ESSAY I. ON THE DIFFICULTY OF DISCOVERING FIXED LAWS. A BOOK on human intercourse might be written in a variety of ways, and amongst them might be an attempt to treat the subject in a scientific manner, so as to elucidate those natural laws by which intercourse between human beings must be regulated. If we knew quite perfectly what those laws are we should enjoy the great convenience of being able to predict with certainty which men and women would be able to associate with pleasure, and which would be constrained or repressed in each other's society. Human intercourse would then be as much a positive science as chemistry, in which the effects of bringing substances together can be foretold with the utmost accuracy. Some very distant approach to this scientific state, may, in certain instances, actually be made. When we know the characters of two people with a certain degree of precision, we may sometimes predict that they are sure to quarrel, and have the satisfaction of witnessing the explosion that our own acumen has foretold. To detect in people we know those incompatibilities that are the fatal seeds of future dissension is one of our malicious pleasures. An acute observer really has considerable powers of prediction and calculation with reference to individual human beings; but there his wisdom ends. He cannot deduce from these separate cases any general rules or laws that can be firmly relied upon, as every real law of nature can be relied upon, and therefore it may be concluded that such rules are not laws of nature at all, but only poor and untrustworthy substitutes for them. The reason for this difficulty I take to be the extreme complexity of human nature, and its boundless variety, which make it always probable that in every mind which we have not long and closely studied there will be elements wholly unknown to us. How often, with regard to some public man who is known to us only in part through his acts or his writings, are we surprised by the sudden revelation of characteristics that we never imagined for him, and that seem almost incompatible with the better known side of his nature! How much the more, then, are we likely to go wrong in our estimates of people we know nothing about, and how impossible it must be for us to determine how they are likely to select their friends and companions! Certain popular ideas appear to represent a sort of rude philosophy of human intercourse. There is the common belief, for example, that in order to associate pleasantly together people should be of the same class and nearly in the same condition of fortune; but when we turn to real life we find very numerous instances in which this fancied law is broken with the happiest results. The late Duke of Albany may be mentioned as an example. No doubt his own natural refinement would have prevented him from associating with vulgar people, but he readily associated with refined and cultivated people who had no pretension to rank. His own rank was a power in his hands that he used for good, and he was conscious of it, but it did not isolate him; he desired to know people as they are, and was capable of feeling the most sincere respect for anybody who deserved it. So it is, generally, with all who have the gifts of sympathy and intelligence. Merely to avoid what is disagreeable has nothing to do with pride of station. Vulgar society is disagreeable, which is a sufficient reason for keeping aloof from it. Amongst people of refinement, association, or even friendship, is possible in spite of differences of rank and fortune. Another popular belief is that "men associate together when they are interested in the same things." It would, however, be easy to adduce very numerous instances in which an interest in similar things has been a cause of quarrel, when, if one of the two parties had regarded those things with indifference, harmonious intercourse might have been preserved. The livelier our interest in anything, the more does acquiescence in matters of detail appear essential to us. Two people are both of them extremely religious, but one of them is a Mahometan and the other a Christian; here the interest in religion causes a divergence enough in most cases to make intercourse impossible, when it would have been quite possible if both parties had regarded religion with indifference. Bring the two nearer together, suppose them to be both Christians; they acknowledge one law, one doctrine, one Head of the church in heaven. Yes, but they do not acknowledge the same head of it on earth, for one accepts the Papal supremacy, which the other denies, |