While meandering in the library after a successful find of a resource for a research paper, I stumbled upon this collection of English essays. Being a lover of a 'quick read with a good punch' I skimmed through the essay titles and found this intriguing essay by Daniel Defoe. Daniel equates the glory of such monumental figures in history such as Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar and Augustus to dust and ash. Growing up I was an admirer of Alexander the Great in light of his courage, quick thinking and unprecedented accomplishments, but to Daniel Defoe, this glory of Alexander but ends with his death and comes to dust. What good are our actions in life if they have no bearing on eternity? Nothing. What we do during our short lived time on earth will end. Hopeless as this is, we are given the second half to this realization, that if the virtue of our soul is great along with our actions, then we indeed do have a glorious man. For, what is glory without virtue?
Daniel Defoe (1661-1731)
The Instability of Human Glory
"Sir, I have employed myself of late pretty much in the study of history, and have been reading the stories of such great men of past ages, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, the great Augustus, and many more down, down, down, to the still greater Louis XIV., and even to the still greatest John, Duke of Marlborough. In my way I met with Tamerlane, the Scythian, Tomornbejus, the Egyptian, Solyman, the Magnificent, and others of the Mahometan or Ottoman race; and after all the great things they have done I find it said of them all, one after another, AND THEN HE DIED, all dead, dead, dead! hic jacet is the finishing part of their history. Some lie in the bed of honour, and some in hounr's truckle bed; some were bravely slain in battle on the field of honour, some in the storm of a counterscap and died in the ditch of hounour; some here, some there; - the bones of the bold and the brave, the cowardly and the base, the hero and the scoundrel, are heaped up together; -there they lie in oblivion, and under the ruins o the earth, undistinguished from one another, nay, even from the common earth.
"Huddled in dirt the blust'ring engine lies,
That was so great, and though himself so wise."
That was so great, and though himself so wise."
How many hundreds of thousands of the bravest fellows then in the world lie on heaps in the ground, whose bones are to this day ploughed up by rustics, or dug up by the laborer, and the earth their more noble vital parts are converted to has been perhaps applied to the meanest uses...
...What then is the work of life? What the business of great men, that pass the stage of the world in seeming triumph as these men, we call heroes, have done? Is it to grow great in the mouth of fame and take up many pages in history? Alas! that is no more than making a tale for the reading of posterity till it turns into fable and romance. Is it to furnish subject to the poets, and live in their immortal rhymes, as they call them? That is, in short, no more than to be hereafter tuned into ballad and song and be sung by old women to quiet children, or at the corner of a street to gather crowds in aid of the pick-pocket and the poor. Or is their business rather to add virtue and piety to their glory, which alone will pass them into eternity and make them truly immortal? What is glory without virtue? A great man without religion is no more than a great beast without a soul. What is honour without merit? And what can be called true merit but that which makes a person be a good man as well as a great man?
If we believe in a future state of life, a place for the rewards of good men and for the punishment of the haters of virtue, how few of heroes and famous men crowd in among the last! How few crowned heads wear the crowns of immortal felicity!
Let no man envy the great and glorious men, as we call them! Could we see them now, how many of them would move our pity rather than call for our congratulations! These few thoughts, Sir, I send to prepare your readers' minds when they go to see the magnificent funerel of the late Duke of Marlborough."
In closing, I make an appeal to us, as stewards of the Lord's earth in this present time, an appeal to virtue. If we want our deeds to be something of worth, we must be virtuous.
...What then is the work of life? What the business of great men, that pass the stage of the world in seeming triumph as these men, we call heroes, have done? Is it to grow great in the mouth of fame and take up many pages in history? Alas! that is no more than making a tale for the reading of posterity till it turns into fable and romance. Is it to furnish subject to the poets, and live in their immortal rhymes, as they call them? That is, in short, no more than to be hereafter tuned into ballad and song and be sung by old women to quiet children, or at the corner of a street to gather crowds in aid of the pick-pocket and the poor. Or is their business rather to add virtue and piety to their glory, which alone will pass them into eternity and make them truly immortal? What is glory without virtue? A great man without religion is no more than a great beast without a soul. What is honour without merit? And what can be called true merit but that which makes a person be a good man as well as a great man?
If we believe in a future state of life, a place for the rewards of good men and for the punishment of the haters of virtue, how few of heroes and famous men crowd in among the last! How few crowned heads wear the crowns of immortal felicity!
Let no man envy the great and glorious men, as we call them! Could we see them now, how many of them would move our pity rather than call for our congratulations! These few thoughts, Sir, I send to prepare your readers' minds when they go to see the magnificent funerel of the late Duke of Marlborough."
In closing, I make an appeal to us, as stewards of the Lord's earth in this present time, an appeal to virtue. If we want our deeds to be something of worth, we must be virtuous.
"The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil" (Ecclesiastes 12:13-14)
7 comments:
I feel like Defoe must have been reading a lot of Hamlet...
mmm... indeed.
Blasphemy! Alexander the Great did more in his capacity as King of Macedon than any other king of any other country ever has and that is all that matters to preserve his eternal fame on earth. He draws artificial connections between the spiritual virtue of Alexander and the earthly magnanimity of his actions. It really doesn't matter for his earthly glory how virtuous or wicked he was, the only thing that matters is the epic scale of his conquests.
chris, what you just told me is that the only thing that matters is 'the epic scale of his conquests.' but what is its difference from plain old earthly glory?
This reminds me of a sermon Francis Schaeffer once gave. It consisted simply of him going through the Bible and reading out "and he died" whenever he found it. (My mom laughed when she heard about it...but it was quite serious!) It also makes me think of a quote by (I think) Coleridge, who said that when people mention "virtue" too much (leaving out God) he starts feeling as if he lives with pagans.
It's interesting because Defoe combines the two--we need to understand that like everyone before us, we will die. But that shouldn't inspire us to do virtuous deeds (like the Greeks) so others will think of us when we're gone. Rather, we have to do all for Him, and only then will we have eternity in our actions.
Thanks for your comment, by the way. I agree with you that the tension is there, and we have to keep it. But I'm starting to see that, as Christians especially, we were made to live in tension...at least in some part until we're called home.
Well, you have nothing to apologize for length-wise, seeing as this is turning into a tiny dissertation. Enjoy the rest of break, Parker!
While scratching my head, (not bald yet, thank God), I happened to remember the title of the essay by Daniel Defoe and a few words from it. I read the essay long years ago, as part of my curriculum. How and why, it came back into my mind after an age ago,I do not know.
Having published my post, I thought I'd search for the essay in full in Google, and lo, I come across your blog. I promise you , I will go through your blog regularly, and may be pester you with a few comments now and then, for what ever little worth they may be to any one
Beautifully said, Parker. I couldn't think of a verse more fitting to end than as you did with Eccl 12:13-14.
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