The Works of John Adams Vol. 10: Letters and State Papers 1811 - 1825 (Annotated) by John Adams

Author:John Adams [Adams, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Presidents & Heads of State
ISBN: 9783849693084
Google: MZ0vDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 49754137
Publisher: Jazzybee Verlag
Published: 2015-10-08T00:00:00+00:00

TO F. A. VANDERKEMP.

Quincy, 26 May, 1816

Reverend, Honorable, Learned, Venerable, and Dear Sir,—

As I stand in need of a casuist in philosophy, morality, and Christianity, to whom should I apply but to you, whom I consider as the best qualified of all my friends?

The stoics, the Christians, the Mahometans, and our North American Indians all agree that complaint is unmanly, unlawful, and impious. To bear torment without a murmur, a sigh, a groan, or a distortion of face and feature, or a writhe or contortion of the body, is consummate virtue, heroism, and piety. Mr. Lear has completed the glory of great and good Washington, by informing us that he suffered great distress without a sigh or a groan. Jephtha’s daughter, Agamemnon’s Iphigenia, the Hindoo widows, who roast and broil and fry with their husband’s bones, probably utter no shrieks. The son of Alnoniac never complained. Brissot and some of his colleagues are said to have pronounced “Vive la répub—,” when the guillotine has cut off the head, which hopping and bouncing and rolling has articulated the syllable “lique,” after it was sundered from the shoulders.

I can almost believe all this. The history of the Christian martyrs, and the French clergy on the 2d of September, seem to render it credible. Indeed, in the course of my strange life I have had at times some feelings of a like kind; but I do not give so much weight to all these as to the cool declaration of our excellent and blessed, though once passionate, Dr. Chauncy, that he had found by experience that a man could lie all night upon his pillow under the most excruciating torment of toothache, headache, rheumatism, or gout, unable to sleep a wink, without uttering a groan, sigh, or syllable. Now, Sir, please to tell me what virtue there is in all this? A common man, as I am informed, was lately asked what he meant by the word resignation. His answer was, “I cannot help it.” Could Socrates have given a better reason?

Resignation is our own affair. What good does it do to God? Prudence dictates to us to make the best we can of inevitable evils. We may fret and fume and peeve, and scold and rave, but what good does this do? It hurts ourselves, and may hurt our neighbors by the weak, silly, foolish example, but does no good in the universe that we can imagine.

Voltaire, for the last ten years of his life seemed to adopt as a kind of motto, “vieux et malade,” and I might adopt for mine, “vieux et malade, paralytique et presque aveugle.” My wife has been sick all winter, frequently at the point of death, in her own opinion. I have been sick in the beginning of winter and the beginning of spring, and good for nothing all the year round. I have lost the ablest friend I had on earth in Mr. Dexter. Is all this complaint? If I say I have the toothache,

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