From Letter VII., “On a Man’s Writing Memories of Himself.”

THOUGH in memoirs intended for publication, a large share of incident and action would generally be necessary, yet there are some men whose mental history alone might be very interesting to reflective readers; as, for instance, that of a thinking man, remarkable for a number of complete changes of his speculative system. From observing the usual tenacity of views once deliberately adopted in mature life, we regard as a curious phenomenon the man whose mind has been a kind of caravanserai of opinions entertained awhile, and then sent on pilgrimage; a man who has admired and dismissed systems with the same facility with which John Buncle found, adored, married, and interred, his succession of wives, each one being, for the time, not only better than all that went before, but the best in the creation. You admire the versatile aptitude of a mind, sliding into successive forms of belief in this intellectual metempsychosis by which it animates so many new bodies of doctrines in their turn. And as none of those dying pangs which hurt you in a tale of India attend the desertion of each of these speculative forms which the soul has awhile inhabited, you are extremely amused by the number of transitions, and eagerly ask what is to be the next; for you never deem the present state of such a man’s views to be for permanence, unless perhaps when he has terminated his course of believing everything, in ultimately believing nothing. Even then, unless he is very old, or feels more pride in being a skeptic, the conqueror of all systems, than he ever felt in being the champion of one, even then, it is very possible he may spring up again, like a vapor of fire from a bog, and glimmer through new mazes, or retrace his course through half of those which he trod before. You will observe that no respect attaches to this Proteus of opinion, after his changes have been multiplied; as no party expect him to remain with them, nor deem him much of an acquisition if he should. One, or perhaps two, considerable changes, will be regarded as signs of a liberal inquirer, and therefore the party to which his first or his second intellectual conversion may assign him, will receive him gladly. But he will be deemed to have abdicated the dignity of reason, when it is found that he can adopt no principles but to betray them; and it will be perhaps justly suspected that there is something extremely infirm in the structure of that mind, whatever vigor may mark some of its operations, to which a series of very different, and sometimes contrasted theories, can appear in succession demonstratively true, and which imitates sincerely the perverseness which Petruchio only affected, declaring that which was yesterday to a certainty, the sun, to be to-day, as certainly, the moon.

  It would be curious to observe in a man who should make such an exhibition of the course of his mind, the sly deceit of self-love. While he despises the system which he has rejected, he does not deem it to imply so great a want of sense in him once to have embraced it, as in the rest, who were then or are now its disciples and advocates. No, in him it was no debility of reason, it was at the utmost but a merge of it; and probably he is prepared to explain to you that such peculiar circumstances, as might warp even a very strong and liberal mind, attended his consideration of the subject, and misled him to admit the belief of what others prove themselves fools by believing.

  Another thing apparent in a record of changed opinions would be what I have noticed before, that there is scarcely any such thing in the world as simple conviction. It would be amusing to observe how reason had, in one instance, been overruled into acquiescence by the admiration of a celebrated name, or in another, into opposition by the envy of it; how most opportunely reason discovered the truth just at the time that interests could be essentially served by avowing it; how easily the impartial examiner could be induced to adopt some part of another man’s opinions, after that other had zealously approved some favorite, especially if unpopular, part of his; as the Pharisees almost became partial even to Christ, at the moment that he defended one of their doctrines against the Sadducees. It would be curious to see how a respectful estimate of a man’s character and talents might be changed, in consequence of some personal inattention experienced from him, into depreciating invective against him or his intellectual performances, and yet the railer, though actuated solely by petty revenge, accounted himself, all the while, the model of equity and sound judgment. It might be seen how the patronage of power could elevate miserable prejudices into revered wisdom, while poor old Experience was mocked with thanks for her instruction: and how the vicinity or society of the rich, and, as they are termed, great, could perhaps transmute a soul that seemed to be of the stern consistence of the early Roman republic, into the gentlest wax on which Corruption could wish to imprint the venerable creed, “The right divine of kings to govern wrong,” with the pious and loyal inference of the flagrant iniquity of expelling Tarquin. I am supposing the observer to perceive all these accommodating dexterities of reason; for it were probably absurd to expect that any mind should itself be able, in its review, to detect all its own obliquities, after having been so long beguiled, like the mariners in a story which I remember to have read, who followed the direction of their compass, infallibly right as they could have no doubt, till they arrived at an enemy’s port, where they were seized and made slaves. It happened that the wicked captain, in order to betray the ship, had concealed a large loadstone at a little distance on one side of the needle.

  On the notions and expectations of one stage of life, I suppose all reflecting men look back with a kind of contempt, though it may be often with a mingling wish that some of its enthusiasm of feeling could be recovered,—I mean the period between childhood and maturity. They will allow that their reason was then feeble, and they are prompted to exclaim: What fools we have been,—while they recollect how sincerely they entertained and advanced the most ridiculous speculations on the interests of life, and the questions of truth; how regretfully astonished they were to find the mature sense of some of those around them so completely wrong; yet in other instances what veneration they felt for authorities for which they have since lost all their respect; what a fantastic importance they attached to some most trivial things; what complaints against their fate were uttered on account of disappointments which they have since recollected with gayety or self-congratulation; what happiness of Elysium they expected from sources which would soon have failed to impart even common satisfaction; and how certain they were that the feelings and opinions then predominant would continue through life.

  If a reflective aged man were to find at the bottom of an old chest, where it had lain forgotten fifty years, a record which he had written of himself when he was young, simply and vividly describing his whole heart and pursuits, reciting verbatim many recent passages of the language sincerely uttered to his favorite companions, would he not read it with more wonder than almost any other writing could at his age inspire? His consciousness would be strangely confused in the attempt to verify his identity with such a being. He would feel the young man, thus introduced to him, separated by so wide a distance of character as to render all congenial communion impossible. At every sentence he might repeat, Foolish youth! I have no sympathy with your feelings, I can hold no converse with your understanding. Thus you see that in the course of a long life a man may be several moral persons, so various from one another, that if you could find a real individual that should nearly exemplify the character in one of these stages, and another that should exemplify it in the next, and so on to the last, and then bring these several persons together into one society, which would thus be a representation of the successive states of one man, they would feel themselves a most heterogeneous party, would oppose and probably despise one another, and soon separate, not caring if they were never to meet again. The dissimilarity in mind between the two extremes, the youth of seventeen and the sage of seventy, might perhaps be little less than that in countenance; and as the one of these contrasts might be contemplated by an old man, if he had a true portrait for which he sat in the bloom of life, and should hold it beside a mirror in which he looks at his present countenance, the other would be powerfully felt if he had such a genuine and detailed memoir as I have supposed. Might it not be worth while for a self-observant person in early life, to preserve for the inspection of the old man, if he should live so long, such a mental likeness of the young one? If it be not drawn near the time, it can never be drawn with sufficient accuracy.