The ills, which men of genius thus occasion and endure, from seeking for their rules of action, altogether from the relations, which they perceive they have to the general system of human society, without sufficiently regarding those, which necessarily connect them to the little system of some particular society, are merely errors in the actual course pursued, not in the motives from which that course was adopted.There are others more fatal, coming, not from mistakes in action, but from errors in the motives to action, and from the imagination that it may be allowable willingly to do a small evil, if a large amount of good follow it.This is unquestionably a moral error, to which men of high powers must, from the consciousness of these powers, be peculiarly liable.It were painful to bring forward instances of their succumbing to the temptation.(67)It is thus that a power, which seems to be at first wakened to life, and to draw its earliest aliment, from the promptings of strong desires in man, to unite himself extensively with his fellow men, to exist with them, and for them, rather than in himself, as it gathers strength, and predominates in any individual, generally renders him so dissimilar to other men, in his feelings, habits, motives, and modes of action, that it in a great measure separates him from them.Whatever he may be, or may hope to be as an inventer, or author, as a man he is misconceived and misapprehended.
Among the men with whom he lives, he lives as not of them, a magic circle is drawn round him which neither he can pass without, nor they, within.
Like the attractive and repulsive powers, which one magnetic influence communicates to matter of the same sort, the different direction in which the great moving and cementing principle of society has been made to flow in him, and in them, incessantly repels, and keeps him at a distance from them.
This disjunction and isolation affect various natures variously.Some cannot endure it; they cannot live but in the constant and intimate sympathy and communion of their fellows.They feel all the loneliness, and little of the grandeur of the desert.They pant for the land of life, and either turning to it, are lost in it, their former existence being remembered but as the wanderings of a dream; or they perish, from their incapacity to mingle with it.Their finer and gentler natures fed, but not strengthened by contemplation, recoil from the coarse and boisterous spirits, with whom they are brought into contact.They sink in the conflict and pass from life itself, "A precious odour east On a wild stream, that recklessly sweeps by;A voice of music uttered to the blast, And winning no reply."To others of firmer mould, the action of these alternately attracting and repelling powers, the passing from one state of being to another completely opposite, from the turmoil of spirit excited by braving and bearing back a world opposed, to the concentration of contemplative solitude, though wasting, is invigorating.Like steel which is first made to glow in fire, and then plunged in water, the fineness of their temper is brought out by the play of opposing elements.It is observed by Mr.Moore, in his life of Lord Byron, that but for the opposition he encountered, the noble poet had never stood forth in might; that persecution found him, as Rousseau, weak, left him strong.
Some, again, the world without affording no resting place, entrench themselves in the world within.Their excursions outwards, are carried on, as into a country permanently hostile.To insult, to attack, to overthrow, not to subdue, or establish, is their aim.These are the skeptics, men seemingly abandoning every other hope but that of making manifest their power, a power that has often been greater than they themselves have conceived, and which, doubtless, would many times have been more happily exerted, had they found themselves in happier circumstances.When we read, for instance, the speculations of Hume, we do not always recollect that he bad been a needy dependent brother of a scotch land-holder, had failed in the only attempt he bad ever made to establish himself in the world, by entering on business, and had come to middle life, known only as a bookish recluse, unable to do good, and only to be tolerated, because he was too inoffensive to do harm to any one.Such an existence may well account for much of that shrinking within himself, that absence of all heart, that habitual distrust, rather rejoicing to overthrow, than hoping to establish, which characterize his philosophy.Who can tell how great has been the influence of that philosophy, in producing what has been, what is, and what is to be, in Britain, and in Europe? Of this we may be assured, that they are least aware of it, who are most affected by it.
There are yet others of higher minds, who, through hopes disappointed, and errors committed, over the waste of the world, and the ruins of their own hearts, can look confidently and courageously forward, to a brighter, though far distant prospect.It is in this spirit that Lord Bacon bequeaths his fame to posterity, and it is through it, that he, who has been to us so notable a benefactor, yet holds converse with us.The manly and generous confidence with which he relies on the better parts of human nature, and, in the midst of so many discouraging circumstances looks forward to the ultimate reign of truth and happiness, constitutes indeed, I may be allowed to remark, no small part of the charm, and perhaps of the utility of his speculations.
