. species is a very pretty thing for a stranger to look upon, but very detrimental to the owner, unless it be a king or a prince who takes a fancy to such a toy. ‹ The ninth species of females were taken out of the ape. These are such as are both ugly and illnatured, who have nothing beautiful in themselves, and endeavour to detract from or ridicule every thing which appears so in others. The tenth and last species of women were made out of the bee; and happy is the man who gets such an one for his wife. She is altogether faultless and unblameable. Her family flourishes and improves by her good management. She loves her husband, and is beloved by him. She brings him a race of beautiful and virtuous children. She distinguishes herself among her sex. She is surrounded with graces. She never sits among the loose tribe of women, nor passes away her time with them in wanton discourses. She is full of virtue and prudence, and is the best wife that Jupiter can bestow on man.' I shall conclude these iambics with the motto of this paper, which is a fragment of the same author: 'A man cannot possess any thing that is better than a good woman, nor any thing that is worse than a bad one.' As the poet has shown a great penetration in this diversity of female characters, he has avoided the fault which Juvenal and Monsieur Boileau are guilty of, the former in his sixth, and the other in his last, satire, where they have endeavoured to expose the sex in general, without doing justice to the valuable part of it. Such levelling satires are of no use to the world; and for this reason I have often wondered how the French author above mentioned, who was a man of exquisite judgement, and a lover of virtue, could think human nature a proper subject for satire in another of his celebrated pieces, which is called The Satire upon Man. What vice or frailty can a discourse correct, which censures the whole species alike, and endeavours to show, by some superficial strokes of wit, that brutes are the more excellent creatures of the two? A satire should expose nothing but what is corrigible, and make a due discrimination between those who are, and those who are not, the proper objects of it. L No. 210. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 31, 1711. Nescio quomodò inhæret in mentibus quasi sæculorum quoddam augurium futurorum; idque in maximis ingeniis altissimisque animis et existit maximè, et apparet facillimè. CIC. TUSC. QUÆST. There is, I know not how, in minds a certain presage, as it were, of a future existence; and this has the deepest root, and is most discoverable, in the greatest geniuses and most exalted souls. of (6 SIR, "TO THE SPECTATOR. "I am fully persuaded that one of the best springs generous and worthy actions, is the having generous and worthy thoughts of ourselves. Whoever has a mean opinion of the dignity of his nature, will act in no higher a rank than he has allotted himself in his own estimation. If he considers his being as circumscribed by the uncertain term of a few years, his designs will be contracted into the same narrow span he imagines is to bound his existence. How can he exalt his thoughts to any thing great and noble, who only believes that, after a short turn on the stage of this world, he is to sink into oblivion, and to lose his consciousness for ever? "For this reason I am of opinion, that so useful and elevated a contemplation as that of the soul's immortality, cannot be resumed too often. There is not a more improving exercise to the human mind, than to be frequently reviewing its own great privileges and endowments; nor a more effectual means* to awaken in us an ambition raised above low objects and little pursuits, than to value ourselves as heirs of eternity. "It is a very great satisfaction to consider the best and wisest of mankind in all nations and ages, asserting, as with one voice, this their birthright, and to find it ratified by an express revelation. At the same time, if we turn our thoughts inward upon ourselves, we may meet with a kind of secret sense concurring with the proofs of our own immortality. "You have, in my opinion, raised a good presumptive argument from the increasing appetite the mind has to knowledge, and to the extending its own faculties, which cannot be accomplished, as the more restrained perfection of lower creatures may, in the limits of a short life. I think another probable conjecture may be raised from our appetite to duration itself, and from a reflection on our progress through the several stages of it. We are complaining,' as you observed in a former speculation, of the shortness of life, and yet are perpetually hurrying over the parts of it, to arrive at certain little settlements or imaginary points of rest, which are dispersed up and down in it.' * Mean. "Now let us consider what happens to us when we arrive at these imaginary points of rest. Do we stop our motion, and sit down satisfied in the settlement we have gained? or are we not removing the boundary, and marking out new points of rest, to which we press forward with the like eagerness, and which cease to be such as fast as we attain them? Our case is like that of a traveller upon the Alps, who should fancy that the top of the next hill must end his journey, because it terminates his prospect; but he no sooner arrives at it, than he sees new ground and other hills beyond it, and continues to travel on as before. "This is so plainly every man's condition in life, that there is no one who has observed any thing, but may observe, that as fast as his time wears away, his appetite to something future remains. The use therefore I would make of it is this, that since Nature, as some love to express it, does nothing in vain, or, to speak properly, since the Author of our being has planted no wandering passion in it, no desire which has not its object, futurity is the proper object of the passion so constantly exercised about it; and this restlessness in the present, this assigning ourselves over to further stages of duration, this successive grasping at somewhat still to come, appears to me, whatever it may to others, as a kind of instinct or natural symptom which the mind of man has of its own immortality. "I take it at the same time for granted, that the immortality of the soul is sufficiently established by other arguments: and if so, this appetite, which otherwise would be very unaccountable and absurd, seems very reasonable, and adds strength to the conclusion. But I am amazed when I consider there are creatures capable of thought, who, in spite of every argument, can form to themselves a sullen satisfaction in thinking otherwise. There is something so pitifully mean in the inverted ambition of that man who can hope for annihilation, and please himself to think that his whole fabric shall one day crumble into dust, and mix with the mass of inanimate beings, that it equally deserves our admiration and pity. The mystery of such men's unbelief is not hard to be penetrated; and indeed amounts to nothing more than a sordid hope that they shall not be immortal, because they dare not be so. "This brings me back to my first observation, and gives me occasion to say further, that as worthy actions spring from worthy thoughts, so worthy thoughts are likewise the consequence of worthy actions. But the wretch who has degraded himself below the character of immortality, is very willing to resign his pretensions to it, and to substitute in its room a dark negative happiness in the extinction of his being. "The admirable Shakspeare has given us a strong image of the unsupported condition of such a person in his last minutes, in the Second Part of King Henry the Sixth, where Cardinal Beaufort, who had been concerned in the murder of the good Duke Humphry, is represented on his death-bed. After some short confused speeches, which show an imagination disturbed with guilt, just as he is expiring, King Henry, standing by him, full of compassion, says, Lord Cardinal! if thou think'st on heaven's bliss, "The despair which is here shown, without a word or action on the part of a dying person, is beyond what can be painted by the most forcible expressions whatever. |
