the mind continually engaged in, or occupied by, fome laudable pursuit. The earliest profef fors of a life of Solitude, although they removed themselves far from the haunts of men, among " caverns deep" and " deferts idle," where nature denied her fons the most common of her bleffings, employed themselves in endeavouring to cultivate the rude and barren foil during those intervals in which they were not occupied in the ordinary labours of religion; and even those whose extraordinary fanctity confined them the whole day to their cells, found the neceffity of filling up their leifure, by exercising the manual arts for which they were respectively fuited. The rules, indeed, which were originally eftablished in most of the convents, ordained that the time and attention of a monk should never be for a moment vacant or unemployed; but this excellent precept was soon rendered obsolete; and the fad consequences which resulted from its nonobservance we have already, in some degree, CHAPTER THE EIGHTH. THE CONCLUSION. T HE anxiety with which I have endeavoured to describe THE ADVANTAGES and THE DISADVANTAGES which, under particular circumstances, and in particular situations, are likely to be experienced by those who devote themselves to folitary retirement, may, perhaps, occafion me to be viewed by some as its romantic panegyrift, and by others as its uncandid cenfor. I shall, therefore, endeavour, in this concluding chapter, to prevent a misconstruction of my opinion, by explicitly declaring the inferences which ought in fairness to be drawn from what I have faid. The advocates for a life of uninterrupted SOCIETY will, in all probability, accuse me of being a morose and gloomy philosopher; an inveterate enemy to social intercourse; who, by recommending a melancholy and fullen seclufion, and interdicting mankind from enjoying the pleafures of life, would four their tempers, fubdue their affections, annihilate the best feelings of the heart, pervert the noble faculty of reason, and VOL. II. X and thereby once more plunge the world into that dark abyss of barbarism, from which it has been so happily rescued by the establishment and civilization of fociety. The advocates for a life of continual SOLITUDE will most probably, on the other hand, accuse me of a design to deprive the species of one of the most pleasing and fatisfactory delights,* by exciting an unjust antipathy, raising an unfounded alarm, depreciating the uses, and aggravating the abuses, of SOLITUDE; and by these means of endeavouring to encourage that spirit of licentiousness and diffipation which fo strongly marks the degeneracy, and tends to promote the vices of the age. means * But the right of indulging this delight, even supposing it to exist, is denied by a very able philosopher. "Some of those sages," says he, "that have exercised their abilities in the enquiry after the supreme good, have been of opinion, that the highest degree of earthly happiness is quiet; a calm repose both of mind and body, undisturbed by the fight of folly, or the noise of business, the tumults of public commotion, or the agitations of private interests: a state in which the mind has no other employment, but to obferve and regulate her own motions, to trace thought from thought, combine one image with another, raise systems of science, and form theories of virtue. To the scheme of these solitary speculatists it has been justly objected, that if they are happy, they are happy only by being ufeless: that mankind is one vast republic, where every individual receives many benefits from the labours of others, which, by labouring in his turn for others, he is obliged to repay; and that where the united efforts of all are not able to exempt all from mifery, none have a right to withdraw from their task of vigilance, or to be indulged in idle wisdom or folitary pleafures." The respective advocates for these opinions, however, equally mistake the intent and view I had in compofing this Treatise. I do fincerely assure them, that it was very far from my intention to cause a relaxation of the exercise of any of the civil duties of life; to impair in any degree the focial difpofitions of the human heart; to leffen any inclination to rational Retirement; or to prevent the beneficent practice of felf-communion, which Solitude is best calculated to promote. The fine and generous philanthropy of that mind which, entertaining notions of universal benevolence, seeks to feel a love for, and to promote the good of, the whole human race, can never be injured by an attachment to domeftic pleasures, or by cultivating the foft and gentle affections which are only to be found in the small circles of private life, and can never be truly enjoyed, except in the bofom of LOVE, or the arms of FRIENDSHIP: nor will an occafional and rational retirement from the tumults of the world lessen any of the noble sympathies of the human heart; but, on the contrary, by enlarging those ideas and feelings X 2 feelings which have sprung from the connections and dependencies which its votary may have formed with individuals, and by generalizing his particular interests and concerns, may enable him to extend the social principle, and encrease the circle of his benevolence. God loves from whole to parts; but human foul The chief design of this work was to exhibit the neceffity of combining the uses of SOLITUDE with those of SOCIETY, to shew, in the strongest light, the advantages they may mutually derive from each other; to convince mankind of the danger of running into either extreme; to teach the advocate for UNINTERRUPTED SOCIETY, how highly all the social virtues may be improved, and its vices eafily abandoned, by habits of solitary abstraction; and the advocate for CONTINUAL SOLITUDE, how much that indocility and arrogance of character which is contracted by a total absence from |
