§ 146. Other illustrations of a similar kind.

The instances of the preceding section are introduced to show that men, if deprived of human society, will endeavour to satisfy the natural demands of their propensities by forming a species of intimacy with the lower animals; a circumstance which seems to us decisively to evince not only the innate existence, but the great strength of the social tendency. There are multitudes of other facts of the same kind, and still more striking than those which have already been noticed. Baron Trenck, for instance, in order to alleviate the wretchedness of his long and dreadful imprisonment, made the attempt, and was successful in it, to tame a mouse. The mouse, according to his account of him, would not only play around him and eat from his hand, but discovered extraordinary marks of sagacity as well as of attachment.

"This intelligent mouse," he remarks, "had nearly been my ruin. I had diverted myself with it during the night; it had been nibbling at my door, and capering on a trencher. The sentinels happened to hear our amusement, and called the officers; they heard also, and added, all was not right in my dungeon. At daybreak my doors resounded; the town-major, a smith, and mason entered. Strict search was begun; flooring, walls, chains, and my own person were all scrutinized, but in vain. They asked what was the noise they had heard. I mentioned the mouse, whistled, and it came and jumped upon my shoulder. Orders were given that I should be deprived of its society; I earnestly entreated that they would at least spare its life. The officer on guard gave me his word of honour he would present it to a lady, who would treat it with the utmost tenderness.

"He took it away, turned it loose in the guardroom, but it was tame to me alone, and sought a hiding-place. It had fled to my prison door, and, at the hour of visitation, ran into my dungeon, immediately testifying its joy by its antic leaping between my legs. It is worthy of remark that it had been taken away blindfold, that is to say, wrapped in a handkerchief. The guardroom was a hundred paces from my dungeon. How, then, did it find its master? Did it know or did it wait for the hour

of visitation? Had it remarked the doors were daily opened?

"All were desirous of obtaining this mouse, but the major carried it off for his lady; she put it into a cage, where it pined, refused all sustenance, and in a few days was found dead.-The loss of this little companion made me for some time quite melancholy."

§ 147. Other instances in illustration of the same subject

Mr. Stewart, in illustrating this very subject, makes the following statement." The Count de Lauzun was confined by Louis XIV. for nine years in the Castle of Pignerol, in a small room where no light could enter but from a chink in the roof. In this solitude he attached himself to a spider, and contrived for some time to amuse himself in attempting to tame it, with catching flies for its support, and with superintending the progress of its web. The jailer discovered his amusement and killed the spider; and the Count used afterward to declare, that the pang he felt on the occasion could be compared only to that of a mother for the loss of a child."

More recently we find statements of a similar purport in the interesting little work of Silvio Pellico, which gives an account of his Ten Years' Imprisonment.-" Being almost deprived of human society," he remarks, "I one day made acquaintance with some ants upon my window; I fed them; they went away, and, ere long, the place was thronged with these little insects, as if come by invitation. A spider, too, had weaved a noble edifice upon my walls, and I often gave him a feast of gnats or flies, which were extremely annoying to me, and which he liked much better than I did. I got quite accustomed to the sight of him; he would run over my bed, and come and take the precious morsels out of my hand."

On a certain occasion, being detected in conversation with his fellow-prisoner, Count Orobini, Pellico was not only reprimanded, but strictly ordered never afterward to converse from his window. He resolutely refused, in language that clearly indicates the workings and longings of the human heart. "I shall do no such thing. I shall speak as long as I have breath, and invite my neighbour VOL. II.-P

to talk to me. If he refuse, I will talk to my window bars, I will talk to the hills before me, I will talk to the birds as they fly about. I will talk.”—On another occasion, after having been visited by some one who took a more than usual interest in his situation, he exclaims, "How strange, how irresistible is the desire of the solitary prisoner to behold some one of his own species! It amounts to almost a sort of instinct, as if to prevent insanity, and its usual consequence, the tendency to selfdestruction. The Christian religion, so abounding in views of humanity, forgets not to enumerate among its works of mercy the visiting of the prisoner. The mere aspect of man, his look of commiseration, his willingness, as it were, to share with you, and bear a part of your heavy burden, even when you know he cannot relieve you, has something that sweetens your bitter cup.'

We hold it to be quite certain, that such considerations and facts as have been brought forward cannot be satisfactorily explained except on the ground that the love of society is originally implanted in the human mind. We might, therefore, be safe in leaving the subject here; but there are some other facts, similar to those which have been mentioned, that seem to possess no small degree of interest. We refer not so much to the case of distinguished individuals who have been subjected to long and severe imprisonment, as to some of the more general results that may be gathered from the history of prison discipline.

§ 148. The subject illustrated from experiments in prison discipline. In the year 1821, the Legislature of New-York directed the Superintendent of the Auburn State Prison to select a number of the most hardened criminals, and to lock them up in solitary cells, to be kept there day and night, without any interruption of their solitude, and without labour. This order, which was regarded, and was designed to be regarded, in the light of an experiment, was carried into effect in September of that year, by confining eighty criminals in the manner prescribed. On this experiment Messrs. Beaumont and Tocqueville, who were recently commissioned by the French govern

ment to examine and to report on the American system of Prison Discipline, make the following remarks: "This trial, from which so happy a result had been anticipated, was fatal to the greater part of the convicts; in order to reform them, they had been subjected to complete isolation; but this absolute solitude, if nothing interrupt it, is beyond the strength of man; it destroys the criminal without intermission and without pity; it does not reform, it kills. The unfortunates on whom this experiment was made, fell into a state of depression so manifest that their keepers were struck with it; their lives seemed in danger if they remained longer in this situation; five of them had already succumbed during a single year; their moral state was no less alarming; one of them had become insane; another, in a fit of despair, had embraced the opportunity, when the keeper brought him something, to precipitate himself from his cell, running the almost certain chance of a mortal fall.-Upon these and similar effects the system was finally judged. The governor of the State of New-York pardoned twenty-six of those in solitary confinement. The others, to whom this favour was not extended, were allowed to leave the cells during the day, and to work in the common workshops of the prison."

The Philadelphia Penitentiary appears to be constituted on what may be considered a mixed principle of punishment, viz., solitary confinement combined with labour, and alleviated by opportunities of reading and by frequent visits from official persons, such as the inspectors, wardens, and chaplain. When Messrs. Beaumont and Tocqueville visited this Penitentiary, one of the prisoners said to them, in language which feelingly intimates how repugnant entire solitude is to the natural sentiments of the human heart, "It is with joy that I perceive the figure of the keepers who visit my cell. This summer a cricket came into my yard; it looked like a companion. When a butterfly or any other animal happens to enter my cell, I never do it any harm."

It may be added here, on the authority of the Translator of the Work from which the foregoing extracts have been made, that "the fatal effects of solitary confinement

without labour, both to the body and the mind of the prisoners, has not been limited to the Auburn Prison. The Penitentiaries of Maryland, Maine, Virginia, and New-Jersey, in their experiments of this kind, have not exhibited happier results. In the latter prison, ten persons are mentioned as having been killed by solitary confinement.”*

149. Relation of the social principle to civil society.

It is on such considerations that we maintain the principle which has now been the subject of examination, to be connatural to the human mind. If men are frequently found in a state of contention, jealous of each other's advancement, and seeking each other's injury, we are not to regard this as their natural position, but rather as the result, in many cases at least, of misapprehension. If they understood, in every case, the relative position of those with whom they contend, and especially if they were free from all unfavourable influences from those who happen to be placed in positions of authority, the great mass of mankind would find the principle of sociality successfully asserting its claims against those causes of repulsion and strife which, for various reasons, too often exist.

In concluding this subject, we may properly revert a moment to the strange notion of Hobbes, and those who think with him, that man is kept in society only by the fear of what he significantly calls the Leviathan; that is to say, of Civil Society in the exercise of force. These writers give us to understand that it is the chain, the sword, and the fagot which sustain the uniformity of the social position. We have no doubt that civil Government, in its proper administration, has a favourable effect, even in the exercise of force. But, at the same time, it is a great and important fact, that Civil Society has a different, and, in all respects, a better foundation than this. It is based on the constitution of the mind itself, on the unfailing operations of the social principle. It is true that the tendencies of this principle are sometimes temporarily annulled by counteracting and adverse influen

* Lieber's Translation of Beaumont and Tocqueville's Penitentiary System of the United States, p. 5, 51, 151, 188.