Thoughts on Man, His Nature, Productions and Discoveries: Interspersed with Some Particulars Respecting the AuthorGodwin, William
Philosophy
Thoughts on Man, His Nature, Productions and Discoveries: Interspersed with Some Particulars Respecting the Author
Godwin, William
Human beings; Psychology -- Early works to 1850
Others again would waste perhaps their whole lives in reverie and
idleness. They are constituted of materials so kindly and serene,
that their spirits never flag from want of occupation and external
excitement. They could lie for ever on a sunny bank, in a condition
divided between thinking and no thinking, refreshed by the fanning
breeze, viewing the undulations of the soil, and the rippling of the
brook, admiring the azure heavens, and the vast, the bold, and the
sublime figure of the clouds, yielding themselves occasionally to
"thick-coming fancies," and day-dreams, and the endless romances of an
undisciplined mind;
And find no end, in wandering mazes lost.
But all men, alike the busy of constitution and the idle, would desire
to follow the impulses of their own minds, unbroken in upon by harsh
necessity, or the imperious commands of their fellows.
We cannot however, by the resistless law of our existence, live, except
the few who by the accident of their birth are privileged to draw
their supplies from the labour of others, without exerting ourselves to
procure by our efforts or ingenuity the necessaries of food, lodging and
attire. He that would obtain them for himself in an uninhabited island,
would find that this amounted to a severe tax upon that freedom of
motion and thought which would otherwise be his inheritance. And he who
has his lot cast in a populous community, exists in a condition somewhat
analogous to that of a negro slave, except that he may to a limited
extent select the occupation to which he shall addict himself, or may at
least starve, in part or in whole, uncontroled, and at his choice. Such
is, as it were, the universal lot.
'Tis destiny unshunnable like death:
Even then this dire necessity falls on us,
When we do quicken.
I go forth in the streets, and observe the occupations of other men.
I remark the shops that on every side beset my path. It is curious and
striking, how vast are the ingenuity and contrivance of human beings, to
wring from their fellow-creatures, "from the hard hands of peasants"
and artisans, a part of their earnings, that they also may live. We
soon become feelingly convinced, that we also must enter into the vast
procession of industry, upon pain that otherwise,
Like to an entered tide, they all rush by,
And leave you hindmost: there you lie,
For pavement to the abject rear, o'errun
And trampled on.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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