REFLECTIONS UPON EXILE.* MDCCXVI. DISSIPATION of mind, and length of time, are the remedies to which the greatest part of mankind trust in their afflictions. But the first of these works a temporary, the second a slow, effect: and both are unworthy of a wise man. Are we to fly from ourselves that we may fly from our misfortunes, and fondly to imagine that the disease is cured because we find means to get some moments of respite from pain? Or shall we expect from time, the physician of brutes, a lingering and uncertain deliverance? Shall we wait to be happy till we can forget that we are miserable, and owe to the weakness of our faculties a tranquillity which ought to be the effect of their strength? Far otherwise. Let us set all our past and our present afflictions at once before our eyes. Let us resolve to overcome them, instead of flying from them, or wearing out the sense of them by long and ignominious patience. Instead of palliating remedies, let us use the incision-knife and the caustic, search the wound to the bottom, and work an immediate and radical cure. The recalling of former misfortunes serves to fortify the mind against later. He must blush to sink under the anguish of one wound, who surveys a body seamed over with the scars of many, and who has come victorious out of all the conflicts wherein he received them. Let sighs, and tears, and fainting under the lightest strokes of adverse fortune, be the portion of those unhappy people whose tender minds a long course of felicity has enervated: while such as have passed through years of calamity bear up, with a noble and immovable constancy, against the heaviest. Uninterrupted misery has this good effect, as it continually torments, it finally hardens. Such is the language of philosophy: and happy is the man who acquires the right of holding it. But this right is not to be acquired by pathetic discourse. Our conduct can alone give it us: and *Several passages of this little treatise are taken from Seneca; and the whole is writ, with some allusion to his style and manner: quanquam non omnino temere sit, quod de sententiis illius queritur Fabius," &c. Eras. De sen. jud. † Sen. De con. ad Hel. VOL. I.-Q therefore, instead of presuming on our strength, the surest method is to confess our weakness, and, without loss of time, to apply ourselves to the study of wisdom. This was the advice which the oracle gave to Zeno,* and there is no other way of securing our tranquillity amidst all the accidents to which human life is exposed. Philosophy has, I know, her thrasos, as well as war: and among her sons many there have been, who, while they aimed at being more than men, became something less. The means of preventing this danger are easy and sure. It is a good rule, to examine well before we addict ourselves to any sect: but I think it is a better rule, to addict ourselves to none. Let us hear them all, with a perfect indifferency on which side the truth lies: and, when we come to determine, let nothing appear so venerable to us as our own understandings. Let us gratefully accept the help of every one who has endeavored to correct the vices, and strengthen the minds of men; but let us choose for ourselves, and yield universal assent to none. Thus, that I may instance the sect already mentioned, when we have laid aside the wonderful and surprising sentences, and all the paradoxes of the Portique, we shall find in that school such doctrines as our unprejudiced reason submits to with pleasure, as nature dictates, and as experience confirms. Without this precaution, we run the risk of becoming imaginary kings, and real slaves. With it, we may learn to assert our native freedom, and live independent on fortune. In order to which great end, it is necessary that we stand watchful, as sentinels, to discover the secret wiles and open attacks of this capricious goddess before they reach us. Where she falls upon us unexpected, it is hard to resist; but those who wait for her, will repel her with ease. The sudden invasion of an enemy overthrows such as are not on their guard; but they who foresee the war, and prepare themselves for it before it breaks out, stand, without difficulty, the first and the fiercest onset. I learned this important lesson long ago, and never trusted to fortune even while she seemed to be at peace with me. The riches, the honors, the reputation, and all the advantages which her treacherous indulgence poured upon me, I placed so, that she might snatch them away without giving me any disturbance. I kept a great interval between me and them. She took them, but she could not tear them from me. No man suffers by bad fortune, but he who has been deceived by good. If we grow fond of her gifts; fancy that they belong to us, and are perpetually to remain with us, if we lean upon them, and expect to be considered for them; we shall sink into all the bitterness of grief, as soon as these false and transitory benefits pass away, as soon * Diog. Laert. † Sen. De con. ad. Hel. as our vain and childish minds, unfraught with solid pleasures, become destitute even of those which are imaginary. But, if we do not suffer ourselves to be transported by prosperity, neither shall we be reduced by adversity. Our souls will be of proof against the dangers of both these states: and, having explored, our strength, we shall be sure of it; for in the midst of felicity, we shall have tried how we can bear misfortune. It is much harder to examine and judge, than to take up opinions on trust; and therefore the far greatest part of the world borrow, from others, those which they entertain concerning all the affairs of life and death.* Hence it proceeds that men are so unanimously eager in the pursuit of things, which, far from having any inherent real good, are varnished over with a specious and deceitful gloss, and contain nothing answerable to their appearances.† Hence it proceeds, on the other hand, that, in those things which are called evils, there is nothing so hard and terrible as the general cry of the world threatens. The word exile comes indeed harsh to the ear, and strikes us like a melancholy and execrable sound, through a certain persuasion which men have habitually concurred in. Thus the multitude has ordained. But the greatest part of their ordinances are abrogated by the wise. Rejecting therefore the judgment of those who determine according to popular opinions, or the first appearances of things, let us examine what exile really is. It is, then, a change of place; and, lest you should say that I diminish the object, and conceal the most shocking parts of it, I add, that this change of place is frequently accompanied by some or all of the following inconveniences: by the loss of the estate which we enjoyed, and the rank which we held; by the loss of that consideration and power which we were in possession of; by a separation from our family and our friends; by the contempt which we may fall into; by the ignominy with which those who have driven us abroad, will endeavor to sully the innocence of our characters, and to justify the injustice of their own conduct. All these shall be spoken to hereafter. In the meanwhile, let us consider what evil there is, in change of place, abstractedly and by itself. To live deprived of one's country is intolerable.§ Is it so? How comes it then to pass that such numbers of men live out of their countries by choice? Observe how the streets of London * Dum unusquisque mavult credere, quam judicare, nunquam de vita judicatur, semper creditur. Sen. De vita beat. Sen. De con. ad Hel. Sen. De con. ad Hel. § Sen. De con. ad Hel. and of Paris are crowded. Call over those millions by name, and ask them one by one, of what country they are: how many will you find, who, from different parts of the earth, come to inhabit these great cities, which afford the largest opportunities, and the largest encouragement, to virtue and to vice? Some are drawn by ambition, and some are sent by duty; many resort thither to improve their minds, and many to improve their fortunes; others bring their beauty, and others their eloquence, to market. Remove from hence, and go to the utinost extremities of the east or the west: visit the barbarous nations of Africa, or the inhospitable regions of the north: you will find no climate so bad, no country so savage, as not to have some people who come from abroad and inhabit there by choice. Among numberless extravagances which have passed through the minds of men, we may justly reckon for one that notion of a secret affection, independent of our reason, and superior to our reason, which we are supposed to have for our country; as if there were some physical virtue in every spot of ground, which necessarily produced this effect in every one born upon it. Amor patriæ ratione valentior omni."* As if the heimvei was an universal distemper, inseparable from the constitution of a human body, and not peculiar to the Swiss, who seem to have been made for the mountains, as their mountains seem to have been made for them.† This notion may have contributed to the security and grandeur of states. It has therefore been not unartfully cultivated, and the prejudice of education has been with care put on its side. Men have come in this case, as in many, from believing that it ought to be so, to persuade others, and even to believe themselves that it is so. Procopius relates that Abgarus came to Rome, and gained the esteem and friendship of Augustus to such a degree, that this emperor could not resolve to let him return home: that Abgarus brought several beasts, which he had taken one day in hunting, alive to Augustus: that he placed in different parts of the circus some of the earth which belonged to the places where each of these animals had been caught; that as soon as this was done, and they were turned loose, every one of them ran to that corner where his earth lay: that Augustus, admiring their sentiment of love for their country which nature has graved in the hearts of beasts, and struck by the evidence of the truth, granted the request which Abgarus immediately impressed upon him, and allowed, though with regret, the tetrarch to return to Edessa. But this tale deserves just as much credit as that which follows * Ov. De Ponto, El. iv. † Card. Benti. Let. in the same place, of the letter of Abgarus to Jesus Christ, of our Saviour's answer, and of the cure of Abgarus. There is nothing, surely, more groundless than the notion here advanced, nothing more absurd. We love the country in which we are born, because we receive particular benefits from it, and because we have particular obligations to it: which ties we may have to another country, as well as to that we are born in; to our country by election, as well as to our country by birth. In all other respects, a wise man looks upon himself as a citizen of the world: and, when you ask him where his country lies, points, like Anaxagoras, with his finger to the heavens. There are other persons, again, who have imagined that as the whole universe suffers a continual rotation, and nature seems to delight in it, or to preserve herself by it, so there is in the minds of men, a natural restlessness, which inclines them to change of place, and to the shifting their habitations.* This opinion has at least an appearance of truth, which the other wants; and is countenanced, as the other is contradicted, by experience. But, whatever the reasons be, which must have varied infinitely in an infinite number of cases, and an immense space of time; true it is in fact, that the families and nations of the world have been in a continual fluctuation, roaming about on the face of the globe, driving and driven out by turns. What a number of colonies has Asia sent into Europe! The Phoenicians planted the coasts of the Mediterranean sea, and pushed their settlements even into the ocean. The Etrurians were of Asiatic extraction; and, to mention no more, the Romans, those lords of the world, acknowledged a Trojan exile for the founder of their empire. How many migrations have there been, in return to these, from Europe into Asia? They would be endless to enumerate; for, besides the Eolic, the Ionic, and others of almost equal fame, the Greeks, during several ages, made continual expeditions, and built cities in several parts of Asia. The Gauls penetrated thither too, and established a kingdom. The European Scythiaus overran these vast provinces, and carried their arms to the confines of Egypt. Alexander subdued all from the Hellespont to India, and built towns, and established colonies to secure his conquests, and to eternise his name. From both these parts of the world Africa has received inhabitants and masters; and what she has received she has given. The Tyrians built the city, and founded the republic of Carthage; and Greek has been the language of Egypt. In the remotest antiquity we hear of Belus in Chaldea, and of Sesostris planting his tawny colonies in Colchos: and Spain has been, in these latter ages, under the dominion of the Moors. If we Sen. De con. ad Hel. |