The foundation of this sentiment is obvious. Men do not live for ever. The longest duration of human existence has an end: and whatever it is of which that may be affirmed, may in some sense be pronounced to be short. The estimation of our existence depends upon the point of view from which we behold it. Hope is one of our greatest enjoyments. Possession is something. But the past is as nothing. Remorse may give it a certain solidity; the recollection of a life spent in acts of virtue may be refreshing. But fruition, and honours, and fame, and even pain, and privations, and torment, when they ere departed, are but like a feather; we regard them as of no account. Taken in this sense, Dryden's celebrated verses are but a maniac's rant:
To-morrow, do thy worst, for I have lived to-day:
Be fair, or foul, or rain, or shine, The joys I have possessed, in spite of fate are mine.
Not heaven itself upon the past has power, But what has been has been, and I have had my hour.
But this way of removing the picture of human life to a certain distance from us, and considering those things which were once in a high degree interesting as frivolous and unworthy of regard, is not the way by which we shall arrive at a true and just estimation of life. Whatever is now past, and is of little value, was once present: and he who would form a sound judgment, must look upon every part of our lives as present in its turn, and not suffer his opinion to be warped by the consideration of the nearness or remoteness of the object he contemplates.
One sentence, which has grown into a maxim for ever repeated, is remarkable for the grossest fallacy: Ars longa, vita brevis[9].
I would fain know, what art, compared with the natural duration of human life from puberty to old age, is long.
[9] Art is long; life is short.
If it is intended to say, that no one man can be expected to master all possible arts, or all arts that have at one time or another been the subject of human industry, this indeed is true.
But the cause of this does not lie in the limited duration of human life, but in the nature of the faculties of the mind.
Human understanding and human industry cannot embrace every thing. When we take hold of one thing, we must let go another.
Science and art, if we would pursue them to the furthest extent of which we are capable, must be pursued without interruption.
It would therefore be more to the purpose to say, Man cannot be for ever young. In the stream of human existence, different things have their appropriate period. The knowledge of languages can perhaps be most effectually acquired in the season of nonage.
At riper years one man devotes himself to one science or art, and another man to another. This man is a mathematician; a second studies music; a third painting. This man is a logician; and that man an orator. The same person cannot be expected to excel in the abstruseness of metaphysical science, and in the ravishing effusions of poetical genius. When a man, who has arrived at great excellence in one department of art or science, would engage himself in another, he will be apt to find the freshness of his mind gone, and his faculties no longer distinguished by the same degree of tenacity and vigour that they formerly displayed. It is with the organs of the brain, as it is with the organs of speech, in the latter of which we find the tender fibres of the child easily accommodating themselves to the minuter inflections and variations of sound, which the more rigid muscles of the adult will for the most part attempt in vain.
If again, by the maxim, Ars longa, vita brevis, it is intended to signify, that we cannot in any art arrive at perfection; that in reality all the progress we can make is insignificant; and that, as St. Paul says, we must "not count ourselves to have already attained; but that, forgetting the things that are behind, it becomes us to press forward to the prize of our calling,"--this also is true. But this is only ascribable to the limitation of our faculties, and that even the shadow of perfection which man is capable to reach, can only be attained by the labour of successive generations. The cause does not lie in the shortness of human life, unless we would include in its protracted duration the privilege of being for ever young; to which we ought perhaps to add, that our activity should never be exhausted, the freshness of our minds never abate, and our faculties for ever retain the same degree of tenacity and vigour, as they had in the morning of life, when every thing was new, when all that allured or delighted us was seen accompanied with charms inexpressible, and, as Dryden expresses it[10], "the first sprightly running" of the wine of life afforded a zest never after to be hoped for.
[10] Aurengzebe.
I return then to the consideration of the alleged shortness of life. I mentioned in the beginning of this Essay, that "human life consists of years, months and days; each day containing twenty-four hours." But, when I said this, I by no means carried on the division so far as it might be carried. It has been calculated that the human mind is capable of being impressed with three hundred and twenty sensations in a second of time.[11]
[11] See Watson on Time, Chapter II.