What Shall We Do with Our Lives?

Boswell’s Life of Johnson is probably the most famous biography ever written. James Boswell spent over twenty years on it, although scholars have calculated that he and Samuel Johnson spent no more than 270 days in each other’s company. But Boswell turned Johnson into a household name known to millions who never read his books.

Johnson is still famous for his forthright, often blunt opinions. For example: "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” “No man but a blockhead ever wrote but for money.” “Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier, or not having been at sea.” “Nobody who does not rise early will ever do any good.” “There are few ways in which a man can be more innocently employed than in getting money."

But if he is more quoted than read, one of his books has remained popular for 250 years. It is Rasselas. Johnson referred to it almost dismissively as “a little story book” he had written in 1759 to meet the costs of his mother’s last illness and funeral. But Boswell made a point of reading it once a year, and he is not the only one.

Its original working title gives a better idea of its theme: The Choice of Life. It is the tale of a young man and his sister who travel the world in search of an answer to the question: What way of life should we adopt to be happy? Needless to say they find that there is no satisfactory answer to their question. That in itself will not surprise any new reader of this classic. The vanity of human wishes is after all a commonplace truth. The appeal of the book is in the detail.

Rasselas is one of those “oriental tales” that were so popular following the translation of Arabian Nights early in the eighteenth century. A writer of this genre would place his hero in exotic, usually imaginary Eastern lands where after marvellous adventures he would learn the folly of his ways and return home a wiser if a sadder man.

Prince Rasselas of Abyssinia lives in Happy Valley in a remote mountain fastness where by ancient tradition the royal child is confined until he is called to the imperial throne. Happy Valley is beautiful and fruitful. Life in it is pleasant, peaceful and cultivated. But Prince Rasselas wants to see the wide world and is determined to escape.

He turns first to a great scientist/engineer/inventor who builds him an aeroplane with which the Prince may fly out of Happy Valley. But in a demonstration of his invention the aeroplane crashes into a lake, from which the Prince rescues the inventor “half dead with terror and vexation”.

Disillusioned with technology, the Prince turns to the philosopher Imlac, who understands perfectly that no man is really satisfied in the comfortable cradle-to-grave security of Happy Valley. He also knows a route of escape into the challenging wider world. He agrees to lead Rasselas, his sister the Princess and her companion, out of Happy Valley and on to the great metropolis of Cairo, where their adventures begin.

One by one the three young pilgrims join various groups who seem to have the secret of the happy life. But one by one they are disenchanted. They join a party of rich young pleasure-seekers, but find that the frenetic fun-lovers are terrified of the prospect of solitude, silence and reflection.

The pilgrims then turn to the life of rustic simplicity—only to find squalor, envy and meanness. They call on a hermit who has renounced the world and all its vanities, only to find he yearns for the fleshpots of Cairo (and has put aside some money to fund his return).

They look to a learned sage who they believe has conquered passion, but find him in unconsolable despair at the death of his daughter.

They find that the old want to be young, the single want to be married, the married want to be single. No one is happy.

This may seem an obvious enough lesson to learn, and indeed it is. But the reason why Boswell read Rasselas every year of his life was not its broad theme but the wit and wisdom of the details.

Take the long story towards the end of the book about the Mad Intellectual and his cure. The pilgrims hear of a scholar of great learning who has lived alone for so long and devoted himself so entirely to science and astronomy that his mind has become unhinged. He has come to the opinion that he controls the movement of the sun and the seasons of the earth. This delusion gives him an enormous burden of responsibility and guilt.

But the pragmatic pilgrims cure him—not by reasoning or philosophy but by the innocent flirtation of the girls and a busy round of excursions. The philosopher Imlac (no doubt speaking for Sam Johnson, who suffered all his life from a fear of madness) draws the moral that we are all prone to mental breakdown: “Few can attain this man’s knowledge, and few practise his virtues; but all may suffer his calamity. Of all the uncertainties of our present state, the most dreadful and alarming is the uncertain continuance of reason.” The best treatment for an attack is a busy social life and female companionship.

Practical good sense of this kind sustains the book. But in any case its broad conclusion is not entirely commonplace. After their last adventure the pilgrims “resolved to return to Abyssinia”. But they do not go home empty-handed. They have learnt from their experiences.

The Prince will try to administer just and good government. The Princess will found a university for women. Her companion will establish an order of nuns.

They know they will not live up to their ideals but they will achieve far more than they would have done if they had stayed in Happy Valley and never experienced the world and its follies.

The Princess has the last word: “To me the choice of life is become less important; I hope hereafter to think only of the choice of eternity.” Or as the philosopher Imlac puts it, each of us is “only one atom in the mass of humanity”. We can only do our best. Remember the Mad Intellectual.