of the Rambler; but hurried away by the impetuosity of his passions, he fell into an error, of which he was hardly, guilty. But candour will still find it difficult to reconcile the contrariety; for in his Life of Milton and of Gray, he again censures it after a lapse of near twenty years. We must, therefore, quietly suppose, that distracted between truth and 'prejudice, and, perhaps, shame, he imposed upon himself in the tumult of contending passions, and wrote otherwise than he really believed*.

Johnson was not a very accurate logician; he was too fond of paradox to be perspicuous, and too vehement to persuade. But he was ambitious of universal ability, and often precipitated himself into enquiries which he was incompetent to decide. In number twenty-four he has attempted to prove the very great novelty that there are times when a man

does

"Between

a

* To add to the mighty contradiction we find him at period subsequent to the publication of his Idler, and previous to that of his Lives, declaring that, Easter and Whitsuntide, having always considered that time as propitious to study, I attempted to learn the Low Dutch Language." Meditations, p. 123. This is indeed "Confusion worse confounded."

does not think beside the hours of sleep. He denies the division of life into active and contemplative, and asserts it to be inadequate and fallacious. "There are mortals," says he, "whose life is certainly not active, for they do neither good nor evil, and whose life cannot be called contemplative, for they never attend either to the conduct of men or the works of nature, but rise in the morning, look round them till night in careless stupidity, go to bed and sleep, and rise again in the morning."

The activity of life has never been thought purely to consist in the performance of good

and evil; for how

many rise in the world like meteors, exist a while, then fade away, and are as if they had never been. To be either virtuous or wicked in an eminent degree, is not the lot of every man; and yet none can live without performing good either directly or indirectly, for such is the condition of humanity. The most cankered villain, or the most stupid fool that ever disgraced the world, could not avoid dispensing benefits in their circle

4

of activity, though they were not, perhaps, the immediate result of philanthropy or principle. As man is a relative being, he is compelled either from the nature of society, or the legal institutions of his country, to the performance of a certain species of moral good, which he cannot deviate from without incurring in most cases a proportionate danger or punishment. Though this may, perhaps, be deemed a negative virtue, it is, however, a sufficient argument to demonstrate the activity of man, and that no human being who shall possess all or even a part of his perceptions and faculties can possibly exist in a state of inactivity. Equally impossible is it for the mind to rest in a state of ideal vacancy, or total suspension of intellect. To contemplate the works of nature or the conduct of man, is the employment of philosophers, the extent of whose minds enable them to trace consequences in their causes; to detect with rapidity the multifarious involutions of human passion; to mark the concatenation of society from moral to political, and from political to moral; to

comprise

comprise the chain of nature, from her highest excellence to her lowest degradation; to trace moral good proceeding from physical evil; to mark distinct features and general resemblances; minute odeviations and invariable properties; and, in short,

To look thro' nature up to nature's God."

21

But it is hence very certain that all men cannot be philosophers. The business of the world must be performed, and without the assistance of such exalted geniuses. Those who minister to the wants of others or themselves, those who invent supplies for artificial necessities, and those who labour for improvement or elegance must all find subjects for intellectual employment. Every art, whether necessary or superfluous, employs a certain number of individuals, and many subordinate hands; which are again multiplied by indolence or by fraud. These then cannot be denied to have something on which to contemplate; and those whom fortune has placed beyond the necessity

of

of manual industry, seek objects of contemplation in the boundless variety of pleasure, and solace their hours with the sports of the field, the tumult and hurry of the town, the bustle of a military life, the more retired labours of study, or in the supporting some prevalent or fashionable foible. It is therefore evident, that these cannot be deemed guilty of that intellectual vacancy; and these may be said to comprise the "maiden aunts with small fortunes, the younger brothers that live upon annuities, the traders retried from business, the soldiers absent from their regiments, and the widows that have no children;" which Johnson considers as having no activity, no thought, but are mere breathing puppets.

As a confutation of the celebrated question in logic, "whether man always thinks," he proposes the following fallacious argument.

"If it be impossible to think without materials, there must necessarily be minds that do not always think; and whence shall we furnish materials for the meditation of the glutton between his meals, of

the