Even with the different vocabularies, however, and Addison's more formal grammar, we recognize the societal traits he is describing. In this case, I submit, we recognize them because we are in the midst of the extreme partisanship he is describing.
This is by no means to say that there are no differences. In Addison's day a demagogue struggled to reach an audience of a few thousands daily. Addison's Spectator was a highly popular daily paper and only had an subscriber base of 2-3,000. Several times that number might read copies left at their version of the Internet... the coffee houses. The present Internet audience for partisan click-bait, by way of comparison, can shoot in a single day into the hundreds of thousands if not millions. No matter that partisanship was very extreme in early 18th century England, the new technology that underwrites our own problem makes it orders of magnitude more daunting and destructive.
There cannot a greater judgment befal a country than such a dreadful spirit of division as rends a government into two distinct people, and makes them greater strangers and more averse to one another, than if they were actually two different nations. The effects of such a division are pernicious to the last degree, not only with regard to those advantages which they give the common enemy, but to those private evils which they produce in the heart of almost every particular person. This influence is very fatal both to men's morals and their understanding; it sinks the virtue of a nation, and not only so, but destroys even common sense.
A furious party spirit, when it rages in its full violence, exerts itself in civil war and bloodshed; and when it is under its greatest restraints naturally breaks out in falsehood, detraction, calumny, and a partial administration of justice. In a word, it fills a nation with spleen and rancour, and extinguishes all the seeds of good nature, compassion, and humanity.
Plutarch says, very finely, “that a man should not allow himself to hate even his enemies, because,” says he, “if you indulge this passion in some occasions, it will rise of itself in others; if you hate your enemies, you will contract such a vicious habit of mind, as by degrees will break out upon those who are your friends, or those who are indifferent to you.’ I might here observe how admirably this precept of morality (which derives the malignity of hatred from the passion itself, and not from its object) answers to that great rule which was dictated, to the world about an hundred years before this philosopher wrote; but instead of that, I shall only take notice, with a real grief of heart, that the minds of many good men among us appear soured with party-principles, and alienated from one another in such a manner, as seems to me altogether inconsistent with the dictates either of reason or religion. Zeal for a public cause is apt to breed passions in the hearts of virtuous persons, to which the regard of their own private interest would never have betrayed them.
If this party spirit has so ill an effect on our morals, it has likewise a very great one upon our judgments. We often hear a poor insipid paper or pamphlet cried up, and sometimes a noble piece depreciated, by those who are of a different principle from the author. One who is actuated by this spirit is almost under an incapacity of discerning either real blemishes or beauties. A man of merit in a different principle, is like an object seen in two different mediums, that appears crooked or broken, however, straight and entire it may be in itself. For this reason there is scarce a person of any figure in England, who does not go by two contrary characters, as opposite to one another as light and darkness.
Knowledge and learning suffer in a particular manner from this strange prejudice, which at present prevails arnongst all ranks and degrees in the British nation. As men formerly became eminent in learned societies by their parts and acquisitions, they now distinguish themselves by the warmth and violence with which they espouse their respective parties. Books are valued upon the like considerations. An abusive, scurrilous style, passes for satire, and a dull scheme of party notions is called fine writing.
There is one piece of sophistry practised by both sides, and that is the taking any scandalous story that has been ever whispered or invented of a private man, for a Known undoubted truth, and raising suitable speculations upon it. Calumnies that have been never proved, or have been often refuted, are the ordinary postulatums of these infamous scribblers, upon which they proceed as upon first principles granted by all men, though in their hearts they know they are false, or at best very doubtful. When they have laid these foundations of scurrility, it is no wonder that their superstructure is every way answerable to them. If this shameless practice of the present age endures much longer, praise and reproach will cease to be motives of action in good men.
There are certain periods of time in all governments when this inhuman spirit prevails. Italy was long torn to pieces by the Guelfes and Gibellines, and France by those who were for and against the league: but it is very unhappy for a man to be born in such a stormy and tempestuous season. It is the restless ambition of artful men that thus breaks a people into factions, and draws several well-meaning persons to their interest by a specious concern for their country. How many honest minds are filled with uncharitable and barbarous notions, out of their zeal for the public good? What cruelties and outrages would they not commit against men of an adverse party, whom they would honour and esteem, if, instead of considering them as they are represented, they knew them as they are? Thus are persons of the greatest probity seduced into shameful errors and prejudices, are made bad men even by that noblest of principles, the love of their country. I cannot here forbear mentioning the famous Spanish proverb, “If there were neither fools nor knaves in the world, all people would be of one mind.”
For my own part I could heartily wish that all honest men would enter into an association, for the support of one another against the endeavours of those whom they ought to look upon as their common enemies, whatsoever side they may belong to: Were there such an honest body of neutral forces, we should never see the worst of men in great figures of life, because they are useful to a party; nor the best unregarded, because they are above practising those methods which would be grateful to their faction. We should then single every criminal out of the herd, and hunt him down however formidable and overgrown he might appear; on the contrary, we should shelter distressed innocence, and defend virtue, however beset with contempt or ridicule, envy or defamation. In short, we should not any longer regard our fellow-subjects as Whigs or Tories, but should make the man of merit our friend, and the villain our enemy.
Also from the Library of Babel:
Spectator. No. 66.] Wednesday, May 16, 1711. A Young Lady, Body and Mind. January 15, 2023. "...the pretty wild thing is taught a fantastical gravity of behaviour, and forced to a particular way of holding her head,..."
- Pierce Butler, Fanny Kemble, et al. July 22, 2020. ‘“An attempt of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to make a way around the original Fugitive Slave Law, of 1793, by finding a private agent guilty of kidnapping for having remanded a slave from Pennsylvania to Maryland was forcefully overturned by the U. S. Supreme Court in Prigg v. United States (1842).”’
- The Best Translation of Dante’s Divina Commedia. July, 14, 2019. “For the next month, then, I put aside a few hours each night. Not only with Singleton and Merwin. In the glorious Age of the Internet, the first step could only be a search for what books relating to the subject were available on Google Book Search and the Internet Archive.”
- A Memoriam for W. S. Merwin. April 17, 2019. “It took about three days, as I recall, for me to surrender to the fact that W. S. Merwin was the finest English language poet of his time. I wished I’d been prepared to read him years ago.”
- Be sure to check out the Browser's Guide to the Library of Babel.
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