The World's Greatest Books - Volume 5 Part 33

One day his old instructor began to lament the change which had been lately observed in him, and to inquire why he so often retired from the pleasures of the palace to loneliness and silence.

"I fly from pleasure," said the prince, "because pleasure has ceased to please. I am lonely because I am miserable, and am unwilling to cloud with my presence the happiness of others."

"You, sir," said the sage, "are the first who has complained of misery in the Happy Valley. I hope to convince you that your complaints have no real cause. Look round and tell me which of your wants is without supply. If you want nothing, how are you unhappy?"

"That I want nothing," said the prince, "or that I know not what I want, is the cause of my complaint. If I had only known a want, I should have a certain wish, and that wish would excite endeavour for its satisfaction. I have already enjoyed too much. Give me something to desire."

"Sir," said the old man, "if you had seen the miseries of the world, you would know how to value your present state."

"Now," said the prince, "you have given me something to desire. I shall long to see the miseries of the world, since the sight of them is necessary to happiness."

_II.--The Escape Into the Outer World_

The stimulus of this new desire--the desire of seeing the world--soon had its effect in making Ra.s.selas no longer gloomy and unsociable.

Considering himself as master of a secret stock of happiness, he affected to be busy in all the a.s.semblies and schemes of diversion, because he supposed the frequency of his presence necessary to the success of his purposes. He retired gladly to privacy, because in picturing to himself that world which he had never seen he had now a subject of thought.

Thus pa.s.sed twenty months of his life; he busied himself so intensely in visionary bustle that he forgot his real solitude. But one day the consciousness of his own folly and inaction pierced him deeply. He compared twenty months with the life of man. "The period of human existence," said he, "may be reasonably estimated at forty years, of which I have mused away the four-and-twentieth part."

These sorrowful meditations fastened upon his mind; he pa.s.sed four months in resolving to lose no more time in idle resolves. Then, awakening to more vigorous exertion, 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.

He now found that it would be very difficult to effect that which it was very easy to suppose effected. He pa.s.sed week after week in clambering the mountains, but found all the summits inaccessible by their prominence. The iron gate was not only secured with all the power of art, but was always watched by successive sentinels. In these fruitless researches he spent ten months. The time, however, pa.s.sed cheerfully away, for he met a thousand amus.e.m.e.nts which beguiled his labour and diversified his thought.

A little while afterwards he began to cherish hopes of escaping from the valley by quite a different way. Among the artists allowed there, to labour for the accommodation and pleasure of its inhabitants, was a man eminent for his knowledge of the mechanic powers, who had contrived many engines both of use and recreation. He interested the prince in a project of flying, and undertook to construct a pair of wings, in which he would himself attempt an aerial flight. But, alas! when in a year's time the wings were ready, and their contriver waved them and leaped from the little promontory on which he had taken his stand, he merely dropped into the lake, his wings only serving to sustain him in the water.

The prince was not much afflicted by this disaster, and he soon forgot any disappointment he had felt in the society and conversation of a new artist--a poet called Imlac--who delighted him by the narrative of his travels and dealings with men in various parts of Africa and Asia.

"Hast thou here found happiness at last?" asked Ra.s.selas. "Tell 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 emperor invite others to partake of their felicity. Is this felicity genuine or feigned?"

"Great prince," said Imlac, "I 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. The rest, whose minds have no impression but the present moment, are either corroded by malignant pa.s.sions, or sit steeped in the gloom of perpetual vacancy."

"What pa.s.sions can infect those," said the prince, "who have no rivals?

We are in a place where impotence precludes malice, and where all envy is repressed by community of enjoyments."

"There may be community of material possessions," said Imlac, "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 the inhabitants of the valley allure others to a state which they feel to be wretched proceed from the natural malignity of hopeless misery. 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."

Upon this hint, Ra.s.selas opened his whole heart to Imlac, who, promising to a.s.sist him to escape, proposed the plan of piercing the mountain. A suitable cavern having been found, the two men worked arduously at their task, and within a few days had accomplished it. A few more days pa.s.sed, and Ra.s.selas and Imlac, with the prince's sister, Nekayah, had gone by ship to Suez, and thence to Cairo.

_III.--The Search for Happiness_

The prince and princess, who carried with them jewels sufficient to make them rich in any place of commerce, gradually succeeded in mixing in the society of the city; and for some time the former, who had been wont to ponder over what _choice of life_ he should make, thought choice needless because all appeared to him really happy.

Imlac was unwilling to crush the hope of inexperience. Till one day, having sat awhile silent, "I know not," said Ra.s.selas, "what can be the reason that I am more unhappy than any of my friends. I see them perpetually and unalterably cheerful, 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."

"Every man," said Imlac, "may, by examining his own mind, guess what pa.s.ses 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 to be possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself."

"This," said the prince, "may 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_."

"Very few," said the poet, "live by choice. Every man is placed in the 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."

Ra.s.selas resolved, however, to continue his experiments on life. As he was one day walking in the street, he saw a s.p.a.cious building, which all were, by the open doors, invited to enter. He found it a hall of declamation, and listened to a sage who discoursed with great energy on the conquest of the pa.s.sions, and displayed the happiness of those who had obtained this 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.

Receiving permission to visit this philosopher--having, indeed, purchased it by presenting him with a purse of gold--Ra.s.selas returned home with joy to Imlac.

"I have found," said he, "a man who, from the unshaken throne of rational fort.i.tude, looks down on the scenes of life changing beneath him. I will learn his doctrines and imitate his life."

"Be not too hasty," said Imlac, "to trust or to admire the teachers of morality; they discourse like angels, but they live like men."

Imlac's caution turned out to be wise, for when the prince paid his visit a few days afterwards, he found the philosopher weeping over the death of his only daughter, and refusing to be comforted by any of the consolations that truth and reason could afford.

Still eager upon the same inquiry, and resolving to discover whether that felicity which public life could not afford was to be found in solitude, Ra.s.selas determined to visit a hermit who lived near the lowest cataract of the Nile and filled the whole country with the fame of his sanct.i.ty, Imlac and the princess agreeing to accompany him. On the third day they reached the cell of the holy man, who was desired to give his direction as to a choice of life.

"He will most certainly remove from evil," said the prince, "who shall devote himself to that solitude which you have recommended by your example."

"I have no desire that my example should gain any imitators," replied the hermit. "In my youth I professed arms, and was raised by degrees to the highest military rank. At last, being disgusted by the preferments of a younger officer, I resolved to close my life in peace, having found the world full of snares, discord, and misery. For some time after my retreat I rejoiced like a tempest-beaten sailor at his entrance into the harbour. When the pleasure of novelty went away, I employed my hours in examining the plants and minerals of the place. But that inquiry is now grown tasteless and irksome, and I have been for some time unsettled and distracted. 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. I have been long comparing the evils with the advantages of society, and resolve to return into the world to-morrow."

They accompanied him back to the city, on which, as he approached it, he gazed with rapture.

A day or two later Ra.s.selas was relating his interview with the hermit at an a.s.sembly of learned men, who met at stated intervals to compare their opinions.

"The way to be happy," said one of them, "is to live according to nature, in 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 design, not instilled by education, but infused at our nativity."

When he had spoken, he looked round him with a placid air, and enjoyed the consciousness of his own beneficence.

"Sir," said the prince, with great modesty, "as 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 so learned a man has so confidently advanced. Let me only know what it is to live according to nature."

"When I find young men so humble and so docile," said the philosopher, "I 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."

The prince soon found that this was a sage whom he should understand less as he heard him longer. He therefore bowed, and was silent; and the philosopher, supposing him satisfied, departed with the air of a man who had co-operated with the present system.

_IV.--Happiness They Find Not_

Ra.s.selas returned home full of reflections, and finding that Imlac seemed to discourage a continuance of the search, began _to_ discourse more freely with his sister, who had yet the same hope with himself.

"We will divide the task between us," said she. "You shall try what is to be found in the splendour of courts, and I will range the shades of humbler life."

Accordingly, the prince appeared next day, with a splendid retinue, at the court of the ba.s.sa. But he soon found that the lives of courtiers are a continual succession of plots and detections, stratagems and escapes, faction and treachery. Many of those who surrounded the ba.s.sa were sent only to watch him, and to report his conduct to the sultan. At last the letters of revocation arrived, the ba.s.sa was carried in chains to Constantinople, and in a short time the sultan that had deposed him was murdered by the Janissaries.

The princess, who, in the meantime, had insinuated herself into many private families, proved equally unsuccessful in her inquiries. She found not one house that was not haunted by some fury that destroyed its quiet.

"In families where there is or is not poverty," said she, "there is commonly discord. The love of parents and children seldom continues beyond the years of infancy; in a short time the children become rivals to their parents. Each child endeavours to appropriate the esteem or fondness of the parents, and the parents betray each other to their children. The 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. Age looks with anger on the temerity of youth; and youth with contempt on the scrupulosity of age."

"Surely," said the prince, "you 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."

"Domestic discord," answered she, "is not inevitably necessary; but it is not easily avoided. We seldom see that a whole family is virtuous.