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VOLUME I

Table of Contents

TO AUGUSTUS HARLEY

Rash young man!—why do you tear from my heart the affecting narrative, which I had hoped no cruel necessity would ever have forced me to review?—Why do you oblige me to recall the bitterness of my past life, and to renew images, the remembrance of which, even at this distant period, harrows up my soul with inconceivable misery?—But your happiness is at stake, and every selfish consideration vanishes.—Dear and sacred deposit of an adored and lost friend!—for whose sake I have consented to hold down, with struggling, suffocating reluctance, the loathed and bitter portion of existence;—shall I expose your ardent mind to the incessant conflict between truth and error—shall I practise the disingenuousness, by which my peace has been blasted—shall I suffer you to run the wild career of passion—shall I keep back the recital, written upon my own mind in characters of blood, which may preserve the child of my affections from destruction?

Ah! why have you deceived me?—Has a six months' absence obliterated from your remembrance the precept I so earnestly and incessantly laboured to inculcate—the value and importance of unequivocal sincerity? A precept, which I now take shame to myself for not having more implicitly observed! Had I supposed your affection for Joanna more than a boyish partiality; had I not believed that a few months' absence would entirely erase it from your remembrance; had I not been assured that her heart was devoted to another object, a circumstance of which she had herself frankly informed you; I should not now have distrusted your fortitude, when obliged to wound your feelings with the intelligence—that the woman, whom you have so wildly persecuted, was, yesterday, united to another.

TO THE SAME

I resume my pen. Your letter, which Joanna a few days since put into my hands, has cost me—Ah! my Augustus, my friend, my son—what has it not cost me, and what impressions has it not renewed? I perceive the vigour of your mind with terror and exultation. But you are mistaken! Were it not for the insuperable barrier that separates you, for ever, from your hopes, perseverance itself, however active, however incessant, may fail in attaining its object. Your ardent reasoning, my interesting and philosophic young friend, though not unconsequential, is a finely proportioned structure, resting on an airy foundation. The science of morals is not incapable of demonstration, but we want a more extensive knowledge of particular facts, on which, in any given circumstance, firmly to establish our data.—Yet, be not discouraged; exercise your understanding, think freely, investigate every opinion, disdain the rust of antiquity, raise systems, invent hypotheses, and, by the absurdities they involve, seize on the clue of truth. Rouse the nobler energies of your mind; be not the slave of your passions, neither dream of eradicating them. Sensation generates interest, interest passion, passion forces attention, attention supplies the powers, and affords the means of attaining its end: in proportion to the degree of interest, will be that of attention and power. Thus are talents produced. Every man is born with sensation, with the aptitude of receiving impressions; the force of those impressions depends on a thousand circumstances, over which he has little power; these circumstances form the mind, and determine the future character. We are all the creatures of education; but in that education, what we call chance, or accident, has so great a share, that the wisest preceptor, after all his cares, has reason to tremble: one strong affection, one ardent incitement, will turn, in an instant, the whole current of our thoughts, and introduce a new train of ideas and associations.

You may perceive that I admit the general truths of your reasoning; but I would warn you to be careful in their particular application; a long train of patient and laborious experiments must precede our deductions and conclusions. The science of mind is not less demonstrative, and far more important, than the science of Newton; but we must proceed on similar principles. The term metaphysics has been, perhaps, justly defined—the first principles of arts and sciences.2 Every discovery of genius, resulting from a fortunate combination of circumstances, may be resolved into simple facts; but in this investigation we must be patient, attentive, indefatigable; we must be content to arrive at truth through many painful mistakes and consequent sufferings.—Such appears to be the constitution of man!

To shorten and meliorate your way, I have determined to sacrifice every inferior consideration. I have studied your character: I perceive, with joy, that its errors are the ardent excesses of a generous mind. I loved your father with a fatal and unutterable tenderness: time has softened the remembrance of his faults.—Our noblest qualities, without incessant watchfulness, are liable insensibly to shade into vices—but his virtues and misfortunes, in which my own were so intimately blended, are indelibly engraven on my heart.

A mystery has hitherto hung over your birth. The victim of my own ardent passions, and the errors of one whose memory will ever be dear to me, I prepare to withdraw the veil—a veil, spread by an importunate, but, I fear, a mistaken tenderness. Learn, then, from the incidents of my life, entangled with those of his to whom you owe your existence, a more striking and affecting lesson than abstract philosophy can ever afford.

2 Helvetius.