at his escape, had less expectation
of pleasure in the world, which he had before tried, and of which he had
been weary. Rasselas was so much delighted with a wider horizon, that
he could not soon be persuaded to return into the valley. He informed
36
his sister that the way was open, and that nothing now remained but to
prepare for their departure.
37
15. The prince and princess leave the valley, and see many wonders
The prince and princess had jewels sufficient to make them rich
whenever they came into a place of commerce, which, by ImlacÕs
direction, they hid in their cloaths, and, on the night of the next full
moon, all left the valley. The princess was followed only by a single
favourite, who did not know whither she was going.
They clambered through the cavity, and began to go down towards
every part, and, seeing nothing to bound their prospect, considered
themselves as in danger of being lost in a dreary vacuity. They stopped
and trembled. ÒI am almost afraid,Ó said the princess, Òto begin a journey
of which I cannot perceive an end, and to venture into this immense plain
where I may be approached on every side by men whom I never saw.Ó
The prince felt nearly the same emotions, though he thought it more
manly to conceal them.
Imlac smiled at their terrours, and encouraged them to proceed; but
the princess continued irresolute till she had been imperceptibly drawn
forward too far to return.
In the morning they found some shepherds in the field, who set milk
and fruits before them. The princess wondered that she did not see a
palace ready for her reception, and a table spread with delicacies; but,
being faint and hungry, she drank the milk and eat the fruits, and
thought them of a higher flavour than the products of the valley.
They travelled forward by easy journeys, being all unaccustomed to
toil or difficulty, and knowing, that though they might be missed, they
could not be persued. In a few days they came into a more populous
region, where Imlac was diverted with the admiration which his
companions expressed at the diversity of manners, stations and
employments.
Their dress was such as might not bring upon them the suspicion of
having any thing to conceal, yet the prince, wherever he came, expected
to be obeyed, and the princess was frighted, because those that came into
her presence did not prostrate themselves before her. Imlac was forced
to observe them with great vigilance, lest they should betray their rank
by their unusual behaviour, and detained them several weeks in the first
village to accustom them to the sight of common mortals.
38
By degrees the royal wanderers were taught to understand that they
had for a time laid aside their dignity, and were to expect only such
regard as liberality and courtesy could procure. And Imlac, having, by
many admonitions, prepared them to endure the tumults of a port, and
the ruggedness of the commercial race, brought them down to the
seacoast. The prince and his sister, to whom every thing was new, were
gratified equally at all places, and therefore remained for some months at
the port without any inclination to pass further. Imlac was content with
their stay, because he did not think it safe to expose them, unpractised in
the world, to the hazards of a foreign country.
At last he began to fear lest they should be discovered, and proposed
to fix a day for their departure. They had no pretensions to judge for
themselves, and referred the whole scheme to his direction. He therefore
took passage in a ship to Suez; and, when the time came, with great
difficulty prevailed on the princess to enter the vessel. They had a quick
and prosperous voyage, and from Suez travelled by land to Cairo.
39
16. They enter Cairo, and find every man happy
As they approached the city, which filled the strangers with
astonishment, ÒThis,Ó said Imlac to the prince, Òis the place where
travellers and merchants assemble from all the corners of the earth. You
will here find men of every character, and every occupation. Commerce
is here honourable: I will act as a merchant, and you shall live as
strangers, who have no other end of travel than curiosity; it will soon be
observed that we are rich; our reputation will procure us access to all
whom we shall desire to know; you will see all the conditions of
humanity, and enable yourself at leisure to make your choice of life.Ó
They now entered the town, stunned by the noise, and offended by the
crowds. Instruction had not yet so prevailed over habit but that they
wondered to see themselves pass undistinguished along the street, and
met by the lowest of the people without reverence or notice. The princess
could not at first bear the thought of being levelled with the vulgar, and,
for some days, continued in her chamber, where she was served by her
favourite Pekuah as in the palace of the valley.
Imlac, who understood traffick, sold part of the jewels the next day,
and hired a house, which he adorned with such magnificence, that he
was immediately considered as a merchant of great wealth. His
politeness attracted many acquaintance, and his generosity made him
courted by many dependants. His table was crowded by men of every
nation, who all admired his knowledge, and solicited his favour. His
companions, not being able to mix in the conversation, could make no
discovery of their ignorance or surprise, and were gradually initiated in
the world as they gained knowledge of the language.
The prince had, by frequent lectures, been taught the use and nature
of money; but the ladies could not, for a long time, comprehend what the
merchants did with small pieces of gold and silver, or why things of so
little use should be received as equivalent to the necessaries of life. They
studied the language two years, while Imlac was preparing to set before
them the various ranks and conditions of mankind. He grew acquainted
with all who had any thing uncommon in their fortune or conduct. He
frequented the voluptuous and the frugal, the idle and the busy, the
merchants and the men of learning. The prince, being now able to
40
converse with fluency, and having learned the caution necessary to be
observed in his intercourse with strangers, began to accompany Imlac to
places of resort, and to enter into all assemblies, that he might make his
choice of life. For some time he thought choice needless, because all
appeared to him equally happy. Wherever he went he met gayety and
kindness, and heard the song of joy, or the laugh of carelessness He
began to believe that the world overflowed with universal plenty, and
that nothing was withheld either from want or merit; that every hand
showered liberality, and every heart melted with benevolence: Òand who
then,Ó says he, Òwill be suffered to be wretched?Ó
Imlac permitted the pleasing delusion, and was unwilling to crush the
hope of inexperience; till one day, having sat a while silent, ÒI know not,Ó
said the prince, Òwhat can be the reason that I am more unhappy than
any of our friends. I see them perpetually and unalterably chearful, but
feel my own mind restless and uneasy. I am unsatisfied with those
pleasures which I seem most to court; I live in the crowds of jollity, not
so much to enjoy company as to shun myself, and am only loud and
merry to conceal my sadness.Ó
ÒEvery man,Ó said Imlac, Òmay, by examining his own mind, guess
what passes in the minds of others: when you feel that your own gaiety
is counterfeit, it may justly lead you to suspect that of your companions
not to be sincere. Envy is commonly reciprocal. We are long before we
are convinced that happiness is never to be found, and each believes it
possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself. In
the assembly, where you passed the last night, there appeared such
spriteliness of air, and volatility of fancy as might have suited beings of
an higher order, formed to inhabit serener regions inaccessible to care or
sorrow: yet believe me, prince, there was not one who did not dread the
moment when solitude should deliver him to the tyranny of reflection.Ó
ÒThis,Ó said the prince, Òmay be true of others, since it is true of me;
yet, whatever be the general infelicity of man, one condition is more
happy than another, and wisdom surely directs us to take the least evil in
the choice of life.Ó
ÒThe causes of good and evil,Ó answered Imlac, Òare so various and
uncertain, so often entangled with each other, so diversified by various
relations, and so much subject to accidents which cannot be foreseen, that
41
he who would fix his condition upon incontestable reasons of preference,
must live and die inquiring and deliberating.Ó
ÒBut surely,Ó said Rasselas, Òthe wise men, to whom we listen with
reverence and wonder, chose that mode of life for themselves which they
thought most likely to make them happy.Ó
ÒVery few,Ó said the poet, Òlive by choice. Every man is placed in his
present condition by causes which acted without his foresight, and with
which he did not always willingly co-operate; and therefore you will
rarely meet one who does not think the lot of his neighbour better than
his own.Ó ÒI am pleased to think,Ó said the prince, Òthat my birth has
given me at least one advantage over others, by enabling me to
determine for myself. I have here the world before me; I will review it at
leisure: surely happiness is somewhere to be found.Ó
42
17. The prince associates with young men of spirit and gaiety
Rasselas rose next day, and resolved to begin his experiments upon
life. ÒYouth,Ó cried he, Òis the time of gladness: I will join myself to the
young men, whose only business is to gratify their desires, and whose
time is all spent in a succession of enjoyments.Ó
To such societies he was readily admitted, but a few days brought
him back weary and disgusted. Their mirth was without images, their
laughter without motive; their pleasures were gross and sensual, in
which the mind had no part; their conduct was at once wild and mean;
they laughed at order and at law, but the frown of power dejected, and
the eye of wisdom abashed them.
The prince soon concluded, that he should never be happy in a course
of life of which he was ashamed. He thought it unsuitable to a reasonable
being to act without a plan, and to be sad or chearful only by chance.
ÒHappiness,Ó said he, Òmust be something solid and permanent, without
fear and without uncertainty.
But his young companions had gained so much of his regard by their
frankness and courtesy, that he could not leave them without warning
and remonstrance. ÒMy friends,Ó said he, ÒI have seriously considered
our manners and our prospects, and find that we have mistaken our own
interest. The first years of man must make provision for the last. He that
never thinks never can be wise. Perpetual levity must end in ignorance;
and intemperance, though it may fire the spirits for an hour, will make
life short or miserable. Let us consider that youth is of no long duration,
and that in maturer age, when the enchantments of fancy shall cease, and
phantoms of delight dance no more about us, we shall have no comforts
but the esteem of wise men, and the means of doing good. Let us,
therefore, stop, while to stop is in our power: let us live as men who are
sometime to grow old, and to whom it will be the most dreadful of all
evils not to count their past years but by follies, and to be reminded of
their former luxuriance of health only by the maladies which riot has
produced.Ó They stared a while in silence one upon another, and, at last,
drove him away by a general chorus of continued laughter.
43
The consciousness that his sentiments were just, and his intentions
kind, was scarcely sufficient to support him against the horrour of
derision. But he recovered his tranquility, and persued his search.
44
18. The prince finds a wise and happy man
As he was one day walking in the street, he saw a spacious building
which all were, by the open doors, invited to enter: he followed the
stream of people, and found it a hall or school of declamation, in which
professors read lectures to their auditory. He fixed his eye upon a sage
raised above the rest, who discoursed with great energy on the
government of the passions. His look was venerable, his action graceful,
his pronunciation clear, and his diction elegant. He shewed, with great
strength of sentiment, and variety of illustration, that human nature is
degraded and debased, when the lower faculties predominate over the
higher; that when fancy, the parent of passion, usurps the dominion of
the mind, nothing ensues but the natural effect of unlawful government,
perturbation and confusion; that she betrays the fortresses of the intellect
to rebels, and excites her children to sedition against reason their lawful
sovereign. He compared reason to the sun, of which the light is constant,
uniform, and lasting; and fancy to a meteor, of bright but transitory
lustre, irregular in its motion, and delusive in its direction. He then
communicated the various precepts given from time to time for the
conquest of passion, and displayed the happiness of those who had
obtained the important victory, after which man is no longer the slave of
fear, nor the fool of hope; is no more emaciated by envy, inflamed by
anger, emasculated by tenderness, or depressed by grief; but walks on
calmly through the tumults or the privacies of life, as the sun persues
alike his course through the calm or the stormy sky.
He enumerated many examples of heroes immovable by pain or
pleasure, who looked with indifference on those modes or accidents to
which the vulgar give the names of good and evil. He exhorted his
hearers to lay aside their prejudices, and arm themselves against the
shafts of malice or misfortune, by invulnerable patience; concluding, that
this state only was happiness, and that this happiness was in every oneÕs
power. Rasselas listened to him with the veneration due to the
instructions of a superior being, and, waiting for him at the door, humbly
implored the liberty of visiting so great a master of true wisdom. The
lecturer hesitated a moment, when Rasselas put a purse of gold into his
hand, which he received with a mixture of joy and wonder.
45
ÒI have found,Ó said the prince, Òat his return to Imlac, a man who
can teach all that is necessary to be known, who, from the unshaken
throne of rational fortitude, looks down on the scenes of life changing
beneath him. He speaks, and attention watches his lips. He reasons, and
conviction closes his periods. This man shall be my future guide: I will
learn his doctrines, and imitate his life.Ó
ÒBe not too hasty,Ó said Imlac, Òto trust, or to admire, the teachers of
morality: they discourse like angels, but they live like men.Ó
Rasselas, who could not conceive how any man could reason so
forcibly without feeling the cogency of his own arguments, paid his visit
in a few days, and was denied admission. He had now learned the
power of money, and made his way by a piece of gold to the inner
apartment, where he found the philosopher in a room half darkened,
with his eyes misty, and his face pale. ÒSir,Ó said he, Òyou are come at a
time when all human friendship is useless; what I suffer cannot be
remedied, what I have lost cannot be supplied. My daughter my only
daughter, from whose tenderness I expected all the comforts of my age,
died last night of a fever. My views, my purposes, my hopes are at an
end: I am now a lonely being disunited from society.Ó
ÒSir,Ó said the prince, Òmortality is an event by which a wise man can
never be surprised: we know that death is always near, and it should
therefore always be expected.Ó ÒYoung man,Ó answered the philosopher,
Òyou speak like one that has never felt the pangs of separation.Ó ÒHave
you then forgot the precepts,Ó said Rasselas, Òwhich you so powerfully
enforced? Has wisdom no strength to arm the heart against calamity?
Consider, that external things are naturally variable, but truth and reason
are always the same.Ó ÒWhat comfort,Ó said the mourner, Òcan truth and
reason afford me? of what effect are they now, but to tell me, that my
daughter will not be restored?Ó
The prince, whose humanity would not suffer him to insult misery
with reproof, went away convinced of the emptiness of rhetorical sound,
and the inefficacy of polished periods and studied sentences.
46
19. A glimpse of pastoral life
He was still eager upon the same enquiry; and, having heard of a
hermit, that lived near the lowest cataract of the Nile, and filled the
whole country with the fame of his sanctity, resolved to visit his retreat,
and enquire whether that felicity, which publick life could not afford,
was to be found in solitude; and whether a man, whose age and virtue
made him venerable, could teach any peculiar art of shunning evils, or
enduring them.
Imlac and the princess agreed to accompany him, and, after the
necessary preparations, they began their journey. Their way lay through
fields, where shepherds tended their flocks, and the lambs were playing
upon the pasture. ÒThis,Ó said the poet, Òis the life which has been often
celebrated for its innocence and quiet: let us pass the heat of the day
among the shepherds tents, and know whether all our searches are not to
terminate in pastoral simplicity.Ó
The proposal pleased them, and they induced the sheperds, by small
presents and familiar questions, to tell their opinion of their own state:
they were so rude and ignorant, so little able to compare the good with
the evil of the occupation, and so indistinct in their narratives and
descriptions, that very little could be learned from them. But it was
evident that their hearts were cankered with discontent; that they
considered themselves as condemned to labour for the luxury of the rich,
and looked up with stupid malevolence toward those that were placed
above them.
The princess pronounced with vehemence, that she would never
suffer these envious savages to be her companions, and that she should
not soon be desirous of seeing any more specimens of rustick happiness;
but could not believe that all the accounts of primeval pleasures were
fabulous, and was yet in doubt whether life had any thing that could be
justly preferred to the placid gratifications of fields and woods. She
hoped that the time would come, when with a few virtuous and elegant
companions, she should gather flowers planted by her own hand, fondle
the lambs of her own ewe, and listen, without care, among brooks and
breezes, to one of her maidens reading in the shade.
47
20. The dangers of prosperity.
On the next day they continued their journey, till the heat compelled
them to look round for shelter. At a small distance they saw a thick
wood, which they no sooner entered than they perceived that they were
approaching the habitations of men. The shrubs were diligently cut away
to open walks where the shades were darkest; the boughs of opposite
trees were artificially interwoven; seats of flowery turf were raised in
vacant spaces, and a rivulet, that wantoned along the side of a winding
path, had its banks sometimes opened into small basons, and its stream
sometimes obstructed by little mounds of stone heaped together to
increase its murmurs. They passed slowly through the wood, delighted
with such unexpected accommodations, and entertained each other with
conjecturing what, or who, he could be, that, in those rude and
unfrequented regions, had leisure and art for such harmless luxury.
As they advanced, they heard the sound of musick, and saw youths
and virgins dancing in the grove; and, going still further, beheld a stately
palace built upon a hill surrounded with woods. The laws of eastern
hospitality allowed them to enter, and the master welcomed them like a
man liberal and wealthy.
He was skilful enough in appearances soon to discern that they were
no common guests, and spread his table with magnificence. The
eloquence of Imlac caught his attention, and the lofty courtesy of the
princess excited his respect. When they offered to depart he entreated
their stay, and was the next day still more unwilling to dismiss them than
before. They were easily persuaded to stop, and civility grew up in time
to freedom and confidence. The prince now saw all the domesticks
cheerful, and all the face of nature smiling round the place, and could not
forbear to hope that he should find here what he was seeking; but when
he was congratulating the master upon his possessions, he answered with
a sigh, ÒMy condition has indeed the appearance of happiness, but
appearances are delusive. My prosperity puts my life in danger; the Bassa
of Egypt is my enemy, incensed only by my wealth and popularity. I
have been hitherto protected against him by the princes of the country;
but, as the favour of the great is uncertain, I know not how soon my
defenders may be persuaded to share the plunder with the Bassa. I have
48
sent my treasures into a distant country, and, upon the first alarm, am
prepared to follow them. Then will my enemies riot in my mansion, and
enjoy the gardens which I have planted.Ó They all joined in lamenting his
danger, and deprecating his exile; and the princess was so much
disturbed with the tumult of grief and indignation, that she retired to
her apartment. They continued with their kind inviter a few days longer,
and then went forward to find the hermit.
49
21. The happiness of solitude. The hermitÕs history
They came on the third day, by the direction of the peasants, to the
HermitÕs cell: it was a cavern in the side of the mountain, over-shadowed
with palm-trees; at such a distance from the cataract, that nothing more
was heard than a gentle uniform murmur, such as composed the mind to
pensive meditation, especially when it was assisted by the wind
whistling among the branches. The first rude essay of nature had been so
much improved by human labour, that the cave contained several
apartments, appropriated to different uses, and often afforded lodging
to travellers, whom darkness or tempests happened to overtake.
The Hermit sat on a bench at the door, to enjoy the coolness of the
evening. On one side lay a book with pens and papers, on the other
mechanical instruments of various kinds. As they approached him
unregarded, the princess observed that he had not the countenance of a
man that had found, or could teach, the way to happiness.
They saluted him with great respect, which he repaid like a man not
unaccustomed to the forms of courts, ÒMy children,Ó said he, Òif you
have lost your way, you shall be willingly supplied with such
conveniences for the night as this cavern will afford. I have all that
nature requires, and you will not expect delicacies in a HermitÕs cell.Ó
They thanked him, and entering, were pleased with the neatness and
regularity of the place. The Hermit set flesh and wine before them,
though he fed only upon fruits and water. His discourse was chearful
without levity, and pious without enthusiasm. He soon gained the
esteem of his guests, and the princess repented of her hasty censure. At
last Imlac began thus: ÒI do not now wonder that your reputation is so
far extended; we have heard at Cairo of your wisdom, and came hither
to implore your direction for this young man and maiden in the choice of
life.Ó
ÒTo him that lives well, answered the hermit, every form of life is
good; nor can I give any other rule for choice, than to remove from all
apparent evil.Ó
ÒHe will remove most certainly from evil,Ó said the prince, Òwho shall
devote himself to that solitude which you have recommended by your
example.Ó
50
ÒI have indeed lived fifteen years in solitude,Ó said the hermit, Òbut
have no desire that my example should gain any imitators. In my youth I
professed arms, and was raised by degrees to the highest military rank. I
have traversed wide countries at the head of my troops, and seen many
battles and sieges. At last, being disgusted by the preferent of a younger
officer, and feeling that my vigour was beginning to decay, I resolved to
close my life in peace, having found the world full of snares, discord, and
misery. I had once escaped from the persuit of the enemy by the shelter
of this cavern, and therefore chose it for my final residence. I employed
artificers to form it into chambers, and stored it with all that I was likely
to want.
ÒFor some time after my retreat, I rejoiced like a tempest-beaten
sailor at his entrance into the harbour, being delighted with the sudden
change of the noise and hurry of war, to stillness and repose. When the
pleasure of novelty went away, I employed my hours in examining the
plants which grow in the valley, and the minerals which I collected from
the rocks. But that enquiry is now grown tasteless and irksome. I have
been for some time unsettled and distracted: my mind is disturbed with
a thousand perplexities of doubt, and vanities of imagination, which
hourly prevail upon me, because I have no opportunities of relaxation or
diversion. I am sometimes ashamed to think that I could not secure
myself from vice, but by retiring from the exercise of virtue, and begin to
suspect that I was rather impelled by resentment, than led by devotion,
into solitude. My fancy riots in scenes of folly, and I lament that I have
lost so much, and have gained so little. In solitude, if I escape the
example of bad men, I want likewise the counsel and conversation of the
good. I have been long comparing the evils with the advantages of
society, and resolve to return into the world tomorrow. The life of a
solitary man will be certainly miserable, but not certainly devout.Ó
They heard his resolution with surprise, but, after a short pause,
offered to conduct him to Cairo. He dug up a considerable treasure
which he had hid among the rocks, and accompanied them to the city, on
which, as he approached it, he gazed with rapture.
51
22. The happiness of a life led according to nature
Rasselas went often to an assembly of learned men, who met at stated
times to unbend their minds, and compare their opinions. Their manners
were somewhat coarse, but their conversation was instructive, and their
disputations acute, though sometimes too violent, and often continued
till neither controvertist remembered upon what question they began.
Some faults were almost general among them: every one was desirous to
dictate to the rest, and every one was pleased to hear the genius or
knowledge of another depreciated.
In this assembly Rasselas was relating his interview with the hermit,
and the wonder with which he heard him censure a course of life which
he had so deliberately chosen, and so laudably followed. The sentiments
of the hearers were various. Some were of opinion, that the folly of his
choice had been justly punished by condemnation to perpetual
perseverance. One of the youngest among them, with great vehemence,
pronounced him an hypocrite. Some talked of the right of society to the
labour of individuals, and considered retirement as a desertion of duty.
Others readily allowed, that there was a time when the claims of the
publick were satisfied, and when a man might properly sequester
himself, to review his life, and purify his heart.
One, who appeared more affected with the narrative than the rest,
thought it likely, that the hermit would, in a few years, go back to his
retreat, and, perhaps, if shame did not restrain, or death intercept him,
return once more from his retreat into the world: ÒFor the hope of
happiness,Ó said he, Òis so strongly impressed, that the longest
experience is not able to efface it. Of the present state, whatever it be, we
feel, and are forced to confess, the misery, yet, when the same state is
again at a distance, imagination paints it as desirable. But the time will
surely come, when desire will be no longer our torment, and no man
shall be wretched but by his own fault.Ó
ÒThis,Ó said a philosopher, Òwho had heard him with tokens of great
impatience, is the present condition of a wise man. The time is already
come, when none are wretched but by their own fault. Nothing is more
idle, than to inquire after happiness, which nature has kindly placed
within our reach. The way to be happy is to live according to nature, in
52
obedience to that universal and unalterable law with which every heart is
originally impressed; which is not written on it by precept, but engraven
by destiny, not instilled by education but infused at our nativity. He that
lives according to nature will suffer nothing from the delusions of hope,
or importunities of desire: he will receive and reject with equability of
temper; and act or suffer as the reason of things shall alternately
prescribe. Other men may amuse themselves with subtle definitions, or
intricate raciocination. Let them learn to be wise by easier means: let
them observe the hind of the forest, and the linnet of the grove: let them
consider the life of animals, whose motions are regulated by instinct;
they obey their guide and are happy. Let us therefore, at length, cease to
dispute, and learn to live; throw away the incumbrance of precepts,
which they who utter them with so much pride and pomp do not
understand, and carry with us this simple and intelligible maxim, That
deviation from nature is deviation from happiness.Ó
When he had spoken, he looked round him with a placid air, and
enjoyed the consciousness of his own beneficence.
ÒSir,Ó said the prince, with great modesty, Òas I, like all the rest of
mankind, am desirous of felicity, my closest attention has been fixed
upon your discourse: I doubt not the truth of a position which a man so
learned has so confidently advanced. Let me only know what it is to live
according to nature.Ó
ÒWhen I find young men so humble and so docile,Ó said the
philosopher, ÒI can deny them no information which my studies have
enabled me to afford. To live according to nature, is to act always with
due regard to the fitness arising from the relations and qualities of causes
and effects; to concur with the great and unchangeable scheme of
universal felicity; to co-operate with the general disposition and
tendency of the present system of things.Ó
The prince soon found that this was one of the sages whom he should
understand less as he heard him longer. He therefore bowed and was
silent, and the philosopher, supposing him satisfied, and the rest
vanquished, rose up and departed with the air of a man that had
co-operated with the present system.
53
23. The prince and his sister divide between them the work of
observation
Rasselas returned home full of reflexions, doubtful how to direct his
future steps. Of the way to happiness he found the learned and simple
equally ignorant; but, as he was yet young, he flattered himself that he
had time remaining for more experiments, and further enquiries. He
communicated to Imlac his observations and his doubts, but was
answered by him with new doubts, and remarks that gave him no
comfort. He therefore discoursed more frequently and freely with his
sister, who had yet the same hope with himself, and always assisted him
to give some reason why, though he had been hitherto frustrated, he
might succeed at last.
ÒWe have hitherto,Ó said she, Òknown but little of the world: we have
never yet been either great or mean. In our own country, though we had
royalty, we had no power, and in this we have not yet seen the private
recesses of domestick peace. Imlac favours not our search, lest we should
in time find him mistaken. We will divide the task between us: you shall
try what is to be found in the splendour of courts, and I will range the
shades of humbler life. Perhaps command and authority may be the
supreme blessings, as they afford most opportunities of doing good: or,
perhaps, what this world can give may be found in the modest
habitations of middle fortune; too low for great designs, and too high for
penury and distress.Ó
54
24. The prince examines the happiness of high stations
Rasselas applauded the design, and appeared next day with a
splendid retinue at the court of the Bassa. He was soon distinguished for
his magnificence, and admitted, as a prince whose curiosity had brought
him from distant countries, to an intimacy with the great officers, and
frequent conversation with the Bassa himself.
He was at first inclined to believe, that the man must be pleased with
his own condition, whom all approached with reverence, and heard with
obedience, and who had the power to extend his edicts to a whole
kingdom. ÒThere can be no pleasure,Ó said he, Òequal to that of feeling at
once the joy of thousands all made happy by wise administration. Yet,
since, by the law of subordination, this sublime delight can be in one
nation but the lot of one, it is surely reasonable to think that there is
some satisfaction more popular and accessible, and that millions can
hardly be subjected to the will of a single man, only to fill his particular
breast with incommunicable content.Ó
These thoughts were often in his mind, and he found no solution of
the difficulty. But as presents and civilities gained him more familiarity,
he found that almost every man who stood high in employment hated all
the rest, and was hated by them, and that their lives were a continual
succession of plots and detections, stratagems and escapes, faction and
treachery, Many of those, who surrounded the Bassa, were sent only to
watch and report his conduct; every tongue was muttering censure and
every eye was searching for a fault.
At last the letters of revocation arrived, the Bassa was carried in
chains to Constantinople, and his name was mentioned no more.
ÒWhat are we now to think of the prerogatives of power,Ó said
Rasselas to his sister; Òis it without any efficacy to good? or, is the
subordinate degree only dangerous, and the supreme safe and glorious?
Is the Sultan the only happy man in his dominions? or, is the Sultan
himself subject to the torments of suspicion, and the dread of enemies?Ó
In a short time the second Bassa was deposed. The Sultan, that had
advanced him, was murdered by the Janisaries, and his successor had
other views and different favourites.
55
25. The princess persues her enquiry with more diligence than success
The princess, in the mean time, insinuated herself into many families;
for there are few doors, through which liberality, joined with good
humour, cannot find its way. The daughters of many houses were airy
and chearful, but Nekayah had been too long accustomed to the
conversation of Imlac and her brother to be much pleased with childish
levity and prattle which had no meaning. She found their thoughts
narrow, their wishes low, and their merriment often artificial. Their
pleasures, poor as they were, could not be preserved pure, but were
embittered by petty competitions and worthless emulation. They were
always jealous of the beauty of each other; of a quality to which
solicitude can add nothing, and from which detraction can take nothing
away. Many were in love with triflers like themselves, and many fancied
that they were in love when in truth they were only idle. Their affection
was seldom fixed on sense or virtue, and therefore seldom ended but in
vexation. Their grief, however, like their joy, was transient; every thing
floated in their mind unconnected with the past or future, so that one
desire easily gave way to another, as a second stone cast into the water
effaces and confounds the circles of the first.
With these girls she played as with inoffensive animals, and found
them proud of her countenance, and weary of her company.
But her purpose was to examine more deeply, and her affability easily
persuaded the hearts that were swelling with sorrow to discharge their
secrets in her ear: and those whom hope flattered, or prosperity
delighted, often courted her to partake their pleasures.
The princess and her brother commonly met in the evening in a
private summer-house on the bank of the Nile, and related to each other
the occurrences of the day. As they were sitting together, the princess
cast her eyes upon the river that flowed before her. ÒAnswer,Ó said she,
Ògreat father of waters, thou that rollest thy floods through eighty
nations, to the invocations of the daughter of thy native king. Tell me if
thou waterest, through all thy course, a single habitation from which
thou dost not hear the murmurs of complaint?Ó
ÒYou are then,Ó said Rasselas, Ònot more successful in private houses
than I have been in courts.Ó ÒI have, since the last partition of our
56
provinces,Ó said the princess, Òenabled myself to enter familiarly into
many families, where there was the fairest show of prosperity and peace,
and know not one house that is not haunted by some fury that destroys
its quiet.
ÒI did not seek ease among the poor, because I concluded that there it
could not be found. But I saw many poor whom I had supposed to live in
affluence. Poverty has, in large cities, very different appearances: it is
often concealed in splendour, and often in extravagance. It is the care of
a very great part of mankind to conceal their indigence from the rest:
they support themselves by temporary expedients, and every day is lost
in contriving for the morrow.
ÒThis, however, was an evil, which, though frequent, I saw with less
pain, because I could relieve it. Yet some have refused my bounties; more
offended with my quickness to detect their wants, than pleased with my
readiness to succour them: and others, whose exigencies compelled them
to admit my kindness, have never been able to forgive their benefactress.
Many, however, have been sincerely grateful without the ostentation of
gratitude, or the hope of other favours.Ó
57
26. The princess continues her remarks upon private life
Nekayah perceiving her brotherÕs attention fixed, proceeded in her
narrative.
ÒIn families, where there is or is not poverty, there is commonly
discord: if a kingdom be, as Imlac tells us, a great family, a family
likewise is a little kingdom, torn with factions and exposed to
revolutions. An unpractised observer, expects the love of parents and
children to be constant and equal; but this kindness seldom continues
beyond the years of infancy: in a short time the children become rivals to
their parents. Benefits are allayed by reproaches, and gratitude debased
by envy.
ÒParents and children seldom act in concert: each child endeavours to
appropriate the esteem or fondness of the parents, and the parents, with
yet less temptation, betray each other to their children; thus some place
their confidence in the father, and some in the mother, and, by degrees,
the house is filled with artifices and feuds.
ÒThe opinions of children and parents, of the young and the old, are
naturally opposite, by the contrary effects of hope and despondence, of
expectation and experience, without crime or folly on either side. The
colours of life in youth and age appear different, as the face of nature in
spring and winter. And how can children credit the assertions of parents,
which their own eyes show them to be false?
ÒFew parents act in such a manner as much to enforce their maxims
by the credit of their lives. The old man trusts wholly to slow
contrivance and gradual progression: the youth expects to force his way
by genius, vigour, and precipitance. The old man pays regard to riches,
and the youth reverences virtue. The old man deifies prudence: the
youth commits himself to magnanimity and chance. The young man, who
intends no ill, believes that none is intended, and therefore acts with
openness and candour: but his father, having suffered the injuries of
fraud, is impelled to suspect, and too often allured to practice it. Age
looks with anger on the temerity of youth, and youth with contempt on
the scrupulosity of age. Thus parents and children, for the greatest part,
live on to love less and less: and, if those whom nature has thus closely
58
united are the torments of each other, where shall we look for
tenderness and consolation?Ó
ÒSurely,Ó said the prince, Òyou must have been unfortunate in your
choice of acquaintance: I am unwilling to believe, that the most tender of
all relations is thus impeded in its, effects by natural necessity.Ó
ÒDomestick discord,Ó answered she, Òis not inevitably and fatally
necessary; but yet is not easily avoided. We seldom see that a whole
family is virtuous: the good and evil cannot well agree; and the evil can
yet less agree with one another: even the virtuous fall sometimes to
variance, when their virtues are of different kinds and tending to
extremes. In general, those parents have most reverence who most
deserve it: for he that lives well cannot be despised.
ÒMany other evils infest private life. Some are the slaves of servants
whom they have trusted with their affairs. Some are kept in continual
anxiety to the caprice of rich relations, whom they cannot please, and
dare not offend. Some husbands are imperious, and some wives
perverse: and, as it is always more easy to do evil than good, though the
wisdom or virtue of one can very rarely make many happy, the folly or
vice of one may often make many miserable.Ó
ÒIf such be the general effect of marriage,Ó said the prince, ÒI shall,
for the future, think it dangerous to connect my interest with that of
another, lest I should be unhappy by my partnerÕs fault.Ó
ÒI have met,Ó said the princess, Òwith many who live single for that
reason; but I never found that their prudence ought to raise envy. They
dream away their time without friendship, without fondness, and are
driven to rid themselves of the day, for which they have no use, by
childish amusements, or vicious delights. They act as beings under the
constant sense of some known inferiority, that fills their minds with
rancour, and their tongues with censure. They are peevish at home, and
malevolent abroad; and, as the out-laws of human nature, make it their
business and their pleasure to disturb that society which debars them
from its privileges. To live without feeling or exciting sympathy, to be
fortunate without adding to the felicity of others, or afflicted without
tasting the balm of pity, is a state more gloomy than solitude: it is not
retreat but exclusion from mankind. Marriage has many pains, but
celibacy has no pleasures.Ó
59
ÒWhat then is to be done?Ó said Rasselas; Òthe more we enquire, the
less we can resolve. Surely he is most likely to please himself that has no
other inclination to regard.Ó
60
27. Disquisition upon greatness
The conversation had a short pause. The prince having considered his
sisterÕs observations, told her, that she had surveyed life with prejudice,
and supposed misery where she did not find it. ÒYour narrative,Ó says
he, Òthrows yet a darker gloom upon the prospects of futurity: the
predictions of Imlac were but faint sketches of the evils painted by
Nekayah. I have been lately convinced that quiet is not the daughter of
grandeur, or of power: that her presence is not to be bought by wealth,
nor enforced by conquest. It is evident, that as any man acts in a wider
compass, he must be more exposed to opposition from enmity or
miscarriage from chance; whoever has many to please or to govern, must
use the ministry of many agents, some of whom will be wicked, and
some ignorant; by some he will be misled, and by others betrayed. If he
gratifies one he will offend another: those that are not favoured will
think themselves injured; and, since favours can be conferred but upon
few, the greater number will be always discontented.Ó
ÒThe discontent,Ó said the princess, Òwhich is thus unreasonable, I
hope that I shall always have spirit to despise, and you, power to
repress.
ÒDiscontent,Ó answered Rasselas, Òwill not always be without reason
under the most just or vigilant administration of publick affairs. None,
however attentive, can always discover that merit which indigence or
faction may happen to obscure; and none, however powerful, can always
reward it. Yet, he that sees inferiour desert advanced above him, will
naturally impute that preference to partiality or caprice; and, indeed, it
can scarcely be hoped that any man, however magnanimous by nature, or
exalted by condition, will be able to persist for ever in fixed and
inexorable justice of distribution: he will sometimes indulge his own
affections, and sometimes those of his favourites; he will permit some to
please him who can never serve him; he will discover in those whom he
loves qualities which in reality they do not possess; and to those, from
whom he receives pleasure, he will in his turn endeavour to give it. Thus
will recommendations sometimes prevail which were purchased by
money, or by the more destructive bribery of flattery and servility.
61
ÒHe that has 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.
ÒThe 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.Ó
ÒWhether perfect happiness would be procured by perfect goodness,Ó
said Nekayah, Òthis 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, a steady prospect of a happier state; this may enable us to
endure calamity with patience; but remember that patience must suppose
pain.Ó
62
28. Rasselas and Nekayah continue their conversation
ÒDear princess,Ó said Rasselas, Òyou fall into the common errours 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 locusts, and suspends
pestilence on the wing of every blast that issues from the south.
ÒOn 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 ten thousands flourish in youth, and wither in
age, without the knowledge of any other than domestick evils, and share
the same pleasures and vexations whether their kings are mild or cruel,
whether the armies of their country persue their enemies, or retreat
before them. While courts are disturbed with intestine competitions, and
ambassadours are negotiating in foreign countries, the smith still plies his
anvil, and the husbandman drives his plow forward; the necessaries of
life are required and obtained, and the successive business of the seasons
continues to make its wonted revolutions.
ÒLet 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.
ÒMarriage is evidently the dictate of nature; men and women were
made to be companions of each other, and therefore I cannot be
persuaded but that marriage is one of the means of happiness.Ó
ÒI know not,Ó said the princess, Òwhether 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
63
collisions of contrary desire where both are urged by violent impulses,
the obstinate contests 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
compacts.Ó
ÒYou seem to forget,Ó replied Rasselas, Òthat you have, even now,
represented celibacy as less happy than marriage. Both conditions may be
bad, but they cannot both be worst. Thus it happens when wrong
opinions are entertained, that they mutually destroy each other, and
leave the mind open to truth.Ó
ÒI did not expect,Ó answered the princess, Òto hear that imputed to
falshood 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. Where 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 politicks and morality:
but when we perceive the whole at once, as in numerical computations,
all agree in one judgment, and none ever varies his opinion.Ó
ÒLet us not add,Ó said the prince, Òto 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.
ÒHow the world is to be peopled,Ó returned Nekayah, Òis not my
care, and needs not be yours. I see no danger that the present generation
64
should omit to leave successors behind them: we are not now enquiring
for the world, but for ourselves.Ó
65
29. The debate on marriage continued
ÒThe good of the whole,Ó says Rasselas, Òis 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.
ÒI 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 an enquiry after
conformity of opinions, similarity of manners, rectitude of judgment, or
purity of sentiment.
ÒSuch 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 had
before concealed; they wear out life in altercations, and charge nature
with cruelty.
ÒFrom 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. ÒSurely 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 enquiry and selection: one
advantage, at least, will be certain; the parents will be visibly older than
their children.Ó
66
ÒWhat reason cannot collect,Ó said Nekayah, Òand 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?Ó
ÒBut surely,Ó interposed the prince, Òyou 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?Ó
ÒThus it is,Ó said Nekayah, Òthat philosophers are deceived. There are
a thousand familiar disputes which reason never can decide; questions
that elude investigation, and make logick ridiculous; cases where
something must be done, and where little can be said. Consider the state
of mankind, and enquire 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 detail of a domestick day.
ÒThose who marry at an advanced age, will probably escape the
encroachments of their children; but, in diminution of this advantage,
67
they will be likely to leave them, ignorant and helpless, to a guardianÕs
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.
ÒFrom 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 surfaces
to each other.
ÒI believe it will be found that those who marry late are best pleased
with their children, and those who marry early with their partners.Ó
ÒThe union of these two affections,Ó said Rasselas, Òwould produce
all that could be wished. Perhaps there is a time when marriage might
unite them, a time neither too early for the father, nor too late for the
husband.Ó
ÒEvery hour,Ó answered the princess, Òconfirms my prejudice in
favour of the position so often uttered by the mouth of Imlac, ÔThat
nature sets her gifts on the right hand and on the left.Õ Those conditions,
which flatter hope and attract desire, are so constituted, that, as we
approach one, we recede from another. There are goods so opposed that
we cannot seize both, but, by too much prudence, may pass between
them as too great a distance to reach either. This is often the fate of long
consideration; he does nothing who endeavours to do more than is
allowed to humanity. Flatter not yourself with contrarieties of pleasure.
Of the blessings set before you make your choice, and be content. No
man can taste the fruits of autumn while he is delighting his scent with
the flowers of the spring: no man can, at the same time, fill his cup from
the source and from the mouth of the Nile.Ó
68
30. Imlac enters, and changes the conversation
Here Imlac entered, and interrupted them. ÒImlac,Ó said Rasselas, ÒI
have been taking from the princess the dismal history of private life, and
am almost discouraged from further search.Ó
ÒIt seems to me,Ó said Imlac, Òthat while you are making the choice
of life, you neglect to live. You wander about a single city, which,
however large and diversified, can now afford few novelties, and forget
that you are in a country, famous among the earliest monarchies for the
power and wisdom of its inhabitants; a country where the sciences first
dawned that illuminate the world, and beyond which the arts cannot be
traced of civil society or domestick life.
ÒThe old Egyptians have left behind them monuments of industry
and power before which all European magnificence is confessed to fade
away. The ruins of their architecture are the schools of modern builders,
and from the wonders which time has spared we may conjecture, though
uncertainly, what it has destroyed.Ó
ÒMy curiosity,Ó said Rasselas, Òdoes not very strongly lead me to
survey piles of stone, or mounds of earth; my business is with man. I
came hither not to measure fragments of temples, or trace choaked
aqueducts, but to look upon the various scenes of the present world.Ó
ÒThe things that are now before us,Ó said the princess, Òrequire
attention, and deserve it. What have I to do with the heroes or the
monuments of ancient times? with times which never can return, and
heroes, whose form of life was different from all that the present
condition of mankind requires or allows.Ó
ÒTo know any thing,Ó returned the poet, Òwe must know its effects;
to see men we must see their works, that we may learn what reason has
dictated, or passion has incited, and find what are the most powerful
motives of action. To judge rightly of the present we must oppose it to
the past; for all judgment is comparative, and of the future nothing can
be known. The truth is, that no mind is much employed upon the
present: recollection and anticipation fill up almost all our moments. Our
passions are joy and grief, love and hatred, hope and fear. Of joy and
grief the past is the object, and the future of hope and fear; even love and
hatred respect the past, for the cause must have been before the effect.
69
ÒThe present state of things is the consequence of the former, and it is
natural to inquire what were the sources of the good that we enjoy, or of
the evil that we suffer. If we act only for ourselves, to neglect the study
of history is not prudent: if we are entrusted with the care of others, it is
not just. Ignorance, when it is voluntary, is criminal; and he may properly
be charged with evil who refused to learn how he might prevent it.
ÒThere is no part of history so generally useful as that which relates
the progress of the human mind, the gradual improvement of reason, the
successive advances of science, the vicissitudes of learning and ignorance,
which are the light and darkness of thinking beings, the extinction and
resuscitation of arts, and all the revolutions of the intellectual world. If
accounts of battles and invasions are peculiarly the business of princes,
the useful or elegant arts are not to be neglected; those who have
kingdoms to govern, have understandings to cultivate.
ÒExample is always more efficacious than precept. A soldier is formed
in war, and a painter must copy pictures. In this, contemplative life has
the advantage: great actions are seldom seen, but the labours of art are
always at hand for those who desire to know what art has been able to
perform. When the eye or the imagination is struck with any uncommon
work the next transition of an active mind is to the means by which it
was performed. Here begins the true use of such contemplation; we
enlarge our comprehension by new ideas, and perhaps recover some art
lost to mankind, or learn what is less perfectly known in our own
country. At least we compare our own with former times, and either
rejoice at our improvements, or, what is the first motion towards good,
discover our defects.Ó
ÒI am willing,Ó said the prince, Òto see all that can deserve my
search.Ó ÒAnd I,Ó said the princess, Òshall rejoice to learn something of
the manners of antiquity.Ó
ÒThe most pompous monument of Egyptian greatness, and one of the
most bulky works of manual industry,Ó said Imlac, Òare the pyramids;
fabricks raised before the time of history, and of which the earliest
narratives afford us only uncertain traditions. Of these the greatest is still
standing, very little injured by time.Ó
70
ÒLet us visit them to morrow,Ó said Nekayah. ÒI have often heard of
the pyramids, and shall not rest, till I have seen them within and without
with my own eyes.Ó
71
31. They visit the pyramids.
The resolution being thus taken, they set out the next day. They laid
tents upon their camels, being resolved to stay among the pyramids till
their curiosity was fully satisfied. They travelled gently, turned aside to
every thing remarkable, stopped from time to time and conversed with
the inhabitants, and observed the various appearances of towns ruined
and inhabited, of wild and cultivated nature.
When they came to the Great Pyramid they were astonished at the
extent of the base, and the height of the top. Imlac explained to them the
principles upon which the pyramidal form was chosen for a fabrick
intended to co-extend its duration with that of the world: he showed
that its gradual diminution gave it such stability, as defeated all the
common attacks of the elements, and could scarcely be overthrown by
earthquakes themselves, the least resistible of natural violence. A
concussion that should shatter the pyramid would threaten the
dissolution of the continent.
They measured all its dimensions, and pitched their tents at its foot.
Next day they prepared to enter its interiour apartments, and having
hired the common guides climbed up to the first passage, when the
favourite of the princess, looking into the cavity, stepped back and
trembled. ÒPekuah,Ó said the princess, Òof what art thou afraid?Ó ÒOf the
narrow entrance,Ó answered the lady, Òand of the dreadful gloom. I dare
not enter a place which must surely be inhabited by unquiet souls. The
original possessors of these dreadful vaults will start up before us, and,
perhaps, shut us in for ever.Ó She spoke, and threw her arms round the
neck of her mistress.
ÒIf all your fear be of apparitions,Ó said the prince, ÒI will promise
you safety: there is no danger from the dead; he that is once buried will
be seen no more.Ó
ÒThat the dead are seen no more,Ó said Imlac, ÒI will not undertake
to maintain against the concurrent and unvaried testimony of all ages,
and of all nations. There is no people, rude or learned, among whom
apparitions of the dead are not related and believed. This opinion,
which, perhaps, prevails as far as human nature is diffused, could become
universal only by its truth: those, that never heard of one another, would
72
not have agreed in a tale which nothing but experience can make
credible. That it is doubted by single cavillers can very little weaken the
general evidence, and some who deny it with their tongues confess it by
their fears.
ÒYet I do not mean to add new terrours to those which have already
seized upon Pekuah. There can be no reason why spectres should haunt
the pyramid more than other places, or why they should have power or
will to hurt innocence and purity. Our entrance is no violation of their
priviledges; we can take nothing from them, how then can we offend
them?Ó
ÒMy dear Pekuah,Ó said the princess, ÒI will always go before you,
and Imlac shall follow you. Remember that you are the companion of the
princess of Abissinia.Ó
ÒIf the princess is pleased that her servant should die,Ó returned the
lady, Òlet her command some death less dreadful than enclosure in this
horrid cavern. You know I dare not disobey you: I must go if you
command me; but, if I once enter, I never shall come back.Ó
The princess saw that her fear was too strong for expostulation or
reproof, and embracing her, told her that she should stay in the tent till
their return. Pekuah was yet not satisfied, but entreated the princess not
to persue so dreadful a purpose, as that of entering the recesses of the
pyramid. ÒThough I cannot teach courage,Ó said Nekayah, ÒI must not
learn cowardise; nor leave at last undone what I came hither only to do.Ó
73
32. They enter the pyramid
Pekuah descended to the tents and the rest entered the pyramid: they
passed through the galleries, surveyed the vaults of marble, and
examined the chest in which the body of the founder is supposed to have
been reposited. They then sat down in one of the most spacious
chambers to rest a while before they attempted to return.
ÒWe have now,Ó said Imlac, Ògratified our minds with an exact view
of the greatest work of man, except the wall of China.
ÒOf the wall it is very easy to assign the motives. It secured a wealthy
and timorous nation from the incursions of Barbarians, whose
unskilfulness in arts made it easier for them to supply their wants by
rapine than by industry, and who from time to time poured in upon the
habitations of peaceful commerce, as vultures descend upon domestick
fowl. Their celerity and fierceness made the wall necessary, and their
ignorance made it efficacious.
ÒBut for the pyramids no reason has ever been given adequate to the
cost and labour of the work. The narrowness of the chambers proves that
it could afford no retreat from enemies, and treasures might have been
reposited at far less expence with equal security. It seems to have been
erected only in compliance with that hunger of imagination which preys
incessantly upon life, and must be always appeased by some
employment. Those who have already all that they can enjoy, must
enlarge their desires. He that has built for use, till use is supplied, must
begin to build for vanity, and extend his plan to the utmost power of
human performance, that he may not be soon reduced to form another
wish.
ÒI consider this mighty structure as a monument of the insufficiency
of human enjoyments. A king, whose power is unlimited, and whose
treasures surmount all real and imaginary wants, is compelled to solace,
by the erection of a pyramid, the satiety of dominion and tastelesness of
pleasures, and to amuse the tediousness of declining life, by seeing
thousands labouring without end, and one stone, for no purpose, laid
upon another. Whoever thou art, that, not content with a moderate
condition, imaginest happiness in royal magnificence, and dreamest that
74
command or riches can feed the appetite of novelty with perpetual
gratifications, survey the pyramids, and confess thy folly!Ó
75
33. The princess meets with an unexpected misfortune
They rose up, and returned through the cavity at which they had
entered, and the princess prepared for her favourite a long narrative of
dark labyrinths, and costly rooms, and of the different impressions
which the varieties of the way had made upon her. But, when they came
to their train, they found every one silent and dejected: the men
discovered shame and fear in their countenances, and the women were
weeping in the tents.
What had happened they did not try to conjecture, but immediately
enquired. ÒYou had scarcely entered into the pyramid,Ó said one of the
attendants, Òwhen a troop of Arabs rushed upon us: we were too few to
resist them, and too slow to escape. They were about to search the tents,
set us on our camels, and drive us along before them, when the approach
of some Turkish horsemen put them to flight; but they seized the lady
Pekuah with her two maids, and carried them away: the Turks are now
persuing them by our instigation, but I fear they will not be able to
overtake them.Ó The princess was overpowered with surprise and grief.
Rasselas, in the first heat of his resentment, ordered his servants to
follow him, and prepared to persue the robbers with his sabre in his
hand. ÒSir,Ó said Imlac, Òwhat can you hope from violence or valour? the
Arabs are mounted on horses trained to battle and retreat; we have only
beasts of burden. By leaving our present station we may lose the
princess, but cannot hope to regain Pekuah.Ó
In a short time the Turks returned, having not been able to reach the
enemy. The princess burst out into new lamentations, and Rasselas could
scarcely forbear to reproach them with cowardice; but Imlac was of
opinion, that the escape of the Arabs was no addition to their misfortune,
for, perhaps, they would have killed their captives rather than have
resigned them.
76
34. They return to Cairo without Pekuah
There was nothing to be hoped from longer stay. They returned to
Cairo repenting of their curiosity, censuring the negligence of the
government, lamenting their own rashness which had neglected to
procure a guard, imagining many expedients by which the loss of Pekuah
might have been prevented, and resolving to do something for her
recovery, though none could find any thing proper to be done.
Nekayah retired to her chamber, where her women attempted to
comfort her, by telling her that all had their troubles, and that lady
Pekuah had enjoyed much happiness in the world for a long time, and
might reasonably expect a change of fortune. They hoped that some good
would befal her wheresoever she was, and that their mistress would find
another friend who might supply her place.
The princess made them no answer, and they continued the form of
condolence, not much grieved in their hearts that the favourite was lost.
Next day the prince presented to the Bassa a memorial of the wrong
which he had suffered, and a petition for redress. The Bassa threatened
to punish the robbers, but did not attempt to catch them, nor, indeed,
could any account or description be given by which he might direct the
persuit. It soon appeared that nothing would be done by authority.
Governors, being accustomed to hear of more crimes than they can
punish, and more wrongs than they can redress, set themselves at ease
by indiscriminate negligence, and presently forget the request when they
lose sight of the petitioner. Imlac then endeavoured to gain some
intelligence by private agents. He found many who pretended to an exact
knowledge of all the haunts of the Arabs, and to regular correspondence
with their chiefs, and who readily undertook the recovery of Pekuah. Of
these, some were furnished with money for their journey, and came back
no more; some were liberally paid for accounts which a few days
discovered to be false. But the princess would not suffer any means,
however improbable, to be left untried. While she was doing something
she kept her hope alive. As one expedient failed, another was suggested;
when one messenger returned unsuccessful, another was despatched to a
different quarter.
77
Two months had now passed, and of Pekuah nothing had been heard;
the hopes which they had endeavoured to raise in each other grew more
languid, and the princess, when she saw nothing more to be tried, sunk
down inconsolable in hopeless dejection. A thousand times she
reproached herself with the easy compliance by which she permitted her
favourite to stay behind her. ÒHad not my fondness,Ó said she, Òlessened
my authority, Pekuah had not dared to talk of her terrours. She ought to
have feared me more than spectres. A severe look would have
overpowered her; a peremptory command would have compelled
obedience. Why did foolish indulgence prevail upon me? Why did I not
speak and refuse to hear?Ó
ÒGreat princess,Ó said Imlac, Òdo not reproach yourself for your
virtue, or consider that as blameable by which evil has accidentally been
caused. Your tenderness for the timidity of Pekuah was generous and
kind. When we act according to our duty, we commit the event to him by
whose laws our actions are governed, and who will suffer none to be
finally punished for obedience. When, in prospect of some good, whether
natural or moral, we break the rules prescribed us, we withdraw from
the direction of superiour wisdom, and take all consequences upon
ourselves. Man cannot so far know the connexion of causes and events,
as that he may venture to do wrong in order to do right. When we
persue our end by lawful means, we may always console our miscarriage
by the hope of future recompense. When we consult only our own policy,
and attempt to find a nearer way to good, by overleaping the settled
boundaries of right and wrong, we cannot be happy even by success,
because we cannot escape the consciousness of our fault; but, if we
miscarry, the disappointment is irremediably embittered. How
comfortless is the sorrow of him, who feels at once the pangs of guilt,
and the vexation of calamity which guilt has brought upon him?
ÒConsider, princess, what would have been your condition, if the
lady Pekuah had entreated to accompany you, and, being compelled to
stay in the tents, had been carried away; or how would you have born
the thought, if you had forced her into the pyramid, and she had died
before you in agonies of terrour.Ó
78
ÒHad either happened,Ó said Nekayah, ÒI could not have endured life
till now: I should have been tortured to madness by the remembrance of
such cruelty, or must have pined away in abhorrence of myself.
ÒThis at least,Ó said Imlac, Òis the present reward of virtuous conduct,
that no unlucky consequence can oblige us to repent it.Ó
79
35. The princess languishes for want of Pekuah
Nekayah, being thus reconciled to herself, found that no evil is
insupportable but that which is accompanied with consciousness of
wrong. She was, from that time, delivered from the violence of
tempestuous sorrow, and sunk into silent pensiveness and gloomy
tranquillity. She sat from morning to evening recollecting all that had
been done or said by her Pekuah, treasured up with care every trifle on
which Pekuah had set an accidental value, and which might recal to mind
any little incident or careless conversation. The sentiments of her, whom
she now expected to see no more, were treasured in her memory as rules
of life, and she deliberated to no other end than to conjecture on any
occasion what would have been the opinion and counsel of Pekuah.
The women, by whom she was attended, knew nothing of her real
condition, and therefore she could not talk to them but with caution and
reserve. She began to remit her curiosity, having no great care to collect
notions which she had no convenience of uttering. Rasselas endeavoured
first to comfort and afterwards to divert her; he hired musicians, to
whom she seemed to listen, but did not hear them, and procured masters
to instruct her in various arts, whose lectures, when they visited her
again, were again to be repeated. She had lost her taste of pleasure and
her ambition of excellence. And her mind, though forced into short
excursions, always recurred to the image of her friend.
Imlac was every morning earnestly enjoined to renew his enquiries,
and was asked every night whether he had yet heard of Pekuah, till not
being able to return the princess the answer that she desired, he was less
and less willing to come into her presence. She observed his
backwardness, and commanded him to attend her. ÒYou are not,Ó said
she, Òto confound impatience with resentment, or to suppose that I
charge you with negligence, because I repine at your unsuccessfulness. I
do not much wonder at your absence; I know that the unhappy are never
pleasing, and that all naturally avoid the contagion of misery. To hear
complaints is wearisome alike to the wretched and the happy; for who
would cloud by adventitious grief the short gleams of gaiety which life
allows us? or who, that is struggling under his own evils, will add to
them the miseries of another?
80
ÒThe time is at hand, when none shall be disturbed any longer by the
sighs of Nekayah: my search after happiness is now at an end. I am
resolved to retire from the world with all its flatteries and deceits, and
will hide myself in solitude, without any other care than to compose my
thoughts, and regulate my hours by a constant succession of innocent
occupations, till, with a mind purified from all earthly desires, I shall
enter into that state, to which all are hastening, and in which I hope again
to enjoy the friendship of Pekuah.Ó
ÒDo not entangle your mind,Ó said Imlac, Òby irrevocable
determinations, nor increase the burthen of life by a voluntary
accumulation of misery: the weariness of retirement will continue or
increase when the loss of Pekuah is forgotten. That you have been
deprived of one pleasure is no very good reason for rejection of the
rest.Ó
ÒSince Pekuah was taken from me,Ó said the princess, ÒI have no
pleasure to reject or to retain. She that has no one to love or trust has
little to hope. She wants the radical principle of happiness. We may,
perhaps, allow that what satisfaction this world can afford, must arise
from the conjunction of wealth, knowledge and goodness: wealth is
nothing but as it is bestowed, and knowledge nothing but as it is
communicated: they must therefore be imparted to others, and to whom
could I now delight to impart them? Goodness affords the only comfort
which can be enjoyed without a partner, and goodness may be practised
in retirement.Ó
ÒHow far solitude may admit goodness, or advance it, I shall not,Ó
replied Imlac, Òdispute at present. Remember the confession of the pious
hermit. You will wish to return into the world, when the image of your
companion has left your thoughts.Ó ÒThat time,Ó said Nekayah, Òwill
never come. The generous frankness, the modest obsequiousness, and
the faithful secrecy of my dear Pekuah, will always be more missed, as I
shall live longer to see vice and folly.Ó
ÒThe state of a mind oppressed with a sudden calamity,Ó said Imlac,
Òis like that of the fabulous inhabitants of the new created earth, who,
when the first night came upon them, supposed that day never would
return. When the clouds of sorrow gather over us, we see nothing
beyond them, nor can imagine how they will be dispelled: yet a new day
81
succeeded to the night, and sorrow is never long without a dawn of ease.
But they who restrain themselves from receiving comfort, do as the
savages would have done, had they put out their eyes when it was dark.
Our minds, like our bodies, are in continual flux; something is hourly
lost, and something acquired. To lose much at once is inconvenient to
either, but while the vital powers remain uninjured, nature will find the
means of reparation. Distance has the same effect on the mind as on the
eye, and while we glide along the stream of time, whatever we leave
behind us is always lessening, and that which we approach increasing in
magnitude. Do not suffer life to stagnate; it will grow muddy for want of
motion: commit yourself again to the current of the world; Pekuah will
vanish by degrees; you will meet in your way some other favourite, or
learn to diffuse yourself in general conversation.Ó
ÒAt least,Ó said the prince, Òdo not despair before all remedies have
been tried: the enquiry after the unfortunate lady is still continued, and
shall be carried on with yet greater diligence, on condition that you will
promise to wait a year for the event, without any unalterable resolution.Ó
Nekayah thought this a reasonable demand, and made the promise to
her brother, who had been advised by Imlac to require it. Imlac had,
indeed, no great hope of regaining Pekuah, but he supposed, that if he
could secure the interval of a year, the princess would be then in no
danger of a cloister.
82
36. Pekuah is still remembered. The progress of sorrow
Nekayah, seeing that nothing was omitted for the recovery of her
favourite, and having, by her promise, set her intention of retirement at a
distance, began imperceptibly to return to common cares and common
pleasures. She rejoiced without her own consent at the suspension of her
sorrows, and sometimes caught herself with indignation in the act of
turning away her mind from the remembrance of her, whom yet she
resolved never to forget.
She then appointed a certain hour of the day for meditation on the
merits and fondness of Pekuah, and for some weeks retired constantly at
the time fixed, and returned with her eyes swollen and her countenance
clouded. By degrees she grew less scrupulous, and suffered any
important and pressing avocation to delay the tribute of daily tears. She
then yielded to less occasions; sometimes forgot what she was indeed
afraid to remember, and, at last, wholly released herself from the duty of
periodical affliction.
Her real love of Pekuah was yet not diminished. A thousand
occurrences brought her back to memory, and a thousand wants, which
nothing but the confidence of friendship can supply, made her frequently
regretted. She, therefore, solicited Imlac never to desist from enquiry,
and to leave no art of intelligence untried, that, at least, she might have
the comfort of knowing that she did not suffer by negligence or
sluggishness. ÒYet what,Ó said she, Òis to be expected from our persuit of
happiness, when we find the state of life to be such, that happiness itself
is the cause of misery? Why should we endeavour to attain that, of which
the possession cannot be secured? I shall henceforward fear to yield my
heart to excellence, however bright, or to fondness, however tender, lest
I should lose again what I have lost in Pekuah.Ó
83
37. The Princess hears news of Pekuah
In seven months, one of the messengers, who had been sent away
upon the day when the promise was drawn from the princess, returned,
after many unsuccessful rambles, from the borders of Nubia, with an
account that Pekuah was in the hands of an Arab chief, who possessed a
castle or fortress on the extremity of Egypt. The Arab, whose revenue
was plunder, was willing to restore her, with her two attendants, for
two hundred ounces of gold.
The price was no subject of debate. The princess was in extasies when
she heard that her favourite was alive, and might so cheaply be
ransomed. She could not think of delaying for a moment PekuahÕs
happiness or her own, but entreated her brother to send back the
messenger with the sum required. Imlac, being consulted, was not very
confident of the veracity of the relator, and was still more doubtful of
the ArabÕs faith, who might, if he were too liberally trusted, detain at
once the money and the captives. He thought it dangerous to put
themselves in the power of the Arab, by going into his district, and could
not expect that the Rover would so much expose himself as to come into
the lower country, where he might be seized by the forces of the Bassa.
It is difficult to negotiate where neither will trust. But Imlac, after some
deliberation, directed the messenger to propose that Pekuah should be
conducted by ten horsemen to the monastery of St. Anthony, which is
situated in the deserts of Upper-Egypt, where she should be met by the
same number, and her ransome should be paid.
That no time might be lost, as they expected that the proposal would
not be refused, they immediately began their journey to the monastery;
and, when they arrived, Imlac went forward with the former messenger
to the ArabÕs fortress. Rasselas was desirous to go with them, but neither
his sister nor Imlac would consent. The Arab, according to the custom of
his nation, observed the laws of hospitality with great exactness to those
who put themselves into his power, and, in a few days, brought Pekuah
with her maids, by easy journeys, to their place appointed, where
receiving the stipulated price, he restored her with great respect to
liberty and her friends, and undertook to conduct them back towards
Cairo beyond all danger of robbery or violence.
84
The princess and her favourite embraced each other with transport
too violent to be expressed, and went out together to pour the tears of
tenderness in secret, and exchange professions of kindness and gratitude.
After a few hours they returned into the refectory of the convent, where,
in the presence of the prior and his brethren, the prince required of
Pekuah the history of her adventures.
85
38. The adventures of the lady Pekuah
ÒAt what time, and in what manner, I was forced away,Ó said
Pekuah, Òyour servants have told you. The suddenness of the event
struck me with surprise, and I was at first rather stupified than agitated
with any passion of either fear or sorrow. My confusion was encreased
by the speed and tumult of our flight while we were followed by the
Turks, who, as it seemed, soon despaired to overtake us, or were afraid
of those whom they made a shew of menacing.
ÒWhen the Arabs saw themselves out of danger they slackened their
course, and, as I was less harassed by external violence, I began to feel
more uneasiness in my mind. After some time we stopped near a spring
shaded with trees in a pleasant meadow, where we were set upon the
ground, and offered such refreshments as our masters were partaking. I
was suffered to sit with my maids apart from the rest, and none
attempted to comfort or insult us. Here I first began to feel the full
weight of my misery. The girls sat weeping in silence, and from time to
time looked on me for succour. I knew not to what condition we were
doomed, nor could conjecture where would be the place of our captivity,
or whence to draw any hope of deliverance. I was in the hands of
robbers and savages, and had no reason to suppose that their pity was
more than their justice, or that they would forbear the gratification of
any ardour of desire, or caprice of cruelty. I, however, kissed my maids,
and endeavoured to pacify them by remarking, that we were yet treated
with decency, and that, since we were now carried beyond persuit, there
was no danger of violence to our lives.
ÒWhen we were to be set again on horseback, my maids clung round
me, and refused to be parted, but I commanded them not to irritate
those who had us in their power. We travelled the remaining part of the
day through an unfrequented and pathless country, and came by
moonlight to the side of a hill, where the rest of the troop was stationed.
Their tents were pitched, and their fires kindled, and our chief was
welcomed as a man much beloved by his dependants.
ÒWe were received into a large tent, where we found women who
had attended their husbands in the expedition. They set before us the
supper which they had provided, and I eat it rather to encourage my
86
maids than to comply with any appetite of my own. When the meat was
taken away they spread the carpets for repose. I was weary, and hoped
to find in sleep that remission of distress which nature seldom denies.
Ordering myself therefore to be undrest, I observed that the women
looked very earnestly upon me, not expecting, I suppose, to see me so
submissively attended. When my upper vest was taken off, they were
apparently struck with the splendour of my cloaths, and one of them
timorously laid her hand upon the embroidery. She then went out, and,
in a short time, came back with another woman, who seemed to be of
higher rank, and greater authority. She did, at her entrance, the usual act
of reverence, and, taking me by the hand, placed me in a smaller tent,
spread with finer carpets, where I spent the night quietly with my maids.
ÒIn the morning, as I was sitting on the grass, the chief of the troop
came towards me. I rose up to receive him, and he bowed with great
respect. ÔIllustrious lady,Õ said he, Ômy fortune is better than I had
presumed to hope; I am told by my women, that I have a princess in my
camp.Õ ÔSir,Õ answered I, Ôyour women have deceived themselves and
you; I am not a princess, but an unhappy stranger who intended soon to
have left this country, in which I am now to be imprisoned for ever.Õ
ÔWhoever, or whencesoever, you are,Õ returned the Arab, Ôyour dress,
and that of your servants, Ôshow your rank to be high, and your wealth
to be great. Why should you, who can so easily procure your ransome,
think yourself in danger of perpetual captivity? The purpose of my
incursions is to encrease my riches, or more properly to gather tribute.
The sons of Ishmael are the natural and hereditary lords of this part of
the continent, which is usurped by late invaders, and low-born tyrants,
from whom we are compelled to take by the sword what is denied to
justice. The violence of war admits no distinction; the lance that is lifted
at guilt and power will sometimes fall on innocence and gentleness.Õ
ÒÔHow little,Õ said I, Ôdid I expect that yesterday it should have fallen
upon me.Õ
ÒÔMisfortunes,ÕÓ answered the Arab, Ôshould always be expected. If
the eye of hostility could learn reverence or pity, excellence like yours
had been exempt from injury. But the angels of affliction spread their
toils alike for the virtuous and the wicked, for the mighty and the mean.
Do not be disconsolate; I am not one of the lawless and cruel rovers of
87
the desart; I know the rules of civil life: I will fix your ransome, give a
passport to your messenger, and perform my stipulation with nice
punctuality.Õ
ÒYou will easily believe that I was pleased with his courtesy; and
finding that his predominant passion was desire of money, I began now
to think my danger less, for I knew that no sum would be thought too
great for the release of Pekuah. I told him that he should have no reason
to charge me with ingratitude, if I was used with kindness, and that any
ransome, which could be expected for a maid of common rank, would be
paid, but that he must not persist to rate me as a princess. He said, he
would consider what he should demand, and then, smiling, bowed and
retired.
ÒSoon after the women came about me, each contending to be more
officious than the other, and my maids themselves were served with
reverence. We travelled onward by short journeys. On the fourth day the
chief told me, that my ransome must be two hundred ounces of gold,
which I not only promised him, but told him, that I would add fifty
more, if I and my maids were honourably treated.
ÒI never knew the power of gold before. From that time I was the
leader of the troop. The march of every day was longer or shorter as I
commanded, and the tents were pitched where I chose to rest. We now
had camels and other conveniencies for travel, my own women were
always at my side, and I amused myself with observing the manners of
the vagrant nations, and with viewing remains of ancient edifices with
which these deserted countries appear to have been, in some distant age,
lavishly embellished.
ÒThe chief of the band was a man far from illiterate: he was able to
travel by the stars or the compass, and had marked in his erratick
expeditions such places as are most worthy the notice of a passenger. He
observed to me, that buildings are always best preserved in places little
frequented, and difficult of access: for, when once a country declines
from its primitive splendour, the more inhabitants are left, the quicker
ruin will be made. Walls supply stones more easily than quarries, and
palaces and temples will be demolished to make stables of granate, and
cottages of porphyry.
88
39. The adventures of Pekuah continued
ÒWe wandered about in this manner for some weeks, whether, as our
chief pretended, for my gratification, or, as I rather suspected, for some
convenience of his own. I endeavoured to appear contented where
sullenness and resentment would have been of no use, and that
endeavour conduced much to the calmness of my mind; but my heart
was always with Nekayah, and the troubles of the night much
overbalanced the amusements of the day. My women, who threw all
their cares upon their mistress, set their minds at ease from the time
when they saw me treated with respect, and gave themselves up to the
incidental alleviations of our fatigue without solicitude or sorrow. I was
pleased with their pleasure, and animated with their confidence. My
condition had lost much of its terrour, since I found that the Arab ranged
the country merely to get riches. Avarice is an uniform and tractable vice:
other intellectual distempers are different in different constitutions of
mind; that which sooths the pride of one will offend the pride of
another; but to the favour of the covetous there is a ready way, bring
money and nothing is denied.
ÒAt last we came to the dwelling of our chief, a strong and spacious
house built with stone in an island of the Nile, which lies, as I was told,
under the tropick. ÔLady,Õ said the Arab, Ôyou shall rest after your
journey a few weeks in this place, where you are to consider yourself as
sovereign. My occupation is war: I have therefore chosen this obscure
residence, from which I can issue unexpected, and to which I can retire
unpursued. You may now repose in security: here are few pleasures, but
here is no danger.Õ He then led me into the inner apartments, and seating
me on the richest couch, bowed to the ground. His women, who
considered me as a rival, looked on me with malignity; but being soon
informed that I was a great lady detained only for my ransome, they
began to vie with each other in obsequiousness and reverence.
ÒBeing again comforted with new assurances of speedy liberty, I was
for some days diverted from impatience by the novelty of the place. The
turrets overlooked the country to a great distance, and afforded a view
of many windings of the stream. In the day I wandered from one place
to another as the course of the sun varied the splendour of the prospect,
89
and saw many things which I had never seen before. The crocodiles and
river-horses are common in this unpeopled region, and I often looked
upon them with terrour, though I knew that they could not hurt me. For
some time I expected to see mermaids and tritons, which, as Imlac has
told me, the European travellers have stationed in the Nile, but no such
beings ever appeared, and the Arab, when I enquired after them,
laughed at my credulity.
ÒAt night the Arab always attended me to a tower set apart for
celestial observations, where he endeavoured to teach me the names and
courses of the stars. I had no great inclination to this study, but an
appearance of attention was necessary to please my instructor, who
valued himself for his skill, and, in a little while, I found some
employment requisite to beguile the tediousness of time, which was to be
passed always amidst the same objects. I was weary of looking in the
morning on things from which I had turned away weary in the evening: I
therefore was at last willing to observe the stars rather than do nothing,
but could not always compose my thoughts, and was very often thinking
on Nekayah when others imagined me contemplating the sky. Soon after
the Arab went upon another expedition, and then my only pleasure was
to talk with my maids about the accident by which we were carried
away, and the happiness that we should all enjoy at the end of our
captivity.Ó
ÒThere were women in your ArabÕs fortress,Ó said the princess, Òwhy
did you not make them your companions, enjoy their conversation, and
partake their diversions? In a place where they found business or
amusement, why should you alone sit corroded with idle melancholy? or
why should not you bear for a few months that condition to which they
were condemned for life?Ó
ÒThe diversions of the women,Ó answered Pekuah, Òwere only
childish play, by which the mind accustomed to stronger operations
could not be kept busy. I could do all which they delighted in doing by
powers merely sensitive, while my intellectual faculties were flown to
Cairo. They ran from room to room as a bird hops from wire to wire in
his cage. They danced for the sake of motion, as lambs frisk in a
meadow. One sometimes pretended to be hurt that the rest might be
alarmed, or hid herself that another might seek her. Part of their time
90
passed in watching the progress of light bodies that floated on the river,
and part in marking the various forms into which clouds broke in the
sky.
ÒTheir business was only needlework, in which I and my maids
sometimes helped them; but you know that the mind will easily straggle
from the fingers, nor will you suspect that captivity and absence from
Nekayah could receive solace from silken flowers.
ÒNor was much satisfaction to be hoped from their conversation: for
of what could they be expected to talk? They had seen nothing; for they
had lived from early youth in that narrow spot: of what they had not
seen they could have no knowledge, for they could not read. They had
no ideas but of the few things that were within their view, and had
hardly names for any thing but their cloaths and their food. As I bore a
superiour character, I was often called to terminate their quarrels, which
I decided as equitably as I could. If it could have amused me to hear the
complaints of each against the rest, I might have been often detained by
long stories, but the motives of their animosity were so small that I could
not listen without intercepting the tale.Ó
ÒHow,Ó said Rasselas, Òcan the Arab, whom you represented as a
man of more than common accomplishments, take any pleasure in his
seraglio, when it is filled only with women like these. Are they
exquisitely beautiful?Ó
ÒThey do not,Ó said Pekuah, Òwant that unaffecting and ignoble
beauty which may subsist without spriteliness or sublimity, without
energy of thought or dignity of virtue. But to a man like the Arab such
beauty was only a flower casually plucked and carelessly thrown away.
Whatever pleasures he might find among them, they were not those of
friendship or society. When they were playing about him he looked on
them with inattentive superiority: when they vied for his regard he
sometimes turned away disgusted. As they had no knowledge, their talk
could take nothing from the tediousness of life: as they had no choice,
their fondness, or appearance of fondness, excited in him neither pride
nor gratitude; he was not exalted in his own esteem by the smiles of a
woman who saw no other man, nor was much obliged by that regard, of
which he could never know the sincerity, and which he might often
perceive to be exerted not so much to delight him as to pain a rival. That
91
which he gave, and they received, as love, was only a careless
distribution of superfluous time, such love as man can bestow upon that
which he despises, such as has neither hope nor fear, neither joy nor
sorrow.
ÒYou have reason, lady, to think yourself happy,Ó said Imlac, Òthat
you have been thus easily dismissed. How could a mind, hungry for
knowledge, be willing, in an intellectual famine, to lose such a banquet as
PekuahÕs conversation?Ó
ÒI am inclined to believe,Ó answered Pekuah, Òthat he was for some
time in suspense; notwithstanding his promise, whenever I proposed to
dispatch a messenger to Cairo, he found some excuse for delay. While I
was detained in his house he made many incursions into the
neighbouring countries, and, perhaps, he would have refused to
discharge me, had his plunder been equal to his wishes. He returned
always courteous, related his adventures, delighted to hear my
observations, and endeavoured to advance my acquaintance with the
stars. When I importuned him to send away my letters, he soothed me
with professions of honour and sincerity; and, when I could be no longer
decently denied, put his troop again in motion, and left me to govern in
his absence. I was much afflicted by this studied procrastination, and was
sometimes afraid that I should be forgotten; that you would leave Cairo,
and I must end my days in an island of the Nile.
ÒI grew at last hopeless and dejected, and cared so little to entertain
him, that he for a while more frequently talked with my maids. That he
should fall in love with them, or with me, might have been equally fatal,
and I was not much pleased with the growing friendship. My anxiety
was not long; for, as I recovered some degree of chearfulness, he
returned to me, and I could not forbear to despise my former uneasiness.
ÒHe still delayed to send for my ransome, and would, perhaps, never
have determined, had not your agent found his way to him. The gold,
which he would not fetch, he could not reject when it was offered. He
hastened to prepare for our journey hither, like a man delivered from the
pain of an intestine conflict. I took leave of my companions in the house,
who dismissed me with cold indifference.Ó
92
Nekayah, having heard her favouriteÕs relation, rose and embraced
her, and Rasselas gave her an hundred ounces of gold, which she
presented to the Arab for the fifty that were promised.
93
40. The history of a man of learning
They returned to Cairo, and were so well pleased at finding
themselves together, that none of them went much abroad. The prince
began to love learning, and one day declared to Imlac, that he intended
to devote himself to science, and pass the rest of his days in literary
solitude.
ÒBefore you make your final choice,Ó answered Imlac, Òyou ought to
examine its hazards, and converse with some of those who are grown
old in the company of themselves. I have just left the observatory of one
of the most learned astronomers in the world, who has spent forty years
in unwearied attention to the motions and appearances of the celestial
bodies, and has drawn out his soul in endless calculations. He admits a
few friends once a month to hear his deductions and enjoy his
discoveries. I was introduced as a man of knowledge worthy of his
notice. Men of various ideas and fluent conversation are commonly
welcome to those whose thoughts have been long fixed upon a single
point, and who find the images of other things stealing away. I delighted
him with my remarks, he smiled at the narrative of my travels, and was
glad to forget the constellations, and descend for a moment into the
lower world.
ÒOn the next day of vacation I renewed my visit, and was so
fortunate as to please him again. He relaxed from that time the severity
of his rule, and permitted me to enter at my own choice. I found him
always busy, and always glad to be relieved. As each knew much which
the other was desirous of learning, we exchanged our notions with great
delight. I perceived that I had every day more of his confidence, and
always found new cause of admiration in the profundity of his mind. His
comprehension is vast, his memory capacious and retentive, his discourse
is methodical, and his expression clear.
ÒHis integrity and benevolence are equal to his learning. His deepest
researches and most favourite studies are willingly interrupted for any
opportunity of doing good by his counsel or his riches. To his closest
retreat at his most busy moments, all are admitted that want his
assistance: ÔFor though I exclude idleness and pleasure I will never,Õ says
94
he, Ôbar my doors against charity. To man is permitted the contemplation
of the skies, but the practice of virtue is commanded.ÕÓ
ÒSurely,Ó said the princess, Òthis man is happy.Ó
ÒI visited him,Ó said Imlac, Òwith more and more frequency and was
every time more enamoured of his conversation: he was sublime without
haughtiness, courteous without formality, and communicative without
ostentation. I was at first, great princess, of your opinion, thought him
the happiest of mankind, and often congratulated him on the blessing
that he enjoyed. He seemed to hear nothing with indifference but the
praises of his condition, to which he always returned a general answer,
and diverted the conversation to some other topick.
ÒAmidst this willingness to be pleased, and labour to please, I had
quickly reason to imagine that some painful sentiment pressed upon his
mind. He often looked up earnestly towards the sun, and let his voice
fall in the midst of his discourse. He would sometimes, when we were
alone, gaze upon me in silence with the air of a man who longed to speak
what he was yet resolved to suppress. He would often send for me with
vehement injunctions of haste, though, when I came to him, he had
nothing extraordinary to say. And sometimes, when I was leaving him,
would call me back, pause a few moments and then dismiss me.
95
41. The astronomer discovers the cause of his uneasiness
ÒAt last the time came when the secret burst his reserve. We were
sitting together last night in the turret of his house, watching the
emersion of a satellite of Jupiter. A sudden tempest clouded the sky, and
disappointed our observation. We sat a while silent in the dark, and then
he addressed himself to me in these words: ÔImlac, I have long
considered thy friendship as the greatest blessing of my life. Integrity
without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without
integrity is dangerous and dreadful. I have found in thee all the qualities
requisite for trust, benevolence, experience, and fortitude. I have long
discharged an office which I must soon quit at the call of nature, and
shall rejoice in the hour of imbecility and pain to devolve it upon thee.Õ
ÒI thought myself honoured by this testimony, and protested that
whatever could conduce to his happiness would add likewise to mine.Ó
ÒÔHear, Imlac, what thou wilt not without difficulty credit. I have
possessed for five years the regulation of weather, and the distribution
of the seasons: the sun has listened to my dictates, and passed from
tropick to tropick by my direction; the clouds, at my call, have poured
their waters, and the Nile has overflowed at my command; I have
restrained the rage of the dog-star, and mitigated the fervours of the
crab. The winds alone, of all the elemental powers, have hitherto refused
my authority, and multitudes have perished by equinoctial tempests
which I found myself unable to prohibit or restrain. I have administered
this great office with exact justice, and made to the different nations of
the earth an impartial dividend of rain and sunshine. What must have
been the misery of half the globe, if I had limited the clouds to particular
regions, or confined the sun to either side of the equator?ÕÓ
96
42. The opinion of the astronomer is explained and justified
ÒI suppose he discovered in me, through the obscurity of the room,
some tokens of amazement and doubt, for, after a short pause, he
proceeded thus:
ÒÔNot to be easily credited will neither surprise nor offend me; for I
am, probably, the first of human beings to whom this trust has been
imparted. Nor do I know whether to deem this distinction as reward or
punishment; since I have possessed it I have been far less happy than
before, and nothing but the consciousness of good intention could have
enabled me to support the weariness of unremitted vigilance.Õ
ÒÔHow long, Sir,Õ said I, Ôhas this great office been in your hands?
ÒÔAbout ten years ago,Õ said he, Ômy daily observations of the changes
of the sky led me to consider, whether, if I had the power of the seasons,
I could confer greater plenty upon the inhabitants of the earth. This
contemplation fastened on my mind, and I sat days and nights in
imaginary dominion, pouring upon this country and that the showers of
fertility, and seconding every fall of rain with a due proportion of
sunshine. I had yet only the will to do good, and did not imagine that I
should ever have the power.
ÒÔOne day as I was looking on the fields withering with heat, I felt in
my mind a sudden wish that I could send rain on the southern
mountains, and raise the Nile to an inundation. In the hurry of my
imagination I commanded rain to fall, and, by comparing the time of my
command, with that of the inundation, I found that the clouds had
listened to my lips.Õ
ÒÔMight not some other cause,Õ said I, Ôproduce this concurrence? the
Nile does not always rise on the same day.Õ
ÒÔDo not believe,Õ said he with impatience, Ôthat such objections could
escape me: I reasoned long against my own conviction, and laboured
against truth with the utmost obstinacy. I sometimes suspected myself of
madness, and should not have dared to impart this secret but to a man
like you, capable of distinguishing the wonderful from the impossible,
and the incredible from the false.Õ
ÒÔWhy, Sir,Õ said I, Ôdo you call that incredible, which you know, or
think you know, to be true?Õ
97
ÒÔBecause,Õ said he, ÔI cannot prove it by any external evidence; and I
know too well the laws of demonstration to think that my conviction
ought to influence another, who cannot, like me, be conscious of its force.
I, therefore, shall not attempt to gain credit by disputation. It is sufficient
that I feel this power, that I have long possessed, and every day exerted
it. But the life of man is short, the infirmities of age increase upon me,
and the time will soon come when the regulator of the year must mingle
with the dust. The care of appointing a successor has long disturbed me;
the night and the day have been spent in comparisons of all the
characters which have come to my knowledge, and I have yet found
none so worthy as thyself.ÕÓ
98
43. The astronomer leaves Imlac his directions
ÒÔHear therefore, what I shall impart, with attention, such as the
welfare of a world requires. If the task of a king be considered as
difficult, who has the care only of a few millions, to whom he cannot do
much good or harm, what must be the anxiety of him, on whom depend
the action of the elements, and the great gifts of light and heat!ÑHear
me therefore with attention.
ÒÔI have diligently considered the position of the earth and sun, and
formed innumerable schemes in which I changed their situation. I have
sometimes turned aside the axis of the earth, and sometimes varied the
ecliptick of the sun: but I have found it impossible to make a disposition
by which the world may be advantaged; what one region gains, another
loses by any imaginable alteration, even without considering the distant
parts of the solar system with which we are unacquainted. Do not,
therefore, in thy administration of the year, indulge thy pride by
innovation; do not please thyself with thinking that thou canst make
thyself renowned to all future ages, by disordering the seasons. The
memory of mischief is no desirable fame. Much less will it become thee to
let kindness or interest prevail. Never rob other countries of rain to pour
it on thine own. For us the Nile is sufficient.Õ
ÒI promised that when I possessed the power, I would use it with
inflexible integrity, and he dismissed me, pressing my hand. ÔMy heart,Õ
said he, Ôwill be now at rest, and my benevolence will no more destroy
my quiet: I have found a man of wisdom and virtue, to whom I can
chearfully bequeath the inheritance of the sun.ÕÓ
The prince heard this narration with very serious regard, but the
princess smiled, and Pekuah convulsed herself with laughter. ÒLadies,Ó
said Imlac, Òto mock the heaviest of human afflictions is neither
charitable nor wise. Few can attain this manÕs knowledge, and few
practise his virtues; but all may suffer his calamity. Of the uncertainties of
our present state, the most dreadful and alarming is the uncertain
continuance of reason.Ó
The princess was recollected, and the favourite was abashed.
Rasselas, more deeply affected, enquired of Imlac, whether he thought
such maladies of the mind frequent, and how they were contracted.
99
44. The dangerous prevalence of imagination
ÒDisorders of intellect,Ó answered Imlac, Òhappen much more often
than superficial observers will easily believe. Perhaps, if we speak with
rigorous exactness, no human mind is in its right state. There is no man
whose imagination does not sometimes predominate over his reason,
who can regulate his attention wholly by his will, and whose ideas will
come and go at his command. No man will be found in whose mind airy
notions do not sometimes tyrannise, and force him to hope or fear
beyond the limits of sober probability. All power of fancy over reason is
a degree of insanity; but while this power is such as we can controll and
repress, it is not visible to others, nor considered as any depravation of
the mental faculties: it is not pronounced madness but when it comes
ungovernable, and apparently influences speech or action.
ÒTo indulge the power of fiction, and send imagination out upon the
wing, is often the sport of those who delight too much in silent
speculation. When we are alone we are not always busy; the labour of
excogitation is too violent to last long; the ardour of enquiry will
sometimes give way to idleness or satiety. He who has nothing external
that can divert him, must find pleasure in his own thoughts, and must
conceive himself what he is not; for who is pleased with what he is? He
then expatiates in boundless futurity, and culls from all imaginable
conditions that which for the present moment he should most desire,
amuses his desires with impossible enjoyments, and confers upon his
pride unattainable dominion. The mind dances from scene to scene,
unites all pleasures in all combinations, and riots in delights which nature
and fortune, with all their bounty, cannot bestow.
ÒIn time some particular train of ideas fixes the attention, all other
intellectual gratifications are rejected, the mind, in weariness or leisure,
recurs constantly to the favourite conception, and feasts on the luscious
falsehood whenever she is offended with the bitterness of truth. By
degrees the reign of fancy is confirmed; she grows first imperious, and in
time despotick. Then fictions begin to operate as realities, false opinions
fasten upon the mind, and life passes in dreams of rapture or of anguish.
100
ÒThis, Sir, is one of the dangers of solitude, which the hermit has
confessed not always to promote goodness, and the astronomerÕs misery
has proved to be not always propitious to wisdom.Ó
ÒI will no more,Ó said the favourite, Òimagine myself the queen of
Abissinia. I have often spent the hours, which the princess gave to my
own disposal, in adjusting ceremonies and regulating the court; I have
repressed the pride of the powerful, and granted the petitions of the
poor; I have built new palaces in more happy situations, planted groves
upon the tops of mountains, and have exulted in the beneficence of
royalty, till, when the princess entered, I had almost forgotten to bow
down before her.Ó
ÒAnd I,Ó said the princess, Òwill not allow myself any more to play
the shepherdess in my waking dreams. I have often soothed my thoughts
with the quiet and innocence of pastoral employments, till I have in my
chamber heard the winds whistle, and the sheep bleat; sometimes freed
the lamb entangled in the thicket, and sometimes with my crook
encountered the wolf. I have a dress like that of the village maids, which
I put on to help my imagination, and a pipe on which I play softly, and
suppose myself followed by my flocks.Ó
ÒI will confess,Ó said the prince, Òan indulgence of fantastick delight
more dangerous than yours. I have frequently endeavoured to image the
possibility of a perfect government, by which all wrong should be
restrained, all vice reformed, and all the subjects preserved in tranquility
and innocence. This thought produced innumerable schemes of
reformation, and dictated many useful regulations and salutary edicts.
This has been the sport and sometimes the labour of my solitude; and I
start, when I think with how little anguish I once supposed the death of
my father and my brothers.Ó
ÒSuch,Ó says Imlac, Òare the effects of visionary schemes: when we
first form them we know them to be absurd, but familiarise them by
degrees, and in time lose sight of their folly.Ó
101
45. They discourse with an old man
The evening was now far past, and they rose to return home. As they
walked along the bank of the Nile, delighted with the beams of the moon
quivering on the water, they saw at a small distance an old man, whom
the prince had often heard in the assembly of the sages. ÒYonder,Ó said
he, Òis one whose years have calmed his passions, but not clouded his
reason: let us close the disquisitions of the night, by enquiring what are
his sentiments of his own state, that we may know whether youth alone
is to struggle with vexation, and whether any better hope remains for the
latter part of life.Ó Here the sage approached and saluted them. They
invited him to join their walk, and prattled a while as acquaintance that
had unexpectedly met one another. The old man was chearful and
talkative, and the way seemed short in his company. He was pleased to
find himself not disregarded, accompanied them to their house, and, at
the princeÕs request, entered with them. They placed him in the seat of
honour, and set wine and conserves before him. ÒSir,Ó said the princess,
Òan evening walk must give to a man of learning, like you, pleasures
which ignorance and youth can hardly conceive. You know the qualities
and the causes of all that you behold, the laws by which the river flows,
the periods in which the planets perform their revolutions. Every thing
must supply you with contemplation, and renew the consciousness of
your own dignity.Ó
ÒLady,Ó answered he, Òlet the gay and the vigorous expect pleasure
in their excursions, it is enough that age can obtain ease. To me the world
has lost its novelty: I look round, and see what I remember to have seen
in happier days. I rest against a tree, and consider, that in the same shade
I once disputed upon the annual overflow of the Nile with a friend who
is now silent in the grave. I cast my eyes upwards, fix them on the
changing moon, and think with pain on the vicissitudes of life. I have
ceased to take much delight in physical truth; for what have I to do with
those things which I am soon to leave?Ó
ÒYou may at least recreate yourself,Ó said Imlac, Òwith the
recollection of an honourable and useful life, and enjoy the praise which
all agree to give you.Ó
102
ÒPraise,Ó said the sage, with a sigh, Òis to an old man an empty
sound. I have neither mother to be delighted with the reputation of her
son, nor wife to partake the honours of her husband. I have outlived my
friends and my rivals. Nothing is now of much importance; for I cannot
extend my interest beyond myself. Youth is delighted with applause,
because it is considered as the earnest of some future good, and because
the prospect of life is far extended: but to me, who am now declining to
decrepitude, there is little to be feared from the malevolence of men, and
yet less to be hoped from their affection or esteem. Something they may
yet take away, but they can give me nothing. Riches would now be
useless, and high employment would be pain. My retrospect of life recalls
to my view many opportunities of good neglected, much time
squandered upon trifles, and more lost in idleness and vacancy. I leave
many great designs unattempted, and many great attempts unfinished.
My mind is burthened with no heavy crime, and therefore I compose
myself to tranquility; endeavour to abstract my thoughts from hopes and
cares, which, though reason knows them to be vain, still try to keep their
old possession of the heart; expect, with serene humility, that hour which
nature cannot long delay; and hope to possess in a better state that
happiness which here I could not find, and that virtue which here I have
not attained.Ó
He rose and went away, leaving his audience not much elated with
the hope of long life. The prince consoled himself with remarking, that it
was not reasonable to be disappointed by this account; for age had never
been considered as the season of felicity, and, if it was possible to be
easy in decline and weakness, it was likely that the days of vigour and
alacrity might be happy: that the moon of life might be bright, if the
evening could be calm.
The princess suspected that age was querulous and malignant, and
delighted to repress the expectations of those who had newly entered
the world. She had seen the possessors of estates look with envy on their
heirs, and known many who enjoy pleasure no longer than they can
confine it to themselves.
Pekuah conjectured, that the man was older than he appeared, and
was willing to impute his complaints to delirious dejection; or else
supposed that he had been unfortunate, and was therefore discontented:
103
ÒFor nothing,Ó said she, Òis more common than to call our own condition,
the condition of life.Ó
Imlac, who had no desire to see them depressed, smiled at the
comforts which they could so readily procure to themselves, and
remembered, that at the same age, he was equally confident of
unmingled prosperity, and equally fertile of consolatory expedients. He
forbore to force upon them unwelcome knowledge, which time itself
would too soon impress. The princess and her lady retired; the madness
of the astronomer hung upon their minds, and they desired Imlac to
enter upon his office, and delay next morning the rising of the sun.
104
46. The princess and Pekuah visit the astronomer
The princess and Pekuah having talked in private of ImlacÕs
astronomer, thought his character at once so amiable and so strange, that
they could not be satisfied without a nearer knowledge, and Imlac was
requested to find the means of bringing them together. This was
somewhat difficult; the philosopher had never received any visits from
women, though he lived in a city that had in it many Europeans who
followed the manners of their own countries, and many from other parts
of the world that lived there with European liberty. The ladies would
not be refused, and several schemes were proposed for the
accomplishment of their design. It was proposed to introduce them as
strangers in distress, to whom the sage was always accessible; but, after
some deliberation, it appeared, that by this artifice, no acquaintance
could be formed, for their conversation would be short, and they could
not decently importune him often. ÒThis,Ó said Rasselas, Òis true; but I
have yet a stronger objection against the misrepresentation of your state.
I have always considered it as treason against the great republick of
human nature, to make any manÕs virtues the means of deceiving him,
whether on great or little occasions. All imposture weakens confidence
and chills benevolence. When the sage finds that you are not what you
seemed, he will feel the resentment natural to a man who, conscious of
great abilities, discovers that he has been tricked by understandings
meaner than his own, and, perhaps, the distrust, which he can never
afterwards wholly lay aside, may stop the voice of counsel, and close the
hand of charity; and where will you find the power of restoring his
benefactions to mankind, or his peace to himself?Ó
To this no reply was attempted, and Imlac began to hope that their
curiosity would subside; but, next day, Pekuah told him, she had now
found an honest pretence for a visit to the astronomer, for she would
solicite permission to continue under him the studies in which she had
been initiated by the Arab, and the princess might go with her either as a
fellow-student, or because a woman could not decently come alone. ÒI
am afraid,Ó said Imlac, Òthat he will be soon weary of your company:
men advanced far in knowledge do not love to repeat the elements of
their art, and I am not certain that even of the elements, as he will
105
deliver them connected with inferences, and mingled with reflections,
you are a very capable auditress.Ó ÒThat,Ó said Pekuah, Òmust be my
care: I ask of you only to take me thither. My knowledge is, perhaps,
more than you imagine it, and by concurring always with his opinions I
shall make him think it greater than it is.Ó
The astronomer, in pursuance of this resolution, was told, that a
foreign lady, travelling in search of knowledge, had heard of his
reputation, and was desirous to become his scholar. The uncommonness
of the proposal raised at once his surprize and curiosity, and when, after
a short deliberation, he consented to admit her, he could not stay
without impatience till the next day.
The ladies dressed themselves magnificently, and were attended by
Imlac to the astronomer, who was pleased to see himself approached
with respect by persons of so splendid an appearance. In the exchange of
the first civilities he was timorous and bashful; but when the talk became
regular, he recollected his powers, and justified the character which Imlac
had given. Enquiring of Pekuah what could have turned her inclination
towards astronomy, he received from her a history of her adventure at
the pyramid, and of the time passed in the ArabÕs island. She told her
tale with ease and elegance, and her conversation took possession of his
heart. The discourse was then turned to astronomy: Pekuah displayed
what she knew: he looked upon her as a prodigy of genius, and intreated
her not to desist from a study which she had so happily begun.
They came again and again, and were every time more welcome than
before. 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 solicitude 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 topick.
106
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 enquiry,
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.
ÒOf the various conditions which the world spreads before you,
which you shall prefer,Ó said the sage, ÒI 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 expence of all the common comforts of life: I have missed the
endearing elegance of female friendship, and the happy commerce of
domestick 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
enquiries have ended in errour, and that I have suffered much, and
suffered it in vain.Ó
Imlac was delighted to find that the sageÕs 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
107
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. ÒIf I am accidentally left alone for a
few hours,Ó said he, Òmy inveterate persuasion rushes upon my soul, and
my thoughts are chained down by some irresistible violence, but they are
soon disentangled by the princeÕs 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
harrassed him in the dark, yet, if his lamp be extinguished, feels again
the terrours 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 intrusted. If I
favour myself in a known errour, or am determined by my own ease in a
doubtful question of this importance, how dreadful is my crime!Ó
ÒNo disease of the imagination,Ó answered Imlac, Òis 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 melancholick 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.
ÒBut 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
108
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.Ó
109
47. The prince enters and brings a new topick
ÒAll this,Ó said the astronomer, ÒI have often thought, but my reason
has been so long subjugated by an uncontrolable 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.Ó
ÒYour learning and virtue,Ó said Imlac, Òmay justly give you hopes.Ó
Rasselas then entered with the princess and Pekuah, and enquired
whether they had contrived any new diversion for the next day. ÒSuch,Ó
said Nekayah, Òis 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.Ó
ÒVariety,Ó said Rasselas, Òis 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.Ó
ÒThose men,Ó answered Imlac, Òare less wretched in their silent
convent than the Abissinian 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.Ó
110
ÒDo you think,Ó said Nekayah, Òthat the monastick 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?Ó
ÒThis,Ó said Imlac, Òis 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, every one is not able to stem the temptations of publick
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
weary of their 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.Ó
ÒSuch,Ó said Pekuah, Òhas often been my wish, and I have heard the
princess declare, that she should not willingly die in a croud.Ó
ÒThe liberty of using harmless pleasures,Ó proceeded Imlac, Òwill 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.Ó
111
The princess was silent, and Rasselas, turning to the astronomer,
asked him, whether he could not delay her retreat, by shewing her
something which she had not seen before.
ÒYour curiosity,Ó said the sage, Òhas 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.Ó
ÒI know not,Ó said Rasselas, Òwhat 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 many other things which I have
done, because I would do something.Ó
They hired a guard of horsemen, and the next day visited the
catacombs. When they were about to descend into the sepulchral caves,
ÒPekuah,Ó said the princess, Òwe are now again invading the habitations
of the dead; I know that you will stay behind; let me find you safe when
I return.Ó ÒNo, I will not be left,Ó answered Pekuah; ÒI will go down
between you and the prince.Ó
They then all descended, and roved with wonder through the
labyrinth of subterraneous passages, where the bodies were laid in rows
on either side.
112
48. Imlac discourses on the nature of the soul
ÒWhat reason,Ó said the prince, Òcan be given, why the Egyptians
should thus expensively preserve those carcasses which some nations
consume with fire, others lay to mingle with the earth, and all agree to
remove from their sight, as soon as decent rites can be performed?Ó
ÒThe original of ancient customs,Ó said Imlac, Òis commonly
unknown; for the practice often continues when the cause has ceased;
and concerning superstitious ceremonies it is vain to conjecture; for what
reason did not dictate reason cannot explain. I have long believed that
the practice of embalming arose only from tenderness to the remains of
relations or friends, and to this opinion I am more inclined, because it
seems impossible that this care should have been general: had all the
dead been embalmed, their repositories must in time have been more
spacious than the dwellings of the living. I suppose only the rich or
honourable were secured from corruption, and the rest left to the course
of nature.
ÒBut it is commonly supposed that the Egyptians believed the soul to
live as long as the body continued undissolved and therefore tried this
method of eluding death.Ó
ÒCould the wise Egyptians,Ó said Nekayah, Òthink so grossly of the
soul? If the soul could once survive its separation, what could it
afterwards receive or suffer from the body?Ó
ÒThe Egyptians would doubtless think erroneously,Ó said the
astronomer, Òin the darkness of heathenism, and the first dawn of
philosophy. The nature of the soul is still disputed amidst all our
opportunities of clearer knowledge: some yet say that it may be material,
who, nevertheless, believe it to be immortal.Ó
ÒSome,Ó answered Imlac, Òhave indeed said that the soul is material,
but I can scarcely believe that any man has thought it, who knew how to
think; for all the conclusions of reason enforce the immateriality of mind,
and all the notices of sense and investigations of science concur to prove
the unconsciousness of matter.
ÒIt was never supposed that cogitation is inherent in matter, or that
every particle is a thinking being. Yet, if any part of matter be devoid of
thought, what part can we suppose to think? Matter can differ from
113
matter only in form, density, bulk, motion, and direction of motion: to
which of these, however varied or combined, can consciousness be
annexed? To be round or square, to be solid or fluid, to be great or little,
to be moved slowly or swiftly one way or another, are modes of material
existence, all equally alien from the nature of cogitation. If matter be once
without thought, it can only be made to think by some new modification,
but all the modifications which it can admit are equally unconnected with
cogitative powers.Ó
ÒBut the materialists,Ó said the astronomer, Òurge that matter may
have qualities with which we are unacquainted.Ó
ÒHe who will determine,Ó returned Imlac, Òagainst that which he
knows, because there may be something which he knows not; he that can
set hypothetical possibility against acknowledged certainty, is not to be
admitted among reasonable beings. All that we know of matter is, that
matter is inert, senseless and lifeless; and if this conviction cannot be
opposed but by referring us to something that we know not, we have all
the evidence that human intellect can admit. If that which is known may
be over-ruled by that which is unknown, no being, not omniscient, can
arrive at certainty.Ó
ÒYet let us not,Ó said the astronomer, Òtoo arrogantly limit the
CreatorÕs power.Ó
ÒIt is no limitation of omnipotence,Ó replied the poet, Òto suppose that
one thing is not consistent with another, that the same proposition cannot
be at once true and false, that the same number cannot be even and odd,
that cogitation cannot be conferred on that which is created incapable of
cogitation.Ó
ÒI know not,Ó said Nekayah, Òany great use of this question. Does
that immateriality, which, in my opinion, you have sufficiently proved,
necessarily include eternal duration?
ÒOf immateriality,Ó said Imlac, Òour ideas are negative, and therefore
obscure. Immateriality seems to imply a natural power of perpetual
duration as a consequence of exemption from all causes of decay:
whatever perishes, is destroyed by the solution of its contexture, and
separation of its parts; nor can we conceive how that which has no parts,
and therefore admits no solution, can be naturally corrupted or
impaired.Ó
114
ÒI know not,Ó said Rasselas, Òhow to conceive any thing without
extension: what is extended must have parts, and you allow, that
whatever has parts may be destroyed.Ó
ÒConsider your own conceptions,Ó replied Imlac, Òand the difficulty
will be less. You will find substance without extension. An ideal form is
no less real than material bulk: yet an ideal form has no extension. It is
no less certain, when you think on a pyramid, that your mind possesses
the idea of a pyramid, than that the pyramid itself is standing. What
space does the idea of a pyramid occupy more than the idea of a grain of
corn? or how can either idea suffer laceration? As is the effect such is the
cause; as thought is, such is the power that thinks; a power impassive and
indiscerptible.Ó
ÒBut the Being,Ó said Nekayah, Òwhom I fear to name, the Being
which made the soul, can destroy it.Ó
ÒHe, surely, can destroy it,Ó answered Imlac, Òsince, however
unperishable, it receives from a superiour nature its power of duration.
That it will not perish by any inherent cause of decay, or principle of
corruption, may be shown by philosophy; but philosophy can tell no
more. That it will not be annihilated by him that made it, we must
humbly learn from higher authority.Ó
The whole assembly stood a while silent and collected. ÒLet us
return,Ó said Rasselas, Òfrom this scene of mortality. How gloomy would
be these mansions of the dead to him who did not know that he shall
never die; that what now acts shall continue its agency, and what now
thinks shall think on for ever. Those that lie here stretched before us, the
wise and the powerful of antient times, warn us to remember the
shortness of our present state; they were, perhaps, snatched away while
they were busy, like us, in the choice of life.Ó
ÒTo me,Ó said the princess, Òthe choice of life is become less
important; I hope hereafter to think only on the choice of eternity.Ó
They then hastened out of the caverns, and, under the protection of
their guard, returned to Cairo.
115
49. The conclusion, in which nothing is concluded
It was now the time of the inundation of the Nile: a few days after
their visit to the catacombs, the river began to rise.
They were confined to their house. The whole region being under
water gave them no invitation to any excursions, and, being well
supplied with materials for talk, they diverted themselves with
comparisons of the different forms of life which they had observed, and
with various schemes of happiness which each of them had formed.
Pekuah was never so much charmed with any place as the convent of
St. Anthony, where the Arab restored her to the princess, and wished
only to fill it with pious maidens, and to be made prioress of the order:
she was weary of expectation and disgust, and would gladly be fixed in
some unvariable state.
The princess thought, that of all sublunary things, knowledge was the
best: She desired first to learn all sciences, and then purposed to found a
college of learned women, in which she would preside, that, by
conversing with the old, and educating the young, she might divide her
time between the acquisition and communication of wisdom, and raise up
for the next age models of prudence, and patterns of piety.
The prince desired a little kingdom, in which he might administer
justice in his own person, and see all the parts of government with his
own eyes; but he could never fix the limits of his dominion, and was
always adding to the number of his subjects.
Imlac and the astronomer were contented to be driven along the
stream of life without directing their course to any particular port.
Of these wishes that they had formed they well knew that none could
be obtained. They deliberated a while what was to be done, and
resolved, when the inundation should cease, to return to Abissinia.
In Parentheses Publications may be
downloaded at
http://www.InPar.dhs.org/
116