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Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia-Part10_Samuel Johnson(1709-1784)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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variety and jollity of youthful pleasures, life may be well enough

supported without the help of a partner. Longer time will increase



experience, and wider views will allow better opportunities of

inquiry and selection; one advantage at least will be certain, the



parents will be visibly older than their children."

"What reason cannot collect," and Nekayah, "and what experiment has



not yet taught, can be known only from the report of others. I

have been told that late marriages are not eminently happy. This



is a question too important to be neglected; and I have often

proposed it to those whose accuracy of remark and comprehensiveness



of knowledge made their suffrages worthy of regard. They have

generally determined that it is dangerous for a man and woman to



suspend their fate upon each other at a time when opinions are

fixed and habits are established, when friendships have been



contracted on both sides, when life has been planned into method,

and the mind has long enjoyed the contemplation of its own



prospects.

"It is scarcely possible that two travelling through the world



under the conduct of chance should have been both directed to the

same path, and it will not often happen that either will quit the



track which custom has made pleasing. When the desultory levity of

youth has settled into regularity, it is soon succeeded by pride



ashamed to yield, or obstinacy delighting to contend. And even

though mutualesteem produces mutual desire to please, time itself,



as it modifies unchangeably the external mien, determines likewise

the direction of the passions, and gives an inflexible rigidity to



the manners. Long customs are not easily broken; he that attempts

to change the course of his own life very often labours in vain,



and how shall we do that for others which we are seldom able to do

for ourselves?"



"But surely," interposed the Prince, "you suppose the chief motive

of choice forgotten or neglected. Whenever I shall seek a wife, it



shall be my first question whether she be willing to be led by

reason."



"Thus it is," said Nekayah, "that philosophers are deceived. There

are a thousand familiar disputes which reason never can decide;



questions that elude investigation, and make logic ridiculous;

cases where something must be done, and where little can be said.



Consider the state of mankind, and inquire how few can be supposed

to act upon any occasions, whether small or great, with all the



reasons of action present to their minds. Wretched would be the

pair, above all names of wretchedness, who should be doomed to



adjust by reason every morning all the minute details of a domestic

day.



"Those who marry at an advanced age will probably escape the

encroachments of their children, but in the diminution of this



advantage they will be likely to leave them, ignorant and helpless,

to a guardian's mercy; or if that should not happen, they must at



least go out of the world before they see those whom they love best

either wise or great.



"From their children, if they have less to fear, they have less

also to hope; and they lose without equivalent the joys of early



love, and the convenience of uniting with manners pliant and minds

susceptible of new impressions, which might wear away their



dissimilitudes by long cohabitation, as soft bodies by continual




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