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Page 17
Now it is otherwise. A change in the mode of life has made it
necessary to be busy; and man finds a thousand things to do now which
before he did not. Instead of placing his ideas of greatness in the
rude achievements of the savage, he studies arts, science,
agriculture, and commerce, the refinements of the gentleman, the
principles of society, and the knowledge of the philosopher.
There are many things which in themselves are morally neither good nor
bad, but they are productive of consequences, which are strongly
marked with one or other of these characters. Thus commerce, though in
itself a moral nullity, has had a considerable influence in tempering
the human mind. It was the want of objects in the ancient world, which
occasioned in them such a rude and perpetual turn for war. Their time
hung upon their hands without the means of employment. The indolence
they lived in afforded leisure for mischief, and being all idle at
once, and equal in their circumstances, they were easily provoked or
induced to action.
But the introduction of commerce furnished the world with objects,
which in their extent, reach every man, and give him something to
think about and something to do; by these his attention his [_sic_]
mechanically drawn from the pursuits which a state of indolence and an
unemployed mind occasioned, and he trades with the same countries,
which former ages, tempted by their productions, and too indolent to
purchase them, would have gone to war with.
Thus, as I have already observed, the condition of the world being
materially changed by the influence of science and commerce, it is put
into a fitness not only to admit of, but to desire an extension of
civilization. The principal and almost only remaining enemy it now has
to encounter, is _prejudice_; for it is evidently the interest of
mankind to agree and make the best of life. The world has undergone
its divisions of empire, the several boundaries of which are known and
settled. The idea of conquering countries, like the Greeks and Romans,
does not now exist; and experience has exploded the notion of going to
war for the sake of profit. In short, the objects for war are
exceedingly diminished, and there is now left scarcely any thing to
quarrel about, but what arises from that demon of society, prejudice,
and the consequent sullenness and untractableness of the temper.
There is something exceedingly curious in the constitution and
operation of prejudice. It has the singular ability of accommodating
itself to all the possible varieties of the human mind. Some passions
and vices are but thinly scattered among mankind, and find only here
and there a fitness of reception. But prejudice, like the spider,
makes every where its home. It has neither taste nor choice of place,
and all that it requires is room. There is scarcely a situation,
except fire or water, in which a spider will not live. So, let the
mind be as naked as the walls of an empty and forsaken tenement,
gloomy as a dungeon, or ornamented with the richest abilities of
thinking; let it be hot, cold, dark, or light, lonely or inhabited,
still prejudice, if undisturbed, will fill it with cobwebs, and live,
like the spider, where there seems nothing to live on. If the one
prepares her food by poisoning it to her palate and her use, the other
does the same; and as several of our passions are strongly charactered
by the animal world, prejudice may be denominated the spider of the
mind.
Perhaps no two events ever united so intimately and forceably to
combat and expel prejudice, as the Revolution of America, and the
Alliance with France. Their effects are felt, and their influence
already extends as well to the old world as the new. Our style and
manner of thinking have undergone a revolution, more extraordinary
than the political revolution of the country. We see with other eyes;
we hear with other ears; and think with other thoughts, than those we
formerly used. We can look back on our own prejudices, as if they had
been the prejudices of other people. We now see and know they were
prejudices, and nothing else; and relieved from their shackles, enjoy
a freedom of mind we felt not before. It was not all the argument,
however powerful, nor all the reasoning, however elegant, that could
have produced this change, so necessary to the extension of the mind
and the cordiality of the world, without the two circumstances of the
Revolution and the Alliance.
Had America dropt quietly from Britain, no material change in
sentiment had taken place. The same notions, prejudices, and conceits,
would have governed in both countries, as governed them before; and,
still the slaves of error and education, they would have travelled on
in the beaten tract of vulgar and habitual thinking. But brought about
by the means it has been, both with regard to ourselves, to France,
and to England, every corner of the mind is swept of its cobwebs,
poison, and dust, and made fit for the reception of general happiness.
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