/ ?*" % ^/ .-ate-- v** -I C 0' \J THE ENCHANTED BEAUTY, AND OTHER TALES, ESSAYS, AND SKETCHES. WILLIAM ELDER, M.D. NEW YORK : J. C. DERBY, 119 NASSAU STREET. BOSTON :— PHILLIPS, SAMPSON & CO. CIKCINXATI— H. yt. DERBY. 1855. ADVERTISEMENT. In the preface to a volume of Miscellanies published last year, entitled " Periscopios," the Author intimated his intention to follow it with another volume, " to consist of Essays, Philo- sophical and Ethical, more bookish in style, and more elaborate in texture." The volume now offered to the public is a compromise fulfill- ment of that intention. About fifty of the miscellaneous articles of that first publica- tion have been replaced in this one by a series of Essays, to give the work its permanent form. If this book shall afford to its readers but a tithe of the advan- tages which its production has yielded to its author, all parties will be satisfied. Not a line in it was produced for the market. It was written tinder impulse, not under inducement of any kind ; and, it is published for those " whom it may concern." September, 1855. CONTENTS. Enchanted Beauty General Ogle — A Character Elizabeth Barton The Duel Buff . Trial by Battel Mortuary French Revolution of 1848 Visionary Metaphysics . Habit . Political Government Government — Political and Natural Government, an Accident — Ought to be a Politics — Principle vs. Practice Physician Heal Thyself Association Capital vs. Labor Capital and Labor The Old Grudge Industrial Competition Club Houses . Protective Unions — Guaranteeisrn Progress of the Age California Gold-Fever — Luxury Science Pftge 9 31 66 106 US 123 130 135 140 141 244 269 271 274 279 285 294 296 300 303 305 305 307 311 313 Vlll CONTENTS, Redemption Page . 31T Benevolence — Sin and Suffering . 320 Poor-Laws . 324 Homestead Exemption . .325 Our Altars and Our Hearths . 331 Freedom of the Public Lands . 331 Wages on the Rise . . . &35 United States of the United Races . 337 England and the Turkish Question . 343 Capital Punishment . . 350 Fourth Street Murder . 356 The Sabbath . . 361 The Bible Question . . 870 Ecclesiastes . . . . 377 The Faith of Caesar's Household . 3S3 Hero "Worship . 387 Anthropomorphism . . 392 Mythology .... . 398 Heaven, a Kingdom of Uses . 399 Romanizing Tendency . 401 Reformers .... . 403 FANCY. ENCHANTED BEAUTY. A MYTH. The mythologies in which the faiths, philosophies and fancies of the world have taken form, have such truth and use in them that they endure, under corresponding changes, through the reformations of creed and modifications of cere- mony which mark the history of natural religion throughout all ages and countries. The essential unity of the race, its kindred constitution of mind and affections, its likeness of instincts, passions and aspirations, naturally account for the under-lying agreement in principles and central similarity of beliefs, which are traceable clean through, from the earliest to the most modern, and from the most polished and elabor- ate eastern, to the rudest northern, opinions. The nice transitions of doctrine from the infancy to the maturity of faith and philosophy, are marked by an answering variance in their significant ceremonials ; but, however mingled and marred, the inevitable truth is imbedded in all the forms of fable, and, under an invariable law of mind, the inspirations of fancy correspond in essentials to the oracles of revelation; just because human nature is one, and its relations to all truth are fixed and universal. 1* 10 ENCHANTED BEAUTY. Creeds and formulae, like the geological crusts of the earth, at once retain and record the revolutions, disintegrations, intrusions and submersions from which they result. In the long succession of epochs, whole continents have risen from the deep, and the vestiges of the most ancient ocean are found upon the modern mountain tops ; promontories have been slowly washed away by the ceaseless waves, and new islands have shot up from the ever-heaving sea. Through the more recent crusts the primitive formations frequently crop out upon the surface of the present, and the compara- tively modern, in turn, is often found fossilized beneath the most ancient ; dislocated fragments are encountered at every step, and icebergs from the severer latitudes are found float- ing far into the tropical seas. Nevertheless, through all changes of system, revolution has been ever in the same round of celestial influences and relations, and the alterations of form and structure have been only so many different mix- tures of unchanging elements, from the simple primitives to the rich composite moulds, into which the waters, winds and sun-light have, in the lapse of ages, modified them. The constancy of essential principles, through all mutations of systematic dogmas, is strikingly manifested. The law of adaptation links the material globe and the rational race, which occupies it, in intimate relations ; and the universal unity in the great scheme of being establishes such corres- pondences of organisms and processes with ideas and ends, that the symbolisms of poetry and mythology are really well based in the truth of nature, and the essential harmonies of all things are with equal truth, under various forms, embraced by fiction and fact, fable and faith, superstition and enlight- ened reason. " The true light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world f " the grace that hath appeared unto all ENCHANTED BEAUTY. 11 men ;" and " the invisible things of the Creator, clearly seen and understood by the things which are made," are proposi- tions which have the formal warrant of our sacred books to back the authority of rational demonstration. Moreover, it is pleasant and profitable to believe that " He hath not left himself without a witness " among any of the tribes of men. The human brotherhood is so involved in the divine fatherhood, that the individual's hold on the Infinite and Eternal must stand or fall with the universality of His regards and providence. If Canaan had been without a " Prophet of the Most High," if Chaldea had been left without sooth- sayer and seer, and classic Greece and Rome destitute of oracles and Sibylline revelations, the Jewish theology and the Christian apocalypse would stand unsupported by " the analogy of faith," and our highest hopes would be shifted from the broad basis of an impartial benevolence, to a nar- row caprice of the " Father of all Men." But, happily, the sympathies of nature, the deductions of reason, and the teachings of the Book, are harmonious on this point, for we find Melchisedec, who could claim no legal or lineal relation to the Levities! priesthood, the chosen type of the perpetual 11 High Priest of our profession ;" and Balaam, notwithstand- ing his heathen birth and ministry among the Canaanites when their cup of iniquity was full ; and the eastern Magi, who brought their gifts from afar among the Gentiles to the new-born " King of the Jews," all alike guided by the same light, and partakers and fellow-laborers in the same faith with the regular hierarchy of Mount Zion. So, the Star of Jacob is the ■■ desire of nations," and the heart and hope of the wide world turn ever toward the same essential truth, and strive after it by the same instinct through a thousand forms, " if haply they may find it." The religious system of the Jews and Chaldeans agreed, 12 ENCHANTED BEAUTY. with wonderful exactness, in the doctrine of angelic beings, and their interposition in the affairs of men. The superin- tendence of the destinies of nations and individuals, and the allotment of provinces, kingdoms and families among these ministering spirits, are as distinctly taught in the book of Daniel of the Old Testament, and in the gospel of St. Mat- thew of the Xew, as in the popular beliefs of the Arabians and Persians ; indeed, the Bible sanction is general, particu- lar and ample, for the doctrine of angelic ministry, as it has been held in all ages and throughout the world. The order and organization of these celestial beings, among whom the infinite multiplicity of providential offices is thus distributed, falling within the domain of marvellousness and ideality, of course, took the thousand hues and shapes which these prismatic faculties would bestow ; and in the various accommodations and special applications of the doctrine, it naturally grew complicated, obscure, and sometimes even incoherent ; but in all the confusion of a hundred tongues, kindreds and climates, a substantial conformity to a common standard is apparent enough to prove the identity of origin and the fundamental truth common to them all. It is to introduce one of these remarkable correspondences that these reflections are employed. Fairy tales, it is said by encyclopedists, were brought from Arabia into France in the twelfth century ; but this can only mean that that was the epoch of the exotic legends. In England, if they were not indigenous, they certainly were naturalized centuries before Chaucer flourished ; and they were as familiar as the catechism, and almost as orthodox, when Spenser wrote his Fairy Queen, and Shakspeare employed their agency in his most exquisite dramas. But their date is, in fact, coeval with tradition, and earlier than all written records ; and their origin is without any neces- ENCHANTED BEAUTY. IB sary locality, for they spring spontaneously from faith in the supernatural. They are inseparable from poetry. That priesthood of nature, which enters for us the presence of the invisible, and converses familiarly with the omnipresent life of the creation, recognizes the administration of an ethereal hierarchy in all the phenomena of existence ; they serve to impersonate the spiritual forces, which are felt in all heroic action, and they graduate the responsive sympathies of Heaven to all the supernatural necessities of humanity. The live soul can make nothing dead ; it can take no rela- tion to insensate matter ; it invests the universe with a con- scious life, answering to its own ; and an infinite multitude of intermediate spirits stand to its conceptions for the springs of the universal movement. Rank upon rank, in spiral ascent, the varied ministry towers from earth to heaven, answering to every need, supporting every hope, and envi- roning the whole life of the individual and the race with an adjusted providence, complete and adequate. In the great scale, place and office are assigned for spirits celestial, ethereal and terrestrial, in almost infinite gradation. The highest religious sentiments, the noblest styles of intellect and of imagination, and the lower and coarser apprehensions of nature's agencies, are all met and indulged by the accom- modating facility of the system. The race of Peris, of Persia, and Fairies, of western Europe, hold a very near and familiar relation to the every-day life of humanity, by their large intermixture of human charac- teristics and the close resemblance and alliance of their probationary existence and ultimate destiny to the life and fortunes of men. A commonplace connection with ordinary affairs and household interests constitutes the largest part of the popular notion of them ; and their interferences among the vulgar are almost absurd and ludicrous enough 14 ENCHANTED BEAUTY. to impeach the earnestness of the superstition, but our best poets have shown them capable of very noble and beneficent functions in heroic story. Like our own various nature, they are a marvellous mixture of the mighty and the mean, the magnanimous, the malignant and the mirthful ; they stand, in a word, as our correspondents in a subtler sphere, and serve to illustrate, by exaggerating, all that is true and possible in us, but more probable of them — our own shadows lengthened and our own light brightened into a higher life. In some countries the legends are obscure, in others clear, but they all agree well enough in ascribing their origin to the intermarriage of angels with "the daughters of men," and that they are put under penance and probation for the recovery of their paradise. So, like our own race, they have fallen from a higher estate, their natures are half human, and their general fortunes are freighted on the same tide with ours. The nursery tale of the Sleeping Beauty will serve capitally to illustrate our theme. Handed down from age to age, and passed from nation to nation, through the agency of oral tradition chiefly, it has, of course, taken as many shapes as the popular fancy could impart to it ; but the essential points, seen through all the existing forms, are substantially these : A grand coronation festival of a young queen abruptly opens the story. The state-room of the palace is furnished with oriental magnificence. The representatives of every order, interest and class in the kingdom— constructively the whole community — are present to witness and grace the scene. The fairies who preside over the various departments of nature, and all the functions and interests of society, are assembled, by special invitation, to invoke the blessings and pledge the favors of their several jurisdictions to the opening ENCHANTED BEAUTY. 15 reign. The ceremony proceeds — the young queen is crowned ; the priest pronounces the benediction, and the generous sprites bestow beauty and goodness, and every means of life and luxury, until nothing is left for imagination to conceive or heart to wish. But an unexpected and unwelcome guest arrives — an old Elf, of jealous and malig- nant character, whose intrusion cannot be prevented, and whose power, unhappily, is so great, that the whole tribe of friendly spirits cannot unbind her spells. Neither can she directly revoke their beneficences ; for such is the constitution of fairy-land that the good and evil can neither annihilate each other's powers, nor check each other's actions ; and their active antagonism can have place and play only in issues and effects. The good commanded and dispensed can- not be utterly annulled, the profusion of blessings prepared and pledged cannot be hindered in their source or interrupted in their flow, but the recipients are the debatable ground ; they are, within certain limits, subject to the control of the demon, and the end is as well attained by striking them incapable of the intended good. The queen and her house- hold are cast into a magic slumber until (for the Evil will be ultimately destroyed by the Good) an age shall elapse and bring a Deliverer, who, through virtue and courage, shall dissolve the infernal charm. The blight fell upon the paradise in its full bloom, and it remained only for the young- est fairy present, who had withheld her benefactions to the last, to mitigate the doom she could not avert, by bestowing pleasant dreams upon the long and heavy sleepers. A century rolls round. The Knight of the Lion undertakes the enterprise — encounters the horrible troops of monsters and foul fiends which guard the palace — overcomes them — enters the enchanted hall, and wakens the whole company to life, liberty and joy again. The knight is, of course, 16 ENCHANTED BEAUTY. rewarded with the love he so well deserves and the hand he has so richly earned. This is obviously the story of the apostacy and redemption of the human family, in the form of a fairy legend. It conforms closely to the necessary incidents of such a catas- trophe, and answers well and truly to the intuitive prophecy of man's final recovery. In substance and method the cor- respondence is obvious. Every notion of " the fall," whether revealed or fictitious, assumes the agency of " the wicked one ; " and the final recovery, universally expected, involves the sympathies, and employs the services, of the " ministering spirits," as important instruments of the happy consum- mation. This tale was presented as a dramatic spectacle last winter at the Boston Museum. The play is a minutely faithful expositor of the legend ; and it is by the aid of this fine scenic exhibition that I am able to adjust the details, of which the primitive story is so legitimately capable, to the answering points in the great epic of human history " as it is most surely believed among us." The parallel presented does not seem to me fanciful, and the circumstantial exactness of resemblance may, I think, be accounted for without supposing a designed imitation. Before tracing the specialties and their allusions, let us notice the general parallelism found between the pivotal points of the fabulous and of the authentic representations. The Bible Eden is introduced at the same stage of the story's action and in the same attitude to the principal characters of the narrative. It stands on the coronation day of its monarch, perfect in all its appointments ; the realms of air, earth and ocean in auspicious relation, every element harmoniously obedient, and the garden still glowing with the smile which accompanied the approving declaration, ENCHANTED BEAUTY. IT " it is very good." Dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that rnoveth upon the face of the earth, is conferred ; and the heavens add their felicities to the inaugural rejoicings — " the morning stars sing together, and all the sons of God shout for joy." The gifts are without measure or stint, and the Divine beneficence cannot be tainted in its source nor impeded in its efflux ; but, the intended recipients, by " the wiles of the enemy," are rendered incapable of the enjoy- ment. The sin-blunted sense and passion-blinded soul of the fallen race are plunged into a spiritual stupor, which sleep — the sister and semblance of death — strikingly illustrates ; and through the long age of moral incapacity which follows, the highest mode of life is but dimly recognized and feebly felt, in the dreams of a paradise lost and the visions of a millenium to come ; till, "in the fulness of time," when a complete pyschical age shall be past, the Deliverer, having first overcome the wicked one, shall lead captivity captive, and by the " marriage of the Lamb" with "the bride which is" the Church,"' perfect the redemption and bring in the new heavens and new earth. But — to the fable, the dramatic representation, and the interpretation thereof. The scene opens upon a rustic society, a hamlet, in the infancy of civilization, such as, upon ballad authority, was " inerrie England'- before the age of her conquests in arts, sciences and arms ; and before the crimes and cares of her age of glory replaced the days of her innocence and con- tentment. Simplicity of manners, modest abundance, moderate labor, aspirations limited to the range of things easy of attainment, and, opinions comfortably at rest on questions of policy and religion, describe the rural life upon Monsieur Bonvive's domain. The master, in bachelor ease, 18 ENCHANTED BEAUTY. superintends the simple affairs of his village ; Madam Babillard, the housekeeper, has the necessary excitement without the anxiety of her post — just the amount of trouble that is interesting with the pigs, poultry and pets of the homestead. The girls, indeed, are too hasty in ripening into womanhood, and the beaux are over-bold in their gallantries ; but then, these are things of great consequence to her, and she is, through them, a matter of great conse- quence to the community, and the exercise of authority amply repays all its troubles and responsibilities. The affairs of the commomwealth take good enough care of themselves, generally ; the people are happy in the enjoy- ment of what they have, and equally happy in the uncon- sciousness of what they have not ; the holidays come at least once a week, and there is space and place for work and play every hour of every -day. Good consciences, light hearts, and natural living, carry them along very happily, and they have enough of the little risks and changes of fortune to keep the life within them well alive. The wilder- ness upon which their village borders is known to be infested with hobgoblins and demons, and there is a current belief that in the centre of the forest there is a princely family bound in a spell for a hundred years, but they have never penetrated the mystery nor clearly ascertained the facts. Among these simple people there is an ancient dame, who was old when the oldest villager first knew her, and she has lived through all the known generations of men. Her whole life has been a continual exercise of the best offices among the people ; she has been nurse and doctress, friend and counsellor, by turns, to the whole community, and they repay her with the love and veneration which her goodness and wisdom deserve. She is now apparently in the decrepitude ENCHANTED BEAUTY. 19 of extreme age, but the frame only shows the marks of decay — the mind is as young and the affections as fresh as they were "a hundred years ago." She is the "Fairy of the Oak/' the youngest at the coronation scene, and the tutelary spirit of the enchanted family. Ever since the hour of their evil fortunes she has inhabited a human form, per- forming the charitable offices of ordinary life and mitigating its incident evils : but, especially, she has been cultivating whatever of virtuous enterprise and aspiration appeared among the youth from generation to generation, directing it into the best service, and endeavoring by it the deliverance of the imprisoned spirits under her charge. Patiently and lovingly she has striven, earnestly and anxiously she has watched, every promise of a Deliverer that the race from age to age produced. Patriarch, prophet, apostle and philanthropist, has each, in his degree, done his own good work, and the world has been the better that they lived ; each has added another assurance of the ultimate success, but themselves "have died without the sight.' 7 Iler own powers, and those of her auxiliaries, are vast and super- natural, indeed, but the championage of human redemption must be human, and she can but inspire, direct, sustain and guard the mighty effort. Now, a young Christian Knight, " the Knight of the Lion," famous for deeds of valor in Holy Land, gives pro- mise of the great achievement to the quick perception of the Guardian spirit. She has aroused his enthusiasm and sus- tained his zeal, disciplined him by trial after trial, and trained him from triumph to triumph, for still greater deeds, which take continually more definite shape and more attractive forms in the dreams and reveries which she inspires, until he has grown familiar with the vision and conscious of its super- natural suggestion, and she is able at last to intimate tha 20 ENCHANTED BEAUTY. duty and the trial which invite him by songs in the air addressed to his waking ear. u The enchanted maiden sleeps — in vain To hope redress from other arm, Foul magic forged the mighty chain, Honor and love will break the charm. Dread perils shall thy path surround, "Wild horrors ranged in full array, Courage shall take the vantage ground, Bright virtue turn dark night to day." Drawn westward by her art toward the scene of the great enterprise, he reaches the village on the border of the wil- derness, and from the legend current among the rustics inferring more definitely the character of his mission, he accepts it in the true chivalric spirit of faith, love and hope. His Squire, or rnan-at-arms, who has followed him heretofore with an unquestioning fidelity, consents to incur the risks, though he has a very imperfect apprehension of the heroic undertaking. The devotion of a faithful follower answers instead of knowledge in his rank of service. He would rather encounter a dozen flesh and blood swordsmen than one ghostly foe ; nevertheless, where his master leads he will follow, whatever the character of the fight. The Knight comprehends the nature of the conflict fully 5 it is not with flesh and blood, but with " spiritual wickedness in high places " that he has " his warfare." To him the great bat- tle is not in the outward and actual, but is transferred to the inward and spiritual, sphere — into the real life — whence the ultimate facts of existence derive all their currents and ends. So felt the hero who said, in the great faith, " we have our conversation in heaven " — " we sit in heavenly places f and so felt and thought the reformer who deliberately threw his ENCHANTED BEAUTY. 21 ink-stand at the devil's head. The region of the ideal is the field of the highest heroism, and every life given to the world in noble service and generous sacrifice is lived in the spirit sphere, in familiar sympathy with the good, and constant strife with the evil, angels. This faith is the main impulse in all chivalric action. Even a heroic poem cannot be created without it. It cannot be false, for it differs nothing in the constancy and efficiency of its presence from the most palpa- ble facts, and is proved true by the test of harmonizing with all other truth. The Knight personates the highest ideal of philanthropy ; the Squire stands for the lower, more palpable modes of prac- tical benevolence and reform. They are distinguished as widely as general and special providence — as the thorough emancipation of the soul, and the charity which relieves the body, or the whole difference between the apostleship of spiritual, and that of civil, liberty. They correspond respec- tively to the prophet Elisha, who saw the mountain tops filled with horses and chariots of fire, outnumbering and overwhelming the hosts of the Syrian king, and to his ser- vant, who saw but two men, his master and himself, opposed to a numerous and well appointed army. Such is the difference between the Seer and the Servant in any labor or conflict of faith — in any enterprise which involves the spiritual forces that rule the movements of the world. Throughout the whole action of the drama the agency and deportment of the knight and his follower are marked by this distinction. But the scene shifts ; and the sympathetic and corrobo- rative movements in fairy-land are revealed. The Fairy of the Oak appears and summons the spirits of the air, earth, water and fire. The elements, disordered by the fall, and thenceforth at war with the poor fugitive from Paradise, 22 ENCHANTED BEAUTY. must render their aid in his restoration, that when the last enemy is put under his feet, the material creation, cursed for his sin, may be renewed with his recovery, and the harmo- nies of matter answer to the sanctities of spirit. The Spirits of the material forces obey the invocation and cordially pro- mise sympathy and service : a Throughout all space — above, below, In earth or air, through fire or snow, "Where'er our mission calls we fly, Our tasks performing merrily, Our guerdon winning happily." The actors, human and ethereal, thus adjusted to their several offices : the Knight and his Squire enter the haunted wood — the Squire to struggle with the grosser forms of evil, some as ludicrous as sad, others as horrible as atrocious, and all odious, coarse and palpable •; the Knight to be tempted of the devil, and do battle with him for the redemption of the enchanted family under his dominion. On the open front of the stage, darkened with smoke and foul with the offensive odors of noxious gases, the Squire is hotly engaged with the great dragon, in close rencontre, and at the same time assailed above, around, in flank and rear, by harpies, fiery serpents, and other forms of terror — the battle of life translated into coarse diablerie. The sen- timent and significance of the play in this take great liber- ties with the regular charities and practical reforms of our social system. The sorts of evil which these monsters so uncouthly represent are such as physical suffering, drunken- ness, violence, fraud, and the thousand shapes of slavery, personal and political, and of all castes and colors. They are represented as greedy and ugly, and full of mocking and malignity, but with little intrinsic capability of mischief, for ENCHANTED BEAUTY. 23 they are really very unattractive in temptation and extreme- ly awkward in battle, and much more remarkable for thick- skinned insensibility to assault, than for any adroitness in the combat. The Squire bravely deals his blows upon the great dragon. Horror, fear, and hatred of the monster, earnest devotion to the " great cause/ 7 with the courage of full commitment, and, perhaps, some regard for his reputa- tion as a hard-hitter, put life and metal in his veins, and right lustily he mauls away. The earliest effects of his prow- ess are remarkable. The dragon, defending his own ground as confidently and angrily as if the empire of evil were really a rightful one, wherever sanctioned by antiquity of possession, dashes his ponderous jaws at the reckless agitator, opened wide enough to swallow him, with all his weapons and armor, at a gulp ; but he manages to elude the clumsy wrath, and, nothing daunted and nothing doubting, deals his blows with energy in the ratio of the rage they arouse. Cu- riously, but conformably enough, at every stroke another ring of the monster's tail unrolls. At first he was an un- wieldy, but not an utterly misshapen, brute ; now, he has become a serpent and a scarecrow ; the head and tail are as incongruous as the pretended righteousness of his cause and his villainous method of defending it. The strife goes on, and grows only the worse and wickeder for its continu- ance, till it is plain that the beast is not to be mastered with hard blows, and if he yields, it is because his huge, unwieldy bulk is exhausted with the protracted effort of defence, and he subsides at last rather than submits. So ends the battle, and then comes the triumph. The valorous victor, claiming all the honors he has won, mounts his sometime foe in the new character of hobby, and rides him grandly off the stage, in a blaze of gaseous glory, cheered 24 ENCHANTED BEAUTY. most vociferously by the boys, and affording not a little mer- riment, mixed with admiration, to the old folks. What a figure that procession made ! and how exact a figure, too, of many another that the world witnesses admir- ingly. The Squire is, however, none the less a hero that his principles are rugged, his method rude, his ideas a little vulgar, and his aims tinged, but not tainted, with egotism. The dragons, serpents and hobgoblins must be routed, and he is the man for the emergency. All the while this palpable warfare is proceeding in open view, the Knight is engaged with the subtler fiends, in the dim and doubtful darkness of the background. Quite behind the scenes the severest strife is maintained, but enough is seen and intimated upon the stage to reveal the real charac- ter of the conflict. The fidelity of illustration in the conduct of the allegory here was really admirable. At one time we descried him through the gloom by the flashing of his sword, engaged in hand to hand combat with a host of fiends, rushing upon the foe with true chivalric enthusiasm ; at another, hard pressed and well-nigh exhausted, sternly enduring the blows he could not parry or repay — exhibiting, in turn, every mood of courage to do, and fortitude to endure, the varied fortunes of the field. But anon, with equal truthfulness of portrait- ure, he is discovered trembling in a sudden and strange panic, which shows the temporary failure of his faith, and seems to threaten his utter desertion of the field. In the open presence of the foe his courage never fails, but the stratagem of darkness and desertion successfully evades the sword-thrust and the shield's defence, and gives him up to doubt and desperation. The powers of darkness take hold upon him, and in his agonies of fear and suffering he would, if it were possible, that the cup might pass from him. In ENCHANTED BEAUTY. 25 this moment of anguish and depression the Fairy of the Oak instantly appeared to strengthen him, With a touch and a word she reassured him, and the divine virtue again shone out, exposing visibly the demon of the doubt, and the good sword again flashed in the gloom, and the fiends, forced into open fight, are finally overthrown. Bulwer strikes the same profound fact of experience in heroic enterprise, in his "Terror of the Threshold." The reformer, however confident in virtue, and however assured of the goodness of his undertaking, naturally trembles at critical stages of revolution in opinions and institutions, long- established and interwoven with the existing order of society ; for the risk of introducing new truths may well check the current of a wise man's zeal. If I pull down, he will say, this temple whose ceremonial, though barbarous and blind- ing, yet supports the morals of the worshiper and the pre- sent order of the social system, will the liberty and light bestowed avail for the designed improvement, or will they only unsettle the securities of law, and prove occasions of disorder and licentiousness ? The brave bigot and fiery enthusiast know nothing of this indecision. The cautious hesitation which springs from solicitude for the best ends and most expedient means, never troubles their stubborn bluntness of purpose, nor abates their boasted consistency of action. But the regular procedure of Providence is marked by regard for the influence of conditions and for the established law of progress. In these things the highest benevolence meets impediments and suffers modifications, and even submits to postponement to avoid defeat ; and the agents and instruments of the world's regeneration have their Gethse- manes as well as their triumphs and transfigurations. Nothing in language, scenery or costume, irreverently asserted the allusions which I am exposing. I do not 2 26 ENCHANTED BEAUTY. know that either playwright, performer or spectator was concerned about, or even conscious of, the significant sym- bolism of the fable and its circumstantial exposition in the play. It was produced as a beautiful dramatic spectacle. Apart from any mystical meanings, it was a perfect luxury of scenic entertainment. It was so regarded by the visitors, and probably was designed for nothing more ; but to me the analogy was a surprise and a delight, growing at every step of the development. It struck me first when I saw the knight and his brave squire standing on the threshold of the enchanted hall, after their victory in the wilderness. "With equal zeal, truthfulness and devotion they had bat- tled with the formidable foe, but with very different aims and apprehensions. The difference was most manifest when they stood in the presence of the enchanted family. The Knight, breathless with awe, and melting with compassion, showed how tenderly and reverently he felt the moral and mental bondage which struck his open vision ; but the Squire, though so faithful and loyal as a follower, and effi- cient as a servant, had yet not the penetration of a seer ; and the preposterous spectacle of princes, counsellors, knights, esquires, priests, soldiers, pages, artisans, musicians, dan- cers, slaves, retainers — every class and calling among men — . all arrested in mid-action, and slumbering for a century amid the luxury and pageantry of a gorgeous festival, with the viands untasted and the cup undrained before them, struck him with a comic wonder and pleasant sportiveness which he cared not to suppress. Approaching the venerable prime minister of the realm, who sat with the goblet near his lip, immovable as death, the thirsty soldier familiarly proposed to drink his health, and only made mcuths at the cup when he found it " as dry as dust." The cheek of the dancing girl, who stood pivoted for her century upon one toe, he found ENCHANTED BEAUTY. 27 " as cold as a stone ; v and the apples offered by an African slave to a guest, whose hand hung arrested midway in the reach, proved to his disappointed taste a "petrified hum- bug." The whole scene of deprivation and incapacity before him he pronounced an epidemic sleeping fever, and he won- dered if it was catching, and where and how he should get his dinner ! All this has its parallel and exposition in the boys that mock a drunkard reeling through the street, and the con- trasted sadness which a soul, alive to the moral ruin, feels at the same sight ; or, it may be witnessed again in the conduct of an insensible boor, and that of a person of refinement, in the presence of the insane ; and in general, in the sentiments of those who have, and those who have not, learned that " the life is more than meat, and the body than raiment." These reflections present themselves in the pause while the champion stands breathless with emotions of wonder and pity at the miDgled gloom and glory of the scene. But the action proceeds again. A strain of melody spoD taheously waking from the silence of an age, fitly preludes and prophesies the harmonies of the new era, and there wants only the " Talitha-cumi'' of the Deliverer to awaken the princess and her household into the activities of full life. At the bidding of the minstrel he advances to ber pavilion. Answering to his word and touch, she rises. One by one the women first resume their proper consciousness, and the revival of the men follows in proper order, till the spell is broken and the last shadow of the long night gives place to the perfect day. The renovated realm everywhere renews its primal beauty, the flowers of Eden bloom again, and the fruits regain their flavor, the wine is new in the new king- dom, and all the material ministries of life without respond to the renewed faculties within. 28 ENCHANTED BEAUTY. The fable has not yet exhausted the facts. Obeying the poetical necessities of the epic story, and conforming also to the apocalytic vision of the world's fortunes, which are to follow the first victory over the dragon, and the binding of the adversary for a thousand years, we have the peace and happiness of the disenchanted household once more disturbed. The Prince of the powers of darkness, that great magician who is the author of all the mischief from the beginning, is " loosed out of his prison/ 7 and gathering all his forces for a final battle, he surrounds the castle. The queen's army, led by the knight, go out to meet the grand enemy in battle, and he is utterly overthrown and his power broken for ever. The conquerors return in triumph to the castle, and in the midst of their rejoicings a herald from the outer wall, who has witnessed the scene, announces the total annihilation of the enemy. The elements, marshaled by their ruling spirits, have overwhelmed him ; a tempest of hail and fire bursts upon his castle, and the earth opening has swallowed up the last vestige of his kingdom and power. The battle of Gog and Magog (20th Rev.) in which the deceived of the four quarters of the earth are gathered together, and compass the camp of the saints about, is the very prototype of this incident in our story, and "the fire which came down from heaven," the " casting of the devil which deceived them into the lake of fire and brimstone," is only a different expression of the same final deliverance of the human family from the last enemy. The marriage rites close and crown the grand achievement, and a magnificent tableau illustrates the consummation. The spirits of the elements arise and array themselves in a vertical arch upon the stage. The centre and summit is occupied by a new figure, now first introduced, costumed appropriately in pure white, representing Truth inaugurated, ENCHANTED BEAUTY. 29 or universal harmony ; the Spirit of Earth at the base on one side, and that of Water at the other, while impersona- tions of Air and Fire occupy the intermediate positions. This bow of beauty and promise, emblematically dressed and decorated, stood a happy symbol of the restored order of the material creation. The household, artistically arranged and displayed, represented the divine order of society, where government and liberty, refinement and efficiency, luxury and industry, are reconciled, and man with his fellow man is organized in the harmonies of the creative scheme. And, that the joy may be full to the utmost limits of communion and sympathy, the Fairy of the Oak is seen ascending, to take possession, in behalf of her race, of their recovered hea- ven — the guerdon of their services to the redeemed family of Adam. So, the last scene in the drama mingles the new Heavens with the new Earth, and all the worlds in our uni- verse triumph together in the general resurrection, as they rejoiced on the birth-day of the creation. I do not koow the history of the fairy tale, its age or origin. I know nothing of the design with which it was pre- pared for theatrical representation, nor do I see why it should be inferred, because the idea and method are so strik- ingly significant, that the manager, after the fashion of the ancient " Mysteries," intended to restore sacred subjects to the stage in allegorical disguise. I suppose that the fable is simply fancy's method of the great fact, and that its doc- trinals are the natural intuitions and the inevitable theory of the human mind concerning the mystery of life, the great epochal experiences of the human family, its final fortunes, and the interests and sympathies of other worlds in its des- tiny ; for such conceptions as these are general and common among all men. The question of special revelation is not affected by its SO ENCHANTED BEAUTY. concurrence with universally received ideas. The correspon- dence pervading all systems proves the truth, and unity of origin, of the essential points in all ; but in no wise touches the method of their revealment, discovery or propagation. The points and particulars of the play are none of them manufactured to supply the running parallel we have given, nor are they nearly exhausted. Moreover, it will readily occur that the plan of the fable illustrates the whole philoso- phy of world-mending by its merely human heroes. The current and eventual progress of civilization, religion and liberty can be laid down upon its scheme in the exactest detail of principles, which facts must follow and fulfil. The supernatural agencies introduced also answer this aspect and rendering of the myth. They well represent the material and immaterial forces concerned in all societary movements, and if they may not serve for the religion of the great pro- cess, they may do duty as philosophical abstractions, or as a beautiful system of poetical symbolism — for in the mystical correspondence of all these systems of ideas there is such fundamental unity of use. TALES AND SKETCHES, GENERAL OGLE— A CHARACTER. Everybody is, doubtless, everybody else's brother, but the family is very large, aud the difference between some of them is quite remarkable. Something is owing to circumstances, but, as a whole generation of men are born about the same time, and have their lifetime under very similar influences, the oddities and genuises that turn up among them must be accounted for, principally, by original differences of con- stitution. These extraordinary people are not only well dis- tinguished from the majority, but they are even as much unlike each other, so that they cannot be huddled together into conveniently comprehensive species. Every one of them is a variety, and no classification does much service which stops short of individualizing them. I, therefore, do not propose a science with a nomenclature for these hard sub- jects. Just now I am occupied with one of them for whom, I think, no match can be found, no class designated, whose known characteristics would help in the apprehension of him. People who don't understand Latin or Astronomy, and thereby miss the allusion of the term eccentric, might be sat- isfied with it as a general description, but it does not nearly meet the case. It is true, he was not held at a steady dis- tance from, and in a regular curve around, any fixed stand- ard, as a planet obeys its sun, or a satellite its primary ; but 32 ■ GENERAL OGLE. this was not because lie was erratic and lawless, but because he was himself a centre of motion and revolution to others. The centric and eccentric man agree only in the fact that they are not concentric ; they nowhere coincide, and never touch except to cut each other's orbits more or less obliquely. Unfortunately we have no science of character fit for hard service ; and so it happens that every instance which we meet with that is specially worthy of study and description, is a puzzle to our philosophy. We ought to have a chemistry of men, but instead, our ignorance keeps us dependent upon such oracles as Shak- speare, Scott, Dickens, Hawthorne, and the poets who are free of their guild. We want an analysis of human nature for common use ; something to help common judgment to the insight and knowledge of high genius ; something to be discovered and revealed by the gifted, in such form that it can be clearly comprehended and safely used by the million — as the mysteries of the material world have been put within the grasp and subjected to the uses of the common mind. Men might be divided, for instance, like electricity, into positive and negative. The analogy furnishes a helpful hint. Logic, also, could afford the aid of its correspondences; the absolute and the conditional let in some light ; and so, per- haps, by the time the whole circle of the sciences had con- tributed to the undertaking, the elements of the microcosmic human nature might be somewhat distinguished and defined. Lacking technical terms sufficiently definite and significant, I must endeavor the delineation of the character in hand in the roundabout method of detailed description. General Ogle, then, was all that is meant and suggested by the words centric, positive, and absolute. He was like Emer- son's Representative Men, for the reason that, like them, he was not representative : he was an exceptional, heroic charac- A CHARACTER. 33 ter, as Napoleon, Cromwell, and Jackson were : that is, lie owed his distinction to the qualities which distinguished him from everybody else, or we never would have heard of either of them. In the language of orator Philips, " he was a man without a model, and without a shadow.* 7 Nature is liberal of her extemporaneous productions, but she took care to copyright him, and it is well known that she never issues more than one edition of her standard works ; if for no other reason, because the type is worn out by the force of the first impression, and if for any other reason, because copies mutually destroy each other's necessity, and, because repro- ductions in changed circumstances are absurdities. General Ogle was not one of a litter. He was made on purpose, and his kind was complete in him. He was of that breed which leaves no heirs and needs no successors. Out of time and place he would himself have been only an oddity, or, perhaps, a monster ; but in his actual surroundings of men and things, there was the happiest possible fitness of rela- tions, and everything in him, accordingly, had its full force and virtue. The region of country which gave him his theatre, and the people who cast the company for the drama of his life, were in such keeping with him as if they had been made for him, and he for them. The scene was laid in one of the mountain counties of Pennsylvania, which lies spread over the junction of two ridges of the Alleghany chain. It is not a valley quite, nor basin, but is slightly curved or cupped from crest to crest of the twin highlands where they inter- lock and lift the intervale almost to a level with their sum- mits. It has no navigable streams, and its artificial roads are the portages which interrupt the railroads and canals from the Susquehanna to the Ohio river. It is thus situated far inland, and in an equal degree, cut off from the advanced 2* 34 GENERAL OGLE. civilization of the Atlantic coast and the sturdy enterprise of the Mississippi valley. The climate is severe, and the soil something niggardly of its fruits, and having few natural advantages to keep it abreast of the progress around it, its inhabitants, fifty years ago, like its forest trees, were nurtured up to a medium growth, and generally arrested there. The valleys on its east and west drained off the overflow of men, as they received the waters destined to mingle with the mightier tides of the world's life. Development requires conditions, and a sterile soil and dislocated position are unfriendly to great and rapid advance- ment of a community. But, notwithstanding the genera] limitation and restraint of life in such circumstances, there are no places more remarkable for producing men of mark — heroes, chieftains, and distinguished leaders — than those which lie in semi-barbarous conditions. Indeed, in most directions the liberty and occasions for individual eminence are larger and freer there than where men are marshalled according to the forms of a higher general cultivation and its authoritative order. The mass lies something lower, but society is by no means so smoothly flat as on the several platforms of a more artificially regulated system. Wealth and poverty are better balanced ; they are less injurious to each other ; and they do not determine rank and privilege to the extent of repressing great natural abilities, and fostering the arrogance of birth and fortune. Personal character, where men must mingle intimately, gives every one his appropriate place, and democracy is the common law of sentiment as well as of political relations. This checks cul- ture and discredits refinement, but it prevents the severance of society into circles, and leaves ambition free, and eminence possible to all. In the heathen mythology, the hills are the favorite habi- A CHARACTER. 85 tations of the gods, and there is something in physical eleva- tion allied to mental and moral greatness, of the kind which men are accustomed to esteem heroic. Whether it is in the air and scenery, or in the discipline of hard conditions, or, whether it finds occasion in the greater difference which lies between genius and mediocrity there, than in the better general state and fortunes of the people who enjoy the more abundant prosperity of valley life, I cannot stop to examine. It suffices that the fact is well established, that mountain regions are quite as capable of noble natures as the ocean shores, and much more likely to exhibit them in relief from the surface of society. Such comparative prominence has, moreover, the effect to exaggerate the points of distinction and push them to extravagance, and to impart a foreign or fabulous aspect to the literal truth, in the judgment of those who are unfamiliar with such conditions and their natural effects. I do not feel assured that strangers to the style of life of which I am speaking will receive my story with the conn deuce which it deserves, nor even, that those who are some- what familiar with the actual history will admit every feature of the portrait which I draw to be the living truth ; but my own assurance is so clear and strong that I can only judge the critic by his judgment of it. I know what I assert, and I am upon honor with my readers. Now let me introduce to their acquaintance the Patriarch Politician of my native county. The person and character of this man, the most ordinary and the most extraordinary actions of his life, were all of a piece ; every thread of the web showed tne pattern, and, to present him well should all be woven together into his description. His very incoherencies stuck together and suggested each other; they all belonged so decidedly to 36 GENERAL OGLE. him. A glimpse of him as he turned a corner, his hat hung upon a peg, his standing attitude, his walk, the elocution of his nasal interjection note, which he executed with as much effect as Wellington could cry "attention" to a British army, or any other act or fact that could happen to him, reminded one of everything he ever did or said in his life. A very singularly odd man, indeed, was he, but not a whit made-up or affected, and without an iota of pretence in him. He was as honest as steel, and as open as day-light; and if he made immense drafts upon the admiration of every man he met, he really believed as earnestly in himself as his most ardent admirer could do, and so he had a perfect integrity and all the corroborating force of it. He was all alive; every moment had its purpose and every action a determinate drift. He knew everything, could do every- thing, and took the responsibility of everything, and so he " burnt his bigness through the world." He was just what his own organization made him. If he had been wound up at his birth to go by his own springs for his whole life time, he could not have been less affected by external circum- stances and accidental influences. He was so ascertained, so clearly pronounced, so inevitable, that no one knowing him could imagine any change of conditions capable of alter- ing him — that transmigration itself could conceal or confuse him — that a pair of wings, a suit of talons, a beak, or a mane, could have smothered or masked the absolute General, or suppressed his individuality. A positive and uncondi- tional nature was his ; it spoke out in every tone of voice, appeared in every gesture, and formally announced itself every time he opened his mouth. Mahomet was somebody certain, selah, verily : General Ogle was his translation into the idiom of the Alleghany Mountain in the nineteenth century. The Prophet's iron A C HAP, ACT ER. 3? earnestness, his robust confidence, asserts itself in the Koran everywhere. Sometimes it bursts out in the midst of a narrative, suspending the sense, to clinch its verity by planting the word " assuredly" as a buttress for the exacted faith; sometimes the word stands alone, a whole paragraph, severed from all relations, personating the absolute and proving it like a voice from the abyss — Assuredly. General Ogle never opened or closed an argument without drawing up his tall person into an attitude of positiveness and power, starting in with the word percisely, and pointing out with an emphatic pine blank — perclsely and pine blank, that the action of the voice, teeth, and lips might answer to the authority and energy of the man. Imagine a man six feet two inches high, finely propor- tioned, with some depth of chest and breadth of shoulder added, to make his courage and confidence the surer; take him at the age of forty-five, the acknowledged great man of the world he lives in; one who really never meets a superior in anything to which he makes a claim, full of the feeling, and marked by the manner of a leader in right of eminent fitness and efficiency; his hair brushed straight from brow and temples backward towards the crown, and powdered, and, with an instinct that it was concerned in expressing him, whenever he stood in the open air his hat was lifted or removed often enough to give it all its proper effect in the impression of his presence. His waistcoat was invariably a dark crimson, and his standing coat collar lined with scarlet. His fine large face was always clean shaved, and he wore a bosom frill elegantly negligent, just as a painter would set a superb head in a cloud-wreath. It was not his dress that he paraded; it was as much as dress could do to match his mien and movement, and, crim- son, powder, and ruffles were tame enough to seem modest 38 GENERAL OGLE. and unobtrusive in Ms service. His hat was large, with liberal breadth of brim, turned up behind to accommodate the erect collar, and deepen the pitch of the point which sheltered the brow and repeated and impressed the curve and dip of his fine aquiline nose. His foot and hand varied the effect of his personal beauty by their more deli- cate elegance; and his boots, crimped and tasselled, relieved the length of limbs and lightened his too imposing grandeur, as rhyming syllables reduce and soften the stride of verse. He walked with his head a little forward of the perpen- dicular, as is usual with men whose frontal brain is active, and always with the pleased engagedness of expression in his countenance which marks a man happy in speaking to others, who are as happy in hearing him. No eye ever caught him weary, listless, or vacant; he took no holidays, nor ever knew those remissions of engagement which oidi- nary people indulge in at the beginnings and finishings of their undertakings. He was always fully employed and equally intent, and the spring in him was not only strong enough for work, but it was easy enough for play : while the tide ran like a cataract, the surface rippled and spark- led with humour — the sunshine in dalliance with the spray — the storm tones rarified into music. His temper was sharp and high, but steady. As it never fell into feebleness, so it never rose into rage; the^ercisely and pine blank tone of feeling, ever present, kept him too well balanced for that. Extravagance, by other men's measure of sentiment and action, was common enough with him, but he was never hur- ried into the trepidation of an angry paroxysm. It is the temperament of such a man, more than anything else, that determines his character. By temperament I mean a condition of the physical organization, a make of muscle, A CHARACTER 39 nerve and blood-vessel, and a manner and proportion in their combination. The terms of art used to distinguish and describe these differences and their effects are not exact or adequate, but I think the words tonic and sanguine answer best to his strength and fervor — the vigor with the glow — the trenchant diamond and its brilliancy ; for all the flash about him was the out-leaping of a steady fire, Every faculty within him seemed hung upon coiled springs, answer- ing with electric quickness to its proper excitant. This man was uneducated, as we phrase it. He owed nothing but reading and writing in his mother tongue, and simple arithmetic, to the schools. He was not deeply read in history, civil policy, law, or general literature; he knew no art or science as a system; but he was none the less equal to any emergency in affairs, or any demand for specu- lative thinking in matters of life and business. His instincts were so large and true, his feelings so sound and earnest, and all his aims so just and generous, that he always found the truth and right by sympathy with their sentiment, and was ever sure of the required inspiration at the moment of his need. Such, indeed, were his native strength and readiness, at all points, that it is safe to say that, in a representative career of forty years, in the State and National Legislatures, and the incident contact with the pivot men of politics, the General was never nonplussed by his defects of education. The nice taste of fashionable people was often shocked by his uncultured strength and rugged style of utterance; and his lack of scholarship was manifest to a degree that furnished superficial criticism With a frequent feast of good things. Nothing was more com- mon in the village than clusters of boy-men in high merri- ment over hig irregularities, like so many flies, after a rich feast, busy with the broken victuals ; but it was only in his 40 GENERAL 0GL5. absence that the buzzing and blowing happened; his presence, somehow, always held so large a balance of force against the sharpness of the witlings, that the hunting never began till the lion had left the field. Probably not one man in a hundred can learn to write his own name, spell February, or hit the cases of the per- sonal pronouns, after forty years of age. The General suf- fered something by his lack of formal training in his youth, which ear-marked his style of speech and composition while he lived. An amusing instance will illustrate a slight defect of this sort, and his masterly skill in extricating himself, which never deserted him in any such exigency. Immediately after Madison's second election, he called upon his friend, Governor Findlay, then holding the office of State Treasurer, with the manuscript of a long letter, which he had written to the President, covering the whole ground of our foreign and domestic policy, and especially, the principles and measures of the Democratic party. Mr. Findlay heard it with not a little admiration of its merits, both as to matter and manner; but, glancing at the paper, he observed that the General had, in some hundred instances, written the pronoun I in little with a pop over it; and sin- cerely desiring to reform it, for the writer's sake, and for the effect that it ought to have; but impressed, also, with his sensitiveness to criticism which in any way impeached his capabilities, he coaxingly suggested the much desired cor- rection after this fashion : — "An excellent letter, General. A sound letter, sir; full of most capital advice, which Mr. Madison will be glad and proud to receive ; and thoroughly democratic in every senti- ment. A letter, General, that any man might be proud to write. Views, sir, that will make the administration equal A CHARACTER. 41 to Jefferson's if they are fully adopted. But, General, they have a court custom at Washington, a small matter, such as you and I are not apt to treat with much consideration, an indifferent little piece of etiquette — a — " Here Mr. Find- lay began to stammer. The General's keen eye was on him, and he felt it. " Percisely ! what is it ?" " Oh nothing " — looking over the paper as if it was hard to find; " nothing at all, and, yet, it would be easily altered. A stroke of the pen here and there, merely." "Pine-blank," said the General. "What is it, Mr. Findlay ?" "Why, General, it has become the custom lately at Washington, to write the pronoun I with a capital letter." The General was caught, and he knew how he was caught, too, and he must recover himself. "Percisely, Mr. Findlay; all right — most assuredly, I know — pine-blank — you're right — no question of it." By this time he was ready. "'Look here, my dear sir," laying his hand on Mr. Findlay's shoulder, as if to reassure him, for the embarrassment was all on the one side now, " you see, my dear fellow, I had a design in it. When I write to a small pattern of a man, I make my capital I's two inches long; when I write to my equal fellow citizens, such as yourself, for instance, I make them the usual length; but, sir, when I address myself to as great a man as Mr. Madison or Mr. Jefferson, I always make them as small as possible, with a pop over them, percisely." I need hardly say that the General walked straight to his room and raised every letter of them to the dignity required by the rules of grammar and the etiquette of Washington City, before he dispatched the epistle. And there was matter in him as well as manner. He had 43 GENERAL OGLE. Loth the insight and foresight of a ruling mind. There were none earlier or more efficient in the support of advance movements in state policy, though, from his inland and iso- lated locality, his connexion with their execution was less conspicuous than that of his principal cotemporaries. He represented a good fiftieth part of the Keystone State dur- ing that stage of its history which gave it its present high position, and his " aye " " aye " upon the journals mark his support of the measures which anticipated and insured its prosperity, percisely, as his "No" "No" bear pine-blank against the projects which principle and prudence inter- dicted. Of course the General was a democrat, a democrat in the best significance of the term ; for there was breadth and variety enough of man in him to fit him for both the service and sovereignty of the civil state, and to conciliate the " duties which he owed to his constituents with the claims he held due from them to himself. A true man in himself, he was false in none of his relations. He purchased nothing by sacrifice of his manliness, - and he secured nothing by usurpation. If he did not surrender the head to the mem- bers, nor lag and linger in constrained equality with the slow-goers, he nevertheless carried the will and conscience of the country with him, and represented the people with the strictest democratic fidelity in the public councils. Right well he knew the mind of his constituents, for it was his own. As he really governed at home, it was easy for him to serve abroad. So, he was neither slave nor tyrant, cheat nor tool, but a freeman in a worthy agency. In the divine order it is appointed that " the elder shall serve the younger," for, in the happy balancings of the thorough man, ambition embraces duty, and government is service. The representative man covers all the space that lies between A CHARACTER. 43 thrones and things, and thus touching the borders of extremes, he is fitted to harmonize all differences of life, for all this variety blends into unity in himself. The religious sentiment of this man was strong and active, under modification of his peculiar mental constitution. He was, indeed, incapable of meekness, and suicide would have been as easy to him as repentance, and very like it. Devo- tion was in him the sympathy of sublimity. All the good and truth of being was grand to him, and he felt its accord- ance without being overawed by it. The glory in his own soul kindled up in the presence of the Shekinah ; he exulted in it, or in the language of the psalmist, he rejoiced in the law of the Lord ! The absolute wisdom, the unlimited power, the infinite beneficence, lifted him into adoration, and he prayed standing, with heart erect and aspiration towering. His practical conformity to the requirements of religion was in no spirit of fear or selfish hope, nor, it is but truth to add, in any very strict sense of duty, or simplicity of submission. He honored and observed just what accorded with the pitch and drift of his own high nature, and left, without apology and without regard, all other apprehensions of the prescribed code to the obedience of those who held and needed them. It was at a later day, when the hardest features of his cha- racter had quite outgrown the little plasticity which tempered them, that he sent his compliments to St. Paul by a dying friend, with the assurance that he "approved his writings, generally, and entertained for himself, as a man, the highest regard, affection and esteem." This, however, was only an exaggeration of his customary mood, for in his best days he would have offered his arm to an archangel in the style of a democratic president doing the honors of the planet to a dis- tinguished visitor. In a word, he was just himself, percisely — - a man that would have stuck to his intercession for the cities 44 GENERAL OGLE. of the plain, if he had been in Abraham's place, till he had nothing left but Lot's wife to offer in mitigation of their doom. Moses, though the meekest of men, was bold enough to reply to the threat of destruction to the Israelites, "forgive them, or blot my name out of thy book." General Ogle would not stop at that ; he would offer an apology for the unfortunate multitude at the general judgment, in the confidence that everything could be satisfactorily arranged afterwards by his own kind offices. Of his moral conscience, I am safe in saying, it was just the balance of his own impulses and opinions. His feelings settled the right and wrong of things among themselves with- out any reference to received standards. No prophet could be more confident of his inspiration than the General was of the oracle within him, and he was, moreover, not the man to desire a favor out of rule ; to pray or wish, in thought or word, for a personal benefit to soul or body, or to fear or evade any legitimate consequence of his own large liberty of soul. The accordance of his opinions and practice with the universal law depended, therefore, entirely upon the concur- rence of his own constitution and conditions. This much observance he frankly gave, and he offered no lip-service and added no slavery besides. His was a lofty love of right, a quick and deep apprehension of the divine order,' and a bold acceptance of the inmost truth of things. For the rest — the application of principles to conduct, in the regulation of his social life, he held his impulses fully capable and most worthy to direct him, and all in the most confident reliance upon the perfect understanding subsisting between himself and the Supreme Authority. I must insist again that he was religious, true and noble ; yet, it must be admitted, in such wise as allowed much in him incompatible with received rules, and, perchance, with A CHARACTER. 45 the absolute right too. For in a character where the natural constitution is every thing, whenever the balance breaks, the most startling incongruities will result. Where the standard of faith and practice is a prescribed one, resting on its proper authority, in all exigencies and disturbances, the man still gravitates toward the point which is the fixed centre to his homage ; but where liberty is law and the life is all sponta- neous, in the confusion of accident and misadventure, the direction is apt to be assumed by the boldest sentiment and strongest feeling, as provisional governments arise in insur- rections ; and, like them, the decision is likely to be ruled by the dominant interest of the hour. The individual is best asserted and shows most nobly in such case, but is liable to work most widely out of the general harmony, and to shake the authority of creeds and precedents by his aberrations. The General, I need hardly say, was no hypocrite or jug- gler in casuistry ; for the incongruities and inexplicable things that puzzled every-day orderly people, were true enough things to him, though false to them and to the general rule too ; but it is strictly just to say in mitigation of the blame which they encountered and the mischief which they worked, that they were never perpetrated in wantonness or selfishness, but to attain such ends as were likely enough to justify them- selves when they were attained. In such minds, efGciency and the necessity of the case override formal systems, and the rule bends to the purpose ; that purpose having first secured their approbation for the highest reasons. They are often breakers but never despisers of the " higher law/' and if they leave the open pathway of the abstract right, by any constrained indirection, they will recover it again if it can any way lead them to their end. The best of Israel's kings was found unfit to build the temple. The great passions of great natures burst out into great crimes. Little men can- 46 GENERAL OGLE. not judge them. They neither prove corruption nor authorize imitation in petty villainies. The midnight incendiary cannot justify himself by the devastation of a flash of lightning, and philosophy reverently hesitates to impeach the power with the mischief which it works. As an example of the General's mode of reasoning, and the morale of his logic, he shall answer in his own style. Suppose an Indian war to be the subject ; its providential results, rather than its justice, being its warranty. "Percisely," he would say, "you mustn't look at a great national movement the way a magpie squints into a marrow- bone ; history isn't written with the point of a pin. The Canaanites were the Indians of the Holy Land, and when the cup of their iniquities was full, and the Cavaliers and Puritans of that day wanted room, and had the better right of better men to fill it, Jehovah told them pine-blank to oust the lounging varlets. Ye see, the Lord of the vineyard cannot tolerate mere cumberers of the ground. The Copper- heads take up more room than the rest of the world can afford them ! They are, in fact, the greatest land monopolists in the universe, and the most worthless squabs at that ; so, the fine fellows must either go to work when the time comes, or else pull up stakes and put out for the Hocky Mountains, or for kingdom come. The earth must be farmed, not foraged, by man ; and the vagabonds that have neither forts nor fences must give it up ; their case is past praying for ; burnt brandy wouldn't save them. Besides, a new world was wanted for the new system — Democracy required a fresh soil, a wide field, and a clean sweep, to set up with ; and, this was just the continent fit for the use, percisely!" With him a policy depended upon its wisdom and fitness ; not, however, always the wisdom and fitness of first principles, unless they would work kindly for his uses, but the wisdom A CHARACTER. 47 and fitness of the end in contemplation, and a strict obser- vance of all the equities which, in the circumstances, it was possible to preserve. That which seemed to him the necessity of the time, got credit for being the duty of the time, and he did it, running the hell-gate of expediency as safely as any other navigator of that dangerous passage ; for he mixed up no mean or personal ends with the motives of his conduct, and, especially to the credit of his integrity, he never mouthed and mumbled the maxims of morals and religion while dis- pensing with their acknowledged obligations. What he did he believed in. He was never caught dodging under the doctrine of human depravity and necessary imperfection, when he was engaged in his greatest undertakings. He verily believed that the best thing that could be done in the circumstances was right before heaven and earth ; and, being so, he had no apology to make, but did whatsoever his hand found to do with all his might. His was not the expediency of a narrow mind or a beggarly soul ; and he was not a time- server, but a politician, a practical man, the man of his own day; not behind it, but enough before to advance it ; not so much so, however, as to be its prophet only, but such a combination of speculation and experience as meets in a prophet-king — the hero of his own age, though a question- able one to the age that follows, if it but proves as much better than his own as he would have it to be. Of course, in some of the exigencies of Iris life, the rule got rather accommodating application to circumstances; but these were only the variations of the needle, which left its polarity unaffected and available when the disturbing cause was removed. He was no exception to the rule "no man liveth and sinneth not," but his errors were those of a brave and candid heart. The General's affections were quick, strong and constant ; 48 GENERAL OGLE. his friendship generous and enduring ; his benevolence wise and steady. His sensibility to every form of beauty and his recognition of eminent excellence, answered like a spiritual echo to the touch ; for he was as capable of the luxuries as of the ruder heroics of a noble nature ; and the beatitudes of affection were richly enjoyed amidst the business and burdens of his crowded lifetime. He would have been a much less man, for any uses, if he had crushed out the sweetness to strengthen the wine of life. It is not the loss of one sense that sharpens another, but its own enhanced activity, com- pelled by the deforming and distorting deprivation. The dismemberment of either soul or body is. not necessary to the development of any special excellency. The General was not a monster but a giant, symmetrical and complete. Responsibility for poor men's debts, and the actual pay- ment of them in the last extremity, and the general care and direction of the improvident and incapable people in his large acquaintance, rested on him constantly, and was cheerfully borne and ungrudgingly discharged, and of course, not a little ostentatiously at the same time. The manners of his consti- tuency were robust and blunt, and great delicacy in his conduct towards them would have missed its aim, and he had no idea of reserve toward those who would bear the open utterance of everything that concerned them. It was, accordingly, not at all unusual, nor very outrageous, either, to find him enacting his benevolences in the public streets ; nor, indeed, was it quite out of the way for him to rehearse them to the ungrateful and presumptuous, for their benefit and his own honor. In the centre square of the county town on a public day, with a crowd of the country people around him, he has been heard to say, more than once, in his loudest tones, "I'm the father of the County. For forty years I have done all its thinking, and managed all its business. A CHARACTER. 49 I projected your public roads, and every great improvement in the policy of the community. I have made you happy at home and respected abroad. I know every man of you from the acorn up to the scrubs that ye are. I know more law than your lawyers, and more divinity than your preachers. I can teach your merchants in their own business ; and there isn't one in a dozen of you that doesn't owe your good luck 1 to my advice, and your misfortunes to neglecting it. I am the oldest Major General in the United States except Gene- ral Jackson, I want nothing from you — I belong to myself ; but I want you to know what is for your own good, percisely." In public debate and conversation he was remarkable for tact, blunt wit, and effective eloquence ; besides, he had a voice and manner of declamation which insured the reception of any thing that he uttered. Not a man in a million has equal command of the nerves of his auditors. Think towards him as they might, they were obliged to think with him, and they were richly repaid for such submission by the temporary levelness of apprehension into which they were lifted by the casual communion. He was felt like magnetism while he stood near, and when he left, men looked at each other to recover themselves, and did or said something not true to assert their independence of him. His catch-words, and a laugh at his egotism, or an avenging thrust at his felt supe- riority, usually did the duty of saving appearances ; but the consciousness, nevertheless, clung, and the effect remained. He did not hold his position in men's opinions on the terms that demagogues maintain their reputation with vulgar fools. He practiced no compliances, and flattered nobody. He was too strong, too honest, as well as too proud and unselfish, for the little arts of little men. His was a frank, confident style of eloquence, which had much more of the tone of authority than of appeal in it It 3 50 GENERAL OGLE. was intended to impart his own convictions in the directest way. The array of his argument was without any special adjustment to, or recognition of, adverse opinions ; and he was much less given to that style of discussion which exhausts the subject, than to that other style which uses up the adversary. He had a close, strong grip of his conclusions ; there was nothing wanting in the assurance with which he gave out his oracles, and, usually, nothing lacking in the acceptance they secured. He never knew the embarrass- ment of a doubt, and he never showed its hesitation. He wasn't loaded squib-fashion, w T ith alternate wads of wet and dry powder. When he exploded an opinion, it had the clear, compact, metallic ring of a strait-cut rifle crack, and, hit or miss, it was not safe to stand within his range. It may have been his own innate clearness, or, it may have been his large experience, that taught him the common impertinency of debate, and led him to prefer the method of decision. However that may be, and however arrogant it may seem in the telling, it was not very much so in the act and fact. His auditors did not feel that they were slavishly surrendering their own judgment, but rather, that they had never seen the subject in that light, or felt it with the same force before. He never argued that a thing is so and so, because something else is so and so, which, in its turn, rests upon something beyond, which is so and so ; but, that it is so, percisely, because it cannot be any other way ; and so his argument stood like a house upon its own foundation, instead of a crazy hut, leaning every way upon props, rea- sonably strong, perhaps, but unreasonably numerous. If any one questions the safety of a logic so incautious, he has yet to learn the virtue which there is in a strong will and sound instincts in thinking, as well as in acting, upon the real affairs of life. It is not more the material of thought A CHARACTER. 51 than the tightness of the twist which qualifies the thread of reasoning and gives it texture. There was nothing slack in warp or woof of the General's web. It had some kinks in it, but he dropped no stitches. He had learned all the best and most available law maxims ; he knew the scriptures, as he said, like a book ; and, he was richly supplied with those sententious oracles of wisdom and prudence which have crys- tallized themselves into happy, self-proving maxims, in form for ready and effective use. If he was not a scholar, and had not the depth and difficult exactitude of systematic learniug, neither had he the narrowness incident to formal and special acquirement. If a scholar opened his budget before him, he knew how to select the goods from the trinkets and trumpery which mingled with them. He tried the worth by the use, and so derived all that had any utility for himself, and he declined the service of pack-horse for the balance. Things not clear were nothing to him, and sterling truths, ready for use and circulation, were as familiar to his ready apprehension at the first blush as if they had been old acquain- tances. He would have found them for himself, by his own intuitions, when nothing else would answer ; but if they were offered, he accepted them with the pleasure of present pay- ment on a note not quite due, but, none the less, a real debt outstanding. His resources were those most available ones which any strong man can employ. They were found in the largest intercourse with the notabilities of the nation, a familiar and responsible communion with the live world around him, and an exhaustless stock of innate experiences growing out of his own wonderfully rich and varied nature. I am not attempting a biography, but presenting a charac- ter, by the method of description, rather than by instances, events, and actions. The actual outward life, in any case, does but little more than hint the constitution of the mai? 52 GENERAL OGLE. Especially where conditions restrain the play of extraordinary powers, narrative must fail to effect a fair presentment. Every incident of the General's life was full of him ; but the historical detail would involve that of the times, his cotem- poraries, and surroundings ; besides, his report rests in oral tradition mainly. He died before the daguerreotype and daily papers undertook the hole-and-corner gossip of the country, and no phonographer ever caught the living likeness of his thoughts. His cotemporaries are nearly all gone, and very few of them fully apprehended him. He published nothing. His life got utterance only in voice and action. It was extemporized on the instant, and the data which remain to the chronicler are as meagre, confused and inade- quate as the incidents of a battle, a storm, or a dance. I would gladly compromise for a fair report of one of his Fourth- of-July orations. It would relieve the awkwardness that there is in playing showman to the lion, and go far to supply the defects in my performance if such an auto-exhibition could be secured. I must even attempt to reconstruct one of those fossil curiosities from the fragmentary remains which lie scattered in my memory. The date is about twenty-five years ago ; the scene was laid at the " Coffee Spring/' a mile from our village; the company made up of the population of the town and neigh- borhood mustered en masse. The dinner, spread upon a table cast into a horse-shoe shape, in an arbor made with forks and poles, covered with bushes fresh cut and close piled to exclude the sun, has been discussed : the military, the citizens, and the boys — refreshed by the repast, and enli- vened a little (more or less), with rye- whisky, whisky and water, whisky sweetened with sap-sugar, and small beer, graduated to the tastes and ages of the company — are all brought up standing, by an order for " attention" from the A CHARACTER. 53 Captain of the " Independent Bines/ 7 and the General mounts the table. " Percisely, my fellow-citizens," (waving a red silk handker- chief at arm's-length,) " Percisely — as Brutus, fresh from the execution of the tyrant Caesar, cried to his countrymen, 'hear me for my cause, and be silent that ye may hear ;' so I come before you to speak the truth in the love of it. I stand here as Abraham, when he was returning from the slaughter of the kings, stood at the feast which Melchisedek prepared for the grand old hero, to bless the name of the Most High, who hath delivered all mine enemies into my hand. " Chederlaomer and Julius Caesar, and that apostate demo- crat, Xapoleon, all died in their sins, for their evil works went before them to judgment ; Pontius Pilate cut his own throat, because he had condemned that Just One ; Judas Iscariot hanged himself in remorse for betraying him ; and George the Third, wilted away in his wickedness like that old pine-tree there, struck by the lightning of heaven — dead at the top, while the miserable old trunk still sticks in the earth by its roots. Honor to the race of regicides ; destruc- tion to the oppressors of the people everywhere; and a stout arm to match the bold heart of sound democracy all over the universe ! "My dear fellows, you don't understand it ; but it is as clear as light to the children of light, that the Lord reigneth and the devil's a fool. I know it ; in threescore years and ten, I never saw the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread. Stretch yourselves up into the light; swell your breasts into the upper air. If you go nosing about in the dirt for a living, and dozing in the mud for enjoyment, the shadow of a leaf will hide the whole heaven from your sight. Pigs have no prospects. They grunt when they are comfort- able, and squeal when they are hurt, but they don't understand 54- GENERAL OGLE. the course of things. And if any fine fellow here feels hi3 bristles rising, he knows who I mean by the parable, percisely. " My hairs are white, like the fields of Judea, ready for the harvest of the great reaper, and these shambling shanks are beginning to shrink from their duty ; but, my soul laughs at the lengthening shadow of my years. Let this crazy frame decay; I shall break out of it one of these days, like a sun-burst upon a mountain-top, when he comes out of his chamber in the east to run his glorious race around the arch of heaven. I am not old, and, when you bury my bones, remember that I am not dead. Peter was bewildered when he proposed to build tabernacles for Moses and Elias on the Mount of Transfiguration. When we have done our duty here we go up higher ! When this frame has lost all its strength and beauty, the kindly mother-earth will sweeten and freshen it into youth again, and the limits of its life will widen into glorious liberty. Hallelujah ! The light of these eyes is growing dim in the light of paradise! " Idiots and drivellers, from seventeen to seventy, think the world is coming to an end when worn-out frames and worn-out things are blown up: but such dotards are but first-cousins to the beast that perishes — all but the beauty. Such cattle have about the same right to scratch their heads, for any thing there is in them, as so many ring-tailed monkeys ; and, very likely, will make as much by the operation. (Here, Bill, turn up a clean tumbler, and give me a drink of water.) "I was among these grand old hills, my sweet fellow- citizens, before the oldest of you were born ; and, snipes and night-owls ! did you ever detect any humbug in me ? If you did, out with it. I'm so tired of barking that I would like a bite. Try your teeth in this tough old hide, ye whipper- snappers. There's blood in me that would make you as drunk as blazes for the rest of your lives, and give you the A CHARACTER, 55 first peep of glory that ever opened upon your benighted souls. " The follies of the dead are buried with them. They were not worth minding then nor remembering now ; but didn't I tell your respectable daddies that they were making fools of themselyes in the whisky insurrection ? Blackguardism is not democracy! "When Washington came to Bedford with the army, the Alleghany Mountain rocked under his footsteps, and the diminutive little manikins that danced like drunk monkeys around then- pig-nut liberty-pole in the diamond oyer there, trembled in their shoes till you could hear their toe-nails jingle. I was a democrat, a Jeffersonian democrat then, as I am now; but I wasn't a demagogue, a coward, or a broad-mouthed brawler against my country, its laws and the constitution. "Your grandmothers can tell you what a rumpus the same ninnies raised around me for the first wagon-road made oyer the mountains to Pittsburgh. It would break up the pack-horse men, forsooth, and the tavern-keepers and horse- breeders would be ruined, when one wagon could carry as much salt, bar-iron and brandy from Baltimore as a whole caravan of half-starved mountain ponies ! But I told them then, that, of all people in the world fools haye the least sense, and that they would live to learn that the best way is as good as any; for, when I was but a boy I discovered that nothing less than too much is plenty, in the American meaning of the word. That's the difference between a man of faith and the snobs that do all their travelling in a tread- mill. " But with such snipes nothing can be done. Cure them of witchcraft and they slide into fortune telling, or some other stupid kind of wonder working; for they understand nothing, either by insight or experience. After a while when the ^6 GENERAL OGLE, prosperity which they at first resisted poured down upon them from a spout, they went crazy, and I was mobbed again for standing by Simon Synder's veto of that batch of shin-plaster banks which the legislature chartered by a two- thirds vote, and gave you your keepsakes of Owl-creek and Mutton-town bills. And now, wheeling gee, as much too far as ye went haw before, you are bellowing at the top of your voice, and the end of your wits, against all bank paper ! " Is it any wonder that I keep up my old grudge at the devil for making such people! Jack (to a darkie carter, occupied at the other end of the table upon the breast-bone of a turkey which he was polishing), you may as well quit beating and bothering your mules ; make their breech-bands of sheet iron, and the traces of cob-web: for the more you wallop them, the more they won't go. My donkeys are of the same breed percisely, and they are all on a spree just now, kicking out their hoofs at free-masonry! That's the secret of all the villany and blundering in legislation, is it ? Butter your brains and give them to the dogs for a New- Year's gift, and let somebody else do your thinking. Oh, it's enough to sicken a snipe to hear a twopenny pettifogger railing at the great men who have given us our free institu- tions, and built up this model republic into a world's wonder; and to see a herd of drivelling noodles drinking in his pro- fanity like the words of life ! But providence always had his hands full of such forlornities. If he can bear with them, I may. He will find the men somehow, when the time comes, to do up the world's work upon the principles of everlasting truth. The universal laws keep the earth in its orbit, and all the crawlers on its surface can't shake it out of shape, or turn it from its track. I believe and live. Behold, ye cles- pisers, and wonder and perish. "And there is the common school syvstem that I have been A CHARACTER. 5*7 laboring for until it is at last fairly on foot. See that you keep it alive, and make it answer the glorious purpose of its establishment. Don't clip it down to nothing by your beg- garly economy. I wish to the Lord that you understood thinking as well as you do eating, and could feel an empty head as painfully as an empty stomach. Can't you under- stand that keeping money in your pocket is not saving it ? A dollar in a buckskin purse won't breed a sixpence in a hundred years ; but employed wisely in the service of soul or body, it will bless the one and glorify the other. If you can't see the policy of education, make a religion of it. The world of ideas is the world of spirits. Introduce your children there, for every good thought is a guardian angel to the dear little lambs. And don't stop just where reading, writing and arithmetic can be worked into dollars and dimes. Carry them through and over this sordid world into God's world — up to the circle of the heavens, where He sits governing the universe by his laws. Every discovery in the truths of nature is so far into the counsel and confidence of the Supreme Ruler. Only the man that has the mind of God is Godlike. Xow, for Heaven's sweet sake, educate your children. You may talk stupidities about the salaries of public officers, as you did against me for voting a gentlemanly per diem to the members of Congress ; but don't cheapen your schoolmasters, till nobody but bankrupt cobblers, habitual drunkards, crip- ples, consumptives, and such other ugly incapables, can be got to serve you, for very shabbiness of the salary. Buy cheap store-goods, if you like, for when they wear out you will know it, and can replace them ; buy cheap provisions, and eat the less of them ; buy any thing cheap but cheap talents. Don't venture upon that speculation, for you are no judges of the article ; and the only way for you to insure the excellence of the quality, is by the liberality of the pre* 8* 58 GENERAL OGLE. mium which you will offer for it ; that will bring the genuine into the market, and the bogus will be clearly exposed by the difference of the ring, weight and shine. "I go in, ye see, for the arts of peace, the prosperity of the people, and all that blesses and embellishes the life of man ; but I would not forget, on this great Sabbath-day of the nation, the glory our country has won in the field and on the wave. It isn't the pluck of the bull-dog or the game- cock in a soldier which I admire, but the high-souled heroism that chooses liberty above life, and knows how to make victory a blessing to the world. "In the Revolution, and in the late war against Great Britain, we fought against foes who were, only a generation or two back, bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh ; born brothers, they were, of course, our equals in all qualities of manhood. They had the advantage in numbers, arms and all the appointments of war ; but the strength of the cause was ours ; we had the right, and the Lord of Hosts was with us. But, if we had been unworthy and incapable, if we had been poor in faith or feeling, poor in heart or hope, we would not have been elected to the office of banner-bearer in the army of universal freedom. The covenants of Heaven are made with faithful men ; and a people that falls away from its worthiness is rejected at last, though still beloved for the fathers' sakes. While ye think ye stand, take heed lest ye fall. "This is a great country, and it isn't all fenced in yet. Very little of it, in fact, is so far finished as to be ready for the first coat of paint. All the wilderness of the new world is ours ; for we alone can occupy it. The dwarfed provincial- ism north and south of us have no expansive growth in them. French and Spanish haven't the right kick in their gallop to match us in the race of empire. I have no contempt for any A CHARACTER. 59 of God's creatures ; they'll all weave into the web of exist- ence somewhere, or they will do for selvedge and fringes ; but showy and shabby is a bad mixture to make up by them- selves. They are not of the right stripe for democrats ; they don't come up to the full measure of the American pattern. "I tell ye, my dear fellows, we have had the wool pulled over our eyes by the European writers which we are all the time reading. Of course they know no better than to call Bonaparte a hero, and Wellington another for conquering him. That will do for t'other side of the water, for every- thing is great or small by comparison. But comparing themselves with themselves they are not wise ; and they don't know enough to discern the true standard. Heaven help them to better doctrine and better diet. They will have such Generals as Washington and Jackson when they have the same occasion for them ; and when they go to fighting for progress instead of power, and organize their civil institutions in the faith of the people's honesty and capacity for self- government, fully, fairly and faithfully, they may put their achievements down upon the page of history in parallel columns with ours. " Xow, I have a few words to say that I don't want you to forget. Turnpikes, canals and railroads must be made, whether they run in front of your cabin doors or not. These mountains must be tunnelled; those valleys must be paved ; must be, and will be. So, don't let any of those miserables who sometimes get themselves into your legislature set you against the necessity which is upon you ; making fools of you, and scoundrels of themselves, by pretending that they will lighten your taxes and reduce the State debt. It is your opposition that will make your taxes heavier, and still will not prevent the inevitable march of public improvement. Support an enlightened system of public works, and choose 60 GENERAL OGLE. iionest and capable representatives — choose gentlemen, and gire the snobs the cnt direct. In the compromises and accommodations of conflicting policies, which must take place at the seat of government, nothing will save a man but sound instincts and high personal qualities. For rough roads take a sure-footed nag, though he be a little headstrong and hard in the mouth. I never prophesied unto you smooth things, I never daubed you with untempered mortar, and I never betrayed your trust in half a century of public service. " Finally — until every man is as wise as his neighbor and as good as he ought to be, you must be governed by the majority, and that necessity will divide you into parties — two parties, mind ye, or one and a parcel of fragments. Now, the greatest of these will have the power in its hands, of course. How will you mend it when it goes wrong ? By drawing off into as many little squads as there may happen to be differences of opinion amongst you ! This will only strengthen the party that you are trying to control. The mountain springs refresh the lakes by flowing into them, not by running off into a multitude of puddles to stagnate in the sun ! Parties must be built upon general views and broad policies. Organize as you may upon transient and trivial contingencies, it is all fuss and foolery. A party with any- thing positive in it will outlive its own abuses and your grumbling; or, if the real majority of the nation is too corrupt to purify itself, it will not be improved by changing its chan- nel. The judgment day divides the world into two classes only — one right and one wrong. Do you think you can make a better or more accurate division ? My dear fellow citizens, don't be caught starting aside after every vagabond fancy that inspired idiots can scare up. Within the proper party of truth and progress will be found all the available means of reform that political agencies can ever effect. Jonah A CHARACTER. 61 withdrew in a fit of disgust because the Lord would not destroy Nineveh for its corruption, and sheltered his indig- nant head under a gourd that grew up in a single night, and, of course, perished in a night ; whereupon he wished himself dead, and fainted outright. Better bear your small per- centage of your neighbor's sins and blunders till they are cured, than curse the world and quit it in a passion. It is good enough for you to do your duty in, and too good to be condemned as long as it is getting better. " Fm done, for I don't jump off the stage or stump, like the pony in a travelling menagerie, through a blazing hoop ; and I wouldn't whine a dying doxology to my speech if I knew that it was the last that I should ever make to you in the flesh. I will speak to you from my grave. My voice will echo from these hills, as long as the truth of my life is of any use to you, and you are worthy of it. Wherever I am — here among you, or there above you — I'll be doing my duty and minding my own business — Go home and mind yours." Saints and savages are much more simple compositions than the pivot-men of practical affairs ; even the heroes and enthusiasts of most frequent occurrence in history are easily comprehended, for they are orderly and consistent in their movements, under the pressure of their singleness of impulse and steady concentrativeness of drift. A man governed by one monopolist passion, and devoted to one absorbing object, works in his vocation like a machine, and is no more a wonder or a puzzle than fire or water in their grandest style of ope- ration ; but those complex and intricate combinations of manhood whose elements are remarkable at once for their energy and divellent tendencies, like the multiform ingredients of vegetable and animal organisms, are as difficult of analysis as of integral activity and consistency. The faculties of such a man as General Ogle, each strong enough in its natural 62 GENERAL OGLE. force, and all sufficiently varied and numerous, to furnish a dozen monomaniacs with extravagance, or a dozen heroes with inspiration, present a most difficult subject for specula- tion ; and, when kept in constant effervescence by an active life, in a rude society, afford a mixture of results not easily reconciled. He is not to be measured by the standard of common lives, nor can his actions be safely resolved into examples for ordinary men's conduct. Things conformable and manageable enough in him would be monstrous in men of more partial make and with less balancing energy. Even in his best days, a strong impulse, aroused by a critical emer- gency, often ran beyond its proper limits and overleaped the boundaries of rule, so that nothing less than the reaction of his own great reserve forces might restore him to rectitude and order. At high tides in the current, in more than one instance, one or another of the provisions of the decalogue was temporarily submerged, and the trespasses of the Patri- archs and Prophets got an occasional rehearsal in the excesses and misadventures of his life. — And in the end, when age and circumstances conspired against him ; when his natural strength abated, and his surroundings fell into general dislo- cation, his instincts and appetites, like the chemical forces which come into play as the vital energies decline, assumed the government, the strength of his nobler nature failed, and his sun sat under a cloud of darkness. At seventy-five years of age the coarse excitement and wild illusions of inebriety replaced the healthy activities which had been the very wine of life of his better days. The busiest occupation, the most perilous risks, the heaviest responsibili- ties, of his eventful experience, had never quite satisfied his great necessities ; and now that the aching vacancy of leisure and enforced inaction had come before "the silver cord was loosed, or the golden bowl was broken, or the pitcher had A CIIAHACTER. 03 broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern," he turned, by a sad necessity of such natures, to the delights of those passions whose indulgence remained possible, after his nobler faculties had lost their occasions and the power of exclusive occupation. The change was as rapid as it was terrible. I had seen him in the glory of his strength. I was a boy, indeed, and could not fully comprehend or estimate him ; but a whole man is never wholly misunderstood even by the least capable observer ; and if the impression was somewhat confused and indefinite, it was, nevertheless, grand and inspiring. He was a gentleman of the olden time, one of those denii-gods of the pioneer period of society that seem compounded of the savage and civilized epochs which they unite. He had outlived the fabulous era to which he appropriately belonged, and was as ill-assorted to the new times as the whole hero race of our idolatry would be if we had their personal presence now instead of their consecrated memories. A ruined tower is picturesque, for it had no sacredness, but a temple in decay is humiliating. It is the tomb of a god — the wreck of a religion — a worship in dishonor. When I met this man again after some years of absence from my mountain home, with my earliest apprehensions of him shar- pened and heightened by the distance and difference of the common-place platitudes of fashionable life, and graced by those touchings of imagination which adorn our ideals and accommodate the object to the homage which we must give somewhere, to keep our faith alive and our souls in tone — when I met him again, bowed with years, in a sadly disor- dered dress, with a dimmed eye, unsteady lirnbs, untoned features, and nothing of himself left but his noble form ot head and that erect hair, standing like a monument of the dilapidated man, I felt the contact like a blow. My habitual 64 GENERAL OGLE. reverence groped for its object in that chaos like a child in a darkened chamber seeking for its father. Standing over his grave I could have recognised him. I could have found him all alive again in every street ; and on my play grounds his presence would have answered to my apprehension, where- ever I turned, if only he had not been there — there as he was. I could, I think, have borne the shock of all natural change. The even rush of years would have left some noble traces to adorn the ruin ; a second childhood would have preserved some symmetry in decay ; but, he remembered me, and had forgotten himself ! Like the chieftain of a clan, he was naturally a foster-father to the children of his early friends. This, too, was extinguished. He had lost the habit of that respect, the consciousness of its mutual claims, and the sympathies and demeanor of the relation. Why does the church pray for deliverance from sudden death ? The battle-field is the fittest death-bed of the sol- dier. When "it is finished," let the strong struggler give up the ghost, that the body may not become the grave of the soul, nor the holy ones see their own corruption. Before this strong man became incapable of active, useful life, his relations to it were divorced, and his great energies were left to prey upon themselves. He was not born to rust but to wear out ; and when society refused his ser- vices and repelled his participation, the appetites, which had been suspended and controlled by half a century of intense engagement in worthy offices, resumed their importunities ; the vices of youth displaced the proper dignities of age, and the offended witnesses of his fall lost their confidence yi human virtue, by the shocking exhibition of its weakness. I did not reproach him for his infirmity. It was not his fault, but the fault of a wretched meagreness and meanness of conditions which could not hold such a mind and heart to A CHARACTER. 65 their highest uses and noblest capabilities to the end. I date his death at the period of his discharge from public duty ; there justice sets up his monument, and its broad shadow covers all that lies behind it. ELIZABETH BARTOK I have a story to tell, not to make. It is true to a thought— true as my senses received it into my feelings and reflections — and I am very sure that it has suffered no dis- tortion or exaggeration there. The occurrences are now twenty years old ; the locality is middle Pennsylvania, in a narrow valley, lying between two of the easternmost ridges of the Alleghany Mountains. I had just finished the usual term of medical study, and attended one course of lectures at Philadelphia. Of the experiences common to my tribe, I had my average — an exhausted purse, and a disappointment in a love affair. Under the compulsion of these, and the notion that a little practice of my own, with its attendant responsibilities (for which, I believe, I was better prepared than usual), would be fine training for my last session at the Medical College, I planted myself at a " + roads" in the centre of a good settlement. A grist mill, saw mill, distillery, smith shop, and retail variety store, did the business of the neighborhood; a weekly mail brought us our letters and newspapers ; and I undertook the health of the vicinity, that is to say, of a region of hill and valley forty miles in compass. A mile below us, on the stream that watered our pretty valley, there stood a long, low-roofed, rough-built, one- story stone house, which was called the " Union School- house." Its primary use was for the instruction of the children of the district; but as it was the only public build- ing in the neighborhood, it was used occasionally for all sorts ELIZABETH BARTON. 67 of public meetings, and on Sundays regularly, under some tacit agreement, by half-a-dozen sects, for preaching and social worship. There, about noon on a summer Sabbath, might be found, at the time I speak of, the persons whom I wish to introduce to the reader's acquaintance ; and, assuming that everybody knows enough of the general char- acter of such audiences to answer our present purposes, I will content myself with describing particularly only three or four persons in the congregation, whom we are concerned to know more intimately. They are not the only notewor- thy people of fifty or sixty present ; for life is not so poor in variety and interest among our mountains, but I cannot pause in my narrative now to illuminate its margins with gratuitous portraiture. The clergyman is entitled to our first attention. This is the first year of his ministry. He is a stray slip of Virginia aristocracy, who has found scope for his enthusiasm of religious sentiment, and opportunity for his generosity of self-denial, in circuit preaching through a mountain range of three hundred miles' compass, which he must traverse once every month, preaching, on an average, " once every day and twice on Sundays." He is marked by better education, better manners, and more refinement than the men among whom he ministers ; but he subdues his tastes and con- forms his general demeanor to the coarse conditions of his w T ork, with all the devotion, but happily, none of the pre- tence of a martyr. In good truth, he is very much out of place in this rude region, except for the rare spirits, one in a hundred or a thousand, who, perchance, may apprehend him. But he came among us in such singleness of heart and cordial devotedness of spirit, that he is as much disguised, to selfish and superficial people, as a prince in temporary banishment. And he would have it so, for he wants the £g ELIZABETH BARTON. discipline of such duty ; and the concealment of his accus- tomed style of life is necessary to the free working of the experiment. The congregation felt that indefinable something in him which distinguishes the gentleman-bred, but missing all the pretence and mannerism, which, in their idea, marked it, they generally accepted him at his own modest estimate, and the secret of his family and fortune escaped the gossips. He accepted his hundred dollars a year, made up by some thirty little congregations, as composedly as if he needed such a pittance, and he took the hospitalities of the circuit as contentedly as if their best was something quite agreeable to him. Not unfrequently the position of the preacher in this rugged region is a matter of ambitious aspiration, notwith- standing the rudeness of the people, and the hardness of the work; for some of our mountain clergy are the coarsest men within the boundaries of the brotherhood ; but often — very often — the service is a sacrifice of rich sensibilities and a dedication of fine talents to the. most repugnant forms of duty. Such was the person, and such the attitude to his work, of our friend, the Rev. George Ashleigh. It were well for our new world if the ministerial office were generally filled by such men as he. Among the women belonging to this society there were two girls, whose characters were brought well enough to the surface by the events of my story to allow the hope of adequate presentment. Nancy Barton's general character was strength and style. Her religious impulses were very active, her social senti- ments free and strong, and her selfish feelings, also, sharp and importunate. She was defective in imagination proper, but the life of passion warmed and strengthened her thoughts ELIZABETH BARTON. (39 into grandeur, and her verbal eloquence was of the highest tone conceivable in a woman destitute of literature and the culture of refined companionship. The custom of the church admitted of female participation in the public devotions, and Nancy found scope in a stormy eloquence of prayer and exhortation, for talents that had no match in such use within the circuit of a hundred miles. She was strongly, rather than handsomely, made. There was a firmness, weight, and force, with such elegance as belongs to them, in her make and manner, that kindled admi- ration, unmixed, however, with tenderness and affection. Her face, well fitted for the elocution of her strong thoughts and burning words, was strikingly brilliant, and even hand- some enough, without being quite agreeable, or, in any fashion, fascinating. It turned, it may be, too fully and boldly to one's gaze ; it confessed, perhaps, too much con- sciousness, and too much of the purpose of its own working, even in the rapture of its excitement ; for there was a little of that system in its passion, which corresponded to the full elaborateness of her robust oratory. The trouble was, that, while her rhapsodies were in the vein of inspiration, the delivery intruded the feeling of much study and large prac- tice with an aim. Nancy was an orphan, and dependent, for her support, upon her industry or the hospitality of her church friends, as she pleased to choose between these two sorts of reliances. She compromised and mixed them as her tastes and purposes required. She had made a long visit, the year before, to a distant town in one or other of these characters, and had returned with no slight advantage of travel and observation from the trip. A few weeks in the family of a lawyer, who had lately joined the church, put some polish upon Nancy's manner, and worked some notions into her understanding, 10 ELIZABETH BARTON. which were not a little available, both for her private and public uses in our little valley. It was evident to me, at least, that it might somehow concern the young clergymen whom the fates should favor with appointments to this cir- cuit for a year or two to come. It was, however, so obvious that Mr. Ashleigh was not a marrying man, that Xancy made no demonstrations in that direction, and, I believe, his general demeanor effectually protected him wherever he went from the usual liabilities of his exposed position. But now that Xancy has had her usual foreground privileges and preferences, and made her due impression upon the company ; and after she has shaken hands with every body entitled to that ceremony before the congregation sepa- rates ; and while she occupies Mr. Ashleigh with questions about the result of the last camp-meeting, followed by inqui- ries about the health of the most interesting members in the most fashionable parts of the circuit, and especially for the health of "Dear old Father Ball," the Presiding Elder, and of Brother Sanford, the eloquent young preacher, that is the present agony among church gossips, — all uttered in tones of unimpeachable meekness and pleasing melody, touched with the slight abstractedness of a devout spirit, — let me introduce you as well as I can to her cousin Elizabeth ; whom Xancy's presence has covered and shadowed until the last moment for lingering has arrived, and the preacher and the old folks have moved decidedly for the door. Elizabeth Barton was something above the middle size, and might be taller still, with advantage, if her bearing had but a little pretty pride in it. She was finely formed, with such a mould of limb, and style of carriage, and rhythm of movement, as result from the best combination of strength and grace in form and arrangement, the best health and habits, and the best tone of mind and feeling, which the laws ELIZABETH BARTON. 71 of correspondence can any way achieve in actual life. Her hand and foot, especially, were models, and her face, in every- thing but the consciousness of high mental power, was per- fect in appropriate beauty. Her head had that symmetrical elegance that is never wanting in a fine character. Her complexion was rich and very pure, and the features regular and finished, but the forms and tints, though faultless, seemed subdued to the air of a hard service ; and her dark chesnut hair, checked of its fullness and effect, was almost hidden from view by the severe restraint of its arrangement. My first sight of her was such a glimpse as I am now giving to the reader. I marked then the rich resources of physical beauty that lay covered there and unpronounced, the serious air of dedication to some onerous duty, and the deep religious renunciation of all the delights of sense and all the pride of life. She spoke modestly and kindly to those who were near- est to her, while she adjusted her bonnet and waited till the company gave her room to pass ; and when she moved, it was remarkable for nothing so much as its quick directness and unobtrusiveness. She seemed to have no gossiping to do, and no time to spare, as she stepped rapidly from the door, and, turning the corner of the building, bent her course toward home. She had two miles to walk ; most of it over a rugged ridge, which separated the little glen where she was born from the valley in which the Union Schoolhouse stood. It was, in fact, but a rift made in the hills by a watercourse, with a narrow border of arable soil, raggedly irregular ; in spots affording room for a cottage, a little cornfield, a garden, and so much nieadow as might feed a cow or two through the winter. Just where Tommy Barton lived, the rivulet was a little more liberal of margin and gave space within a mile for three other tenements ; one occupied by Elizabeth's grandfather, another by her uncle, and a third 72 ELIZABETH BARTON. by John Brown, who renders us the service of escorting our heroine across the ridge on bad nights, when she is obliged to be abroad, and occasionally performing other duties of kindness and courtesy, such as his supernumerary sort of character owes to useful people in the world who are their nearest neighbours. By the way, this was the only noble office that the poor fellow ever filled, and we ought to be thankful that he was good enough and good-for-nothing enough, to be always ready for the duty. Brown, though a married man, of about fifty-five, is Elizabeth's only beau, but we may accompany her in imagination to her cottage home in the glen. The footpath lies straight up the hillside, leav- ing the winding wagon road abruptly and plunging directly into the thick bushes. A sharp struggle with the steepness, a brisk squabble with the loose stones which slip and tumble under the foothold, and we have gained the flat rock that caps the ascent. But it affords no outlook. The broad limbed chesnuts, scrub oaks, and undergrowth of bushes, hide everything but patches of the sky, and glimpses of the tree tops on the mountain range before us. Besides, we are on the way to Tommy Barton's, and there is nothing in our search that matches well with grand scenery and pretty landscapes. We must get down the rugged pathway, with our attention sharply employed upon our footsteps, and when the feat is well accomplished, we are on the margin of the , little rivulet that unrolls like a silver ribbon between the hills. Stepping daintily upon the plank, that swings and dips till the surface of the water steadies it, we reach the worm fence of the little meadow, which is crossed by a stile, made rudely enough of an upping-block on one side, and a stump upon the other. The cabin sits fifty yards before us upon a natural terrace ; a rocky bluff rises rapidly behind it, like a giant stairway to climb the mountain, which swells away into the ELIZABETH BARTON. 73 tnid-heaven, so steep and barren that it seems built there to dyke out the northern storm waves. This cabin is a rude, unshapely piece of architecture. Originally it was a square pen, built of unhewn logs, about a foot in diameter and twenty-five in length, but, as the necessity for room increased with an increasing family, additions of similar log pens were piled up, at either end, until it stood stretched out in line ; three houses made one by cutting out the end walls of the first one, and throwing all the rooms into one great hall, which, without partition, blinds or curtains to divide them, served for kitchen, dining room and bed chamber for the old folks, and cubbies for half-a-dozen of the young ones, besides room for a hand loom and its appurtenances, in the corner farthest from the kitchen end of the building. A half story above this long range of rooms, accessible by a ladder instead of stairway, with a clapboard roof for ceiling, and divided into rooms by drop curtains of heavy home made canvas. afforded the girls a dormitory at one end and the oldest boys a like accommodation at the other. The family, all told, reached the round number of fourteen children, of whom Elizabeth, the eldest, was about twenty-two, and the young- est child four years old at the date of our story. The mother was one of those indistinct nobodies who usu- ally figure at the head of such a regiment of children, but the father was an Irishman, and had as much of that in him as would serve to "set up twice as many heirs," as the saying is, "in extravagance." He was one of the Bartons of the Xorth, and according to his own account, " of a dacent fami- ly that lived on their own land at home, and niver a one of the name was iver known to be a Papist." Tommy's zeal for the true faith, it was easy enough to perceive, was the old grudge, and only another phase of his pride of caste and boast of blood. He was religious, of course, or he might as 4 14 ELIZABETH BARTON. well have been born anywhere else as in the County Antrim. A dozen years before, he had been a member of the society that worshipped at the schoolhouse, — that sort of a member that can neither be kept in nor out of the Church but by the severest measures and the hardest fighting. Tommy left the brotherhood but two choices — either to put him out, or to blow themselves up. Accordingly, they expel- led him on sundry charges, among which were hard swearing, occasional intoxication, and perpetual contumacy. The injury of this expulsion was nothing, in the account that Tommy opened with them for it ; his pride fed fat upon his injuries ; everything, everybody, injured him. In fact, he had all his consequence in his injuries. Their greatness served to mea- sure the magnitude of his rights and were welcome to his magnanimity ; but the insult was too much for one of the Barton family to bear. Tommy was eloquent by birthright, but, unhappily, be was never genial except when he was boring some gentleman in good broadcloth with the proofs and indications, historical and fanciful, of his family's gen- tility. Ill luck and ill treatment, ill conduct and ill condi- tions (Tommy never had any other sort of either) had curdled the wit and humour inherent in his blood, and kept it for ever boiling and bubbling with fretfulness and passion. Yet, queer, crazy, and absurd as was the mixture in this proud, weak, worthless, high-spirited old man, Elizabeth derived, it seems to me, her steady nobleness from his impulsive aspira- tions, her fine enthusiasm from his wild fire, and her generosity from his Irish pride. The chemistry of matter knows how to convert the elements of charcoal into diamond ; and the modifying forces of the vital laws are equally adequate to all the difference between this foolish old father and his noble daughter. There was that in him which, by looking for it, one could see might, by ELIZABETH BARTON. 75 better mingling and steadier drift, be made to answer the best uses and highest ends ; but, by an accident or jog in the settling, had produced instead — an Irishman, — which, I take it, as s> rule, is nearer to a natural nobleman and yet further from a reasonable being than any other variety of the human race. The difference in results between these two persons was so great that they never actually touched, even at the borders ; yet an intrinsic resemblance could be traced in every fibre of their respective constitutions. Tommy could get tipsy occasionally, talk nonsense mixed up with poetry any time, and brag like a jockey about every : thing that in any way concerned him. He was, moreover, incapable in business, unsteady in labor, and given to substi- tute the sentiment of duty for its practice, and to content himself with fine speeches in place of noble actions ; and all without a shade of hypocrisy, for he was in fact so proud of what he was, and so ready with reasons and apologies for all that he was not, that he needed no pretences. He was not profligate, unprincipled, or insensible to right ; he was only an Irishman ; and that hindered him from being either worse or better. The raw elements of every human excellence were in him in rich abundance, and in great confusion too : but in Elizabeth they had crystallized into the most efficient forms and most perfect beauty ; for all of texture that was want- ing in her paternal blood was supplied to her by her maternal grandfather who was an unmitigated Scotchman. With his beggar's complement of children, and general unthriftiness of character, Tommy was, of course, poor to the very verge of destitution. He had grown steady — that is, sober — lately, and he was not lazy ; but it was as much because his health had failed, and age was beginning to stiffen the machinery, as from any principle, that he was amending 76 ELIZABETH BARTON. in his habits. It must be allowed, also, that he was feeling Elizabeth's influence with steadily increasing force. There was dignity with its incident authority in her deportment ; not of the imposing kind, nor by any means directly and dis- tinctly shown and felt ; it was more like that energy of gentleness which shapes the bone to the brain's steady pres- sure, the framework of the chest to the resiliency of the lungs and heart, the vital power that in the tenderest flower stalk pierces and mellows to conformity the hardest clod. The very poor are unapt to respect each other, or to regard, amid the rude familiarities of their daily intercourse, the noblest qualities. Nor, indeed, is it easy for them to discover them in the coarse dress of circumstances which poverty imposes. Ay ! it is the bitterest of poverty's ten thousand curses, that it denies the conditions of decorous association and refining intercourse ; that it prevents that discipline which habitual proprieties of demeanor only can enforce, and destroys all pure and healthful self-respect by the undignified and indelicate personal relations which it compels. And it is uttering a volume of commendation in a word, when I say that Elizabeth had conquered her father's refractoriness, and secured from him a deference which almost inverted the Irish order of domestic life. Five years before, when she attached herself to the church, the very church which had expelled him, he drove her with violence from the house, with as great indignation as if she had stained his name and honor with the deepest shame. A weary, wretched year she endured the exile, earning her support by labors, lighter, indeed, upon her hands than the tasks which she performed at home, but heavier upon her heart ; for she could do nothing for that large family that needed her now every day, more and more, in every office which a woman only can fulfil to a household of small ELIZABETH BARTON. 77 children in great need. The mother was what the country people called a " doless creature/ 7 and the sister next in age to Elizabeth was delicate in health and too feeble in char- acter for the service. The weight that lay heaviest upon her heart was half a dozen of little sisters, as beautiful as birds, wanting all things, and wanting, most of all things, the governance and culture of an elder sister's nursing love and controlling prudence. They were crowded there together like a herd of orphans in an almshouse, exposed to their father's petulance and to each other's selfishness and tem- pers, and suffering many things besides, which childhood cannot suffer without having the very fountains of its life poisoned by the bitter deprivations ; and all without the mediation of that wise, good heart which was aching in its exile to render its self-sacrificing services. There were fret- tings and fightings there, tears and turmoils, injuries inflicted and endured, and with all, and above ail, the absence every hour felt, by the hourly recurring need, of the ministering angel of the household. Especially through the long, gloomy winter, the days, and weeks, and months wore wearily away in that wretched cabin. All suffered the pen- alty of the father's pride, but none so keenly as himself, for to him it brought all the privation, with the sin and folly added. But he would not yield to the constraint he felt and the necessities he witnessed, because it would have been in such circumstances, not a reconciliation, but a surrender ; and, the refractory old fool would dash the tears out of his eyes, with the pretence that it was passion, and not sorrow that moved them, and with an oath refuse her permission to return. At last, when things had become intolerable, half a dozen children and the mother sick, the whole household suffering, and the father at his wit's end, she bravely forced her way into the wretched hovel. It required a little more 78 ELIZABETH BARTON. resolution than the old man could muster to make resistance, and he silently and sullenly submitted. It was enough ; she was installed again, and she had returned strong in purpose and very rich in resources for the exigency. A year's experience, a larger sphere of thought and broader observation, had done wonders upon her earnest character. It seemed natural enough that she should be a little strange for a few days after her return ; moreover, she was still under ban, though the banishment was remitted ; and these things together served to explain her difference of manner and general demeanor to her father and old familiars, and to protect her peculiarity from impertinent remark. She left them before her religious enthusiasm had time and opportunity to settle into form and take the habitual direction of her conduct. Residence among strangers, with its modicum of leisure and privacy, had invested her with her proper individualism ; and the severe discipline of mind and feeling undergone, had worked its permanent results into the texture of her mental constitution, which was remarkable at once for its aptness and tenacity. The con- trolling quality of Elizabeth's mind was, very plainly, in its intense religious devotedness, which, in her not only sublimed, but strengthened her natural affections, held them well and wisely to their office, and gave to the simplest duty which had anything of sacrifice in it, the tone and determination of a sacred obligation. Her ideal of a religious life is called, in the phrase of her church creed, sanctification, perfect love, or Christian perfec- tion. This conception was her standard. The instant aspi- rations of her heart were for angel purity and excellence. Her understanding, in its enthusiasm, rejected the logical manceuvering by which the requirements of the highest law are reconciled to habitual delinquencies of life ; nay, she felt ELIZABETH BARTON. f9 weakness itself like a crime. Her meekness bore without apology the burden of her offences ; and self-justification on the ground of natural infirmity of nature, would have felt to her the very boldness of an appeal from the law of con- duct prescribed for her by her Divine Father. The soul held in such a frame, grew and gushed like the flowers and fountains under the kindliest influences of heaven. In the calm of her holy reveries, blessing lay like dew upon her affections, and in its exultant movement, the divine presence flooded her whole being with its light and life, like a sun- burst on a mountain top. It needed only a clear insight to perceive that her essential life was " hid with Christ in God f that there was a constant rapture in the soul under that tranquillity of the senses — a fullness of the diviner life sus- taining a level of perpetual calmness on the surface, which the forces of the outward and accidental had no power to disturb. This supremacy of the central took nothing from the wonted energy of the loves she owed to the world with- out ; it rather adjusted, steadied, and supplied them with a recreating strength, a constant freshness and untiring patience. If her faith and fervor bordered on fanaticism in sentiment, they nevertheless, in all the verities of use, flowed like life blood through her moral system, feeding with vital force all the faculties which perform the benign offices of love and duty. A deep peace ruled her spirit and wove its quiet into all the solicitudes which she sustained for others, and holy rest within compensated and repaired the waste of toil without. She held herself aloof from the coarse companionship around her without offence, for it was seen that she had no leisure for idle courtesies ; and the restraints which occupa- tion would not account for, were credited to her devotional habits. Besides, however strange it may seem, with all her 80 ELIZABETH BARTON. dignity, beauty and efficiency, she was not especially attrac- tive to the undiscerning boors about her. Her riddle was quite beyond their reading ; and her charms were not in direct array to their apprehensions ; for, in all its propor- tions, that saying of the apostle has accurate application, that " spiritual things are spiritually discerned," and not otherwise. She was quiet constitutionally, more so still by the high occupation of her thoughts ; and she was, besides, really not eloquent in words, nor copiously furnished with thoughts and utterance for conversational uses. Her early education had been sadly neglected by that improvident father of hers ; her present opportunities for study were absolutely nothing, and her mental activities were now, on account of their nature as well as of necessity, almost wholly introverted. Indeed, she was one of those instances of ade- quateness for the severest trials and highest duties, ay, for the nobles styles of life, where the intellect is only moderate, but the harmony and richness of the moral nature supplies it with inspiration, giving it range and strength and certi- tude, quite beyond its own independent capabilities. Three centuries ago, there were peers of England who could neither read nor write ; and the highest fame in all the ample round of historic greatness belongs to a man, who, in speculative philosophy and general literature was neither proficient nor remarkable for his capability. Elizabeth knew everything that her life demanded, though she had learned so little. She could work miracles in the domestic economy of that burdensome household. She knew how to rule without usurpation, where authority rather required her to obey ; and the younger inmates, refractory to all other force, yielded to the charm of her goodness and the mixture of gentleness, steadiness and address which she had the grace and patience to employ. A just analysis of ELIZABETH BARTON. 81 her agency in that family would make an excellent treatise upon domestic conduct, though she would probably have been both silent and incapable in a discussion of the princi- ples and policy of her system. Her mind and feelings, more than any other that I ever knew, found their manifestation in action, duty, practice ; and less in utterance and social demonstration. Her reserve, indeed, seemed like an incapacity, and its rigidness scarcely escaped the censure of her kindest friends. Nothing could draw her from that everlasting loom except some household duty. No visit paid there seemed to include her in its courtesies or idleness. If a direct question interrupted the flying shuttle and her hand paused a moment in its office, it was only for the interval required by the shortest answer that could be made in kindness and cordiality. The thread of her web resumed its race as quickly as the urgency of the interrogation would allow, and her patience under persecut- ing complaisance was even equal to her perseverance ; but, few as there were who understood it, or the proprieties which it exacted, there were still fewer who could raise the hardihood to test her forbearance very severely. Her steady manner settled it without appeal, for it really gave no offence and left no dissatisfaction. She was busy with a warrant, and the visitor always made her apology so as to leave the pleasure of the call marred by no feeling but the sense of his own loss. I have seen but few women who sat as well at the piano, and when she had a fine linen web in the loom, and the weather allowed of open doors, clear air and summer neat- ness in the array of the cabin furniture, nothing could be more becoming than her occupation. It was not monotonous, for her face was full of thought- 4* 82 ELIZABETH BARTON. ful light and changeful feeling. Her perfect gracefulness of motion and simple elegance of form, her strength and quiet beauty, which, without challenging admiration, gave deep, pure pleasure, preserved an air of naturalness to the picture which allowed it to glide unquestioned into the spectator's feelings. Thus I found her and her surroundings when I called occasionally as a visitor ; but, when I went professionally to see the children in their little illnesses, difficult as order was in such circumstances, the whole feeling of the scene was changed by the effect of her changed attitude. She stood foremost then, the mind that took direction of affairs ; her manner intimating the highest qualities, and her whole action impressing me with the feeling, that she was my equal and something more, except in my professional office. In a thousand women I have met none whose mental sympathies and intuitions felt firmer and broader than did that rustic girl's. After a year's occasional intercourse, but more than occa- sional interest in her, the relentless severity of her toil and the unrelaxing strain of her mental excitation, conspiring with the recurrence of the epidemic season and an unusually wet autumn, broke down her strength, and I was summoned to her bedside, by her faithful old friend and servant, Brown, with a rap on the window of my shanty, I know not how long after midnight. " Doctor, you're wanted badly at Tommy Barton's. Eli- zabeth is down, I'm afeared with the fever ; and she wouldn't let me trouble you till, I doubt, we've waited almost too long ; but, I hope not." " Why Brown, is that you ? Are you afoot ? It must be pitch dark on the ridge just now." E L I Z A B E T H B A B X N . 83 " Yes ; I had no horse ; and I'd rather walk such a night as this than ride, anyhow. I don't know how you'll get along in the woods, Doctor !" " Don't bother your brains about that, Brown. Old Barney will find his way across the ridge for me, as soon as I turn him into the track, by the sense he has in his toe- nails, if it is as dark as Egypt. There is a good fire in my office ; you can find a plank in the floor soft enough for you to sleep on, and you may eat my breakfast for me in the morning, and get home at your leisure by daylight. " In ten minutes I was mounted, and Barney and I were swinging down the valley road, with such confidence and alacrity as nothing animal or human can feel, in the deep darkness of a starless night, except a country physician and his horse. But, I must not indulge in the rehearsal of a night ride along the mountain foot, the frequent fording of the valley stream, and the thick palpable blackness of the ridge before me. What of it ? My faithful horse had the strength of a steam engine, and the elastic action of a leo- pard. Ah ! we understood each other perfectly ; and, while I adjusted myself in the saddle and he took in his first long breath to ease the girths and prepare for his first play- ful spring, I could feel that his heart swelled to welcome the sympathetic pressure of my knees. And when in the silence and vastness of the night I danced in the stirrups for very joy, the little difficulties and shadowy dangers of the path- way served only to frame in the dream, and define it into fact and give its enjoyment firmer reality and finer edgedness. Why, bless your cautious indolence, I was but twenty-two and had not lost a single patient in six months' full practice ! I was in love with nature and all the world just then ; for 1 had convalesced from my last attack, with the trouble all gone and the tenderness all left, sweet and fresh ; and was #4 ELIZABETH BARTON. ]*ust hovering on the verge of another and deeper passion, without exactly knowing or fearing it. So, hurrah for the night, the mountains, and the sky of heaven that I touch now in the vibrations of these stooping clouds ! "Ho, Barney ! step a little gingerly; my hat is down, but it wasn't your fault, my fine fellow; and that blow of the bough in the teeth closes the conversation with all out- of-doors for the rest of the ride." And so, settling into the proprieties of the occasion, I ride a little more warily and soon reach the rivulet, find a hitching-place for my horse near the stile, and the cabin door is reached with a spring or two by the light flashing from all its windows and show- ing the agitation of its inmates. * * * * Ay, fever it is, and a ferocious one. It has set in with such a storm of general disturbance, that my best judgment cannot predict the result. I see it all, all but the issue. A long, desperate struggle — weeks of battle between this vig- orous life-force and the avenger of the much wronged organ- ism. Elizabeth ! the very glory of thy beauty is upon thee now. Smitten, as the swooping mountain wind dashes down upon a sleeping valley lake, arousing its billows into answer- ing madness ; and with the terrors of the storm, too, this liberated life has come ; for there is desolation in the wake of all its grand commotion ! Dreary, dismal, chill and hope- less, the winter that may follow ; and the flowers of the coming spring — how sad, in their fresh gaiety, will they bloom to me, if they shed their sweetness on thy grave ! Such were my sensations under the first shock of the threatening symptoms. The flushed cheek and flashing eye ; the nervous energy, bordering upon delirium ; the throbbing, wiry pulse and burning heat, crisping over all that snowy purity of complexion — all these arrayed against the roused resistance of that noble constitution — unfolded like a battle- ELIZABETH BARTON. 85 chart to my startled apprehension. And the grouping of the anxious family, which always has its force in medical prognosis ; the father, with his look of fear and h elplessness, breaking into tears and tenderness, so unusual with him ; the mother, looking that complete break-down wretchedness which she felt ; Mary, busying herself with nursing duties, which she is inventing to crowd out the thickening thoughts of danger ; and the children, with eager alarm in their little faces, peeping from under cover in every corner that could command my countenance, to read their hopes and fears in its expression ! How electrical the focus of such burning eyes, the centre of such whirling thoughts, becomes ! and how much depends, to the patient, family and physician upon the impressions of that first fronting with the malady ! Its intensity must be broken by a movement of professional authority, and hearts get relief in the activity of the hands, or mischief will follow that cannot be repaired. " Bring me some water, Mary, fresh from the spring — a large bowl full and a thick towel for her pillow. We must sponge her head and hands till the excessive heat is well reduced ; and, Mary, bring her a tumbler, lipping full, to drink, too." " Oh, thank you, bless you, Doctor ; Pm burning with this thirst and fever ! All day long the water in the spring- run has been rippling just beyond my reach — the sound of its dropping falls like blows upon my ear ; it boils upon my hot tongue, and the steam of it fills and seethes my very brain. It runs away between my spread fingers when I try to dip it up, and it bursts out into flame as soon as it touches my hot lips. Oh, give me some cool, fresh, sweet water, and let me rest, for I'm so weary ; and — and — I have so much to do when I waken." 11 The trouble on her mind is for us, as it always is," 86 ELIZABETH BARTON groaned out the father ; "and she's just killed with labor. I wish it was myself that was lying there, and as well pre, pared, for I'm no use now, and she'll be hard to spare in this desolate family. She has kept us together with hard struggling, many a long day, and I thought she would be spared to us and then we would hardly want anything else in life. Must we lose her, Doctor, dear, do you think V 7 11 Lose her ! No, it is not possible. It is not in the har- mony of things. We love her as well, and need her more than the angels do ; and we'll hold her here with a heart- strength that will not fail us. Fear nothing, believe and wait." My own prophecy did but little to assure me ; but fear answered as well when hope failed, and without bating a jot of effort I gave her such skill of medicine and nursing as head and heart could furnish for nineteen days and nights ; doing double duty with half rest, in order to distribute even justice to my other patients, and watch for the changes that I feared in her case. How still my heart stood at that cot- tage door-step, when I made my visits in the night, while I paused to catch by the well-known signs of the sick room, how the patient was supposed to be by her attendants, before the courage could be summoned to meet the facts in all their certainty. And when, day after day, the same changeless stapor hung upon her brain, the same hot pesti- lence rioted through her frame, till she lay a wreck upon the fever surges that were slowly wasting her, — oh, what questionings of my own competency, what doubtfulness of my profession's truth and usefulness, what prayer and wrestling with the Power that held the issues of life, for deliverance from the impending danger ! At last, one fine November morning, when faith and hope, and even affection, had worn weak by their own exhausting E L I Z A B E T PI BARTON. '87 tension, and the suspense, grown into a habit, held our hearts in a mechanical, steady stupor, suddenly the clouds broke, and the heavens and earth smiled out with joy again, like the waking of a summer morning after rain. The crisis was past, and she was given back to us, and we sat down together like children, and played with our recovered bless- ing, as with a new toy given by a loving parent on the morning of a holiday. Critical illnesses often work other changes in the patient besides the various physical phases of their progress — changes that become permanent in the habits of feeling and character of thought. These discovered themselves in Eliza- beth during her convalescence by a happy consciousness of all the interest that we felt, and a gaily frank acceptance of the services w r hich we rendered her. No weight of work and duty lay heavy upon her heart now, and her affections flowed out rich, genial and generous, without check or censure from an over severe sanctity of spirit. Affectionate tenderness, flowing in upon her for the first time in her hard life, had its natural effect ; her mental tension and strictly ruled emo- tions lost their strained resistance under the influx of loving kindness. The rigid habitude of devotedness and self-sacri- fice was relaxed by bodily feebleness, and her long checked affections opened broad and bright, like the flowers of a late spring in the first full flood of sunshine. It was about the third day after the happy turn, when the hope of her recovery felt well assured, that I was first impressed with these thoughts about her. Mary had suc- ceeded in thoroughly dressing her luxuriant hair ; the bed, made up in the tone of the new hopefulness, was snowy w T hite in its array of fine domestic linen, manufactured by Elizabeth's own hands the year before ; and a pink gingham bed-gown, which I recognized as an old acquaintance doing 88 ELIZABETH BARTON. a new duty, lent its delicately relieving tints to the exquisite fairness and fineness of her pure complexion, still too pale from her recent illness. The windows were open to the genial air, the sunlight lay mellow upon her pillow, and a smile of holy sweetness played upon her face. We stood in the conscious communion of her inmost life, and saw the real as in a vision, and felt the true as it were a dream* The imagination had there materials for its brightest fanta- sies ; but there was a soul within, and a simplicity of fact beneath this transfigured life, that might stand the ordeal of the hardest baked philosophy. I marked the fact that she had new first awakened to the full consciousness of her own loveliness. Its proper joy gave light to her eye and its melody to her voice that morning, just as the breezes, birds and rivulets breathed, and sang, and smiled out the gladness and glory of their own beauty. The severe restraints of her girlhood, which had garnered while they repressed her life's natural outflow, now gave way under the new impulse. The reverent tenderness of those whom she most loved had found occasion in her illness for such manifesta- tion, that she could feel, without the abatement of self- reproof, her own real worth and a divine blessing in the sense of it. It rested like a crown upon her natural noble- ness, converting that cottage into a very presence-chamber, and the bed and beauty which rested on it seemed an altar with its angel. It came to me like a religion* and lent a lasting beauty to my life — an abiding sense of the sacred- ness of pure womanhood. That winter I had devoted to the completion of my colle- giate term of study. Three precious weeks of the session had gone by while I lingered with Elizabeth ; for I could not leave her till her health was certainly reestablished ; and I may, perhaps, as well confess that I was in no special hurry ELIZABETH BARTON. 89 to take my own discharge. After all, it was only one of the professors whom I cared very much about losing for the first month of the course, and so I took a little more time than in strictness might have sufficed for preparation for departure. Returning from the County town one evening, two days before the morning fixed for leaving for the city, a furious storm of wind and rain drove me for shelter into the farm- house of a friend and sometime patient, where I was delighted to find the Rev. Mr. Ashleigh staying for the night. He had been absent from the circuit for a month or more, on a visit home. His brother had died, and left him guardian of two young children, whose care had a little while detained him. His greetings were unusually earnest and impressive ; they made me know that he had something to say to me in trust, or that I could do something for him. ■ We had not been friends before, exactly, but near enough to it to become so through the sympathies of the first scrape that either of us might fall into. A private interview was impossible, for the rain kept us in the house, and the family wouldn't miss a word of the conversation of the Preacher and Doctor, or leave us a moment alone, for the world. They were too polite and respectful for that ! And as it rained on severely till nearly bedtime I agreed to stay with them. That night we occupied the same bed. Two hours, full, he talked, as I felt, about every thing but the matter on hand, until I grew weary, and withal solicitous to know what exactly was the matter with the fellow. At midnight the sky cleared and a bright moon burst gloriously out; its light fell full upon my face through the window : I marked it, and turning toward him, jocularly said : " Brother George, did you ever walk out alone, on a fine 90 ELIZABETH BARTON. night, to talk to the moon, and when you met her face to face, didn't know what to say to her, eh ?" His whole manner changed ; his fine face filled full of high emotion ; he rose upon one elbow and laid his other hand upon my heart, thrilling with the appealing meaning of its touch, and looking steadily and largely into my eyes, he said, slowly and impressively : " Doctor, do you know Elizabeth Barton ?" His look held the question where his words had put it, with such impressment, that I lay still under its imposing earnest- ness till it was hard to make my answer fittingly. My mind manoeuvered for a moment or two for an escape, but it wouldn't do ; " the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth w was the demand, and in all plainness it rose spon- taneously, and I could only touch it as it passed my lips, with a relieving shade of humor. "Know her ! my dear fellow, know her ! why, I don't know anybody else." He fell back upon his pillow, as if he had fainted. This brought me to my elbow, to gaze in turn into his face. He hid it with his hand and whispered slowly : "Wait a moment and I'll tell you." " That's you," said I ; " Unbuckle your budget freely, and let me look over your assortment. I'm ready for anything that you have on hand; especially, anything about Elizabeth." My gaiety relieved him ; and rising again, quite as earnest, but not quite so awful as before, he said in tones as mellow as pity for himself could make them, "Doctor, I love that girl to desperation." " Whew ! whew ! " 11 Hear me, Doctor, do hear me ; I know what I'm saying. It is true as heaven, it is the only live truth left in me. I ELIZABETH BARTON. 91 love her as never man loved a woman before. What shall I do?" " Do — do — you superlative simpleton ! why, get up this moment, go saddle your horse, gallop over the ridge, kick the door down, throw yourself at her feet, tell her you love her, with your face set to the same expression that you have told me : and if she don't accept you on the spot, take your boarding, or fall sick and stay till she does. Now my poor fellow, lie down and take a good cry, and you'll feel better. I'll sit up with you till the crisis is past. There — there — on your own side, please ! you're smothering me ! and more than that, Toby Myers will hear you bawling out ; I heard him turn in his bed just now ; he'll be up here directly, if you don't behave, and then I'll have to tell some capital lie for you, about the nightmare, to account for this blubbering. Come, do behave yourself, will you ? n In a few moments he reined up and carried himself steadily, and- then he told me how he had been impressed by his first sight of her ; how he kept thinking about it ; how he preached an entire sermon to her, soon afterwards, and how, after a little while, he could scarcely preach at all, because she was present with her earnest eyes fixed so steadily and coolly on him ; how he called as often as he could invent occasions at her father's ; and how incessantly that everlasting loom went on with its work ; how many efforts he had made to gain some conversation with her; and how completely he was always baffled by her busy occupation, and her reserved demea- nor, until he felt worried out of his life with disappointment and uncertainty. " Uncertainty," said I, " what about ? " "What about !" he answered sharply, almost angrily; " what about ! why, Doctor, what do I know about her ? Can she read and write ? I'm hardly sure that she can talk. 92 ELIZABETH BARTON. Do you know that I am a gentleman ; or must I tell you ? And more than that, I am not quite a fool either. My family is fashionable ; I am wealthy, — and I cannot marry an uned- ucated wife, — a woman that I must blush for, till I grow ashamed even to love her. Oh Lord ! what shall I do ? " " Do ! I'll tell you what to do. Just hold your tongue till you hear me, and then hold it afterwards till you tell your story to Elizabeth and hear what she has to say : for you have not wit enough now to take care of yourself." u That's not very hard to say, I reckon, for it hasn't to be felt first," was his reply. Then pausing for five minutes, he added slowly, and as he thought, very resolutely, " I'll do nothing more about it. I must go home again in January to attend to business, and (here he drew the clothes tight about his shoulders like a man determined to sleep) I'll not be sent back to this penitentiary circuit again, I suppose ; so, if I can forget her, she is dropt, that's all. But, if the good Lord thinks otherwise, why, I suppose it will be brought about somehow. Let me see — you start for the city in a day or two. Of course, you think it safe to leave her. And, maybe I shall never see either of you again. God bless you, Doctor, I'm glad and thankful that you are her friend." Another long silence, and he turned up upon his elbow again. " See here, my dear brother Doctor : you are in love with Miss M. Now, I don't ask your confidence — I don't want it ; but tell me just one thing. If you marry Miss M., and I were to marry Elizabeth, would your wife visit mine, there in that old cabin, among those looms and pots and rickety old chairs, and, I don't know what all ? " This brought me to my elbow decidedly ; and, thrusting him down upon his pillow, and laying my shut fist upon his breast, instead of an oath, I answered him with a ring of the real metal of my meaning in every word : "If she wouldn't, ELIZABETH BARTON. 93 ehe shouldn't live with me, that's all ; — so please don't make a special fool of yourself." The poor fellow's eye moistened 7 his face softened into a happy smile, and laying his open palms upon my temples, he whispered "The good Lord bless you;" detaining every word as it passed his lips, to give it all the earnest tenderness that was welling up from his full heart. The next morning, I inferred that he had slept as I did ; he looked so fresh and happy. I waited for breakfast for the sake of his company homeward, and I noticed that Mrs. Myers mellowed her voice and looked more womanly than usual when she spoke to him at the table. Something had turned up within him that telegraphed itself to her instincts, and made him beautiful exceedingly that morning. I knew it, — he had got his own consent, and given free wing to his idolatry ; he had, in a sense committed himself to Elizabeth by opening his heart to her friend, and the poor fellow of yesterday was rich now in the unchecked overflowing of his own soul. But, wasn't I fidgety and foolish ; didn't I almost tell something that nobody could understand, when next day I visited Elizabeth ? Wasn't I provoked that she wouldn't know she was queen of a new found world, and wouldn't echo all my exultations about — nothing at all, when it came to be stated in clear terms ? And didn't I nearly swear her to a promise not to work that winter in my absence, but read and write, and visit my sweetheart and her friends ; and get well and strong against the next spring, when I should return to set her free from my authority ? Moreover, wasn't I so glad of everything, and so full of robust rejoicing that I rudely stole a kiss, and felt particularly awkward when I discovered that I could have had it willingly, and that much the better, in the presence of the whole world ? And — and — then I turned 94 ELIZABETH BARTON. away as a tear of gratitude and blessing glistened in her eye, blurring the last look she should have of me for many months, with all the shadow of life's risks thrown over the prospective absence. I had my reward ; I was paid for all that I had done and suffered in one moment — I stood clear in the appre- hension of one pure, noble soul ; the angel-life within me was stirred and realized in her recognition, and I knew again that the divine is true, and that the highest and brightest is the most real. But the conditions of the outward life were upon me ; devotional joy quickly resolved itself into gladness of nerve and heart, and Barney wondered what was the matter with me, I thought, by his plunging and blowing before he had climbed to the top of the rough ridge. By the time he got into my secret, as usual, I was quiet, and rational, and orderly again. A horse may bear a burden that will lift his service into the fellowship of a grateful sympathy. Poor fellow, he soothed me in many a moody hour ; he understood me, — and I love his memory now. By this time my readers are beginning to like me, I fear, and in that proportion, to withdraw their interest from the principals of my story. I will indulge the generous sentiment with a word only. My letters came to me during the session to the very hour. I found them every Saturday morning upon my plate at the breakfast table, where my good old landlady persisted in placing them, to have the pleasure of the explosion, which I could not learn to master when I found them with the right post-mark and image on the seal. So the studies at the college and the pretty girls at my board- ing house did me no mischief, and I got along like a young bear, or a man with a wheelbarrow — my troubles all before me. The winter was a severe one, the snows deep, and the roads in the valley desperate ; and I heard scarcely anything about Elizabeth except that she was " doing well." ELIZABETH BARTON. 95 Of all the days in the year, it was St. Patrick's day in the morning that I was awakened from the absorption ofrny own affairs to a renewed interest in the events of my story, by receiving a brief note from Elizabeth, inviting me to her wedding, and conveying Mr. Ashleigh's request that I would stand groomsman for him with my own sweetheart, who was to play bridesmaid to her. This was all tempting enough, but the session had not closed and it was impossible. I was obliged to do as the courtly Mr. Dapper did, when it suited his business to leave church before the service had com- menced, — send my "card with regrets" to the altar. The day after I arrived at home, I crossed the ridge by the old route to see the " new married pair." It may seem odd, but the thing did not feel quite so like a romance, now that it was settled and consummated, as it did the last time I travelled that same road. It was all over, like a ball or a battle, and the hopes and anxieties so interesting while the plot was opening, were replaced now by those common-place certainties, which belong alike to all new marriages, sharpen- ed and deepened, indeed, in this case, by the speculations of curiosity and the feelings of friendship which specially belonged to it. How it had been brought about was yet a secret to me : but the route has usually lost its chief interest by the time the rendezvous is reached. This feeling came down* upon me like mountain mist as I crossed the hill again, in circum- stances so much altered to all the parties involved in my story; and when I met the happy couple in the cabin, with all its furniture and conditions, and their own manner and relations, changed so greatly for the better ; and, especially Elizabeth, in a new attitude which severed the old relations and broke up the dependence upon myself, which had grown so familiar to me and so pleasant, I confess, my enthusiasm 96 ELIZABETH BARTON. flattened out a little. There she was before me in full health, her face more beautiful even than ever, but of a different style of beauty; her rich chesnut hair had been shorn in her convalescence to prevent its loss, and was now confined by a cap that helped to mark the transition from the rustic maiden to the married lady, with the most exquisite grace and fullness.^ Her new character, with all its claims finely asserted, sat upon her as easy as if she had been "to the manner born ; n and I felt the improvement, but I felt the difference, too, and I believe I checked my first greeting in mid-volley and changed it somewhat sharply into the propri- eties of the new order of affairs. Instead of the capers and confidences that I had promised myself in the consummation, we conversed and then dined, actually dined, in that same old cabin, in a way that I thought none of us were exactly accustomed to. The fashion of it wasn't Philadelphia, nor was it Virginia, and I'm sure it was not any nearer Tommy Barton's style than it was to either of the others. It was a sort of compromise of the three, and so an immense improve- ment upon the past, but without its natural relish. I didn't quite want the old order restored again, but — I missed it. Could I have been a little mean and selfish, because, with aS my real generosity, it was very pleasant to play patron to a very pretty girl, — because my occupation, with its pride and circumstance, was, like Othello's, gone — and, because, I was now of no real consequence to anybody there, and had only to be thanked and discharged from office, and, maybe, patronized besides, at the next turn affairs might take in our respective fortunes ? Heigh-ho ! it really is more blessed to give than to receive ; and, to be drifted into an eddy while the current that we rode so grandly on drifts by without us, makes it a little difficult to be liberal in sym- pathy with the dashing waves that leave us by the way. ELIZABETH BARTON. '97 Bit. Ashleigh had been married almost a month, and he looked already as if it were quite a settled matter with him. He spoke to his wife as politely as if thirteen children, a couple of old folks, and a young gentleman with a sharp eye in his head, were not to be taken deep into the connubial confidences. I thought he did not fully believe in my pro- found respect for everybody and everything that surrounded him, and I was for a moment shabby enough to hope it was nothing worse even than that. But no matter — I had busi- ness over the ridge a little earlier and more urgent than I had thought of until now, and was about shaking hands respectfully, when Elizabeth, the Elizabeth of my memory, peeped out of the new Mrs. Ashleigh and asked me for a word in private, I gave her my hand, — we walked to the spring-head, a few paces from the house, and quickly found ourselves all right again. Turning to me, she said, " Doctor, I owe you, along with other things, a bill for medical attendance." " If you do, Elizabeth, you will have to owe it, along with the other things, and pay it in the same way." " Pm glad and thankful to have it so," she answered, in a manner full of beauty ; " I do not wish to owe you less, to take one grain's weight of my debt from my memory or affec- tions, but I thought it due to Mr. Ashleigh to renew it in his name if you would not let me pay it. We will be sepa- rated soon ; we may never meet again, and I wish all your recollections of me to be happy as they can be ; and I cheer- fully remain your debtor that the clink of money may not seem to cancel any bond between us. God bless you, Doctor !" She took my hand and stood for a moment in rapt devo- tion, as I had seen her before under trials and in triumphs, and I felt its influence, — its hallowing influence, — like a new 5 98 ELIZABETH BARTON. baptism. Then changing her whole manner, she said lightly, " Doctor, Pin very happy — it is all right, — I have not a word to say that you need to know. Your warmest wishes for me are more than fulfilled ; be sure of this. But, did you know that Cousin Nancy was not at our wedding V "No." " You must ask my husband for the reason. He will tell you — I cannot. There he is getting out his horse to go with you, I suppose. What a talk you will have ! I shall be along with you, in fancy, and overhear every word. Oh! I wouldn't miss your part of it for the world ; especially, the sight of your face, which I shall have by my own insight, in a place or two in the story that I know of. Good-bye. You will be with us to-morrow. We dine with Miss M — ." We were scarcely mounted when Ashleigh looked at me just as he did on the morning after our moonlight bed scene. Like his wife, he thought and felt much more than his face usually confessed, and, like her, when his heart opened, the revealment was full and absolute. The road was narrow; but we did not want a wide one. He seized my hand and gave me a look that began with a pleasant, cunning, self- congratulating meaning, which soon sobered down into deeply earnest feeling, then rose again into the tone of a gay triumph, and burst out finally into laughter which set every nerve in his body to dancing in its own gladness. There needed no introduction and there was no danger of impertinences in his story. He began naturally, just where I left him, and went on, only lightly now and gaily, with his difficulty of getting access to his sweetheart's presence. He tried every way but the right one, until, when there was no other left, he discovered that, and then his troubles were well over. He asked her to walk with him up the valley, having something to communicate, he said, which greatlv ELIZABETH BARTON. 99 concerned himself ; anc 1 they were immediately on their way and out of earshot of all the world. He had learned the necessity of directness by the failure of all his little dodges, and he had crossed the Rubicon himself, and felt the over- ness of his position. His words were few but full. They needed no explanation, and they left no doubts. And when he had opened his heart, and emptied it utterly before her, he turned, and asked her if she could love him. She answered him with equal candor and directness : " Mr. Ashleigh, I do not love you. I have never thought of such a thing. I have esteemed you as a preacher ; and, as a man, too, when that point has presented itself, I have sufficiently admired you ; but I saw you were a man of good birth and gentle breeding, good talents and education, with the world open to you, by virtue of your social position, and, perhaps, wealth ; for even the signs of that were not all concealed under your careful modesty of manner. Am I right about your circumstances ?" said she, pausing for a reply. " Yes, Elizabeth," he answered, "I am what you would call rich." "Well," she resumed, "I knew all this ; and, if I had thought of giving you any other regards than such as became our church connection, the improbabilities would have checked me, but I did not. Mr. Ashleigh (reaching out her hand to him), I tell you truly, that I do not love you. It is a new feeling to me. Perhaps I do not very well understand it ; nor will you expect it to come like a ready answer to a short question." "Good! Good!" I shouted. "What a glorious girl! What a world of genius in her simple truthfulness ! What did you say to that, Ashleigh ?" 11 Say to it ? just hold still and you shall hear. Of course, you can't guess ; for you didn't see her face, at that moment, 100 ELIZABETH BARTON. nor read its meaning, as I did. Ah, my dear Doctor 1 it was worth living all one's lifetime and a better life than mine, to witness that transfiguration of perfect womanhood! I wonder if she is not sometimes literally inspired ! ' Well/ I answered : ' you do not love me, Elizabeth, but could you not V I waited long enough to read it all in her face, and then it came in words. 11 ' Mr. Ashleigh, it is in my heart to love you, for you are very noble, as this world goes, more than noble, gener- ous, without a parallel. And, sir, I am what I am ; not unworthy of the love you offer me, nor incapable of return- ing it. I can marry you without a fear. Now, leave me, please ; I wish to be alone.' " And so did I," he added, musingly ; "it seemed as if eternity had opened to me ; and I wanted to be alone in the universe with my emotions." A long pause followed, which I felt, for his hand, and eye and voice helped me to understand it. He resumed : — " Enough of that. You understand it, or will, when you get big enough. We have reached the spot in the road which I wish you to mark particularly, for it concerns your- self more than anybody else, I believe." Here he dropped my hand, which he had held all the way up the ridge, and stiffened himself upon his stirrups, his whip whistled as it cut the air, and the whole man was keyed up as tensely as the texture would bear. " You recollect," he began, " our talk that night at Tobj Myers's. Well, whether our friend Nancy got it in gossip there, or guessed her way to all she discovered, I don't know ; but it was not long after I knew my own secret that she had it very fully. Of course, she noticed my visits to the glen, and I had paid but few of them, after my return from home in February, till she knew all they meant. One ELIZABETH BARTON. 101 day I was coming over and she knew it, and contrived to have me overtake her near the top of the hill. Supposing that she was coming to her uncle's, I, of course, dismounted, and, leading my horse by the bridle, walked beside her. I didn't like her, and I didn't like that she should be in my road where I was going either ; but I must be polite and bear it. 11 We walked on, I in the mood that you may guess, and she occupied and agitated in a fashion that was decidedly alarming. Her manner was more than usually impressive, touched with a little more of that soft seductiveness which coarse people use to humbug verdant ones, than was com- mon with her. Sometimes she fell suddenly silent, with an air of troubled abstractedness, from which she would rouse herself with a sort of impassioned recklessness, which would soon give place again to a turn of tenderness, that, altoge- ther, made an object of me, and shook my nerves into a state that put me at her mercy. " When she talked, it was in her style of glowing elo- • quence, with, I thought, increased concentrativeness of con- ception and utterance. She was, in short, inspired with a strong purpose, and I caught it by contagion. I didn't know what it meant, nor whither tending ; but I was feel- ing and believing something great or terrible in advance, and was prepared for the fact or fancy, when it should come. " When we reached the spot I bade you notice, I was electrified to the right point and she knew it. She stopped suddenly, and turned full upon me, looking, I confess, grandly, — a little too grandly, to be sure, — but still it overcame me. Besides, she had taken advantage of the ground, and so had me in all respects just right for her purposes. " ' Brother Ashleigh,' said she, with a measured earnest- ness that made my heart beat, * you love Elizabeth. I know 102 ELIZABETH BARTON. it ; nor do I wonder that it is so. She is an angel of beauty and goodness. I know her, as her cousin, her playmate, her friend and sister. I know her, as a woman only can know another ; and I declare to you that I never knew her equal in every excellence of heart and life. Her childhood was purer, I believe, than any other's, and she has lived a sinless life, if ever human soul did. Oh ! she has borne the selfishness, the very sins of other's like a saint, — she has borne mine, till I feel humbled before her. And if she had but an equal intellect, an equal sharpness and strength of understanding for her own defence, she would be the very paragon of the world ; and, alas ! would be as happy now as she is good and beautiful.' "Here she stopped, and looked me so pityingly in the face that I held my breath with fear. She saw it ; and clasping her hands upon her bosom, she turned her face toward heaven, with all her passions working into prayer in it, till it grew grand and almost beautiful. I see her face now ; I could paint it at a dash, if I were a painter ; I could stick it in the mist here as plain and palpable as life. Wherever I look, I see it ; it repeats itself, like masks in a fancy dance, wherever my eye turns. The pearly tear that glistens so gracefully in her eye was upon duty, looking like a great rain-drop upon a leaf, with the sun blazing on it, — all but the innocency. An impressive moment she stood, wrapt in a seeming agony of supplication, then her face came down again from its high pitch to the tone of pity. She hesitated — admirably the hesitation was done ; she trembled — the saint sank in the woman — she bent her head upon my shoulder, and sobbed out till I shuddered. Then she roused herself, dashed the tears out of her eyes, and spoke quick, and almost passionately : — " Brother Ashleigh, the Doctor urged this engagement ; ELIZABETH BARTON. 103 he used all his art of persuasion, all his power, upon your noble confidence ; and he abused your trust. While he seemed only to answer your wishes, he in fact started them in your feelings. I know it must have been so, or you could not have been so horribly deceived.' " Well ?" said I, turning my horse square across the road, and clutching his by the mane, " Well ?" "Well, then, she dropped her head again, and seemed really convulsed with grief. Her tears rained upon my shoulder, and ' My poor, poor, ruined cousin ! my good, angel cousin ! my heart's sister V seemed to wrench her very life out in the utterance. A moment's silence, a strong shudder, and it came. Turning quickly from me, she stood droopingiy, while she said, in the deepest tones of grief and shame : ' Her beauty led him into sin, and he must find some one to marry her, for he was himself engaged, and could not ;' and, with a bound, she dashed down the hillside, and was hid from me in the thicket." "Ashleigh!" . "Doctor!" I believe I did as much hard swearing as might serve a pirate for a voyage in the next thirty seconds. I saw the wretch's picture now as plainly as Ashleigh did awhile before, and there seemed to me but one word in English profane enough to name it by — that word was Nancy. It was an oath to me for years after. When I looked round next my friend was just in sight. I waited for him, and when he joined me he was humming a hymn tune, long metre, very solemnly. "Have you any" more refreshing entertainment for me, Mr. Ashleigh?" said I ; "there is a relish about that last tit-bit that gives me an appetite. Why, what a gem of a gipsy we have among us ! That girl ought not to be thrown 104 ELIZABETH BARTON. away upon trifles ; she is fit to plot for a kingdom. Among the fools and scoundrels of the great world she would make a figure. But, tell me what you thought, and said, and did about it. Your first thought first — I'm curious." " My thoughts ! I believe I did no thinking of any kind for an hour. My soul stood still like a frozen cataract. I passed the night in a very quiet sort of stupor. The mere mechan- ism of the mind carries on one's life pretty well, you know ; and, in the morning, I simply told Elizabeth that Nancy must not be invited to our wedding. That was all. And I never said a word about it to her till last week, when she urged me for my reason for the request." " And what did Elizabeth say, Ashleigh, after you told her ?" " She held her breath till my story was finished, and sat astonished and speechless till I left her to recover herself. An hour after she came to me, and said : l George I have poured out my thanks to heaven, and I come to bless you that you did not in any manner mention this to me before our marriage ; for I never could have fulfilled my engage- ment with you, with that horrible pit opened up between us. 7 Again the promise is fulfilled to me, ' Upon all thy glory there shall be a defence.' n The solution is easy. Nancy had wakened up with a sur- prise to find the Reverend Mr. Ashleigh, a splendid preacher, a gentleman of rank and fortune, in love with her poor cousin ! poor, in a sense, to Nancy, that took all the pity out of it ; a spiritless, meek beauty, unconscious of her availabilities in the market, and stupidly devoted to silence, sacrifice and duty. To be undermined, and, in some sense, defrauded, by so simple a sheep of the flock, was almost incredible, but it was not the less certain. And counting upon Mr. Ashleigh's softness, by the same rule which had ELIZABETH BARTON. 105 already misjudged Elizabeth, her plot was adjusted with great skill to the case, and as well executed. But, the devil would be only a fool in heaven, and would fail to make the angels misunderstand each other, whatever other success his villainies might meet with ; for the faith of a pure heart " tries the spirits," and discerns vital truth by its own instincts. THE DUEL. From the commencement of our Revolution till the year 1815, a period of forty years, England was engaged in war without any intermission. These wars were with the thir- teen colonies, or United States, France, Spain, Holland, the French Republic, Bonaparte, and again with the United States ; sometimes singly, sometimes with several of these nations at once. The battle of Waterloo was fought on the 18th June, 1815. That year the army of England amounted to three hundred thousand men ; and in 1845, although she had enjoyed thirty years of peace, her standing army was still one hundred thousand strong. In the time of peace one would think that such a host of soldiers could not be required for any purpose ; and they probably are not, but it is the policy of such governments as that of England to keep as many men in the public ser- vice as possible. To say nothing of other purposes, it is easy, in an army of a hundred thousand soldiers, to have four or five thousand commissioned officers, who generally belong to the class of gentlemen — a class that is found to fur- nish the most useful and thp most submissive slaves to those who feed them. The most useful, because, being well-born, well-educated and well-connected, they are very capable in themselves, and very influential with others ; and most sub- missive, because they are so well paid, and have no other service than public office which it suits them to accept. The army of England is crowded with officers who enter THE DUEL. 107 it merely as a trade or profession, by which they may get a living. A horrid business it is, indeed, to undertake to do any killing of men anywhere that the Government may command, without asking any questions, or knowing or car- ing whether it is right or wrong ! But so it is, when rightly understood ; and yet, we must not be surprised if we find, once in a while, a man too good for such a trade . engaged in it, for it is generally thought honorable, even the most honorable of all professions, and but few stop to inquire if it is also right. My story will introduce the sort of man that is an excep- tion to the rule. To be perfectly candid with my readers, I must inform them that I have forgotten the names of the persons that I am to tell about. The precise place where it happened has also escaped me, but I am sure that it was somewhere in Ireland ; and the exact date is gone, too — but I know that it was after the year 1815, and before the year 1835, for that was the time when I heard it. The general peace of Europe, which followed the fall of 'Napoleon, released the army of England from foreign ser- vice and, after reduction to about one-third of its former number, it was distributed among the military stations within the kingdom and provinces. A large number of the surviving officers of the field of Waterloo were garrisoned in Ireland. They were generally men who had seen hard service, and had earned their honors and offices in the bat- tle-field ; but a considerable number of new men received appointments through favor of their wealthy and powerful friends, and came among the veterans with commissions in their pockets which gave them high rank in the army. The old soldiers, naturally enough, looked upon these raw recruits as mere upstarts and intruders. They despised 108 THE DUEL. them for their inexperience, and hated them for the injustice suffered by their promotion. In a profession where honor is gained by killing the country's enemies, it will scarcely be thought immoral to hate the individual's rivals and sup- pliers. The Apostle John says, that murder and hating one's brother go together. And, taking the military senti- ment for the standard of judgment, it is mean to beg or buy promotion, where other people have to fight for it. But this is done elsewhere, as well as in the British army ; for the offices which are thought the most honorable are often obtained by means the most dishonorable. The hero of my story was in this situation ; and whether he deserved the judgment we have passed upon his class, or not, he certainly suffered it in full measure. He had obtained, by patronage, the appointment of Ensign, after the establishment of peace, and was quartered, with some dozen or twenty officers of Wellington's army, in one of the cities of Ireland. An Ensign is the lowest commissioned officer, and the salary, or pay, is so small that it is a saying, "If an Ensign has wine for dinner, he must go without sup- per." Our Ensign was very poor — he was friendless, very young, and constitutionally shy. On the other hand, the officers of the station were gene- rally well supplied with money, and had nothing to do but spend it ; they lived fast and high, and were, by all their habits and tastes, unpleasant companions for such as he. Besides his retiring manners, there was something else in him which disinclined him to their society, and exposed him to their dislike ; this was a certain air of self-respect, show- ing refinement and culture, and a strict propriety of lan- guage and manners, which quietly, but all the more severely, rebuked their general looseness and rudeness of conduct. They hated him for the manner he entered the army, and THE DUEL. 109 still worse for his personal character and demeanor among them. All this had its effect upon him also, and so the breach between them widened every day. A certain amount and kind of courtesy he was entitled to, by the rules of the service ; this they gave him, but so sharply measured out, that every salute was an affront, and every look an insult, and he might have had cause of quar- rel at any moment that he pleased. It was, in fact, the set- tled purpose of several of these men to drive him out of the army by their incivilities, or to drive him into a duel, and so dispose of him finally. Things grew worse continually. The contempt of the older officers for the young Ensign, and his repugnance to them, increased with every meeting, until they paid no kind of respect to his feelings, and he avoided them with a cau- tion that looked like antipathy. The worst of all was the evident conviction in the minds of the whole garrison that he was a coward — a character most shameful in a soldier, and, in any man, a weakness that renders every other virtue worthless. Poor fellow ! he was alone, friendless, and without a dol- lar in the world but his monthly pay. With these beggarly circumstances he was a scholar and a gentleman, with feel- ings rendered over-sensitive by high culture and recent mis- fortunes. But his chief impediment was a conscience — a religious sense of right, which left him no liberty to relieve himself or mend his prospects by any means which the high- est morality forbade. He suffered much every way, and most of it all he endured for " righteousness sake." Of course he had the strength and nobleness which such a sen- timent bestows ; but it is easier to do great things than to bear little ones. There are more heroes than saints in the world. St. Peter was not afraid of the soldiers in the gar- 110 TtiE DUEL. den, but lie was ashamed of his master in the Judgment Hall. To bear disgrace, and shame, and scorn, to stand quiet under suspicions that drive one out of society, for the sake of a principle which nobody believes or respects — this is cross-bearing. Our young hero occupied the position of a soldier and a gentleman, with the character of a coward and a slave ! It was a bitter cup, and his enemies kept it constantly to his lips. One day he received an invitation, as a matter of course, to dine with the General in command, who had just arrived at the station. A meeting with his brother officers pro- mised him no pleasure, and he was personally a stranger to the General, who knew nothing of him but by report of those who despised him. He managed to arrive at the lat- est allowable moment, and he contrived to procure a seat at table next to the General, who, both as his host and supe- rior officer, was bound to afford him protection from the insolence of the company. I need not say how the dinner hour passed with him. Totally silent and neglected, except for the necessary notice of the General, the time, so full of pleasure to the company, wore away heavy and painful to him ; but he was contented to escape rudeness, and made indifference comparatively welcome. After the cloth was removed the wine circulated, the company drank freely, the mirth grew loud, and the presence of our young friend was nearly forgotten, until a circum- stance of a startling character brought him into notice. The General suddenly cried out, " Gentlemen, I have lost my watch — I had it in my hand ten minutes ago, but it is gone." A painful suspense instantly followed ; every man exchanged glance s with his neighbor,' until at last every eye THE DUEL. Ill settled with suspicion upon the young Ensign. Who but he, of all the company, could be guilty of such a crime ? Besides, he was, perhaps, the only man near enough to the General to effect the theft. Such thoughts as these were in every mind — they left not a shade of doubt. The miser- able wretch was caught at last ; and there was as little pity as respect felt for him. " Shut the door," shouted the Colonel of the regiment, " let no man leave the room. The watch is among us, and it concerns every man present to fix the guilt where it belongs. I propose that a search be instantly made, and let it begin with me." "By no means," interposed the General. "It shall not be so. No gentleman is capable of such an act. A hundred watches are not worth the impeachment of any gentleman's honor. Say no more about it. It has no special value above its price, and I care nothing about that." " But, General," said the Colonel, " the watch is in the room. One of us must have it," looking sternly at the young Ensign, " and the rascal must be driven from the station. We cannot have a pickpocket among us, and we cannot con- sent to leave it a moment in doubt who the wretch really is. There is no fear that the shame will fall in any unexpected place. We must finish the fellow now, and be done with him." The Ensign sat steady, motionless and pale as death. Every eye was fixed .upon him, and to every eye the signs of guilt were perfectly clear. The General had no doubt of it, and he was the more anxious to prevent the search on this account ; but he was overcome, and submitted. A few minutes sufficed for the examination of every one present, till it came to the Ensign, who was left purposely to the last. " Now, young man," said the Colonel turning and advanc- 112 THE DUEL. ing toward him, "now, sir, it is your turn ;" his face look- ing perfectly savage with scorn and hate. " The watch, sir, without a word or a moment's delay !" But a terrific change had passed upon the long-suffering, patient boy. He sprang from his seat with a scream so wild, so fierce, and so full of agony that every heart stood still a moment with surprise. In that moment he had planted himself against the wall, drawn his sword, and taken the attitude of defence. " Come you to search we, sir, as you would a suspected thief ? On your life, I warn you not to offer me that indig- nity. My dead body you may search, but not my living- one. Approach now if you dare. I defy the whole of you as one man I" Instantly the Colonel crossed swords with him in furious combat. " Hold ! peace ! arrest them !" cried the General, and sprang forward himself to prevent the affray. At the first step, the watch rolled on the floor ! He had missed his fob, and now the watch fell from its concealment in the violence of his movements. The company was electrified. The con- duct of the Ensign was inexplicable ! He had braved destruction, risked his reputation, and perilled his life, on a point of honor too nice for his superiors to feel ; and he had insulted and defied them all in one breath, and there he stood justified and victorious before them ! It was too much to bear, for they ^rere too much excited to understand it. Their determination was taken, and the company dispersed with resolutions set, and purposes inflexi- ble. The General seized the opportunity to apologize to the Ensign for the unhappy mistake which led to the quarrel, and requested him to call upon him that evening at a late hour. THE DUEL. 113 Our hero was scarcely in his own room till the Colonel's challenge was presented to him. Without a moment's delay he answered the second who brought it : "I will not accept this challenge to mortal combat. I am opposed to the duel on principle, and I will not be driven from my sense of duty. You all know what I have already endured rather than revenge or defend myself by taking life. I think you have done your worst, but if not, I am prepared for it. I am my own master, and will not allow any man to dictate my opinions in a matter of right, or compel me to conduct which my heart and head condemn. 11 Sir," replied the second, " you have seen fit to include me among the men who despise you, and you are right in that opinion. Let me tell you, that cowardice and conceit, covered with preaching and canting, will not protect you. You have grossly insulted every gentleman in the garrison, to whom you were odious enough before, and you must either give them the satisfaction which the code of honor approves, or you must leave the army. Be assured of that." When he met the General that night, and informed him of the challenge and his refusal, that officer shook his head and looked at him sadly and earnestly, if not doubtfully. " My dear young friend," said he, " I am afraid it won't do. These men will not be satisfied with an argument, and it is plain that you are not the man to make an apology while convinced that you are right, nor do I believe that they would accept anything short of your resignation. You have somehow got the ill-will of the whole corps, and to-night you affronted them mortally. I am sure you cannot know how sharply your conduct and language touched them, and your triumph only aggravated the offence. And, now, your refusal to accept the Colonel's challenge is, under the most favorable construction, an attack upon the code by which 114 THE DUEL. military men govern themselves toward each other. I see no escape. Fight you must, or your challenger will heap upon you such personal indignities as will make your life intoler- able, or drive you into violence, which will amount to the same thing as accepting his challenge. I saw that in your eye to-day which convinces me that you are as brave as Julius Csesar. Yes, I saw something there braver than mere phy- sical courage, and I felt its superiority ; but, you cannot convert the world and reform the army soon enough to answer your own ends, and you must submit to its rules, or be driven from it in disgrace. I honor your principles, for I under- stand them, but you cannot maintain them." Our hero's reflections that night must be left to imagina- tion. The difficulties which surrounded him, the compulsions that were upon him, can be known only to those who have been tempted and tried to the utmost, with the world and their own necessities against them. In the morning he accepted the challenge. Having the right to choose the weapons, he named the small-sword. When the Colonel heard this, with a touch of feeling, which all his bitterness could not quite extinguish, he said : " Does the moth know that he is fluttering into the flame?" The second answered, "I told him that you are reputed the best swordsman in the army, and begged him to choose pistols, which would give him some chance of equality in the fight, but he declined. In fact, I don't know what to make of this young fellow — like the sword that he has chosen to fight with, he is so limber, and yet so elastic and mettlesome, sometimes ; he is such a mixture of methodist, mule and madman, that I cannot make him out. And, Colonel, he is not a light bargain, either, for anybody. It seems to me that you were making nothing off him, yester- day, when the General interfered. The fellow actually stood THE DUEL. 115 up handsomely, and made very pretty play with his weapon. To tell the truth, I'm beginning to like him a little, and I feel sorry that he must be disposed of in your peculiar way." The Colonel muttered, grimly, " If I must kill the rascal, I'm glad he shows some pluck and capacity in the business ; I don't want to be a boy-butcher." The next morning, at early sunrise, they met on the field of honor. When the ground was prepared, and the champions stood armed and ready, the Ensign suddenly lowered his sword point, and, addressing his antagonist, said : " Sir, I am here under compulsion, merely. I do not consent to this practice. To me - it is absurd as it is wicked. It settles no right, and it redresses no wrong. Let me say, then, that if my patience has given way under my persecutions, and if I have, by a hasty word or act, justly offended you, I am willing to retract it. What is your complaint ?" " Young man, I came here not to preach, but to fight. I came here not to confer with you about nice points in casu- istry, but to punish your impudence ; but, if you have no relish for that, I will spare your life, on condition that you leave the army — take your choice." The Ensign's answer was prompt and firm : "You will have it so — I am guiltless," and the fencing began. The seconds and witnesses had never seen such a display of skill, and they never dreamed of such a result. In five minutes the Colonel was disarmed, and at the mercy of the insulted and outraged boy ! Heated by the struggle, and excited by the imminent peril and bloody bitterness and fury of his enemy, he turned from him somewhat haughtily, with — "I have taught you a lesson in sword-play, and now I will set you another. 116 THE DUEL. which you need even more — an example of moderation in success." The ColonePs mortification and rage seemed to know no bounds. " I accept no favors from such a canting, phrase-making sentimentalist — such a mere fencing-master — such a trickster and conjuring sword-player as you are," the Colonel burst out through his grinding teeth. " You knew well, what you were about when you chose these toys to play tricks with. If you have a sentiment of honor left in you, let me have pistols. I tell you this quarrel is not made up. I will not have my life at your gift. You shall take it or I will take yours. The quarrel is to the death, and there is a blow to clinch it," striking at the Ensign in a transport of passion, which he avoided with equal coolness and dexterity. The seconds interfered, and even the spectators cried shame ; but it was clear enough that blood must flow before the parties should quit the ground. The Ensign's second, carried away by the excitement, urged him to accept the new challenge or change of conditions, for he despaired of any other adjustment. " Will nothing satisfy this madman but my life ?" said the young officer, deeply agitated. " You have made him mad," said the second, " and there is nothing left for it but a fatal issue. You have the right to refuse, having already spared his life, and I will sustain you ; but I do not advise it, for it will be unavailing in the end." "I have gone too far," replied the Ensign, sadly, "too far from the line of strict principle, to recover it now. I cannot any longer say that I am opposed to fighting ; I have broken down that defence by yielding to an expediency which I thought a safe one. Oh, it is horrible ! I did not dream this morning that I might die a fool's death to-day." THE DUEL. 117 " You will accept the offer/' hastily interposed the second ; "you must be a good shot, with such an eye and hand, and such self-possession as you have shown to-day. If your pis- tol matches your sword you cannot miss him, and upon my soul, he deserves it, and I say let him have it. You accept." The Ensign stood silent. The ground was measured, the pistols prepared, and the combatants stationed. The word was given. One — two — three. The Colonel's pistol was discharged at the instant, and the Ensign stood untouched. He had reserved his fire, and had the right now to take deliberate aim. Steadily he raised the deadly weapon till it bore point blank upon the Colonel's heart, and there it rested a minute in terrible suspense ; not a nerve quivered, not a limb trembled in either, and the spectators helcT their breath hushed as the death they waited for. But suddenly wheeling, the Ensign marked a post in a different direction, at twice the distance of his antagonist, and, pulling the trigger, delivered his ball in it, breast-high. It was a centre shot, and instantly fatal if a living man had stood there. The next instant, throwing down the pistol with decision that could not be mistaken, he cried out : "I will go no farther in this wicked folly. If there is nothing else left for me but murder or submission, I will submit." The grandeur of his position was too striking now to be mistaken or denied. The Colonel was the first to acknow- ledge it. Twice within the hour he owed a life to the mag- nanimity of a man he had so much abused. That man stood now vindicated, even by the hard laws of war and honor — ■ he was neither trickster nor coward. Possibly the Colonel felt something of the higher nobility of the young man's principles, but I will not be sure of that. He found him brave and generous, and that was enough, without looking deeper for the hidden springs of the nobler life within him. US THE DUEL. Advancing to him, he offered his hand, apologized frankly for all his misconduct, acknowledged his misconception of the character which he had put to so severe a trial, and added that he was willing to owe his life to "the bravest man he had ever met, either as friend or foe." " Brave !" said the young man with the color mounting to cheek and brow. " Brave ! Colonel — pardon me — Heaven pardon me ! True bravery consists in refusing to fight altogether. But I have betrayed a principle which I should have valued more than life ; I have risked my life — not for that principle, but to satisfy a caprice — I am the miserable hero of a miserable falsehood, instead of the mar- tyr of a great truth. I have lost confidence in myself and men's prrises only mock me." BUFF. When I was a very little boy I had a very big dog. He took his name from his color — it was Buff — not from his character, for he was as remarkable for magdoganimity as for strength and courage. He was very patient, too; all the worry and work that a seven-year old urchin could inflict upon him in a long holiday never disturbed his equicaniani- mity. He probably had once been a puppy, but no one who knew him would think of uncoiling such an inference from the principles of natural history to his prejudice — he was every inch and every ounce a dog, and one of the biggest BUFF. 119 and noblest of the race, at that. How he hated the harness of my little wagon in summer, and board-sled in winter! He was faithful, and fond of his little master; but naturally enough, while he performed the duties and felt the sentiments of a dog, he resisted the degradation of a hack. Xothing else ever made him exhibit any doggedness of temper. I never caught him in a sneak except when he was trying to escape the collar and traces; nor at a dodge, except when a hole in a fence, or the low door of his dormitory, offered him the opportunity of stripping me off his back. My troubles and tumbles of this sort often ruffled my temper with him; but more mature reflection has long since reconciled me to his conduct in this respect, and in the "late remorse of love,"' I admit that he was right. Alas, poor Buff! Every dog, they say, has his day; but Buff's was shamefully shortened. A beggar poisoned him; for it was a principle with him never to let a tatterdemalion cross our door-step. He had an opinion and a post to maintain — he had some dignity of his own, and, of course, a decent indignation against vaga- bonds deficient in both dress and address. He suspected them of fleas, perhaps; perhaps of felony; anyhow, he could not abide them; and if it was only a capricious antipathy, I don't think it a very serious impeachment of his otherwise unquestionable philanthropy. He may have been a reformer, and had amission; and for that reason, must be excused if he garrisoned the premises with rather severe fidelity. 1 doubt not that excellent authorities can be found for growling and barking alarmingly for conscience's sake, and I claim the benefit for the justification of Buff; the more by token that the poor fellow fell a martyr to it at last. See, there is a doctrine and a parable even in the life and death of a clog. One day — how well I remember the day — I was trying to drive a family of refractory pigs out of the yard, and, after 120 BUFF. a dozen failures, called upon Buff for assistance. He had been looking on contemplatively for half an hour, while the struggle lasted, without offering any assistance or exhibiting any interest in the matter, and now absolutely refused to interfere. There was another witness of my perplexity — my father was standing on the porch, very quietly waiting for the result. A regular fight had begun with Buff for his insolent indifference and downright disobedience ; but, detect- ing the presence, and hoping for the interposition of the para- mount authority, I began m y complaint with, "Papa, what is the reason that Buff won't hunt these pigs ?" "Why, William, don't you know that a big dog will not worry little pigs ? If you want to have help at a mean little job, you must employ a puppy in the service." Buff was fairly vindicated, and I had a lesson which has served me many a time since. Just then I felt only the rebuke, without at all relishing it, and, indeed, without fully understanding its philosophy. That night, after saying my daily prayer, and feeling as good as if I had been whipped, or praised, or pardoned some little iniquity, and had my account with the world and the world to come happily squared, and at liberty to begin again, I renewed the complaint and apology by saying, "But, papa, what is the reason that Buff oughtn't to worry little pigs when they are in the yard, where they have no business to be ?" "Why, see here, my son; little pigs have some rights, even when they are doing wrong. Haven't they V } "No; I don't see how they can be right when they are wrong." Smiling in a way that made me think I was not quite up to the argument, although I could not see the kink in it, he answered: BUFF. 121 "Well, then, if pigs are not quite right when they are wrong; or, what is a very different thing, if they have no rights when they are in anything wrong — as, for instance, in the wrong yard or wrong trough — little boys and little dogs may, nevertheless, be wrong in their way of turning them out — may they not ?" " I suppose so ; but " — " Come, come, William ; you can defend yourself any other time. Buff knows we are talking about him, and he is pres- sing in between us here, and looking at you, as much as to say, Little master, I can't speak for myself, you know. Do listen to what papa is going to say for me," "Get away, Buff," was my answer; "you have your great big paw on my toe that has a splinter in it." " He has a worse grip of you than that, William : he has you in the wrong. Put up your little foot, and let me see that dreadful sore toe. Tut, there is no splinter there." "But there was one, yesterday. See how red it is." " Red, William ; it isn't as red as your face ; and I know it doesn't hurt you as badly as you feel somewhere else." "I want to go to bed, papa." "No, no, my boy ; you are too wide awake just now for that. You have not been so wide awake, all over and all through, for a week ; and I want you to reflect, while you lie awake to think over this matter, that there are some things and some ways of doing things, that are unworthy of anything but puppies and mean people : no matter what wrongs they undertake to correct. You wouldn't smother a poor little pig in a puddle X ecause it happened to be tres- passing on your play-ground. You wouldn't kick a little baby with your boots on, for taking your piece of bread and but- ter that happened to fall within its reach, any more than Buff would crush the bones of a little pig for playing in the yard 6 122 BUFF. It is not what a wrong-doer may seem to deserve when you are angry, but what is becoming to yourself, that you should do. Now, my son, shake hands with Buff — poor Buff — and then with me, and go to your little bed. There, that's right ; now run along.' 7 "But, papa"— "Never mind, now ; go, and don't walk as if you were carrying a weight, nor look as if it were too heavy for you. Open your window, for the robins will be singing in the apple-tree in the morning ; your dear little toe will be well as ever, and you will be as happy and merry as a bird again. You will be my own brave boy; and when you get to be a big one, you'll understand Buff." The moral of my story, as applied to the hunters of men, is — altered a little from the original — " In all your service, copy Buff." "TRIAL BY BATTEL." A duel is a fight between two persons with deadly weapons, according to some established rules, for the pur- pose of deciding a quarrel. In past "times it was much in use, under various forms, and upon various grounds and pretences. In our day it gets but little countenance from public opinion, and the laws of most civilized countries declare that the killing of a man in a duel is murder, and shall be punished as such. But the duel was not only allowed in England in early times, but it was actually appointed and employed as a legal method of trial in certain kinds of lawsuits about property, and in criminal charges generally. Indeed, this "trial by wager of battle," as it was called, was not abolished by law until the year 1811, though it had not been actually used since the time of Charles the First, or about two hundred years ago. It was introduced into English law by "William the Conqueror (in the year 1066), who brought it with him from Normandy, as a part of that barbarous and superstitious system of mili- tary government which he established upon the ruins of the ancient Saxon institutions. The Germans, when they were first known to the Romans, had this custom ; and among the Goths, in the country now called Sweden, it was, in like manner, a mode of trying suits at law. The first written authority for these judicial combats is found in the laws of Burgundy, A. D. 500. In England for six hundred years, down till a century after the Reformation, the trial by bat- tle was in actual use under the laws of the land. It was 124 TRIAL 3Y BATTEL, resorted to as an appeal to " the God of battles," in the belief that he would give the victory to the party that had the right. The cases tried in this way were of the kinds in which there was some uncertainty, or difficulty, or impossi- bility of settlement by courts and juries upon the usual kinds of evidence and proof — in disputed land titles, for instance. In that early time written deeds and wills were not in use ; and when claims were set up which were so old that the witnesses were dead, or of any kind that the courts could not certainly determine, they were referred to this supernatural sort of decision. In criminal charges, if the offender was caught in the act, he was not allowed his appeal to arms ; but whenever there was a doubt, he might chal- lenge his accuser to decide it by combat. One of the oldest English law-writers justifies this custom by the example of the combat between David, on the part of the Israelites, and Goliah, the champion of the Philistines. So the Bible has been quoted in past times as authority for wrong doing, and so it is still perverted and abused in our own day. In civil cases — that is, in suits about property — the bat- tle was not fought by the parties to the suit, but by their champions, hired or otherwise obtained for the purpose. It is very likely that bullies were hired then as lawyers are now — to beat each other, only in a different way — a hard head then, a well-filled one now — stout arms then, a nimble tongue now ; and, in both, willingness to fight for either side of any case. In criminal cases, the combat was required to be in person, and not by attorney or champion, which means the same thing. But if either the accused or accuser were a woman, a priest, or under twenty-one years of age or over sixty, or lame or blind, such person might refuse the challenge, and have the case tried by a jury. When the battle was appointed and the combatants "trial by battel." 125 entered the field, they took an oath in which each declared that his cause was just ; and where the champions fought for hire, they took the same oath, and furthermore swore that they used no magic, sorcery, or enchantment. The precise words of this last declaration were these — " Hear this, ye justices, that I have this day neither ate, drank, nor have upon me neither bone, stone, nor grass, nor any enchant- ment, sorcery, or witchcraft, whereby the law of God may be abased, or the law of the devil exalted. So help me God and his saints." The judges attended these legal combats in their robes of office, that they might witness the result and give judgment in the suit accordingly. But the battle was not fought with deadly weapons, and death seldom ensued. Each party was furnished with a baton or staff an ell long (about four feet), and a four-cornered leathern target for defence. If the defendant in the action could maintain his defence till the stars appeared in the evening, or killed his antagonist, or forced him to yield and cry " craven," his defence was judged . complete. If he yielded, or was killed, his case was decided against him. In criminal charges, if the accuser killed the accused, it was taken for the decision of Providence ; or if he pressed him so hard that he could not or would not fight any longer, he was condemned and punished forthwith as guilty. On the other hand, if the accuser was conquered, he was pronounced infamous, and could never be a juror or a witness in any case afterwards, because, as it was said, he had sworn to a falsehood, and charged an innocent man with a crime. All the reasoning for this trial by battle, or legal duel, turned upon the presumption that in the kind of cases where human judgments were doubtful, the Divine Providence would decide the appeal as the real justice of the case 126 "trial by required. Wars between different nations, and armed rebel- lions against despotic Governments, rest upon the same notion of presumed interference by Providence in disputes where there are no earthly courts or judges to decide between the parties. The trial by battle is the way that nations " go to law n now. One would think that the result of wars being so often manifestly against the right, and in favor of the wrong, the world would give up this supersti- tious notion ; but it is, nevertheless, true, that the weaker side at least, and the oppressed party, in all wars and revo- lutions, always take up arms in some confidence that the " God of Battles " will somehow fight for the right. And curiously enough, too, where the opposed armies are of the same religion, and even of the same nation also, they have clergymen, called army chaplains, who daily make public prayers to the same God for victory to both sides ! If these preachers in the opposite camps could be brought together into one prayer-meeting, each party calling upon the Supreme Being for the overthrow and destruction of the other, they would appear to us as they must appear to the angels. Good angels must weep and evil angels laugh at such a sight. The revolutionists all over Europe, in the year 1848 and 1849, went to battle against kings and tyrants in this belief of the Divine assistance in killing their oppressors. Yet they were everywhere beaten by the superior force of their enemies, or by divisions and treachery among themselves. So far as we have been considering the duel between individuals and between nations, in the cases where it is either believed or pretended that Heaven will decide the trial according to justice, we need add no words to show how idle and foolish such a faith is. The words of Jesus to Peter in the Garden of Gethsemane are his answer to this ''trial by battel." 127 whole question — " Put up thy sword into its place ; for all they that take the sword shall perish by the sword." He would not employ or authorize one man to take the life of another. He that enjoins the forgiveness of injuries and the love of enemies can never help us to kill them. Besides, He adds that he has "more than twelve legions of angels" at his command, if he wished to destroy men's lives. (Mat- thew xxvi. 52, 53.) But the duel now has not the hardihood to call itself any- thing better than honorable revenge, or murder with fair play and an equal risk to both parties. It is no longer resorted to on any pretence that God will take part in the horrible struggle, and decide for the right, but it is under- taken in open defiance to the laws of God and man : u And if the holiest name is there, 'Tis more in blasphemy than prayer." This is bad enough and wicked enough, and more so than one could think reasonable human beings could be guilty of ; but it is sometimes, perhaps always, more or less mean or cowardly, as well as brutal and bloodthirsty. More than one challenge has been given and accepted, and many a duel has been fought, too, in which one or both of the parties has felt as much of fear as of malignity. Duels arise in this way : Some one, having too little regard for justice or truth or good manners to govern his tongue and conduct with pro- priety, does another an injury, or offers him an insult. Xow, such a man is more likely to be a coward than a brave man in even the lowest sense of the word ; for sound courage is made up of confidence in one's self, in the Tightness of his own conduct and intentions, in the approbation of the good and wise, and in the Divine support. But the wrong- doer has none of these reliances, and he can have nothing 128 but mere animal hardihood to maintain him against the natural fear of truth and justice which threaten him with open shame, and this fear takes away all the proper man- liness of his daring. Audacity is not bravery, for it is blind and unprincipled, and will not support a man one moment in the presence of light and truth. But, the innocent and injured party in a quarrel may be a good and true man. Yes, and he will remain so until feel- ings of revenge and thoughts of murder drown out his bet- ter nature, and make him fierce, selfish, and reckless of right and duty. Can a good man consent to kill one whom a wife or child or parent loves, however unworthy that one may be ? Can a good man disobey all rightful authority ? Can a good man be absolutely relentless and cruel ? Alas ! when the demon of revenge and blood takes possession he drives out every virtue and every feeling that enters into the character of a brave man ; for where all law is defied there is no respect left for honor or fair play, and the mad- dened monster will take all the advantages which cowardice itself asks against a foe. Moreover, in nine cases out of ten, one or both the persons engaged enter into it, not willingly, but by a force which he has not quite courage enough to resist. He is really more afraid of the character of coward than of the little risk of a fight. Some bad friend, who cares nothing for another's risk, tells him that he must fight, and he suffers himself to be bullied into it. He sends a chal- lenge or accepts one in the hope that the quarrel may be made up before the fatal meeting, or, at the worst, after an ineffectual shot has been exchanged. In a word, he gets into it as other people commit other crimes — with a blind hope that the worst consequences may be somehow escaped. And then, there is the hope of getting credit for the very thing he most wants — courage. Oh, how anxious the coward "trial by battel." 129 is for a character. So between the force of fools' opinions, which are strong with him, and the chance of escape, which is quite promising, and the prospect of a brag affair, the poor fellow will manage to pick up as much extemporaneous pluck as might help him to be hanged pretty decently if he happened to be going to the gallows instead of the field of honor. In favorable circumstances, with everything to help and everybody looking on, the most shabby fellows generally contrive to make a tolerable show of themselves. There is always and everywhere a grand difference between the lofty daring that becomes a man, and the poor counterfeit appear- ance that is put on to get the reputation of a man. But — we have a story to tell that will show up this matter better and more pleasantly than we can do it in a dull argument. 6* 130 MORTUART, Monstrous and false in form, But true and beautiful in promise ; "Wisdom and love, with savage force allied ! The plan, the purpose, and the means — The thought and will of God achieved Through discipline of pain! Vigilant, relentless, yet beneficent the law ; The wounds flow wine, the flesh is bread. Caucasus in calvary resolved ; The vulture slain, and the cross crowned. ^Saiit is not punishment, and there is no I^atft. The world's hope but waits the great atonement, Each serving to his brother's use and suffering for his sin, And the divine for all. And the sacrifice shall not cease, nor justice reign Until Faith stands rendered into knowledge, And worship incorporates with work — Till the world's life obeys its science. And man is organized in unity With max, with nature, and with god. The universe is one — reconciliation is redemption — harmony is heaven. " The mystery hidden from the ages," Rendered by this key — The Sphinx shall perish, the curse cease, and death and hell be swallowed up in MORTUARY. i;n EXPLANATION OF THE SKETCH. Mr. Sartain's " Lot," in the Monument Cemetery of Philadelphia is a right- angled parallelogram, thirty-three feet by twelve. Close-planted cedar trees give to its two longer sides walls of evergreen. At the entrance of the avenue thus formed stand two Obelisks (monolyth) bearing a brief record of the interments. At the end of the avenue, and closing it, is the structure which supports the group represented by the engraving: it is in the form of the propylseum, gateway, or entrance to the court or vestibule of the ancient Egyptian temple. The structure, including the statuary, is sixteen feet high, the base seven. The Sphinx is four feet in length; the Psyche, four in height; or "small life size." They are metallic. The monument is of stone. On its plain centre slab or tablet is the inscription given on the opposite page, 132 MORTUARi. In the apprehension that the Sphinx symbolizes the Design, the End, and the Discipline of life, the Minerva head, Yenus bosom, and brute body represent, respectively, the Wisdom, Love, and Corrective Force which rule in the economy of man's earthly existence. The fabulous monster serves as well to signify the mixed intelligence, affections, and animal instincts of the human constitution. The Greeks gave it the head and breasts of a woman, a human voice, the body of a dog, the tail of a ser- pent, the wings of a bird, and the paws of a lion, — human, reptile, quadruped and bird. The Egyptians made it some- thing less complex in form, but evidently intended an equal comprehensiveness of allusion. Employed here only for the higher significance of the Myth, its expressive intimation of the creative mind, benevolent aim, and providential policy, apparent in the history of human existence, are mainly intended ; and the accomodations and additions in the symbolism of the group and decorations are made to conform to this purpose. The sacred Tau of the Egyptians, suspended upon the bosom of the Sphinx by a necklace, formed of a serpent with its tail in its mouth, indicates the eternal creative energy. The figure of Psyche, or type of the soul, rests lightly upon the body of the Sphinx ; her right arm around its neck ; in her left hand a butterfly — immortality solving the enigma of sublunary life. The group of statuary rests upon the capping-stone of the monument ; below it, upon the cornice of the entablature, is a figure in alto relievo mourning over the ashes in a funeral urn, unmindful of the ascending spirit, symbolized by the winged flame, which forms in the composition the balance and contrast on the one side to the urn on the other. In MORTUARY. 133 the cove cornice, immediately below the figure of Grief, the general form of Egyptian decoration is observed, with the difference of substituting for their winged globe an hour-glass encircled with an endless serpent. The design of the Monument, the model of the statuary, and the drawing engraved, are by Mr. Sartain. The Inscription was intended to be enigmatical. The underlying idea is that all religious faiths have a central cor- respondence, traceable through their diverse traditions and formulas ; and, that all are so far true as they are universal; thus, the Wisdom and Love of God are known of all men ; the goodness and severity of his providence are their hope and fear. Prometheus, the man-maker of the Greek mythology, so far corresponds to the Christ of the Christian system, that he is chained upon his rock from the beginning of the offence, as the Lamb is " slain (or nailed to his cross) from the foundation of the world v — the woes of earth echoed in the passion of the Creator till the sacrifice shall cease. Both the Greek and Christian system say of their vice- gerent Divinity " he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows ; yet, we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God f and afflicted." The parallelism of the Representative Man of the heathen creed and the " Second Adam n of Christianity is obvious in the most essential points : The cross of Calvary and the rock of Caucasus abide the curse till the atonement is complete and the redemption achieved. The Myth of the Sphinx is well rendered, in one of its striking aspects, by the idea that Life propounds its riddle to every traveller, destroying those who fail to solve it, and that the monster is fated to perish when its mystery is made known. When the disciples came to Jesus and asked him " Why speakest thou unto the multitude in parables ? " he answered and said unto them, "Because it is given unto you to 134 MORTUARY. know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given." It is just as true of the insurgent physical forces of nature, and of the disturbed social relations of men, that they must be subdued and harmonized by the discoveries of natural science. This consummation is the world's hope. The oracle of Apollo declared that when the Sphinx's riddle should be resolved, there would be an end of the evil which she wrought on the earth. Isaiah the Evangelical prophet, Peter the apostle of the Messiah, and John the revelator of " the things which shall be hereafter," speaking for the past, the present and future of the Church, say, "We look for new heavens, and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness ; " and Paul, the grand expositor of the faith as it is received among us, declares that a time cometh when all rule, and all autho- rity, and all power (all executive government) shall be put under his feet — the feet of the Son of Man. Moreover " the Son (the representative man ; certainly not the Divinity) shall also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all." In other words, conformity to the divine order shall be spontaneous. Then the Wisdom and Love will be severed from their Sphinx-like union with disciplinary force ; Law will govern without penal sanctions ; and Liberty will reign in universal harmony — the Sphinx shall perish, the atonement cease, and "all that have followed Him in the regeneration," "filling up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ," " being partakers of his sufferings, may be glad, also, with exceeding joy when his glory shall be revealed." So the atonement is laid upon all ; the patriot, sage and saint, in their several degrees, giving their lives for their brethren, take up 4heir cross and follow Him. FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1848. 135 that " having suffered with him, they may also reign with him." In a lower application of the oracle, it is noteworthy that Hercules, the type of all-conquering labor, slew the vulture of Prometheus ; suggesting that the evil of the natural world must be overcome by heroic industry — that Labor, the Im- manuel, the perpetual creator, the God-with-us, must subdue the enmity of matter and release humanity from its physical bondage and suffering. FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1848. The steam-ship Cambria, which left Liverpool on the 21th Feb., and arrived at New York on Saturday morning last, brought all the details yet received of the revolution which commenced in Paris on the 2 2d. The latest tele- graphic despatch from Paris is dated 1 o'clock, A.M., Feb. 26th. The events of three days only are embraced in the reports received ; but these suffice to establish -the fact of the complete overthrow of the throne, the flight of Louis Philippe, the institution of a provisional government, and the probable erection of a republic. We have neither room for the particulars of this glorious achievement, nor language to express the emotions which it has awakened. The most malignant despotism in Europe is 136 FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 18 4 8. demolished, and the greatest of her oppressed nations is free! Ever since that bastard birth of the three glorious days of 1830 has been upon the throne, he has been laboring to blast its aims and disappoint its purposes ; he has shackled the the press, abridged popular representation, and resisted the generous spirit of social reform. Abusing the trust reposed in him, he steadily advanced from one stage of encroachment upon the rights of the people to another, until virtually he took the attitude of open war against the French nation. He fortified Paris, garrisoned it with 100,000 troops and sentinelled the kingdom with 300,000 more. Thus secured and provided, he addressed himself to the work of extinguish- ing the last spark of popular liberty. His police courts punished the slightest indications of the reform spirit, whe- ther they occurred in political papers, industrial tracts, theological essays or album poetry, until the censorship of the press became as petty in its details, as it was sweeping in extent and monstrous in spirit. To guard himself against the danger of free speech he forbade the assemblies of the people, their processions and banquets, by which they sought to promote the peaceable redress of grievances and the pro- gress of political and social reform. This last aggression brought on the crisis. He attempted to prevent a grand Convention of the reformers, appointed for the 22d of Feb. The people, nevertheless, gathered in multitudes in the streets — they were dispersed by the regular troops — they assem- bled again and again, and as often met the military in all the confidence of right and all the courage of a generous enthu- siasm. The masses offered themselves not so much for battle as in sacrifice to the soldiery, and in a spirit that rendered their slaughter impossible even to mercenaries. The National Guard sympathized with the people, and from them the army caught the contagion and declared for reform, FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1848. 131 On the 24th the King abdicated in favor of the Count de Paris. It was too late. Friday, a republic was proclaimed, and, in the name of the sovereign people, a provisional govern- ment was published, among whom we recognize Arago, the astronomer, Lamartine, and Louis Blanc, a distinguished writer of the Fourierite school. The same day an order was issued, in the name of the French people, in which the meet- ing of the Ex- Chamber of Peers was interdicted, signed by the members of the provisional government. In the progress of these affairs the Tuilleries was captured by the people, the furniture destroyed, and the throne burnt in the street. The army had abandoned the defence of the palace, and the royal family fled from the city. Five hundred of the citizens, no more, were killed in the sev- eral affrays, and the last accounts reported the fighting at an end and the peace and order of the city restored. Come what may of all this, the event fills us with the deepest religious joy. Physical force of the most imposing magnitude has once more been met by moral power and dis- , armed as by enchantment. Despotism has been taught that standing armies are no security for thrones ; that might melts away in the august presence of right. Cobbling conservatism has an opportunity to compare itself with regenerating radi- calism; the quickest and best way of redressing hoary-headed grievances is demonstrated, and the Solomons of Political Science have learned that whether the people are fit to gov- ern themselves or not they intend to do it. The French people in their first Revolution had to fight their way up through such depths of debasement and dark- ness that they grew savage in the desperate strife. Like King David, their hands were so full of blood when their enemies were all conquered, that they were unfit to build the temple. They had, like him, however, collected the most 138 FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 184 S. magnificent materials, and in 1830 it went up almost without the sound of a hammer. But a new dispensation has been given; the sacrifices of the old became intolerable, and its ritual a mockery, and now in three days it is overturned; not one stone is left upon ancther, and its ministrations are dis- tributed over the whole discipleship of republican liberty. We don't want to frighten good people into philosophical fits with our fanaticism. We hold the same creed for the world which they do for themselves, and only ask that its doctrines shall receive universal application. Nor do we mean to construe it so rigidly, even in favor of life and liberty, as to affirm that all men are born equal in all things, but only that all men ought to be held equal before the laws in those respects in which they are equal before God. We believe, indeed, that " different measures of the same spirit are given unto every man to profit withal," but we cannot therefore agree that any one shall monopolize his neighbor's. share be- cause it happens to be a small one. In a word, our notion is that the Creator made every man purposely, and that he will answer that purpose if he is as well managed' as he is made. The old doctrine of the social compact, which holds that men must surrender an indefinite number of their rights, upon entering into society, in order to secure the balance, is a most villainous philosophy, invented by Prerogative, to justify its frauds upon human rights to any extent which might suit its own convenience. It bases itself upon the falsehood that, isolation is the state of nature, and society a matter of con- vention. The truth is, that man is social by his constitution, as much as sheep and crows are gregarious by theirs; and every faculty and power given to him is capable of harmoni- ous and beneficent action in the social and political organi- zations adapted to human nature. It would reproach the wisdom and power of the most ordinary mechanic, if he put FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1848. 139 one wheel more or less into a machine than its movements required; and it would be no less discreditable to him, if he made any of them so weak or so strong as to endanger the rest by its legitimate play. If the existing order is incom- patible with the liberty of all, it is the fault of the institution ; mend that; don't mar the man. Moreover, it is less expensive of life and happiness for men to govern themselves any way they please, than to be gov- erned by a few in the way which they don't like. Moreover again, men cannot in fact be governed by anybody any bet- ter than they are capable of, and that much they can do for themselves. People talk of anarchy and despotism as if convulsions were more dangerous than consumption. It is nonsense; authority sheds more blood, breaks more hearts, and crushes more greatness in any month, than popular revolutions and popular governments do in a century. Five hundred people were killed in Paris the other day — what then ? The invio- lability of life is not in its continuance but in its freedom. Killing people dead is not the crime of crimes ; killing them alive — the death that never dies — is the essential hell which human tyranny inflicts. The loss of life! why, the majority of those men lost nothing of their life by a violent death, they lived it out to its full measure in one comprehensive aspiration, one mighty effort which exerted to exhaustion all the powers within them. A charge of gunpowder does more burning in one flash, and with tenfold more effect, than the saltpetre and charcoal would accomplish, if they were kept smouldering for a month. We are far from believing that " a revolution is not worth one drop of blood." We would agree with O'Connell if he had said that a revolution is not worth one crime, because it is made worthless by the crime Liberty is cheap enough to the gainers at the 140 "VI SIONAR Y." price of life ; not of the lives they take but of those they give. If the French people fall again into confusion, if they rush into anarchy and civil bloodshed, or what is even worse, if they compromise principles and patch up a false peace, based upon incoherent systems, we will neither wonder nor despair. We do not despise our fellow men, and we do not fear them: we are just as certain that they are competent to their own regeneration as we are that God made them for goodness and happiness; and, just as surely as we are immortal, our eyes shall yet behold the consummation, and we wait and look in a hope that rises out of the nature of man, and rests upon the promises of Heaven. " VISIOXARY !" Sixty years ago Herman Husband, of Somerset, Pennsyl- vania, predicted that the road, then only a pack-horse path over the mountains, would yet be paved all the way from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh. "Within the lifetime of the chil- dren who heard him, the promised paved road has been made and become obsolete ! the canal dug beside it has fallen behind the demand, and steam velocity already replaces them all ! The visionaries of the present day are, very likely, as much short of future history in their hopes as Herman Husband was in his day. But prophets will at last work themselves into credit ; the world will learn faith, and its works will grow continually more and more worthy of its origin and its des- tiny. Fulfilment follows so close upon the heels of predic- tion already, that conservatism is getting afraid to throw stones at the prophets, lest they may hit the facts in the face. ESSAYS. METAPHYSICS. Revival of mental science — Experiment, legitimate in the material sphere, but inca- pable of directing discovery and improvement in the moral — Empiricism of social and political systems — The Church affords no societary science — Metaphysics practically repudiated — Physical and Metaphysical departments of mental philo- sophy — The Baconian method adapted to the former, but incapable of the latter — The method of the schools illogical and unscientific — A true and useful system attainable — A Chemistry of mind demanded — Revolutionary crises favorable to speculative inquiries. I propose a series of articles which may as well muster under this general title as under any other. I wish the word to be taken in all its acceptations — in the loosest popu- lar use as well as in the closest technical meaning. I do not design a systematic discussion, nor any such orderly arrangement of topics as a scientific treatise would require. It is my purpose to traverse the province of Mental Philoso- phy, and its adjunct and dependent departments, in such directions, and with such method, as the pursuit of practical truth may determine. A religious honesty of aim is relied upon to take care of the spirit of the inquiry: the surpassing value of the truth 142 METAPHYSICS. involved is offered in justification of the hardihood of criti- cism and audacious freedom of opinion which will be indulged. Just now, booksellers' catalogues and quarterly reviews seem to indicate a revival in the science. New books are being written, old ones republished, and systems old and new are undergoing the process of digestion and reformation. Whether its philosophy will be made presentable to the mil- lion, and whether it is either hoped or proposed to bring it down from the clouds and subdue it into the service of the world's immediate wants, does not clearly appear. There is a felt demand for such guidance in settling the policy of life as the science of mind ought to afford. This an age of revolution, both in the form of pacific progress, and of change by military violence. Precedent is not only at fault, but is itself the offender; and Experience, which is nothing but the world's own shadow, projected upon its pathway by the light of the past, offers darkness just where direction is demanded. Society is not counter- marching upon authority, and it asks now the light that shines out from the point of destination for the guidance of every footstep in its progress. It is an age of battle and blood, indeed, but there is some- thing else and higher than mathematics involved in the con- duct of the strife. At least one of the combatant parties on every field is developing an idea, and asserting an opinion; and that universal agitation, called pacific, which is at work upon the order and institutions of society, social, industrial, religious, and political, deals directly with abstract ideas and fundamental truths — all the forms of movement which char- acterize the age are so many appeals to first principles, so many wars of opinion; and they all seek adjustment by the laws of the dominant spirit life, which is alike the impulse M ET-APH Y SIC S . 143 and the end of the entire apparatus of being which sur- rounds it. It might be supposed that wars and great social vicissitudes, which give so much value to physical forces and material elements, would be unfriendly to the cultivation of speculative science, but the facts of history and the reason of the thing are against this notion. The greatest advances in theoretic truth ought to be made amid the strifes which put first principles most earnestly in issue. The exigencies of pressing need reveal to communities, as to individuals, the resources, and supply the powers, which they demand, There is, in fact, no condition of things so favorable for mental achieve- ment as an environment of the intensest life. Human des- tiny being the subject, not of fate, but of law, depends so closely and critically upon the adaptation of means to ends, that, by Divine pre-appointment, the circumstances which most require the direction of a great thought, shall be ever the best adapted to its development — witness the proclama- tions of Provisional Governments, the reports of revolution- ary committees, and the insurrectionary eloquence of all reformations and rebellious. The prophets appear in the times of the world's sorest need — the hour and the man come together, and mind answers to movement with Providential adjustment. We have a proverb, that "amid wars the laws are silent," and it is true that some of the arts of peace are interrupted; but the laws and labors which wars, civil and international, suspend, are only the municipal systems and those handi- crafts which are by physical necessity involved in the strife. The biographies of the men who have moulded the mind of ages exhibit the fact, that the greatest achievements of intel- lect have been made amid the din of arms, and in great con- vulsions of society, from the days of Moses down to that 144 METAPHYSICS. grand epoch in the revolutions of political systems, and the equally great revolutions in science, which commenced at the close of the last century. The fact corresponds to a similar one in the material sphere — the grandest chemical phenomena depend for their display upon a certain elevation of temper- ature or a certain excitation of electricity. The sphere of mind seems to be under the same law, for it is manifest that passion, far more eminently than knowledge, is power. It is natural, moreover, for society, when it finds its con- ventions going to pieces, to look closely into the essential nature and constitution of things ; and that when it is wrenched from its moorings and thrust out upon the deep, it should put its trust in science and betake itself to star- gazing. The route of experiment is on a trackless, shoreless ocean ; its march is over the earth, but its directory is in the heavens: the unknown is revealed by the abstract, as the parallels of latitude are discovered by their correspondents in the skies. It is clear that the world's life is under law, and that its happiness depends upon conformity to the nature and necessi- ties of the human mind. Those institutions alone sustain themselves against perpetual change which correspond to the laws of mental life. The family group, guarded by its divine instincts, is preserved in its integrity amid the dismember- ment of empires and the revolutions of policy which leave other institutions neither peace nor permanency. None of the remoter relations of men are yet settled; no other form of government in existence coincides with the laws of the human constitution; and there is no rest possible or desirable till external order and mental law are in perfect harmony. Experience., growing out of the blind necessities of society, has found and proved many particular truths, and practice appropriates them; but all past attainment in political policy METAPHYSICS. 145 has been merely empirical. No true system has received and harmonized discoveries, and directed their modification in new uses. Nobody knows now, certainly, whether representative republicanism will answer the wants of Europe; nor is it likely that its own people will know with any greater assurance after they shall have tried it. Men and nations may blunder upon a truth, but if they find it by accident it will never grow into a principle. The experimental philoso- phy, rejecting, as it does, the light of final causes, is necessa- rily limited in its range to physical discovery. Incapable of induction a priori, and its facts all lying within the domain of the external senses, it has done nothing for Psychology, nor for anything in Education, Civil Law and Government, that depends upon spiritual science, and it never can — but, more of this anon. Religion rightly presides over morals, and should pre- scribe rules for all the relations of men ; but our political and ecclesiastical Protestantism, to make sure of the divorce of church and state, forbids the intrusion of the thought of • God into the theory of politics ; and the priesthood is as scrupulous to observe the prohibition, as if it really believed theocracy to be the worst sort of despotism. The church gives ns no system of society — social, industrial, or politi- cal. It prescribes particular virtues, and proscribes particu- lar vices in the direction of individual conduct ; but it declares that the JSew Testament does not teach politics, and it even accepts its own polity from the civil Govern- ment. It is as democratic in its prolonged protest against popes, as the republic is in its resistance to kings. The church takes care of worship, but allows the state to pre- scribe morals, and we have no help from that quarter. Mental Philosophy (technical), notwithstanding the natu- ral justice of its pretensions, is neither permitted to design T 146 METAPHYSICS. the general plan of the social edifice, nor to govern any of its departments. Civil government builds itself upon pre- cedent, and is as shy of first principles as if they were the poetry of rebellion. Education, while it assumes to teach psychology as one of its hundred fragmentary sciences, nowhere gives any sign that it is itself governed by its supreme laws. Medicine has a few vague maxims about the connection and reciprocities of mind and body, but they are quite behind the facts of general experience, and are, besides, incapable of any practical application ; and Popular Sentiment mocks at the very name of meta- physics ! Generally, its topics are nowhere discussed, its doctrines are not understood or accepted, and even its terms of art are by nobody employed with any reference to their scien- tific value ; indeed, there are no words in the language whose signification is so uncertain as that half dozen or half score which constitutes the entire nomenclature of our men- tal philosophy. It seems not to have joaastered details enough to need a table of distinctive names, nor to have made its discoveries exact enough to require precise defini- tions. It is strange, very strange, when one comes to think of it, that the philosophy of the mind should have no effective existence among men ; that the sovereign life of the world should be without a theory recognized, or a set of principles accepted and employed in daily use ; and that, too ; after the assiduous investigations of five-and-twenty centuries of recorded labor. Fruitless of available results as this long toil has proved, it is yet the mind's instinct to work ever at the task of exploring its own nature and ascertaining its own laws. In METAPHYSICS. 14T a vague, uncertain way, Metaphysics has a sort of semi- sacred place among her sister sciences — the position of a dead child in a family. It has a mysterious existence some- where in the spirit-world, with a name to live in the material, and it is neither given up by the affections, nor entirely unrecognized among the actualities of busy life, but there is no plate set at the table, no chair in the social circle, and no work assigned it in the field. Its precocity and contemplative habits, its delicate thinness and bril- liancy, its dreamy earnestness, bordering upon delirium, yet full of the light of genius and the warmth of a higher life, are dwelt upon with a sort of reverence that is not reliance, and a mixture of tenderness and pity that has not quite the familiarity of affection. Opinion stands at a puzzle ; there is an idea that it must have got some incommunicable insight into something or other in its long reveries, too high, probably, for revelation, and too fine for use ; and the dreamer was therefore removed into the ethereal regions, because not fitted to rough it among the rude realities of the working world. Of necessity, political and social order are established in communities early in their progress toward civilization, and long before the laws of mind become the subjects of critical inquiry, those of conduct are somewhat digested ; just as languages are pretty well filled up before the rules of gram- mar are formally systematized. In both cases, fundamental laws tacitly preside over and direct the development, and drift it toward the symmetry of form which exact science afterwards bestows ; but the progress is made through the tortuous route of a blundering empiricism, and at the cost of much loss, and under the burden of much error perpetu- ated by authority of experience long after its age of ignorance has passed. 148 METAPHYSICS. If practice should conform to principle, then the actual must rest upon the theoretical — the prescient thought must direct the evolution of dependent facts. Now, man, notwithstanding his large liberty, and the prodigious variety of his actions, is still a being of creation, and the subject of invariable laws — laws which arise out of his constitution, and determine all its movements. He is not the product of chance, nor the sport of caprice. He has a constancy of nature maintained through all change of conditions and relations ; and there must be a science of his constitution, a philosophy of his actions. The specific powers of the human soul are not, probably, more numerous than the elements of the surrounding world, to which they bear relation ; the phenomena of their workings are gene- rally quite as well exposed to observation as the properties of matter ; and for those things in the mental constitution, which will not objectively answer to inquiry, we have con- sciousness to reveal them ; so that over and above all our means of examining the outward world, already so well explored, we have this faculty accompanying every fact of psychical existence, and exposing it to reflection. But the necessity of this knowledge to the accomplish- ment of human destiny, absolutely demonstrates the possi- bility of its attainment, to the conviction of every mind that sees the dependency of ends upon means in the system of nature, and knows, also, the beneficent provision of means to those ends. Geology promises to render us the history of the earth, recorded in the hieroglyphs of rocks and fossil vestiges ; Astronomy is capable of its prophecy ; and Chemistry actu- ally invests us with the executive power of the material kingdom. The air, the earth and the ocean, are yielding their tribute richly to the sovereignty of mind. The know- METAPHYSICS. 149 *• ledge which the sciences supply has step by step yielded its equivalent of administrative power over physical nature. All this has been attained by proceeding upon the simple apprehension, that all the differently endowed material sub- stances are under the government of positive law ; that each element is related to every other by affinities, whose action produces all the changes in nature ; that it is possi- ble to note, compare and arrange all the facts into the order of a certain system ; and that such just and thorough observation must at last put within the control of mind all the possibilities of matter, so that the entire system which came into existence in obedience to a word, and to manifest an idea, shall yield allegiance to the wisdom of that idea, wheresoever and by whomsoever it is displayed. Mind is a spiritual substance or being, and has the habi- tudes and obeys the laws of that manner of existence ; but it is adjusted (to answer the relations of a temporary life) to a material organization, and it is intimately interlinked with a complete material creation. Within the compass and sphere of these its instrumental activities and material relations it is clearly within the province of physical philo- sophy, and answerable to its methods. All its actions, affections, relations, manifestations, in and by material interventions, belong necessarily to the department of phy- sical science, and as such must be explored and cultivated, that it may yield the utilities of true and certain knowledge. There must be a science of mind equivalent to the chemistry of matter, if we would obtain power over the mental, similar to that within our reach over the material, world ; and we can neither meet its requirements, develop its agencies, nor comprehend its phenomena, while we refuse to know them as the subjects of those material and mechanical conditions on which their manifestation so clearly depends. Here, in 150 METAPHYSICS. the outermost sphere of mental life, in all that is exposed to observation by the senses, in the region of the external experiences of the present life, it is the proper object of the Baconian system of philosophizing, the legitimate subject of its modes of exploration, and discoverable by no other. The school of thinkers who have given the present form to the doctrines of mind have done nothing for their subject that the mechanical philosophers have effected for theirs. They have given us no analysis of the mental constitution. They have not known that specific knowledge of its elements is either needed or attainable. With them, the mind is a force, an agent, or a function ; but whether it consists of numerous dissimilar parts and powers, having each its distinct endowments, or is a simple essence without parts, is neither settled nor esteemed of any importance in the inquiry ; jast as if it were undetermined in physics, whether matter is (according to the conception of the anci- ents of their materia prima) without qualities, properties, shape, or atomic constitution, or, embodied, as modern chemistry renders it, in some fifty or sixty distinct ele- ments. Not only its intimate character and constitution, but the facts of its instrumental connection with the body, are thrown out of consideration. Many vital actions are understood to depend upon the corporeal structure, but those which are concerned in the mental manifestations are wholly neglected. The material conditions are as entirely disregarded, as if the intelligent soul acted upon the surrounding universe per se I Analysis is, indeed, constantly spoken of in the books, but the word is borrowed from physical science, without any of its meaning, and it is put to no legitimate use; for example: the faculties of mind recognized are such as perception, con- METAPHYSICS. 151 ception, memory, judgment, imagination, and attention. A moment's reflection will show that none of these are names for elementary parts or powers of the intellectual organization. They are obviously the names of so many states or modes of action of the elementary powers. They correspond to solu- tion, crystallization, combination, reaction, precipitation, and sublimation, in chemistry; but in no respect, and for no purpose, answer to its oxygen, nitrogen, potassium, and other results of its real analysis. Mental philosophy speaks only of processes under the names of powers., and faculties, and is just in the condition that the theory of matter w^ould be, if the gases, earths, metals, and imponderable bodies, were unknown or undistinguished, i. e., it is still looking at actions and results, and mistaking them for agents and powers. Attention is but a name for the active state of a power; Memory is the same act or state of a faculty which existed in Perception, but without the presence of the object; Percep- tion is not a faculty, but a mode of action of many diverse faculties ; like Judgment, which is a process in and by ele- mentary powers, as unlike as are their several objects, of which the qualities of a heroic poem, and of a whisky punch, give some idea of the possible variety and dissimilar- ity — and so of all the other misnamed faculties of the meta- physicians. The ancients knew nothing of the methods of the experi- mental philosophy, and they did not attempt its employment in any region of inquiry, physical or metaphysical. Modern inquirers into the mysteries of mind have constantly endeav- ored the solution of that which is above the province of the senses by the sensational method, and they have constantly neglected that department and region of research which is responsive to their manner of investigation; and the results have very naturally disgraced the effort 152 METAPHYSICS. Gall and Spurzheim applied the experimental method to that department of mental life which lies in the sphere of material manifestation, with eminent success. They endeav- ored discovery by the employment of means adapted to their field of inquiry; but, as Bacon's philosophy was not acknowledged to be scientific by the metaphysicians for half a century after its publication, this application of it must probably wait as long for a recognition. The phrenologists, however, consider the mind only phe- nomenally, and exclusively as a department of physical phi- losophy. But there is, besides, a range of metaphysical science which lies quite out of the domain of the senses, a region of psychical experiences into which the mechanical philosophy cannot penetrate, and a class of processes, very real and very common, which are out of the reach of observation; moreover, intuitive truths are legitimate premises in the logic of this high sphere of thought, and its supreme laws and most influential relations are discoverable only by the a priori route of demonstration. The ancient philosophers tried to resolve the riddle of material existences by the means of those intuitions and hypothetical methods which are native and legitimate only in the world of mind. The moderns, dissatisfied with their substantial forms, materia prima, occult qualities and a priori method, have assaulted the spiritual world with the ponder- ous enginery of the material system, and endeavored to extend the jurisdiction of its compasses and plumb-line over the immaterial. The results are prodigious enough with- out being at all surprising ; but the world will be wiser and better before they will be fully recognized and reme- died. In the order of things, the material world was to be first METAPHYSICS. 153 subdued ; and its philosophy has been long supreme. When that is well-nigh accomplished, the laws of spirit life will get themselves considered, and mind will be restored to its due supremacy of dominion and dignity. II. Physical and Metaphysical departments of mental science — Functions of the exter- nal senses limited to physical bodies and their properties — Perception is by internal senses — Ideas which the external senses cannot furnish, either in their elements or form — General or abstract ideas generated by the innate power of the intelleot — Instinct — Moral liberty— The results of mental action determined by a pre-established harmony — First principles and necessary truths instinctive — Standards of taste and morals — Educability — The mind descends by its intui- tions to the specialties of knowledge. In the first number of this series I took the ground that the science of mind divides naturally and necessarily into two departments, which I designated the Physical and Meta- physical, respectively. I will endeavor now to establish this division. It is not my purpose to define the boundary sharply, and assign to every particular fact and phenomenon within the compass of psychological science its appropriate place and relations, but only to exhibit and justify this divi- sion of the subject, and the correspondent differences of phi- losophic method required by these diverse departments of inquiry. In the discussion I will not carry with me the conscious- ness of all the controversies of all the schools, and address myself to them, as if everything must be proved against everybody. It is not feats of metaphysical gymnastics, but some earnest available work that I would perform. T* 154 M ETAPHYS I CS. The mind of man holds certain determinate relations to the material universe. By means of appropriate parts of the body it is adjusted to this intercourse. Through the instrumentality of the external senses and the organs of voluntary motion it acts upon, and receives the action of, all physical things, and, whatever of mind is embodied around it. The five external senses are the known avenues through which specific knowledge of surrounding material things is admitted to the mind; but the organs of these senses have no perception of the things thus admitted. They minister intermediately to internal or intellectual senses by receiving impressions, and modifying and conveying them to those interior faculties whose function it is to translate the pictures, vibrations, and molecular motions into perceptions: these perceptions being as well distinguished from the sensations which occasion them as the instructed telegraphist is from those motions of the excited wires which he recedes and ren- ders into the symbols of thoughts and things. It is not the eyeball which perceives, for, though pictures of things be drawn upon the retina perfectly, as they may be in all instances of absorbing mental occupation, no cognition of the pictured object results. The same obtains with the ear in every one's experience. Persons deeply engaged in study or house affairs seldom hear the clock strike, though the vibrations certainly beat upon the drum of the ear every hour. Again: it is not the eyeball which perceives form, for instance, for the touch, the smell, the hearing, are just as capable of awakening the idea, when the eye is closed; and, memory can raise it quite as well as vision can produce it. Every one is conscious that he sees with his "mind's eye," when the body's is inactive or incapa- ble. The eyeball is but an optical instrument, and differs nothing in office from an artificial machine, except in its vital METAPHYSICS. 155 connection with the mind. The same is true of the other external senses. The word sensation is, therefore, well restricted to those impressions of the living organism which are yet short of intellection. Perception properly means that act or state of the mind by which it has the conviction of the present existence of external material things: or, perception is the conversion of a sensation into an idea or notion — the tran- script of material things in the mind, and its primary and simplest apprehension of them. The office and power of the external senses being thus limited, they are capable of conveying from the outward world to the mind whatever represents bodies, their proper- ties and physical conditions and relations, but nothing else or more. Whatever is beyond the material and phenome- nal, is quite out of their reach, and is in no way responsive to their jurisdiction. Of those/ external things which the senses are conversant with, we, in common with the inferior animals, have percep- tions, ideas, or notions. But we have */ther ideas and notions, quite as clear and cogent, which are neither per- ceptions of bodies nor ideas of them, nor of their physical properties and relations — ideas which cannot be pictured even by the fancy in any sensible forms or colors, or under any of the conditions of bodies ; such as ; Wisdom, Ignor- ance, Verity, Justice, Cogitation, Virtue, Honesty, and their opposites, with a hundred others. These relative ideas obviously belong not to the world of corporeal sensation. They have neither body, form, nor motion, and they have no representatives either in image or action that sense can appreciate. The external senses are also incapable of impressions by incorporeal beings, if there are any such. God, the human 156 METAPHYSICS. soul, spirits, are not revealable to them or by them. The senses cannot logically deny such existences ; they can only reply to inquiry by acknowledging their ignorance and incompetency. Such beings are not impossible, for they are conceivable, and they are not necessarily disaffirmed by any- thing that we do know. The senses cannot disprove anything by their ignorance and incapacity until it is demonstrated that all possibility lies within their embrace. Besides specific ideas of incorporeal beings, and relative ideas both of corporeal and incorporeal beings, which cannot either in form or in their elements enter the mind through the bodily organs, there are innumerable logical relations of things, involved in every process of thought, relied upon in every action of our lives, and verified by universal expe- rience, which can spring only from the innate activity of the mind itself, and of which the corporeal senses are wholly incapable. The idea of Causation — that familiar omnipo- tence which intimates the Infinite Efficiency to all intellects, with the force of a necessary truth — is an eminent instance of a logical idea, spontaneous and instinctive, which the senses can neither create nor receive, and which nothing in matter can either manifest or support. The conception that " everything must have a cause n is so far an instinct, that it comes before all reasoning, refuses the authority and declines the tribunal of reason, and must, in fact, like all first principles, be had before reasoning can begin. Yet, Power — the efficiency of blind force, and that of wisdom — is not cognizable by any sense. The idea is evolved within, in entire independence of all outward impressions. The classification of natural objects and the general con- ceptions of genus and species, are further instances. Ideas exactly correspondent to individuals may be admitted and imprinted by the senses, but the generic notion of fish, bird, METAPHYSICS. 15? beast, man, is not a copy of any possible observation. So, of a nation, commonwealth or corporation, considered as an artificial person. The eye receives the impressions of per- sons and individuals, and reports them in severalty to the mind ; but it cannot see the logical tie that binds them, nor can it comprehend them as one whole. All abstract or general ideas are generated within ; and they are not sum- maries of individuals ; for the reason that the individuals are merged, not combined, in them, and would not together produce them. Moreover, the pattern or general idea must be had before individuals can be aggregated under it. Nay, more : even in the region of Physics — in corporeal things and their qualities, which are the objects of sense — the mind is not dependent ; nor is it limited in materials to experience and observation. The artist's conceptions of form, symmetry, proportion, harmony, are inward revela- tions. Eye hath not seen, nor ear ever yet heard, the glory of form, color and melody which shall be revealed in him. The exemplars of his high conceptions exist nowhere in material forms. Art copies not matter but thought in its creations. There are, also, all the passions and affections proper. Of them we have the clearest intellectual apprehension. There is nothing more distinct than our ideas of them, sepa- rate from the feelings themselves. They lie well defined in the mind's eye as subjects both of memory and judgment. The ideas of them are present at our bidding when the paroxysms are not reproduced ; but none of the external senses can transmit the sentiments of gratitude, love, rever- ence, pity, pride, anger and hope. Whether the soul be immortal and whether there be any other spirits than those of men, there is a class of expe- riences which belong not to the material world which invest? 158 METAPHYSICS. us. Probably enough, all beings are organized substances, but they are not all objects of these flesh and blood senses of ours. The mind is not the mere correlate of matter. Its powers are not merely co-extensive with surrounding corporeal things ; and its conceptions even of them are above them. It overpasses all their teachings — transcends all their intimations — " glorifies them into higher things than any of their highest." The senses take the impression of the forms, attitudes, motions of the creation, as an illite- rate man scans a book, but the soul rises to the inference and apprehension of wisdom, beneficence and power in the designing mind ; it presses through into the thought of the Infinite, and looks down, from the height of the real and the absolute, upon the actual, as in the slow procession of the ages it feebly and imperfectly unfolds itself into the facts of experience. These dominant ideas, which are nothing other than modi- cations of the intellect, are not less real than the modifica- tions of matter ; they are otherwise manifested, but they are facts of equal validity, and they rest upon evidence, and offer demonstration, at least equally sure. What is there in hard, or soft, or round or square, more real than in cause and effect, art and wisdom? These powers are effi- cient in the most momentous phenomena of nature and human life ; yet they are but relations and aptitudes of things one to another, and to certain ends. As facts, they are not discovered or established by the action or the evidence of the senses. They are of another sphere ; they bear relation to the agencies of nature — the senses lie on the level of its passive materials. If any one replies, " The impressions of sense as materials are elaborated by the mind into the higher general concep- tions which we have of things f notwithstanding their total METAPHYSICS. 159 inadequacy, I do not feel concerned to contradict him for any other reason than that which respects the symmetry of science ; because the pattern and guiding thought or idea, by which these elaborating processes must be conducted, remains to be accounted for. To illustrate : It has been said that the statuary gathered and blended " the pride of every model and the perfection of every master in one chef cVotuvre of art" in the creation of the Venus de Medici?. But whence came the presiding and directing architectural conception, which selected the separate beauties and built them into unprecedented perfection — whence the ideal that stood model in the artist's mind for that transcendent work ? The types even of physical perfection are in the soul — the standard of the material is in the immaterial ; and mind is the measure and mould of matter. In morals, obviously, the light within is not born of the darkness without. The demands of conscience are ever above the facts of experience, and its code of laws has not been gathered from the world's life, for it ever judges it. • Are these ideas, which experience can neither achieve nor attain to, innate, as philosophers understand the word ; or directly inspired, as certain religionists teach ? We are not driven to the choice of either of these opinions. On the assumption that the mind is an assemblage of faculties, numerous, dissimilar, and mutually related — each adapted to a special office, governed by fixed laws, and intrinsically active, we can easily enough get a solution of the question presented. An hypothesis consistent with all the facts of a series, and harmonizing with all related truth, is true. (Harmony is truth.) The following conception is offered in the belief that it will justify itself under this rule. Every faculty, whether concerned with bodies and their 160 METAPHYSICS. qualities, with abstract speculation, or, with the emotions and passions which arise out of our social relations — if it has its own determinate nature and method, its action, however excited, must necessarily drift or tend toward certain results, and produce them in proportion to the degree, and other modifications, of its activity. If, for instance, a faculty is given for the conception of the idea of form (not the passive reception merely of a picture of it) then— just as we find the fact to be — whenever that faculty is excited to act, concep- tions of forms will arise, and its action will not depend upon the presence of any outward material body to awaken it. It will be accomplished in memory, reverie, or dream, as well and as certainly as in the presence of an object which can render its image through the senses. We have but to assume that this power of conceiving form is a member of the mental apparatus, which will produce its own kind of thought, however its activity is prompted, and, we have the generation of ideas, independently of all corporeal elements and suggestions, sufficiently provided for. The animal instincts will serve well for illustration. Hunger determines to all the actions which satisfy the want. Anger and Fear in this respect are like it. Arouse the passion, no matter how, it will work in a certain way and produce accordant results. There are other instincts which each in its own way modifies the life. Some of them involve processes and conceptions identical with what we call reasoning; as the instinct to build, to build in particular localities, and in special modes, which displays thought either in the animal, or in its Maker, or in both. These powers and tendencies are, evident- ly, so many springs, impelling their subjects to correspondent modes of action; and they need no previous education for their work. The impulse from within unfolds its inevitable results. It is nothing to the purpose to answer that these METAPHYSICS. 161 are blind, unintelligent instincts working in ignorance alike of their cause and ends. In all respects which concern our argument, we have similar conditions of the higher and freer faculties to account for, and the same ends to reach. If the instincts of animals are rigidly and intimately guided by the thoughts of God. perhaps, the higher and freer faculties of Man are destined to an ultimate conformity, and are con- trolled, only with a little less of concurrent exactitude, by the law of a preestablished harmony between all agencies and all ends. The freedom of the intellectual functions, it must be observed, relates not to their manner of working, nor to the effects which result from a given amount of activity in them. The Creator has prescribed the law of their action, and holds them ever in their appointed offices. If the reflect- ive powers are active, inductive or analogical reasoning, not mnsic or covetousness, will result from that activity. Mind has a constant constitution, and to regard it in certain res- pects as a piece of complex mechanism, will help us to an •accurate apprehension of it. Some of its powers which lie closest about the roots of the animal life are deprived, in a great degree, of freedom — of the freedom to act or repose at will. The imminent necessity of their service fastens upon them the condition of bond slaves of the body. The rule of will or choice among the higher and remoter powers is freer and wider, but the kind of work that each power will do is beforehand determined. In the application, and in the degree of activity, of the higher faculties there is liberty, but none that can change the specific nature and character of their actions. The reflective powers being excited look for causes and find them, as naturally as hunger suggests food, and as certainly as the migratory impulse sends the pigeon southward in his season through the pathless air, without 162 METAPHYSICS. experience and without instruction. The idea of cause is not born in, but it is nevertheless instinctive. The corporeal life is protected by making its instincts irresistible. The mental life is secured by making the conception of first principles and necessary truths inevitable. To this extent and end "He lighteth every man that cometh into the world/ 7 and in this way "the life is the light of men." In the human bosom are planted the varied capabilities of the animal, rational, and moral nature, and the stimulants of life unfold each toward maturity in its own kind, as sun- shine and moisture excite the germs of vegetation into their variegated beauty and manifold forms of use. It is not wonderful, however intricate the process, that a rude piece of timber thrown into a machine shall drop out a gun-stock complete, if the wheels, planes, and chisels are set and worked exactly to the pattern. There is the fact, and the reason of it, and all puzzle about it is only a confession of ignorance or willful inattention. The thing is admirable indeed, but the admiration is due to the designing mind. All else is plain enough. We may indulge our w r onder to any extent, which will not confuse our thoughts, at the mechanism of mind. But if it had a maker, and he had a purpose, it is plain enough that he w r ould address it to that purpose by giving every varied power its required capacity and a determinate adjustment to its specific function. There is freedom enough left for all actual and possible weal and woe, for all just praise and blame, in leaving the direction, the degree of activity, and the combinations of movement among the several powers, to our choice. There is everything in the instinctive and spontaneous action of the souPs higher powers that is required for their ultimate attainment to perfection and harmony with themselves, with nature, and with the creative mind; but nothing which METAPHYSICS. 163 shall at every step of every process insure their wisest appli- cation and most perfect action, as in the case of the animal instincts. They are not, like these, conducted by the over- ruling purpose, in measure and form, to their ultimate end. Accident, choice, will, or what you will, determines the degree of their effort, and the direction of their application, and the misapplied and the partial are accepted for the cor- rect and complete, and so they fall into the false. Thus, revenge will seem justice, if only the immediate parties and the injury are regarded. The circle of reasoning here is regular, round, and conclusive. Every faculty involved works true to its constitution, within the range which it takes, but, that is not broad enough to embrace all the facts and truths really concerned, and so, the conclusion is false to all the elements which are excluded, and, to the universal truth. The difficulty of finding a standard for beauty and even for morals is because, the true standard is only in the mind of the highest endowed in these things respectively, and, because, that absolute highest has never yet been and never can be manifest. Just because the highest truths are not yet in the actual, but still in advance of, and beyond, expe- rience — unrevealed in the possible — just because the limits of attainment are not yet reached, the measure of the just and perfect is not known. The definite proportionals of chemical combination demonstrate their highest conditions in crystalline 'completeness. Their ultimate is reached and known. But the for ever unfolding future of spirit must be led forward by a measure of the true and the right, above and beyond every stage of achievement. The true rule cannot be gathered from the record of attainment; it must be revealed by the most perfect mind. To moral perfection 164 METAPHYSICS. we look for moral law, and to the highest in every depart- ment of thought, for the law of its subjects. But all progress, and capability of it, imply that the ideas by which advancement is to be made must come, not from the region of the known, but from the unknown into which it leads. Receptivity is necessarily in advance of attainment, and no one can receive anything who has not already its kind. A dog cannot be taught philosophy, nor a sheep devotion; the general idea must receive the parti- cular — the abstract comprehends the actual. The mind descends from universals into the specialties of knowledge. The sacred science of no people under the sun infers its Divinity from particular truths, but prescribes truths coin- cident with their intuitions of a God. The old is not expanded into the new: we are ever capable of more than all that we have, and so, growth in knowledge and goodness is secured to all, even to the highest. I have nowhere intimated that the specialties of the knowledge of material things can be had independently of the senses — that, for instance, ai blind man can know colors — but I will not now anticipate objections and misapprehen- sions. In my next I will gather up some of the loose ends of this, and give them a focal direction, and will endeavor the demonstration of these assumptions on another field of argument. METAPHYSICS. 165 III. Instinctive and rational life, their resemblance of nature and necessities, and their differences — Similar ends effected in both by similar powers — Man has not invented any part of his own nature — Only general ideas and feelings are intui- tive ; the specific are determined by associated faculties — Reason knows causes and sequences, but the religious instinct apprehends and individualizes God and a spiritual hierarchy — Every faculty authoritative in its own sphere — Divine Revelations proceed upon the assumption and recognize the fact that the idea of God is intuitive and not logical or demonstrative — All the other faculties, ani- mal and rational, modify the formal conception — The necessity of a priori knowledges and affections to the development of our nature, in harmony with the general system and the designing Mind — The universal truth and goodness are the type and standard of thought and feeling in all orders of sentient beings. I have said that some of those ideas which we have by the action of our higher intellectual and moral faculties are spontaneous and intuitive — that those first principles and primary emotions which are elementary, essential, and com- mon in all thought and action, are not logical or demonstra- tive, but instinctive. I have likened them to those instincts, commonly so called, by which the actions of the inferior animals are automatically directed. Such direction must be provided for the infancy and necessary inexperience and incapacity both of the rational and irrational races. If, for instance, the appetite for food, and the art of securing it, adaptation of element and locality to the life, with the cau- tion, cunning and courage which guard it, were not divinely provided and adjusted in their instant activities to the necessities of every moment, the scheme of creation in every department of sentient existence would utterly fail. The instincts of animals are, indeed, a kind of mechanism by which the purpose of their existence is certainly accom- plished; but their life is not without its modicum of liberty, 166 METAPHYSICS. for their actions are impelled by motives and directed by knowledges, and they vary their actions according to circumstances, within their own limited range of choice, as men do, and as advantageously. In truth, we differ from them, not by universal unlikeness, but by the greater num- ber of faculties which we possess, by the higher nature of those which are proper to humanity, and, by the consequent greater freedom of all. Human nature repeats and reproduces all the powers of all the inferior animals, and, superadds its own that are peculiar. The faculties which are common to men and ani- mals are very numerous. Let us indicate a few: The func- tions of the five senses, which are alike wherever they are found; the instinct of intersexual love, which is quite general; marriage for life or exclusive attachment, as in the fox and dove; gregariousness or societary organization, as in the bee; love and care of offspring; fear, cunning, cour- age, music; perception, cognition, memory, and judgment of the physical properties of surrounding things; under- standing of the passions of their own kind, and of similar passions in other animals and in men; and in some of them, a devotion to their human masters that might be called the religion of instinct, but that the worshiper is not made in the image of the worshiped, and is not capable of growing into likeness of life and character. Now all these faculties, and the ideas and capabilities which we have by them, come to us under the same laws and conditions, and answer to the same ends, as in the ani- mal world. In us, as in them, the primitive impulses and intuitive knowledges w r hich rule and direct the life that is common to all the sentient races, are before and above all instruction, experience, and capacity of reflection. But the whole of humanity was as certainly and necessa- METAPHYSICS. 167 rily fore-ordained by a competent intelligence; and men have not invented for themselves any of their elementary faculties. The sentiment of parental love was given to the human, race, as to the lower orders, and the feeling and the idea do not, in the one case any more than in the other, depend for their existence upon the intellectual perception of the beauty, utility, and necessity of such an instinct. The same is true of conscience, hope, benevolence, faith in and w r orship of, the supernatural. We have these also by constitutional provision, and we owe the feelings and ideas to which we give these names to instinctive impulse. But conscience, as nature furnishes it, is not a code; the impulse to believe and worship things which the senses cannot appre- hend, is not digested into a creed; nor is the simple senti- ment of benevolence formed into a policy of philanthropic enterprises. Like so many springs of the moral mechanism they lie coiled up within us, to supply, each its specific kind of energy and action to the general life; but the special direction and ultimate manifestation will be determined by all the causes which influence human agency. General conceptions and tendencies only are secured by the mental organization. The particular ideas and feelings of actual experience are left free to form themselves within these outlines, under the laws which govern the contingencies of rational existence. Conscience gives the general idea that there is right, with the feeling which executes particular judgments in self-approval or remorse; but it does not supply the standard of those judgments. The instinct of supernaturality assumes the existence of beings that live independently of material forms, and the particular doctrines of angels, demons, and deities are received into this general conception, but axe not specifically shaped and exactly determined by it. So the sentiment of benevolence gushes 168 METAPHYSICS. out like a fountain from the bosom of the earth, but its particular channels and effects are determined by ulterior influences. Thus, justice, mercy and faith are given; but, "to do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly before God" depends, for all practical conditions and ultimate results, upon all the circumstances which modify human actions. Only those general conceptions and tendencies are thus intrinsic which ascertain to what class of beings we belong, and the destiny toward which the general current of our life shall necessarily drift. Within these limits the actual history of individuals will be infinitely varied. This theory of the mental constitution assumes the exis- tence of as many unlike kinds of faculty in the mind as there are unlike species of ideas and feelings in human experience; it ascribes the production of every kind of idea to its appropriate faculty, exclusively, and, attributes all general a priori conceptions to the spontaneous action of their appropriate faculties. It refuses the origin of the religious sentiments to the reflecting powers. To them belong the primary conception of causation, and the appre- hension of all specific causes; but it is the sentiment of worship that impersonates and individualizes a God. The self-evident truth that everything must have a cause, which the inductive faculty teaches, can lead neither mind nor heart up to the first cause; the series of links in this logical chain finds no end, and rests in no beginning, but rather denies it. It is the religious instinct which lodges it in a conscious uncaused First cause. Since the inauguration of the mechanical philosophy, metaphysical theorists have been endeavoring to derive all general ideas from the particular ones which they seem to include. In the field of physical experiment items and atoms are painfully gathered into aggregates, and general METAPHYSICS. 169 inductions are made from special instances. Observing that mental activity in childhood begins, in point of time, with the perception of external material things, and that practical knowledge is conquered only by patient observa- tion and thorough experience, they hastily conclude that the most general conceptions, or abstract ideas, of every kind, must be somehow elaborated from the most particular; and so, the external senses come to be the only orthodox inlets of truth to the mind. Locke taught that all ideas of reflection are derived from ideas of sensation, and so laid the foundation of the grossest form of materialism. Under the rule of this system, whatever opinion or feeling could not justify itself by the judgment of sense was condemned, and life and spirituality perished out of philosophy, and even religion grew shy of its vital assumptions. It was a very bad logical blunder to make any one mental faculty do the proper work of another, as it would be to employ the eye to hear with, or the foot in the office of the hand. To ascribe the religious sentiment to the reasoning faculty, and try its truth by the testimony of reason, was indeed unmatched in error and mischief, until an equal absurdity was achieved in the philosophy of the senses. The visible and tangible forms of things were observed to differ, and as it is true that only the tangible corresponds to the occupa- tion of space by natural objects, metaphysicians drew the conclusion that the touch modifies the function of sight, and rectifies its impressions. A straight stick, thrust obliquely into water appears to the eye bent at the surface of the water, while the touch is not so deceived; but it is plain that the vision is not thereby corrected, as it is said to be, for the most enlightened philosopher will see it still just as much bent as will the most ignorant child. It is indeed, very absurd to suppose that any faculty, sensitive, affective, 8 170 METAPHYSICS. or reflective, can take the place and perform the function of any other; each was appointed to minister to the general end in its own way, and no other is employed or permitted, by the laws of our constitution, to replace it. The eye is not untrue in its own office because the touch takes a differ- ent impression in particular circumstances. When a hawk strikes his prey in the air, vision measures distance and direction perfectly where touch can give it no aid and no previous instruction; moreover, the eye distinguishes colors which the finger is utterly incapable of. Every faculty is properly addressed to its own office, aud must not be sub- jected to the incompetent criticism of any other. Reason has no just authority against the teachings of feeling: our loves' and hates must not ask its leave to be; though they should accept its light in the manner of their action. Intel- lect did not discover emotion; reason did not produce fear, or anger, or gratitude, or pity, or devotion, or remorse, or hate; and how can it nullify either of them without stultify- ing itself. a It results that every kind of feeling is the function of a special faculty — that each bears a divine warrant for its own exercise, and, that the existence of each argues the existence of a correlate object, and either proves it or dis- proves all design in the creation. Whatsoever is positive in our mental structure corresponds to and implies something real in related existence; as the eye-ball intimates light, and the lungs, air. The fact that the intellect does not and cannot generate the general idea of divinity and of a spiritual hierarchy, is the reason why neither the Jewish nor Christian Scriptures, nor indeed, the oracles of any other revelation, that is either true or probable, attempt the logical demonstration of those first principles of religion : " In the beginning God METAPHYSICS. 171 made" There! the assumption of a divinity, in its own proper self-reliant majesty, is addressed with authority to the expectant instinct of worship in humanity; and the didactics of the theological system, occupied with the speci- fic attributes and administrative functions of the Deity, are steadily restrained from arguing his existence. A pretended revelation attempting a logical demonstra- tion of the being of God would doubly ignore its own claims to credit — for it would address faculties incapable of the proof, and so disprove its alleged divinity, and it would be ignorantly attempting that by indoctrination which already exists by intuition, and can be had by no other means. The faculties which relate us to supernatural beings give us our properly religious ideas and conceptions, but the intellect, with the moral feelings and the propensities, modi- fies and forms them in particulars. Our Divinity will take the character of everything in our humanity. The God of a just, benevolent, and affectionate man is a very different being from that of a revengeful, austere religionist. Oracles and sacred books, however reverently received, will not secure uniformity of apprehension; they will more or less modify the conception, but under the general law every creature brings forth after his own kind, and the intellect is so little adequate to the original production of this great idea that it has, in fact, less influence upon it than any pas- sion or propensity of our animal nature. The impulses which generated the mythology, of Greece are active in every age and under every form of faith. The necessity, and therefore the existence, of such a ■priori general ideas in the intellectual and higher moral and religious faculties as our theory assumes and affirms, is further apparent from these considerations: — Human nature is put under the law of indefinite develop- 172 METAPHYSICS. ment. The mind is not brought into being in the full maturity of its powers; its end and beginning are not joined in stereotyped perfectness of capacity and action; — it has a future stretching ever forward into the infinite and it claims eternity and the universe for its sphere and range. In the endless and boundless unknown it must be directed by the light of such certainties of knowledge, and such tendencies of affection, as rule in the system to which it belongs. It must have capacities adapted, and activities correspondent, to the scheme of things which lies in the scope of its relations and experiences; and it must carry with it for impulse and direction as much of the universal love and truth as will ultimately achieve its own destiny; or else, the highest parts of the creation are left to organize lawless confusion into order, without light, power, or deter- minate drift! A state of things, conceivable only of a chaos, but absolutely impossible in a creation. Unity of the supreme power, unity of the general system of existence, imply impulses and attractions in every atom and every agent which shall at all events achieve the grand design of the universe. If the animal must be born fully provided for the limited range of its routine life; if the faculties which are conversant only with the facts of physical being, which lie within the immediate reach of the sensitive organs, need to be furnished with powers and appetencies w r hose apprehensions answer truly, without pre- vious instruction or experience, to the facts of their exist- ence, much more do those powers and tendencies of high humanity need to be furnished with divine instinct, impulse, and guidance, whose appointed office it is to com- prehend all the truth of fact and principle in nature, and to feel the sympathies and reciprocate the loves of the whole conscious creation, and know and enjoy the Creator for ever. METAPHYSICS. 173 The understanding must be fitted to apprehend causes and relations, just as they stand in the omniscient philosophy; and the affections and sentiments must go out after their objects with the regards which the creative purpose assigns to them by the laws of universal harmony. For how else than by such previous adjustment, even in the constitution of the individual, could the demands of selfishness be bal- anced by the concessions of benevolence — the instincts which cherish the life, with the impulses which devote it to the race — and, the relishes of appetite with the luxuries of the soul — in such symmetry, self-adjustment, and unity of action and end ? The harmonies of relation which traverse the whole crea- tion and accomplish its unity are effected by the cotrespond- ences distributed throughout the various orders of being. Each class or kind is adapted and adjusted to all that is below, and around, and above, it, by characters common to all. Our union with our own race is in possibility exact and perfect. The less nobly endowed species are associated and harmonized with us in those things in which they have likeness of nature. To the extent of the parallelism and correspondence unity is secured, and, there is no antagonism in that in which we transcend them: we only depart from, and do not conflict with, them, for all in us which excels them is at harmony with all in us that resembles them, and, therefore, with them also. In like manner, our union with all that is higher than we is limited to the points in which we resemble them ; and beyond there is no conflict, for there is nothing to oppose. For all the purposes of coherence in the general system of being — for all the necessities of the general government, and, to effect that ultimate harmony which the completed plan of Divine Wisdom supposes— our intellectual action 174 METAPHYSICS. must be determined in essential correspondence with the universal truth, and our affections must be impelled into substantial conformity with the all-pervading goodness. Right and wrong, truth and falsehood, good and evil, must be recognized in all worlds. From centre ta circumference of sentient being thought must answer to the attractions of divine truth, and feeling have polarity to the Divine good- ness — the broad basis of all knowledge must be laid in intuitive truths inwoven with the very texture of the intel- lect, and emotion must be trained upon the framework of the universal loves. Right may be confused with wrong in form and ultimate fact, but in essence it must be, and be felt to be, antagonis- tic, else all appeals to it must be unavailing for development and for duty; and good must be distinguished from evil, and have constancy of character, or all discipline of reward and punishment must utterly fail; and there could be no reliance in legislation, no calculation upon conduct, no science of character. The mental and moral constitution, to be the subject of a uniform and permanent moral law, must be as stable and constant as the organic anatomy, which is found to be identical in the Egyptian mummy and the latest born individual of the race. This can be obtained in detail only by ideas and feelings fundamentally alike in all; and the actual uniformity seems explicable only by the assump- tion that they are imbued by creation into the functions of the soul, and are so far the transcript and image of the Divine wisdom and love. All of which is only saying that the Infinite Providence has not taken care to feed the birds and clothe the lilies, yet utterly abandoned the noblest part of all his works to the blind hazards of chance. The liberty in human agency, and its compatibility with determinateness of nature and the government of constitu- MET APHY S I C S . 175 tional law, will receive special attention in its convenient place. We must prepare the way for this and kindred questions by first settling that of mental analysis and organic instrumentality, or, The physical department of mental philosophy. IV. Mind manifested during this life wholly through the material organism — Such inter- course of spirit with spirit as establishes the unitary order of creation excepted — The natural reaches into the supernatural, a presumption of science — The body's functions subordinate in different degrees to the mind — The phenomena of the mind subject to the laws of the body — Mind has perception as well as sensation through the organism — Immortality and nature of the soul not involved in the physiological inquiry — Manifestation not a measure of the soul's intrinsic power. The soul during this life is manifested only through and by the organism of the body. To observation and experi- ence its activities seem to depend upon the material machinery. To the senses, and whatever of knowledge we have by them, mind has no existence separate from matter, and no other capacities or powers than those which are exhibited by the corporeal instruments ; or, the body is to the soul what a musical instrument is to the performer — its means of expression and medium of manifestation. I do not say that all the faculties of the soul, and all the actions of every faculty, depend upon material conditions, and that there is nothing within us which is above the sphere, and independent of the laws, of materialism ; for a negation so broad as this would be unphilosophical in spirit, and very improbable in fact. The faith of the enlightened, and the superstition of the ignorant, all the world over and all its history through, are arrayed against it ; and the pre- 1T6 METAPHYSICS. sumptions of science, even the science summoned by skep- ticism, strongly corroborate the assumptions of faith. We have the analogies of nature for the probability of powers which can pierce into the province of the spiritual, even while, in the main, they are limited by the laws of the material life. Every class of beings, which we know, possesses a shade of that which is the proper characteristic of the class next above it. The mineral and vegetable worlds blend, so as to bridge over their difference and dis- tance, by transitions which obliterate the marks of separa- tion ; the vegetable and animal natures are confused; where they border, by mutual overlappings — every species of each of these great kingdoms of natural beings mingles with that which is first above it by intrusive overreachings that fill up the gulfs which definition would put between kinds and degrees. Classes flow into each other by partici- pation of properties, and so creation is linked into unity, from atoms up to archangels. Between centre and cen- tre of adjacent groups the difference of kinds is obvious, as the interval between the crests of waves, but where they meet they are indistinguishably blended. Throughout nature, structure with structure and function with function interchange where they separate, and embrace as they depart, and the unbroken harmonies of the universe answer to the oneness of its origin and end. If plants are made sensitive that the proximate modes of life may mingle at their mar- gins — if the domestic and half-reasoning animals are lifted into intercourse with us by an educability above the limita- tions of instinct, it is egregiously illogical to deny, and to deny positively, that our race is endowed with something of that which is immediately above its rank — something lowest in that which is above us, and highest in us. It is flatly unphilosophical to say that our present and future, this METAPHYSICS. 1*7 material and that spiritual, are divided by a yawning chasm of incongruity — that the law of intrusion or anticipation fails first where the material brinks upon the immaterial — that the mineral may ascend into the vegetable, and the vegetable into the animal, and every species aspire to parti- cipation with its superior, and, that aspiration is first for- bidden and a-cension first arrested where they become most noble and most necessary ! At the top of this climax ; in the full sweep of this accumulated tide ; up in the range of existence where the law of progress has become a habit of nature, and reached the noblest of all its subjects, it is impossible that creation should suddenly lose its instincts, and the wisdom of design start aside from its consistency of drift. It is not probable that all the light which comes to us from the higher life suffers the refraction of this dense material medium ; and some of that upper-world liberty seems even indispensable amid the disabling limitations of this life. The supernatural (if unity of scheme pervades the universe) is only a higher natural, and the material and spiritual must mingle where they meet. In affirming the dependency of mind upon the material organization during the present life, therefore, this point is reserved, and the mechanical philosophy is received, to this extent, under protest. But the truth and all the truth concerning this instru- mental connection and its incidents is not outranked in importance by any department of the great subject. The soul inhabits the body, and all the parts of the body answer to its offices in orderly relation and dependency. There can be no part of the structure without a function necessary to the whole, though the greatest diversity of relations between the several parts and the whole necessarily exists in a struc- ture so complex in constitution and use. Some organs of 8* 178 METAPHYSICS. the body are incessant in their activity ; some come into use at regular but somewhat distant periods : and others are inactive for years together. Some of the offices of the organs terminate in the maintenance of the machinery only — they are but the servants of servants ; others are the immediate instruments of the mind. It is well known that the mental faculties are attached to the physical organization, and their philosophy is, thus far, a department of physiology. Such of them as are con- cerned with the things " which do appear," are regulated by laws and subject to changes, exactly correspondent to those of the corporeal fabric. The conditions of infancy, maturity, and old age ; of health and disease ; of vigor and debility ; of habit, necessity, and liberty ; and of alternate activity and repose, are as distinctly marked upon the intellect and affections as upon the bodily frame. The same words are used interchangeably concerning the states and accidents of both, and the affections of either are instantly translated into correspondent changes in the other. The feeling that there is something in mind which matter cannot measure — that thought and emotion are very unlike the substances which digestion and secretion produce, and have no parallel in the mechanical movements of the body, has induced the error of altogether neglecting the organism in the study of mental science. Besides, mental philosophy was cultivated for ages before the functions of the body generally, and especially those of the nervous system, were even tolerably known ; and its doctrines took their general shape, and the study its method, while as yet human physi- ology was incapable of affording its assistance, or of assert- ing its claims to consideration. And, beside these causes the divorce of mind from matter in technical contemplation may have been still further effected by the at>prehension METAPHYSICS. 119 that the doctrine of immortality would be endangered, if the offices of mind were considered in any respect subject to the laws of its physical instruments. This objection is not valid. If thought and emotion are very unlike bile and saliva ; if feeling and fancy can have nothing in common with substances elaborated from articles of diet ; it must be noticed, that the doctrine of the brain's instrumentality in the mental phenomena does not intimate that mind is a secretion or product of the nervous apparatus. !No such analogy is affirmed, and the doctrine is not responsible for any such resemblance between the nutritive and the intellec- tual functions. Digestion and assimilation build up the body and keep it in repair, as an instrument of the mind, and voluntary motion is among its capabilities of duty ; but it is to some action of the perfected instrument that we look for analogies to reconcile our reason to the alleged phy- siological connection ; and we find them in sufficient force in the offices of sensation. The eye is capable of the first degree of affection by external objects which is ultimately .resolved into perception and cognition — the ear receives vibrations and effects the first of those changes which ulti- mate in the felt pleasure of music. If these satellites of the sensorium commune are thus capable of the earliest trans- mutations of physical impressions into intellectual affections, it is not difficult to admit that the brain is the seat and centre and instrument of completed perception. To say that matter cannot think is to say nothing to the purpose ; the allegation is, that mind manifests thought, as it is admitted to see and hear, through and by certain parts of the body, and in the closest dependency upon the laws and conditions of the structure. Of this there is such proof as — invariable feebleness of intellect and feeling during the feebleness of infancy, disease, and old age — 180 METAPHYSICS. the aberrations of mind and morals under the influence of narcotics, the excitement of fever, and such violence as dis- turbs the healthy functions of the brain — and, the apparent loss of mental and organic life together, in temporary sus- pensions, and in the final extinction, of the latter. The other objection arising upon the supposed danger to the immortality of the soul is of little account. It is not this doctrine but that of the objector, which makes the souPs existence to depend upon its supposed nature. It is enough to say that this inquiry does not involve its substance, quality, or duration, nor in any wise affect its destiny, but merely the conditions imposed upon it by its connection with the body. Whether the soul is adamant or ether, or that which is meant by the word spirit, is here of no conse- quence. If a seraph were incarnated the capabilities of flesh would limit his powers of action and passion here, and his angelhood would be temporarily levelled to our humanity. All excess of power, all transcendency of nature, would be restrained of display, just as the conceptions of musical harmonies are limited in their utterance by the capabilities of the instrument that must produce them. And just as in the case of the musician, his powers are not measured by the music produced, so of the human soul : by means of this body, in this life, it can accomplish so much, and is liable to such changes, as we witness, but what are its intrinsic capa- bilities and liabilities beyond all this " doth not yet appear." The disabilities of the first childhood do not so much impress us, but those of the second, the helpless infancy of old age, compel the thought that with better adapted instruments the spirit could accomplish greater things — how much greater, if freed from the incumbrance of these, or fitted with organs capable of all its glorious strength " it hath not entered into the heart of man to conceive." METAPHYSICS. 181 v. The brain the focal centre of the impressions from without, and the salient point of all volition, therefore, the immediate organ of the mind — The affections do not belong to the viscera, argued from the structure of the inferior animals, young children, idiots, from diseases, and from the singleness of function of every organ — Organic sympathies. f We have seen that the different tissues and organs in the human system bear each a more or less remote relation to the mental actions. The Brain seems to be the nearest, the first link, in the series of instruments by which the soul maintains its present intercourse with surrounding things. It is the seat of consciousness. All impressions made upon the external senses, and all affections of the body generally, are perceived or recognized there as in the centre of animal life. The nerves, which are the organs of sensa- tion, meet and deliver their impressions there. Whatever interrupts this nervous communication, and so disconnects any part of the body from the brain, renders consciousness of its conditions, changes, and affections, impossible. If the optic nerve be cut, tied, or compressed, vision is inter- rupted, whatever be the condition of the eyeball ; and no violence inflicted upon a limb, if its nerves are in like man- ner interrupted, will reach the seat of consciousness and be felt by the mind. Moreover, if the brain itself be compressed by fluids, tumors, or depression of the surrounding bone, or if its own blood vessels be turgid to the extent of suspending its func- tions, though all the rest of the body is in perfect health, the torture of the rack cannot awaken the subject to ans 182 METAPHYSICS. sense of pain, any perception of surrounding things, or, con- sciousness of his own existence. Again : the brain is the immediate instrument and seat of the mind ; for, all its volitions proceed thence. As in the former instance, whenever a sensitive nerve is inter- rupted, sensation and perception by it fail, so, whenever a motor nerve is divided, compressed, or otherwise reudered incapable of its office, no exertion of the will can produce any motion in the muscle or member which that nerve sup- plies. Organic life may continue in the part for any length of time, but its obedience to the will is wholly prevented ; the limb or muscle is thenceforth beyond the control of the mind. The Brain being thus the treasure-house of sensation, the place where all communications from the external world are gathered to a point, and where all the changes in the body are recognized ; being the point, also, whence the mandates of the mind issue — the council-chamber and throne-room of the soul's sovereignty — it has all the conditions, and answers every requirement, which should constitute it the immediate organ and instrument of the mental faculties. In popular apprehension and language the intellectual powers are ascribed in a general way to the head ; and to this reference of them everybody's experience testifies with unequivocal clearness. All the facts by which the locality of such functions may be ascertained, connect themselves with the brain, at least as clearly as vision is felt to be by the eye, or, hearing by the ear. The ordinary and moderate activity of neither is felt at all, so as to be referred to them distinctly ; but unusual intensity of effort, and that feeling of fatigue which follows long-continued action of the reflect- ing faculties, locate themselves as distinctly in the brain, as intense action and fatigue of these senses are felt in their METAPHYSICS. 183 respective organs. Moreover, the intellectual actions indi- cate their corporeal locality with the greater certainty, because it is not confused by any of their secondary or reflected effects upon other parts of the body. The percep- tive and reflective powers employ chiefly the voluntary appa- ratus of the body (the muscles and members of the face and limbs), in their service ; and the sympathetic motions and sensations which thought excites are seen and felt almost exclusively in those outward organs, and in their attitudes and gestures ; but they are so remotely connected with the animal life, and so distinctly subordinate to the mind, that their amputation or other incapacities of action are known to be no hindrance to its functions. Their affections are so plainly symptomatic only that they are in no danger of being mistaken for signs of the immediate presence of the primary impulse. The finger that assists in delineating a thought is not suspected of being the thinking instrument ; and the eyebrow, corrugated in the effort to recover a lost idea, is too plainly a symbol of the natural language, 'to be credited with any nearer office in the service of the memory. But it has happened, because emotion manifests itself often with great force in the viscera of the chest and abdo- men, that popular opinion has located the affections there ; and following this notion and addressing itself to it, Poetry has almost consecrated the prejudice, and even Science, with some formality of effort but without any success, has occasionally attempted its justification. I feel strongly tempted to undertake the explanation of this much honored conceit ; for its grounds and reasons are full of interest and beauty ; but, I must content myself now with disproving it. The following facts and considerations are thrown toge- 184 METAPHYSICS. ther very hastily, and, perhaps, with too little order for effect, but they are given as much to indicate the proper method of the inquiry as to attain its end. Many animals endowed with certain feelings are quite destitute of the organs to which this hypothesis ascribes them. Insects subject to anger and hate have neither liver nor bile ; or, if microscopic facts of the negative kind are doubtful, it is at least certain that lambs of the gentlest temper have as large livers as the most pugnacious dogs of the same size. Generally — the dog, the sheep, the lion, the horse, the tiger, and the wild boar, have viscera and nervous arrangements in the great cavities of the trunk, not at all different in those respects which, according to the theory in dispute, must account for their difference of propensities and passions. They are marked, in fact, by no peculiari- ties of visceral structure but such as the digestion of their dissimilar aliments requires. Again : the organs in the chest and abdomen of young children arc in high activity and perfection, and are even more excitable and vigorous than in adults ; yet several of the feelings attributed to them (such as compassion, friend- ship, conscience, and religious hope and faith) either appear not at all, or in a very inferior degree. The heart, for instance, is fully developed and very active long before all the loves ascribed to it are manifested at all, and the mani- festation in no period of life is in any constant proportion to the development of this organ. Again : complete idiots have all these organs, sometimes in great perfection of power and in full health, but none of the feelings that by this doctrine should belong to them. Again : the feelings are not deranged invariably in pro- portion as the viscera are diseased. It is not denied that their morbid states are occasionally the cause of moral dis- METAPHYSICS. 185 ease (and alienation of the intellect, also, though only the emotions are said to be seated in the diseased parts), but such disease, it would be easy to demonstrate, results directly from morbid actions propagated to the brain from their primitive seat in the viscera, and thus result in mental and moral disturbance. Furthermore: it is a principle in the animal economy that every organic part performs only one function — a prin- ciple of the highest importance in the study of the vital laws, and capable of the clearest elucidation (which is deferred till we consider the subject of mental analysis and the plurality of the mental organs). But this doctrine would make the heart of the tiger, which circulates his blood, the seat of his cruelty, and, to add con- tradiction to confusion, it makes that of the lamb the organ of meekness! In the human subject it is burdened with such quantities and contrarieties of work as are quite suffi- cient to derange and break it in the happiest individual — it must do up our loving of all sorts, and every variety of hating; our hoping and doubting and believing; fighting and fearing; rejoicing and sorrowing; and, indeed, everything else that takes the form of feeling in our complex expe- riences! Tone and temperament of body have indeed much to do with our emotional nature and moral character, but it is only as giving tone and temperament that the liver, lungs, heart, and spleen have any modifying influence upon our feel- ings. It is impossible that they should be the immediate instruments of the affective powers and passional impulses. It is true that the emotions so ascribed to these parts of the body are felt in them, and much of the force of passion is often expended upon them. Joy and sorrow suspend the appetite ; grief affects the lungs, and sighs and groans indi- cate the seat of the corporeal suffering, as well as give it its 186 METAPHYSICS. natural expression. In fear the heart flutters as if it struggled for flight; and in honest indignation swells as high ; and beats as boldly, as might serve for the elocution of the sentiment; but all these, and many other conspicuous affections of these viscera, no more entitle them to claim the office of producing the feelings, than the eyes that stream with pity, the lips that quiver in anger, or the knees that smite each other in affright, may justly claim to be the seats of compassion, rage, and fear. Those affections of the heart, stomach, eyes, lungs, lips, and limbs are alike effects of actions begun in a distant part, the brain, and are propagated to them by virtue of those sympathies which link all the parts of the frame into unity of suffering and harmony of action, so that " when one member suffers all the others suffer with it, and when one member is honored all the others rejoice with it." Whatever be the necessity and use of these sympa- thies, which thus involve the whole fabric (as its parts are severally more or less nearly related to the centre of life) in a common weal or woe, and establish the intimate reciproci- ties of body and mind, the integral life is ordained in such arrangements of the corporeal structure as abundantly secure them. The viscera of the great cavities are by the great sympathetic nerve connected with the spinal cord, the brain, and with each other; and, by the pneumo-gastric, a lesser sympathetic nerve, with the organs of voice, the eyes, nose, tongue, and with other parts of the brain. Now because of this universality of connection a sensation in any particular organ is not sufficient proof that the change felt originated there where it is first perceived; nor, on the other hand, need the free play of these sympathies confuse the inferences of science drawn from such facts. Legitimate reasoning, nevertheless, finds a safe clue through the laby- rinth and rests upon certainties in the issue. METAPHYSICS. 187 We conclude from all these considerations that the popular and poetic language which seems to except moral emotions from among the functions of the brain, is oaly figurative, and not at all philosophical, though not the less beautiful and effective for the service in which it is employed. The discussion of the doctrine which credits the produc- tion, instrumentally, of the propensities and sentiments of our nature to the breathing, circulating, and digestive organs, might have been spared if only its own proper con- clusions were aimed at, but it is given now for other services which it is expected to render some other day. It helps, too, to impress the proposition that the mind is manifested by the material organization, and that the brain is its imme- diate instrument, by impressing the method of philosophizing by which that proposition is sustained. The mental mani- festations must be brought clearly within the region and rule of the material laws so far as they are really incarnated and phenomenally dependent, or we shall be thinking meta- physics over our studies in physics, and by a compensating blunder, perhaps, mixing up a muddy materialism with the the highest speculations in the domain of spirit. 188 METAPHYSICS VI. Mental analysis— Defects of the accepted theories in aim and method— Spiritual science beyond the jurisdiction of that experience which is the test of physical truth — The mind's relations, affections, and modes of action, various; its organ- ization inferred — Naturalists recognize notions of their subjects, general, common and special; metaphysicians stop short of the special and elementary — Scientific analysis resolves all compounds ^objects and ideas) into their elements— -Plurality of the mental faculties and of their cerebral organs indicated by analogies in the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms, especially in the nervous system ; fatigue, of a single power; dreams and partial insanity — Connection between forms and uses, absolute and necessary. It is possible to conceive of the mind as a simple and indivisible substance or essence, capable of passing into different states, and so, in its entirety, manifesting all its varied modes of action and affection. Some systematic theorists formally affirm this doctrine of it, and the most of those who do not trouble themselves with the point involved, in effect treat it so. Denying to spirit all the properties, laws, and conditions of matter, and all corres- pondence to it, they anxiously exclude all conceptions of it, either in substance or in action, which embrace the idea of divisions, parts, and complexity of constititution and function. It is also possible to regard it as an aggregate, or congeries, of faculties and capacities, distinct and coexistent; somewhat in the light of an organic structure, or, analogous to the human body, which, though it is an unit by organization, consists of a great number of members, so unlike that no one is capable of the office of any other, and, though admittiug an almost infinite variety of combinations in action, the whole is perhaps never engaged in any one particular act. METAPHYSICS. 189 Mere observation, without the least reflection or philoso- phy, teaches and impresses a distinction among the processes of nature — crystallization, solution, elasticity, gravitation of unsupported bodies, evaporation, and such like phenomena, get noticed, individualized and named. So, the neces- sities of thought and communication oblige every one to distinguish those general kinds of mental action which are designated by the names of perception, judgment, memory, benevolence, devotion, reasoning, instinct, etc. The philosophies in vogue occupy themselves with these phases of mental manifestation, and after the example of the sciences which are entitled to the term, they also speak of analysis, although their method has no just pretensions to it, being, in fact, only an assorting or classifying of ultimate effects and appearances, in total disregard of the elementary powers upon which they depend. If here and there a fundamental faculty gets recognition, in some of these systems, it is an accident and not the result of any such analytical method as promises to bring the intrinsic consti- tution and nature of the mind into notice. However and to whatever purpose they employ investigation, they never press analysis so as to trace differences of office up to any real distinction of elementary faculty in the mental structure. If one were to demand from a college of metaphysicians a science of mind really equivalent to the chemistry of matter, he would be stunned with a general disclaimer of all such inquiries — he might as well ask them for the anatomy of the " spiritual body" itself. Indeed, there is no chapter in the modern psychologies half so long, half so full of preten- sion, or so glorified with the eloquence of words, or, so glutted with twattle and cant, as that one which disavows all ontological investigations, and all possibility of knowledge in the intimate constitution of the mind. Authors and 190 METAPHYSICS. declaimers are never so much on parade as when they are arguing the philosophy of this pet negation of theirs, and illustrating the wonderful wisdom of its ignorance ! Physical science makes such a figure among its terra firma data that the truths which can show no other evidence than their moral and logical necessity, are not allowed to assert an equal certainty, or pretend to scientific demonstration. "Experiment and induction thence" is the battle cry of material philosophy in its strife with the mysteries of nature, and under it she has achieved her stupendous victories; but spiritual science cannot pile up her trophies on the field of achievement like steam and electricity, and the finer truths of the more ethereal philosophy are drowned amid the din and clatter of physical demonstration. "Experience " (said some Johnsonian dogmatist, half a century ago), "which is constantly contradicting human theories, is the only test of truth." But it is obvious that experience can only contra- dict theories of such things as it has cognizance of, and that all the stumbling which it can detect is done on its own stilts. It is, in fact, busy at nothing but denying things that it knows nothing about, and contradicting the false- hoods which it taught before — repenting its own crimes and cobbling its own blunders, and committing and making new ones, to be corrected in like manner as it gets wiser. This maxim is nevertheless employed to prohibit all inquiry beyond the range of sense and observation, and it has had the luck, absurdly enough, to secure the homage at once of philosophical bigotry and skepticism. Locke and Hume agree upon it as a starting point, and the coarsest material- ists and devoutest religionists here occupy common theoretical ground. Misdirected by the notion that experiment must guide and limit analysis in spiritual as in physical science, inquiry METAPHYSICS. 191 has made no systematic effort to unfold the intrinsic consti- tution of the mind. But, knowledge, to be useful, must be special and particular where it touches on fact and principle; and the office and use of analysis is to resolve compounds into their elements, and to reduce general into specific ideas. In mental science it is the function of analysis to trace manifestations till they stand appropriated in the primitive and fundamental faculties which, produce them. Ultimate actions and effects are the poiuts of departure, not the aims, in this inquiry; yet in the various systems extant, perhaps not half a dozen truly elementary powers are indicated, and even these are not admitted in any broad apprehension of the great principle which governs in the evolution of natural truth. Speculation has been mainly occupied with systema- tizing operations where they ultimate in the facts of observa- tion and experience, and with the most general views of these. If the intrinsic constitution of the soul were wholly inscru- table, or if it were ascertained to be without parts or com- position — a simple essence and a single power in its inmost nature — it is yet so obviously the subject of such greatly varied states, actions and relations, that a theory of simplism applied to its phenomena and constitution answers none of the ends for which science is pursued. It is, indeed, difficult to conceive how auy truth, even the most absract, can be so useless for all practical purposes as this notion is. Still, whether simple in essence or not, it is not with its substance that we are concerned, but w r ith its manner of existence, and with its modes of activity, which certainly are exceedingly complex. The soul is in relation with all that variety of natural beings which immediately surrounds it; it is susceptible of their manifold properties; it is variously modified by them; 192 METAPHYSICS. and, it is capable of multiform action upon them. In this region of its relations there are such properties and condi- tions of things as, color, form, order, number, size, weight, and place. The mind has also conceptions, of time, of causation, and, of analogy, melody, beauty, and harmony, among the objects of sense and its own ideas. All these are varied modes of mental action, and signify and proclaim a correspondent variety of powers in its nature, and argue its organization. Moreover, it is adjusted to duty and enjoyment by numerous forms of emotion which link it by its richly varied loves to the society of its kind, and fit it for all the reciprocities of service and regards which constitute its social life. And above all these — and they are many and noble, ranging through the whole scale of affections from simple amenity of manners up to universal benevolence — above all these, in office and aim, tower the religious affec- tions, apprehending and responding to the attributes of the Divine, and completing and crowning that wondrous corres- pondence and adjustment of faculty to object which consti- tutes the human nature a reproduction of all that is below it, and a reflection of all that is above it, in the universe. Naturalists have not been satisfied with general conceptions in their respective departments. They have carried their science deeper into the secrets of nature than the general notion that all inanimate bodies have extension, configura- tion, mobility, and such like; nay, they rest not even in those qualities which are common to kinds of objects, as of metals — their ductility, density and lustre. Particular metals, such as copper, iron, gold, must be specified — particular earths, as chalk, clay, &c. Indeed, analysis has scarcely begun its work at the point of these very obvious distinctions; it decomposes every compound, discovers the METAPHYSICS. 193 gases, and the bases of the earths, alkalies and metals, until the simple elements of all substances are separated, and their properties, affinities and spheres of action are all known. Science pulls all fabrics into pieces to learn the mystery of their construction, and to acquire the power of producing others; she resolves all substances into the ele- mental chaos again to note the laws and trace the process of their organization, and she wrenches from the very heart of nature the secrets which invest her with its dominion. Ideas and notions, general and abstract, are the outline intuitions and spontaneous products of our faculties, and are given as receptacles of the particular truths which they logically include, and all the learning of life is nothing else than producing them into their ultimated specialties. I have the general conception of causation as capacity for comprehending all forms and modes of efficiency: I have the sentiment of reverence as a general impulse to the homages severally due to all the species of exalted worth ; and, bene- volence to be branched out to its diverse objects in due quality and measure. Distinctness, individuality, specialty, is the drift and destination of all intellectual development: it lives and grows only by the digestion of its aliment, and its more than chemical perfectness of decomposition and assi- milation. Speculation in this matter tends to practice, and opinions affect interests. It is not a matter of indifference whether morality be regarded as a product of reflection, and so within the reach and power of preceptive instruction; or, be attri- buted to faculties as different from those of the understand- ing as the ear is from the eye, and requiring a correspondent difference of culture. An education proceeding upon the ground that morals must be proved will result very differ- ently from that system which teaches that they must be felt. 9 194 METAPHYSICS. But, the judgment of a notion is pronounced when it is found untrue, for mischief only can result from falsehood; and, the health and life of the soul depend as closely upon the truth of its treatment, as the body's upon the relations which it maintains to the physical forces that surround it. I will not further insist upon the necessity of special, inti- mate, distinctive and accurate knowledge of the objects of natural science, and its still more eminent importance in the science of mind, by all the difference of its dignity and value above every other. I do not admit that inquiry into the intimate nature of the soul is impracticable, or unprofitable, or unnecessary, or forbidden ; but, as the truth under consideration lies displayed in both provinces of our being, we will pursue it now in the region of physical inquiry. The mind, whether a simple force, like the stream that drives a mill, or complex, as the hand that moves within its glove, is attached to the bodily organization, and within the sphere of physics closely conforms to the laws of its material machinery. To every variety of external objects the mechanism has an adapted variety of structure, and the multiform offices of the mental instruments intimate a cor- responding difference of faculties in the agent. A part of any machine which represents no thought, and forwards no purpose, and answers to no necessity of the design in which it is employed, is absurd and impertinent. We have taken the ground that the brain is the immedi- ate instrument of the mind, and, of course, hold that in this service it is subject to all the laws of organism. Ana- tomical analysis, like chemical, ascertains the fact that every difference of quality and function takes difference of form and organization; and we have in every realm of nature the general law that for the production of dissimilar METAPHYSICS. 195 effects the material conditions of bodies are always varied. In the inanimate world every salt and metal has a peculiar crystallization as decided as its difference of qualities; the chemist knows them by their figure alone. In vegetable life the difference of structure is just as great as the differ- ence of character among plants: the instructed sense of the botanist distinguishes kinds, species and varieties by visible and tangible differences of organization ; and, in the indivi- dual plant, the wood, the leaves, the fruit, are as distinguish- able in form and arrangement as in office. But it is in the human constitution especially, w T here all the endowments of the inferior creation are reproduced and still nobler ones are added, that this law gets overwhelming demonstration. Passing over the more open and obvious illustrations offered by the heart, lungs, liver, etc., of the doctrine that differ- ences of function, vital as well as mechanical, require variety of apparatus, let us trace the evidences of the law more minutely in the divisions of function in a single organ of sense. The tongue is the organ of taste. We speak of the sense of taste as a single one — as one of five; but savors are diverse; there are, among others, easily distinguished, sour, sweet, and bitter, and each of these is appropriated to a spe- cial part of the tongue, and is felt in no other place. Sour at the tip, sweet along the edges and under them, and bitter at the root. If the tongue is thrust beyond the lips, the acidity of cream of tartar will be produced the instant that it touches the extremity of the organ; but aloes, though a most malignant bitter, is not appreciated or recognized in that position and place at all. So, if the acid is carefully laid on the root of the tongue, it will be swallowed without being perceived; but bitter clings there for a long time after the impression is made. Xow, if the difference of sour and bitter and sweet, demands a change of structure and quali- 196 METAPHYSICS. ties, we have tile infinite complexity of the animal organiza- tion illustrated, and the doctrine that no one texture per- forms more than one office, fully supported. The varied susceptibility of the body to the effects of drugs, renders it probable that every remedial agent has a specific destination. Indeed, if it were not so, varying the dose and circumstances of administration would produce all the variety of effects which in practice is obtained only by a multiplication of remedies. The nervous system, by virtue of its higher organization and nearer analogies to our subject, is the best qualified, and is, in fact, the clearest witness to the truth of our proposi- tion. The nerves which connect the brain and spinal cord with the general muscular system, and convey the volitions from the brain to the members, and the sensations from the surface to the brain, are demonstrated now to be double in structure as they are known to be in function. They all rise by double roots, one the sensitive, the other the motor, nerve. The complexity of the nervous, distribution generally is to the same point, and unequivocal. The tongue has taste, common voluntary motion, common sensation, and motion associated with respiration in oral language; to give it these endowments it has as many kinds of nerves coming to it from totally different sources. It has a gustatory, a respiratory, a motor, and a sensitive, nerve. The eye in like manner has its nerve of vision, common sensation, motion, and expression — a complexity of apparatus answer- ing to the diversity of offices in perfect numerical parallelism. It is not so in the circulation of the blood; there, the fluid is uniform in its constitution, and all parts of the body are supplied from the main trunks as they pass, by the nearest and most convenient routes; just as the principal water- pipes in our cities are tapped to supply the want in the METAPHYSICS. 19T immediate vicinity. But nerves, whose general office it is to endow the body with all its modes of vitality, come from all directions and distances to supply a single organ with its many kinds of power and capacity. The impression might be greatly deepened by multiplying the proofs of the doctrine which these few facts illustrate. If only a finger be so far mentally analyzed as to distinguish its muscles, arteries, nerves, and skin, and the modifications of structure be dwelt upon long enough to raise its own phi- losophy, the conclusion will be irresistible that the mechanism of Nature is just as complex as her operations are various; and, the extreme simplicity of apparatus, so often ascribed to her, will appear rather oratorical than oracular. The truth is that every fibre in the animal body, every atom in the creation, having a special office, has a distinct form; that quality and structure are in necessary connection; and, that all the forms of things depend upon their uses. The elements of material beings are probably distinct in proper- ties and embodiment as they stand in the Divine conception — certainly they are, as they are related to all other agencies; and the continual flux of forms which marks the ceaseless dissolutions and new creations of existence, results from the play of laws which rest in this intrinsic difference of the permanent elements. At the risk of tediousness I must, for the sake of disci- pline where conviction already exists, and for adaptation to styles of mind not met by the previous method of treatment, offer some other arguments for the diversity of the mental faculties and, under our rule, the corresponding plurality of the cerebral organs. They are such as these, viz. : The inequality of faculties in the same mind — difference of ability for different things being both original and insur- mountable. Walter Scott could not draw with a pencil the 198 METAPHYSICS. landscapes which he painted in words— Michal Angeld was absolutely incapable of composing the pictures of Raphael. A great master fails in drawing while he excels in coloring; another shall have form and attitude exquisitely, and never attain to eminence in color. Washington could not have written Byron's poetry, nor could Newton have created Macbeth. The inference is that the difference of faculty is not merely change of state of the whole mind, so that strengthening it generally will necessarily strengthen it in every particular power or mode of manifestation; and the facts in the case of every man — in his intellect and in his morals — are conclusive. Fatigue of a single faculty while the others remain vigor- ous and capable, is a clear proof of distinct organic apparatus; and dreaming, somnambulism, and partial insanity, are easily understood upon the hypothesis of a plurality of nervous instruments, and are utterly inexplicable on any other. Madness, though complete as to some of the powers, is seldom universal; and the absurdity of dreams is often seen to be in the inactivity of a single faculty, as of conscience, time, benevolence. Frightful crimes are committed in sleep, without the slightest thought of the wrong; and dates and localities not only fall into confusion, but often fall clean out of consideration and consciousness. It is remarkable, too, that the feeling or faculty most active during the preceding day is by exhaustion the wanting one in the phantasms of the night; while all the other parts and processes are conducted coherently and consistently by the faculties which are awake in this state of partial sleep. In our daylight wakefulness and general activity, the faculties are never all at work at once, nor capable of it. Our conclusion, clear enough before, is reinforced by these considerations, and we write it down for settled that — METAPHYSICS. 199 The faculties of the intellect, and the sentiments, affec- ticns, passions, and instincts of the moral nature, are very numerous and unlike; and that — They are each manifested by a special part of the cerebral apparatus. TIL Analysis and Generalisation in physics — Confounded in Metaphysical systems — Their method varied according to differences of aim — General and descriptive anatomies of the body, their difference of drift — Metaphysical systems a general physiology of mind — The descriptive and special required — Criticism of the faculties usually admitted — Desire and Will — Categories of Aristotle, of Kant — Disharmony of metaphysical theories. A science is defined to be a collection of the general principles, or leading truths relatiug to any subject, arranged in systematic order. . In the discovery of scientific truth analysis, or the separa- tion of compounds into then- simple elements, is pursued until a natural history of the facts is secured; next, the facts collected are classified; thirdly, their respective and relative weight and significance are investigated and estimated; and, lastly, the laws of the phenomena in question, thus ascertained, are pursued through successive generalizations, from the least comprehensive regularly upwards, till the high est and most general principle is reached. This is the Bacon- ian or Inductive method. Its adaptation to the whole range of physical truth is unquestionable. It is the life and soul of the experimental philosophy, and its triumphs in the sphere of materialism are the proofs of its validity. Its fitness and value as a method of metaphysical research are logically very questionable, and the results of its employment hitherto 200 METAPHYSICS. are, strictly speaking, equivocal. The facts and laws of mind which are clearly matters of observation, fall fairly within its jurisdiction; but there are other facts of mind which are intuitive and witnessed only by our consciousness, and so, lie quite out of its range. Bacon, himself, applied it sparingly, and with great hesitation, to psychology. A very few pages of his voluminous works contain all that he wrote of a strictly metaphysical character. Analysis, in physics, is the separation of a compound body into its constituent elements; in logic, it is the tracing of things to their sources, or, the resolving of knowledge into its original principles. Generalization is the classified colligation of facts, under such conceptions of their classes, as at once express the general truth, and contain the particular truths, embraced in them. The law of a class of facts must describe all the individual facts which it covers; it does not merge or sink them in a verbal menstruum, indistinguishably dissolved, and requiring a new and delicate analysis to render them up to observation again. It is not reduction by evaporation, but natural arrangement by crystallization, that best illustrates the process. Analysis to ultimates, and legitimate generalization, may be called the instruments of scientific research and philoso- phic induction. The chemist loosens the simple bodies com- bined and hidden in his compounds, examines them separately, ascertains their several qualities, and their relations to each other; in effect, he dissects his subjects, and learns the functions of their elementary parts. The botanist and zoologist follow the same method. The analyst of inorganic, and the anatomist of organic, matter have similar aims — the discovery of the primitive elements in all compounds, and the determination of their qualities and agencies. METAPHYSICS. 201 Thus, a science, or, in other words, a complete knowledge of a subject, according to the inductive method, is achieved. But it needs to be observed that each science, or art, directs its inquiries, collects its data, and forms its classification, following only those things and properties which fail within its special cognizance, or which it must take into account to accomplish its special ends. There may, therefore, be several sciences of the same com- mon subject. Thus, man is properly the subject of anatomy, physiology, psychology, sociology, &c. Each of these are concerned with the human constitution, and often with the same parts of it, but with such difference of objects and ultimate drift, that the facts and principles of neither of them separately, nor of all together, will certainly serve for a system of mental philosophy. It is, for this reason, not enough that a particular science of a given subject be com- pact, coherent and complete in and for itself. The general subject may be capable of something more and something else for other or more comprehensive uses. Even the science of anatomy, with its inseparable physi- ology, is divided by the medical profession into two distinct and very dissimilar systems. Their general anatomy follows the specific tissues of the body wherever they are found; the cellular membrane, for instance, through the entire frame, in the bones, coats of the blood vessels, sheathings of the muscles, meninges of the brain, coats of the viscera, linings of the cavities, texture of the viscera, &c, without any con sideration or regard for the determinate organs, into which it enters; and so of all the other primitive textures in turn, of which the various organs of the bodies are composed. The object of this science is to find mucous membrane, mus- cular fibre, nervous matter, osseous fibre, lime, blood glo- bules, wherever they are distributed, and to settle and 202 METAPHYSICS. determine their- intrinsic qualities, without concern for the form, place, office, or relations and functions of the several organs. It has nothing to do with the stomach as an organ of digestion, with the eye as an instrument of vision, or with the brain as an apparatus of innervation. But special or descriptive anatomy, while it necessarily embraces, in its own way and for its own ends, all that general anatomy teaches of the primitive tissues, concerns itself also with the integral structure and special function, and with every quality, condition, and relation of, each and all the organs of the body. It charges itself, for instance, with the several coats of the stomach, its arteries, nerves, veins, absorbents, with the gastric fluid, the phenomena of digestion, the sympathies which link it with associated organs, and all that enters into its constitution and functions as a whole. In other words, general anatomy treats its subjects as .a mere mineralogist or chemist would examine and report the several metals and other materials of a watch; while special anatomy considers and renders its subjects as a scientific machinist would treat the workmanship, the wheels, the springs, construction and motion, of the time-piece, without at all overlooking the various materials of which it is composed. Xow my apprehension of the sytems of mental philosophy which the world has in time past held legitimate is, that they are strikingly analogous to that general anatomy of the human fabric which we have here described; and, that the defects and faults of their teachings result inevitably from the neglect of those specialties of the mental constitu- tion and functions which correspond to and demand a des- criptive anatomy and physiology. The schools have, besides, analyzed, in their way, thought and feeling, rather than mind — actions and effects, rather than METAPHYSICS. 203 • instruments and powers. They have attempted a general physiology, unconditioned upon anatomy ; they have treated functions without reference to the special faculties which they indicate, and suppose, and depend upon; just as the functions of the animal frame are regarded by the unlearned without any consideration of, or reference to, the organs which manifest them. We do not propose a history nor a general criticism of mental philosophy as it exists, but certain classes of these speculations may be considered to a certain extent in advancement of our own object. One class of metaphysicians conceives of the fundamental phenomena of mind, as if they were identical with its primitive or elementary faculties, and divide them, with more or less agreement among themselves, into consciousness, sensation, perception, attention, sympa- thy, antipathy, pleasure, pain, desire and will. jSTow, this analysis, with any possible rectification in par- ticulars, is only, and at best, a sort of general physiology of .mind; and it has no conformity of principle and method to such a distinction of mental powers and functions as will entitle it to the analogical name of a mental chemistry. What just claim has it then, to the character of a complete analysis of its subject, or to a useful generalization of its laws ? Let us see: — Consciousness is the immediate knowledge we have of the operations of our own minds. It is identical with mind — a necessary concomitant of all its operations. It is a general term. It is an effect of the activity of any one, and of all the fundamental faculties. And the physiologist might as well enumerate vitality, the inseparable accompaniment and issue of all the organic actions of the body, as one of its 204 METAPHYSICS. simple functions, The chemist might as justly speak of molecular motion as one of the elements of matter. Sensation is also a general term. It means an immanent act of the mind — an act that has no object distinct from the mind itself, or, an affection of the mind regarded as severed from its cause, the simple reception or the undergoing of an impression. It belongs to every power of the mind which is the subject of actions from without — it belongs to each of the five senses; it is induced by heat and cold, and results from every contact with foreign bodies; it accompa- nies muscular motion; it occurs often in the viscera; it is an incident of all the passions and emotions, and of many of the ideas of the mind; and in all these instances is corres- pondingly modified. It may be compared, for our purpose, with physiological sensibility, and with the chemical pheno- menon, Conduction. Perception is also a general term. It is distinctively used to signify that act of the mind by which it refers its sensa- tions to their external corporeal cause. By it we have the conviction of the objective things which cause our sensations. It is exerted by as many of our fundamental faculties as are perceptive in their nature and office, and these faculties are as numerous and unlike as the qualities of external things which are their objects. Those things have size, color, form, position, order, number and other properties; each of which requires a special mental power for its recognition. Percep- tion is, therefore, a comprehensive, and not a specific, desig- nation for these offices of the intellect. The word is as general as reflection in optics, or in acoustics, or as vibra- ' tion in music, or reaction in medicine. Attention denotes the active state of every intellectual faculty; sometimes it means the combined activity of M E I A PHYSICS. 205 several; but it is no more a fundamental power than is organic tonicity in physiology, or cohesion iu chemistry. Memory is the capacity of the mind for returning to the same state, in the absence of the object, which its presence induced in the previous act of perception. Essentially, it is the perceptions reproduced. It applies, also, to the states of the passions and affections after they have passed away. The heart's experiences, all of them, are objects of memory; differing, however, from the recollection of external things in this, that the feelings themselves are not revived, but remembered rather as events in our mental history. It is hence of so many kinds, and so unlike in its numerous modi- fications, that the idea of it according to the metaphysicians is not a whit more analytic than excitability in physiology, or reviviscence in chemistry. Judgment. — The received technical definition of this word is, perhaps, capable of holding all its proper meanings; but it needs rectification, and greatly lacks exactitude. It needs just what a definition should have — a clear and expli- cit inclusion of all that belongs to the thing defined, and the exclusion of all that does not beloug to it. It is not enough to say of judgment, that " it is the act or process of the mind in comparing its ideas, to find their agreement or dis- agreement, and to ascertain truth." This may describe a philosophic judgment, a process of systematic or logical reas- oning, but it does not apply with any tolerable propriety to those instant conclusions which the mind forms of things, and their properties and relations, as they are currently presented to its perceptions. A musician judges the harmony of sounds with as little ratiocination about them as a gour- mand exercises in spicing his oysters. In either case an ignoramus or an idiot is adequate to a perfect decision of the agreement or disagreement, agreeableness or disagree- 206 METAPHYSIC; ableness of the impressions made upon his senses. All the intellectual faculties have judgment, each of its own kind, just as the senses have taste, which is a kind of judg- ment ; and just as the desires and affections have pleasure in the feeling of fulfilled requirement. They also have their preferences and make their elections without help from, or intervention of, the understanding. A colorist, a costumier, a wine-bibber, a horse-jockey, a sagacious dog, perceives, feels, decides the relations of things among themselves, and to his own relishes, and in effect, affirms and denies concern- ing them with as clear and complete judgment as the logi- cian, the mathematician, or the moralist exercises upon the respective subjects of his own provinces of thought. The Instincts are blind to moral distinctions, but they know and criticise their own objects. Appetite, in the inferior animals, discriminates and finds congruities after com- parison of objects ; a young kid which had never yet tasted food selected milk from lime-water and a mixture of magnesia presented to it. After smelling at each, it decided for the right. In the judgments which we form of the character and feelings of others by the natural signs of gesture and physi- ognomy, there is not only no comparison of ideas in the act, but really we have no ideas about the matter to compare. But judgment, even in the instances to which the received definition has some pertinence, is not a single or simple power. ~No man has it in equal degree in all the things he is concerned with; but every man has it in proportion to the power of the faculty to which it belongs. There are, therefore, as many kinds of judgment as there are knowing faculties in the mind. The perceptive and reflective powers all have it, just as they all have memory and imagination, also, in their respective spheres or functions. METAPHYSICS. 207 1 Here again, we ore not supplied with the specific and dis- tinctive knowledge which analysis should afford, but, accord- ing to our plan of parallelism, it is analogous to assimilation in physiology, and to crystallization in chemistry, and is as far as they are from being elementary. If association signifies that several faculties, in various groupings, mutually excite each other, the word is merely historical and not analytical in the sense that science demands. It describes an event, not a power — a happening, not an agent. It might, indeed, designate a law, but it is put for an essence. It corresponds very well to sympathy in phy- siology, and to elective affinity in chemistry; and these are not elements, but actions and accidents. The sympathy and antipathy, the pleasure and pain, of moral philosophers, are but two pairs of words for the same two things. They express relations only, not powers or specific constitutional endowments. They stand in mental philosophy about where absorption and excretion stand in physiology, and are equivalent to the attractive and divellent forces of chemistry. They are modes of action of many and dissimilar powers. Oxygen is an element, but oxydation or effervescence is not. A capillary blood vessel, with its vital endowments, is an organ or an instrument ; but absorp- tion, excretion, election, assimilation, are only varied and accidental manifestations of it. Desire and Will are used to comprehend the whole moral nature of man. Understanding and Will, Intellect and Affections, Intellectual and Active powers, Mind and florals, Head and Heart, Thought and Feeling, are usually employed to embrace all our speculative or knowing, and affective or emotional, faculties. The first class we have sufficiently considered, and we 208 METAPHYSICS. dispose of the theory, classification, and nomenclature in use for the second, in like manner, for similar reasons. Desire, reduced to its essential signification, may be ren- dered by the word hunger, thirst, or want. It is the nor- mal effect of the activity of any of the feelings, whether of the class, instincts, sentiments, moral or religious; indeed it can scarcely be denied to the knowing and thinking powers, if the same thing, substantially, should always be called by the same name, as oxygen carries the same name wherever it occurs, whether voraciously active as in the acids, slug- gishly at rest as in the rust of iron, or inappreciable to the senses, as in the atmosphere. If the term be limited to the propensities, it is still gen- eric and not specific; for these are very numerous and very unlike. The desire for wealth, the desire for fame, and the desire for love, is such another analysis of the individualities to be covered by it, as the word " wants " at the head of an advertising column in a daily newspaper. It includes all "the lusts of the flesh, and the desire of the eye, and the pride of life." It runs through the moral constitution so uni- versally, that it may be compared to the nutritive impulse of living organizations: its chemical analogue is electric affinity. Here again we have a class of actions, instead of an analysis of forces or functions, and the specific knowledge of each, which we are in search of. Will is often but the synonym of desire. It is used to mean the particular desire which overwhelms the others, that in any particular instance are in conflict with it. But, in different individuals, and in the same individual at different times, every one of the instincts, sentiments and inclinations must, according to this apprehension, become a will ; and thus we would have as METAPHYSICS. 209 many different wills as desires. In this sense it is not properly a faculty at all, but an occasional resolution, and has no sort of analogy to the limbs, members, or organs of the living body by which it is qualified for its various offices and adjusted to its diverse objects ; and so, it is no analysis of the moral con- stitution; nor has it any better claim to the character of a scientific classification of a principle or law of its nature. It is a verbal, but not a logical, definition of the thing intended; for it does not describe it by kind and difference from other things. It is only another word for desire, and that has many and dissimilar meanings in philosophy. Those philosophers who by the mill intend to include the propensities, passions, and sentiments, or, the entire emotional side of our nature, no doubt use it so comprehensively, because they regard it as the resultant of each particular combination of them, and so of all of them in turn. If this be not the same notion that we have just now been discussing, it differs from it only by being in its employment more confused, and worse in its effects. Tery grave consequences have followed this looseness of logic, in ethics, as well as in theoretical phi- losophy; but it does not fall within our present plan to undertake the exposure. It is enough to say that will and desire cannot be the same thing, for the latter is in its nature a blind unreflect- ing force, while the former is alwaye distinguished as an act of intelligent determination. Intelligence is held both in morals and civil law as an indispensable condition of will. It is not a master appetite but a determining motive, inclu- ding the notion of reflection and choice. Will is considered and treated by some writers as an entity, a distinct faculty or force of the mind; but whatever the essential element may be, it is phenomenally always a decision of the understanding adopted according to motives. 210 METAPHYSICS. It embraces the propensities, sentiments, and sometimes, the perceptive powers, as motives, and the understanding as their arbiter. It always supposes a plurality of motives, and it exhibits an election among them, the reasoning powers being the dominant element, or agent, in the process. Such a mixture of materials and agencies cannot be a simple faculty. Before it can be tabled among the results of a scientific analysis it must be decomposed. Upon our plan of illustrating the errors and defects of the systems under discussion, the will, as a mental faculty, conforms somewhat to secretion (the organic choice and modification of the elements into determinate forms) of physiology, and to precipitation in chemistry. It has been our aim in this chapter to expose and to account for the errors which we charge upon the systems and doctrines, considered. It is very sadly true that the teachings of the schools in mental philosophy have attained no such certainty or utility of results, as the corresponding sciences of physics have afforded the world. At least equal talent and zeal have been employed upon it, and the failure must be ascribed to erroneous methods and misdirection of aim, for, the failure is just as great in those parts of the subject which lie fairly open and responsive to inquiry, as in those which are supposed to be in their nature inscrutable. The fault lies in this, that the cultivators of this branch of human knowledge have occupied themselves exclusively with general conceptions where they should have sought specialties; at the same time making the equally great mistake of attending only to processes and effects, w 7 here they should have looked for the primitive sources, the elementary powers, which display them. They have given, or attempted to give, us only a general physiology of mind, without so much as admitting specific functions, which must exist, if METAPHYSICS. 211 the mind be a congeries or collection of varied capabilities or activities. This method of philosophizing is necessarily as erroneous and defective as if in medicine, only sensibility, contractility, and secretion in the abstract, were regarded, to the exclusion of the distinct and integral offices of the eye, the muscles, the stomach, skin, &c. Or, as if in chemistry, sublimation, crystallization, affinity, and radia- tion, were given as the result of its analysis, or as a list of elements, instead of the individual earths, alkalies, metallic bases, and gases, with their respective habitudes and powers. Other sets of thinkers, however, have aimed at elementary discovery. One kind or class of these has endeavored to ascertain the simple elements of which all our knowledge consists. These occupy themselves with the objects of mind primarily, and thence infer the faculties concerned with them. Another class subjects the mind itself, or intends so to do, to investigation. We will very briefly notice both. • The categories of Aristotle are based upon the first men- tioned of these methods of research. But, beside a faulty limitation to material objects, his classification is broadly generic, often including many predicates of the object under a single general term. His category of quantity, for instance, must include all that falls within the two provinces of arithmetic and geometry, at least, and perhaps still more. There is no other place in his scheme for number and figure, or for order, color and weight. Here then are five condi- tions of objects which may require as many varied perceptive powers in the mind; and the category fails of its proper use in suggesting them. With the exception of his first and seventh category, he has, perhaps, not indicated the correla- tive in objective things, of any of the simple faculties by which they must be apprehended, judged, or conceived. 212 METAPHYSICS. But the method is intrinsically bad. The universe of things is resolvable to intelligent beings only in coincidence with the faculties and capacities which they possess, and when these are the aim of discovery they are most directly and successfully examined in themselves. The system of nature may be a very difficult thing as it stands to the apprehension of inferior animals, of men, and of angels. The perceptive powers of either of these several orders of beings, are, there- fore, not certainly inferred by an analysis of nature, made by either for the other. A dog has no notion of religious devotion or of its object; an angel may, for aught we know, have some faculty by which he sees immediately the chemi- cal constitution of a crystal, as we perceive its form and color, at a glance. Moreover, were a perfect analysis of the external world made for us, it does not follow that our faculties shall correspond in number and quality to the elements so obtained. A small number of primitive mental powers may stand addressed to all that we can know by them of the whole material creation; while a dozen others or a score may be conceived of as concerned with wife, child, or friend. The mind itself must be anatomized to reveal its constitu- tion. The categories of Kant are based upon this better devised method and better chosen object of investigation. His most general or highest classification of the human fa- culties is into sensational perception, understanding, and, pure reason. The two former of these classes he subdivides into fourteen categories, or, as he expresses it, the fourteen con- ceptions in relation to which everything really existing must be viewed. This phrase in itself gives us warning that we must not expect an ultimate analysis pushed to elementary simplicity, but only certain conceptions which the mind must take of all its objects. By looking critically into these con- METAPHYSICS. 213 ceptions, it will appear that several of them may be the work of a single faculty, and that of several others each embraces the primary services of many faculties at once. The forms of sensation he reduces to time and space. The first of these is probably the function of a single power, but how any single power can be supposed to receive all the properties and conditions of material objects except those embraced under the faculty of time, is quite beyond compre- hension. If space includes only the simple notions of size, locality, form and order, we have already a vicious general- ization, that at best affords us only products, and conceals the factors. He has, indeed, made provision for some of the ideas and offices of sensation under his second general class, understanding; only some of them, however, and these seem to be unwarrantably dislocated. The laws of the understanding he reduces to twelve. Remark, Laws, for they are not faculties, properly, but modes of mental action, or general notions of its offices — ■ these twelve are made to fall within four principal or head- categories, viz. quantity, quality, relation and modality. Under quantity he gives us unity, plurality, totality. This seems to be only a grammatical generalization, not a philo- sophical analysis of the subject. Now, there may be a single power for the perception or cognition of number, and ano- ther for size, and still another for form. If so, is not the first adequate to the several ideas of unity and plurality, while the same power, or some other, shall have the capa- city of comparing the perception with another idea and so settle its totality. The same things are very probable of size and form. But if the categories do not mean element- ary perceptions, or judgments, then, they are not the ana- lysis demanded, but may be some kind of generalization of them. 214 METAPHYSICS. That naturarobjects have qualities is very certain, and it is just as certain that we have the faculties by which they are perceived and distinguished, but they are very numer- ous, and Kant's subdivision of quality into affirmation, nega- tion, and limitation, is certainly no specific list of them. Nor is it intended to be, but rather certain resultants of reflection upon them. The problem of mental science con- cerning the qualities of things is, what are the perceptive powers by which we know them ? Kant does not attempt this ; his search is for laws — our demand is for elements and their laws. Under the head of Relation, he gives us substance, causality, and reciprocity. That we have a faculty by which we have the idea of substance, and that this idea is intuitive, the ground of the natural conviction that all qualities inhere in, and are supported by, some subject — in other words, that the objectivities of mind are not a mere phantasmagoria of phenomena, as Pyrrho and Berkley thought, is a very admissible, if not a necessary, proposition. And, that we have another elementary faculty by which we have the idea of causation is also logical enough. And so we pass these without excepting to them. In our appre- hension of them they are true in themselves and answer the inquiries which we put, so far as they go. But as a part of his classification they are vitiated by an unmethodical collocation, and erroneous tendencies in theory. They are incongruously woven into a web of very abstruse theorizing. They are not put availably at the service of theoretical science and all its practical uses. Under the head of Modality, are contained possibility, actuality, and necessity, which may be the poetic or tran- scendental rendering of the topic, but it gives no hint of the mental constitution or the primitive faculties, by which these M ETAPH Y SI C S. 215 logical gymnastics are accomplished. It is not the retorts, the scales and weights, the manipulating formulae of the laboratory, that we require, but the elements to be obtained by them ; and then all the laws and history of the process, by way of notes and inductions. It is not the statuary, but the bones, muscles, glands, nerves, bloodvessels, of the mind, with the laws of all its diverse functions in detail, which are required for the utilities of science. To the pure reason he attributes three irreducible ideas — • the soul, the universe, and God. By the pure reason, then, he must mean all those original faculties which achieve these irreducible ideas. What are they ? Severing the head- category from the others only indicates that we have not these three ideas either through the sensations or the under- standing. This is all the analysis it gives us, and this is the extent to which it penetrates the grand problem of mind. Nothing is done for the idea of God by calling it irredu- cible. And we may well question the notion, for, causality, the devotional sentiment, the instinct of supernaturality, hope, the feeling of the sublime, the sympathies with good- ness, aye, even the passions, are all elements and sugges- tions of the great conception. Indeed it is not easy to see why, so far as the symmetry of classification and nomenclature are concerned, he might not as well have clustered these three ideas under that category of the understanding which he calls quantity, and subdivides into unity (plurality) and totality, taken in con- nection with the other categories of substance ; for, the soul he conceives of as the absolute subject, the universe as the totality of all phenomena, and God as the all-perfect essence. Here are the substance, the unity, and the totality of the un- derstanding, and very probably they are that very pure reason which he is endeavoring to eliminate from the mixture. 216 METAPHYSICS. This is not Tery respectful to the categories, but the im- patience betrayed springs from respect for scientific truth maltreated. That the essential drift of this method is in the direction of generalization and not analysis, is shown very well and clearly by its final issue in the hands of its most distin- guished disciples. M. Cousin, " one of the first of living philosophers," says Mr. Morell, "has criticised the labors of Kant, and has reduced the whole of the Kantian cate- gories to two fundamental ideas P " According to Cousin all our thoughts may be reduced to the two primitive ideas of action and being." Is it not obvious that the metaphysi- cians of this school by analysis really mean combination, and by primitive intend complex. Our apprehension of their science of mind is thus vindi- cated : It is neither a natural history, a descriptive anatomy, a special physiology, nor a chemistry, of the mental constitution. It does not analyze the soil, botanize the harvest, nor garner the diversified fruits, but it opens a sort of rectifying distillery and extracts their proof spirit. That the researches of the two or three hundred historic metaphysicians who have flourished from Pythagoras down to Sir W. Hamilton, have turned up much truth of the kind, and in the form, required by a legitimate science, is un- questionably true. But, that not one of them has been able to construct a system which any other in this long list accepts, is a significant fact, which is itself the severest possible criticism upon the whole tribe. Their work lies yet in the condition of the earth on the first demiurgic day ; we see the light, that it is good, but it is not yet divided from the darkness. When its beams shall be rolled up in the order of a completed system, some of them will shine as stars in the firmament, to give light METAPHYSICS. 21? upon the earth. We must wait for the creation of the great lights, that are to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the lmmt from the darkness. VIII. Sources of the data — Observation — Consciousness — Their respective offices — The animal kingdom, nature's chemistry of the functions common -to man and ani- mals — Comparative psychology — Data derived from mental and moral differences in the sexes — From differences among men of genius — Tests of functional simpli- city — Physiognomy — Indications of e'ements in the cerebral structure — Human actions indicate special faculties — Grammatical indicia of primitive powers — Sphere and services of Consciousness— Limitation of its office — Reflective facul- ties, the analysts of mental phenomena. To attain a true psychology we must know all the facts of the mental constitution — all the varied phenomena which its action displays, and all the laws which govern them. Our means for obtaining the knowledge of the facts requir- ed, are of two kinds. We can oh serve some of its phenomena, and the conditions of their manifestation, as we examine and collect the facts of the world without ; and, by our con- sciousness, we can know other facts, which are not thus open to observation by the senses. Consciousness, indeed, covers the whole field of this research, and so casts a cross-light upon that department of the inquiry to which observation is limited, while it has exclusive cognizance of another eminently important division of the data demanded. The materials contributed by both these means are alike the sub- jects of our reflective faculties, in their proper work of eliciting and arranging the resulting truths, and giving them their scientific effect. Observation and consciousness are the miners and common carriers — the reflecting faculties 10 218 METAPHYSICS. are the assayers and comers of the ore for use and cur- rency. It is not true, as the metaphysicians allege, that the facts of mental phenomena are wholly and exclusively a matter of consciousness. Instrument ally, the mind's working pow- ers are connected with, and modified by, the physical organ- ism which it inhabits ; and we might as well be limited to our consciousness in learning the facts and laws of respira- tion, to the neglect of the mechanism and movements of the chest, as thus to restrict the exploration of the mind's functions. If the method of biped progression, the possession of hands of a particular formation, and a forehead nearly ver- tical to the face, are together the signs of the highest order of intelligent beings, the facts may be, and probably are, material to a thorough knowledge of the subject. It is unphilosophical to exclude any fact, always present, from the consideration of any question ; because, it cannot be insignificant. Moreover, the fruitlessness of the ancient logic, as an instrument of discovery in physics, is well exposed by its failures, and even better proved by the successes of the modern method by analysis ; and mental science, to this day, is another reproach of the purely speculative system of philosophizing. Naturalists have demonstrated that the immensely diversified animal life of our globe is effected by the permutation of a determinate number of essential pow- ers, and a distribution of them, in varied number and com- binations, among the several species of sentient beings. From the lowest and simplest natures up to the highest and most complex, the ascending series is marked by a regu- larly progressive superaddition of faculties, at every stage, to the endowments appropriated to that next below, until METAPHYSICS. 219 man is reached, at the top of the scale, in whose constitu- tion they are all reproduced, and afterwards crowned by still nobler qualities and capacities which are peculiar to him. Here, then, we have an analysis, or division of the elements, and a distinctive exhibition of them accomplished by nature's own chemistry ; and it is simply absurd to refuse its teachings. Surely something of value may be learned by observing the qualities of our own nature, whether they belong to mind or body, as they stand decomposed in the riving beings around us. A phenomenon of our own nature challenges inquiry — but, for the reason that it always carries the form of unity in manifestation, it may seem to our con- sciousness to be single and simple. Xow, suppose that something of the same kind of fact occurs also in an inferior animal, where it appears as a simple endowment, but evi- dently lacks an ingredient found in the human form. Is it not clear that the difference between these two phenomena, thus shown, must be a distinct element in the human quality ? And is it not so proved to be complex ? The system of nature so displayed, may properly be made to serve as a chemistry of mind, and its study cannot fail to instruct, to the extent that it is capable of solving the great problem. Our own social instincts appear thus decom- posed and distinguished for our use in the variously distri- buted endowments of the animal kingdom. For instance : Sheep are gregarious or attached to society ; but there is no exclusive or constant attachment between the sexes ; and, they have nothing of the family institution. Foxes are married for life ; they live in family, and, they are not societary. Bees and beavers have political institutions, over and above their gregariousness ; while" sheep have no civil polity. Here is an analysis, so far as it goes, of the social 220 METAPHYSICS. instincts, and we have it proved that the elements are thus distinct in nature ; and a just inference is afforded that they lie thus distinguishable in the human constitution, which other modes of examination and proof may either confirm, rectify, or push to still minuter divisions. The phenomena in question may be capable of still further severance into their elements by our consciousness and reasoning powers ; but here are facts of observation which we cannot safely overlook ; for here are divisions which must be valid, because they are live truths in the logic of nature, and are, therefore, something better verified than mere speculation upon consciousness can always be sure of. Reasoning may disintegrate in the endeavor to decompose, but the vital wholeness and efficiency of elements found in nature justify and authenticate her divisions, so far as she carries them. In general, then, we may say that, whatsoever man has in his constitution which other beings possess only in part, is complex in him, and that its analysis is so far rendered as essential difference is discernible between the forms in which it is respectively manifested ; and that, whatsoever he has, of which they have nothing, either in degree or kind, must be distinct in his constitution from those other things which he has in common with them. A further analysis is afforded by the differences in the intellectual, moral, and instinctive characteristics of the two sexes of our own species. All differences, which are not merely those of degree or of application, may be taken to indicate a distinctiveness in the elementary faculties from which they must emanate. If, for instance, intellect predominates in man, and emotion in woman, then emotion is not a result of intellect — it is something else, for it is not in proportion to its supposed METAPHYSICS. 221 cause. If one mode of intellection appears in man, and another in woman, bearing no constant proportion to each other in either, then, intellect is complex, and in the parti- culars exhibited ; and the sexual differences suggest the elements that produce these unlike results. On the same ground : If the domestic affections are regularly stronger in women than in men, the higher moral feelings being equal, the love of offspring is not merely a manner of action of the moral sentiments, but is essentially distinct from them. Here again are facts which consciousness and reflection alone may, indeed, discern, but cannot distinguish with any decided certitude, without the helps and corrections of observation. At least, they are not the only, or the best, instruments of inquiry in the case. Again : a particular capability of mind not proportioned to others in the same individual reveals a distinctiveness of functions, and divides offices of mind into specialties, either in their ultimate simplicity or approaching it. If Newton could not have written the " Paradise Lost," nor Milton the "Principia," the fact is proclaimed that some particular faculty or faculties, were respectively stronger and some weaker in each of these men, than were the others which their relatively greater and less abilities exhibited. That which was strongest in each must have been a different tiring from that which was weakest — great inductive powers are not the same, or any modification of the same, primitive faculties which afford superior poetical capabilities. Con- sciousness and observation thus applied are both competent witnesses to the facts involved in this process, but each affords a different light, and a correcting test of the truths sought, and neither must be rejected. The principle which thus directs in the exploration of elementary differences 222 METAPHYSICS. runs through the entire intellectual and moral nature of man. When a function of mind is observed to be capable of acting and of reposing singly, it may still be complex, but it is certainly separate from all other functions, and is to be referred to a fundamental power until it is further decomposed by other tests. A function that may singly preserve its health, or be affected by disease, bears the same mark of constitutional severance from its kindred powers. "Where eminent arithmetical talent is found in an idiot, or in one whose other intellectual faculties are morbidly dis- qualified for their offices, it is clearly independent of them in nature and office. Cases of monomania, and the phenomena of dreams, in both of which one power only is sometimes affected, while the others remain intact, afford evidence, in their way, of the specialties of endowment that are to be sought for. We have already indicated half a dozen varied means of tracing the complex facts of mind toward their primitive origins in its organization. Logically employed, they will safely limit, rectify, and verify each other, and their harmon- ized results must be legitimate. But observation has, beside all these, a very important field of research in the organism concerned in displaying the actions and affections of the mind. A smile, a tear, a frown, a pale cheek and tremulous lip, and a flushed face and flash- ing eye, are the respective signs of emotions which are probably as distinct from each other in their origins as their physiognomical symbols are different. Tones of voice, and gestures and attitudes of the body, are the appropriate in- dications of unlike feelings, and they suggest inquiry for their respective impulses in the spiritual mechanism. Some of METAPHYSICS. 223 them, or all of them, may be equivocal, under a partial view; but follow them wherever they present themselves in sensitive beings, in many individuals and circumstances, and then correct the inductions by the other modes of investiga- tion which justly apply, and the truth sought will be attained or approached with security and certainty. The fixed forms of the organism immediately concerned in the offices of the mind are necessarily among the most pro- mising indicia of the facts to be discovered. If the brain is the nearest instrument of the thinking and feeling powers of the soul, or as it is stated by the highest authorities, both in physiology and psychology, if " cerebral development is inseparably connected with mental manifestation," the ana- tomy of the brain is of prime importance to the philosophy of mind. Structure does not teach function in an organ whose office is not mechanical, but there is neverthe- less a relation between structure and function which, in a useful and reliable way, may be made to direct research and secure its proper results. When the general uses of a vital part are once well ascertained, its modifications of structure, seen in the light of philosophical principles, must be good evidence of corresponding differences of office. Nature never varies her instruments, in form or quality, but to produce varied results; and, organic differences, there- fore, always prove corresponding varieties of action and use. No two organs in the body, having unlike forms and other qualities of structure, have similar offices in the living economy. The brain of an animal, commissioned to exert a certain set of instinctive faculties, will always be found to differ appreciably from the brain of another with dissimilar impulses and capabilities. All that science needs in order to distinguish and classify these offices, and compare them, so as to know what the structural differences indicate, is to 224 METAPHYSICS. have the power of philosophically interpreting the signs offered to the senses. And the principle is so pervading and comprehensive that, if all differences in the structure of the same brain could be clearly discerned and estimated, the physical apparatus would stand decomposed to the senses, and the corresponding mental organization would be so far clearly proclaimed. We could say that the mind has at least as many different functions as require all these differences of organism for its manifestation. And, if it were also ascertained that no power of mind can be in any- wise exerted except in connection with a fitting material apparatus, then we would have an absolutely ultimate, a thoroughly simplified, analysis of all its operative faculties. I do not know, or believe, that phrenology proper has so large an office as this. It has certainly not yet covered all this ground ; and from certain intrinsic difficulties in its method, w T e cannot expect so much from it. But cerebral anatomy and physiology are, nevertheless, to say the least, very hopeful auxiliaries in the work of constructing a com- plete psychology. If certain distinguishable forms of brain are found to be invariable accompaniments of special mental characters or qualities, such differences of form must be taken to prove that the associated faculties are not accidental modifications of the very same elements, but must needs arise from primi- tively different elements. The help which structure can afford in analysing functions is well illustrated by the organic apparatus of two of the external senses — taste and smell. It might not be possible so to distinguish odors from savors as to refer them, with unquestionable certainty, to distinct nervous functions, were it not that the respective organisms of the mouth and nose exhibit and prove the severance. If the olfctorv and gus- METAPHYSICS. 225 tatory nerves were both distributed in confusion upon the surface of the same cavity we might confound them, in spite of consciousness and reflection, and suppose taste and smell to be only modifications of a single sense. It is sometimes very difficult, if not impossible, to determine whether the vapors issuing from a bakery are smelled or tasted. In this way organic structure, wherever it availably exists, is always a safe guide, and sometimes an indispensable one, to functional analysis; because, however nice or dubious the distinctions in theory may be, the fact is unquestionable when so avouched. For example : if in constant connection with eminent inductive faculties, a certain form of brain could be noted; and, a different form were, in like manner, found to accompany the method of reasoning styled analo- gical, and these invariably, so that the one form should be the physiognomical sign of the one method of reasoning, and the other form the sign of the other method, an analysis of the reflective faculties [would be so far furnished that we should know independently of consciousness, and more certainly than it could prove the fact, that analogy and induction are not convertible modes of one and the same elementary power or powers. It is now a well-established doctrine among naturalists that the human brain, in its gradual formation, assumes, at its successive stages of growth, the various types which char- acterize the whole animal creation below the rank of man, and that man's cerebral superiority consists of superaddi- tions made upon that of the inferior tribes of beings. This fact ascertained, it follows that, in the varied structure of animal brains there are the natural signs of all their varied functions, in elementary distinctness — that, as one organ of a primitive power after another is added all along the ascending series until man is reached, philosophy has in this 10* 226 METAPHYSICS. legible record of progressive development an absolute de- monstration of the divisions into which the corresponding endowments of humanity naturally fall. Cerebral anatomy is, on these grounds, a legitimate department of mental science, so far as the instincts and intellectual powers of animals reach. And it is a safe inference to make from observations thus far established, that the form, size, and other properties of brain, are hints, helps, and proofs of in- tellectual and moral qualities, from that point upwards at which the parallel ceases. The brain is, doubtless, the im- mediate organ of all the soul's powers, and the economy of its structure, and the policy of its vital laws, are, very probably, coherent and integrally consistent throughout. Phrenology, for such reasons as these, lays just claim to a prominent position among the means of mental analysis. Observation has at least two other spheres of service, besides those already suggested, whose facts, under correc- tion of consciousness and the guidance of philosophic reason- ing, must be taken into the inquiry. 1st. Due attention to the conduct of men. Actions are the effects of sentiments, affections, passions and determinate intellectual forces, and these effects, in many instances, in- dicate their specific causes. The conduct of parents to their children shows parental affection to be a determinate im- pulse of humanity. All its combinations with other feel- ings and ideas, and all the modifications within itself, which it manifests, serve rather to individualize than to confuse it to our conceptions. Again : man is proved by his history to be a social being ; and the manifestations of his affection, esteem, admiration, resentment, approbation, love, and all his other dispositions toward his kind, serve, in like manner, to indicate the constitution of mind from which they flow. Love of offspring, love of sex, of home, of society, of METAPHYSICS. 227 wealth, of justice, pride, vanity, benevolence, religious devotion, faith in the supernatural, the sense of the beauti- ful, sympathy with goodness, hopefulness without reasonable cause — are all well distinguished from each other in action, object and use, and are certainly distinct, if not severally single, in constitution ; and may be made to confess their intrinsic character under the tests of simplicity which we have at command. The functional categories of the knowing powers are, also, signified by their respective manners of action, objects and final aims ; and, if we are careful to look for simply integral powers, and as careful to avoid confounding them with mere degrees of their activity, diversities of application, and with the necessary incidents of their operation, we may, under the criticism of all our other means of inquiry, discover them in their individual distinctness. 2d. Attention to the structure of language cannot fail to throw much light upon the facts of this search. Words express the thoughts and feelings of the mind, and language takes its forms and laws from the mental constitution. We can, however, expect only those distinctions which the com- mon business of life requires. Distinct things are not always distinguished in expression ; and, it is further to be remem- bered that, oral language is not adequate to all the varieties of human thought and emotion. Nevertheless, there are to be observed in all languages those constitutional tenden- cies of mental action which proclaim to a certain extent, very clearly, the intrinsic structure of the thinking agent. They all have nouns, substantive and adjective ; verbs, active and passive ; tenses, moods, persons and number. There is a universal grammar, which shows a universal agreement in the things upon which it is founded. If any people believed or could conceive attributes without a subject, then their 228 METAPHYSICS. adjectives would be independent words ; and would make sense without a substantive. The qualities of things are immediately received through our sensations of them ; but it is some instinctive and inevitable suggestion of the mind itself which conceives and supplies a substance in which they inhere. This observation teaches at least .this much of the mental organization ; that, the perceptive powers are dis- tinct in office and nature from that faculty or faculties which conceive or apprehend substance ; and we are put so far on our way in our analysis, and prompted by the logical principle thence derived to go further. The plural number of nouns proves that all nations have notions of attributes which are common to many individuals ; from which the metaphysicians might have learned that many separate and distinct agencies may have common pro- perties of certain kinds, however unlike in other respects, and that the detection of such common properties is very far from a complete practical knowledge of individualities ; and, that generalization of formal qualities is not the same thing as analysis of entities. Active verbs show the universality of the idea of causa- tion, and that some intellectual impulse, inherent and essen- tial to mind, puts every intelligent being upon the question, why ? and prompts him to look for a cause for every effect. This fact starts the inquiry, is causation the suggestion of a special faculty whose office is a necessary ingredient in the process of induction ? And, it further suggests that reason- ing by comparison, as it is obviously a different movement of mind, must be a distinct power, and starts again the still further question, is analogical reasoning simple or complex ? And so of all the forms of speech, and the channels of thought which they show to be fixed and necessary methods of mind in its varied offices. METAPHYSICS. 229 Consciousness, as an instrument for exploring the special- ties of the mental structure remains to be considered. We have defined it to be the immediate knowledge we have of the operations of our own minds ; we conceive of it as inseparable from the idea of mind, and of mind as in- conceivable without it. To say that we are conscious of a thought, or feeling, is to say that we know, discern, distin- guish, feel, or apprehend our mental actions and states, and can examine, remember and judge of them, as of any other objects of intellection ; and all this supposes, besides, that we have certain faculties of mind which have the processes of the others for their objects. Xow, if the mind be an apparatus of numerous parts — an assemblage of many dissimilar powers, this consciousness which belongs to them all must be a competent reporter of their experiences ; and the reflecting faculties which have cognizance and judgment of the record, will find in it the means for distinguishing the specific kinds of mentality which it imports. Consciousness being no more than the feeling or perception of the facts and conditions occurring, is not the analyst of their essences or elements, and is by no means the scientific expositor of the relations, classifications, and laws of the facts which it furnishes. This is the proper office of the reasoning powers, and they must examine the evidence so furnished, under all the lights and guides which scientific truth demands. I am conscious of loving and of hating, and I feel distinctly the difference between the respective sensations, but, whether these emotions are merely opposite motions of the self-same faculty, or modes of action of different members of the mental fabric, is not yet determined. I am conscious of an emotion of vanity, and again, I feel the sentiment of pride : these feelings are consciously dissimilar, but, are they only 230 METAPHYSICS. less or more of the same passion — modifications of the same thing induced by difference of inducing causes ? Does the one include the other with some elementary feeling added ? or, are they wholly separate and independent of each other ? The solution of these problems belongs not to the witnessing consciousness, but to the judging reason, and they are to be examined in every light that all the means of knowledge respecting them can supply. Every movement of feeling has a peculiar sensation, whether it passes only through degrees, or is complicated in kind. Probably the experienced sensations of no moment are ever exactly and simply repeated in the course of a life- time. Consciousness of sensations is therefore strictly historical, but analysis — the reference of every state of feel- ing to its elementary origin, the distribution of the mental phenomena into their organic individualities, and the classi- fication of these according to species, genera, and whatever higher and more general groups they are capable of, is necessarily the work of the high reflecting powers of the mind. The office of consciousness in collecting the required data is probably broader and more comprehensive than that of any other agency appointed to this service, inasmuch *as, besides witnessing within us, in its own way, all the facts which correspond to those which lie also in the province of observation without, it has intimate cognizance of our in- tuitions and inspirations, and the very processes which originate, modify, and limit the life of the soul in the body; but it must, nevertheless, be recollected that its simple knowledges are not a philosophical system of the facts and laws involved. There are, doubtless, still other sources of knowledge concerning our subject than those adverted to, and other METAPHYSICS. 231 methods of employing them than those which we have noticed ; but it was not the aim of these essays to invent a " Xovitoi Orgauum" of mental science. I have not un- dertaken the ambitious task of laying down the laws, limit- ing the field, prescribing the method, and furnishing the formulas of the processes to be pursued. I have ventured only to present certain plain reflections upon the principles and policy of the methods hitherto employed, with a view to bring into relief some very general and incomplete, but I trust useful suggestions, touching the methodology of mental science, which I proceed now to submit. IX. Methodology of Mental Science — Respective uses of Idealogy and Phrenology — What is a Psychology, its uses — What is an Elementary faculty — Br Gall, his de- .fects — Spurzheim — Principles, rule, observations — Empirical method exposed, Concentrativeness — Speculation corrected by observation — Conscience an ex- ample of Phrenological analysis — Sensations and Perceptions Distinguished — Spurzheim's achievement in the theory of perception — His Works — Objections of Anatomists, Magendie and Bell — Phrenology not a mere anatomy of the Brain, but an integral Psychology — Anatomical criticism — Craniology, it's limitations — A Shaksperian analyst of mind required to complete the phrenological system- — Estimate of Phrenology, Our reflections upon analysis and generalization in Meta- physical science expose the fact, that notwithstanding the precision of their received verbal definitions, the practical employment of them has been far from determinate, method- ical or answerable to the intention. Our present concern is to determine how they must be employed, and with what drift, in psychology. We answer — that we look for two distinct sciences of the 232 METAPHYSICS. mind, or two dissimilar methods of treating the common subject : One, which corresponds to the general Anatomy of the body in manner and aim, we have in the recorded labors of the metaphysicians of twenty-five centuries, in such perfection as they could give it. This system as we have seen, occupies itself mainly, if not exclusively, with modes of mental action, following the processes of sensation, perception, reflection, and consciousness, analytically, indeed, but in effect historically, throughout the whole range of mental phenomena. — The other system, that which cor- responds to the descriptive anatomy of the animal fabric ; undertaking, and charging itself with the determination of the fundamentally integral faculties of the psychical consti- tution, and which has not so much as been attempted un- derstandingly by any but the phrenologists. They have done their work well, and have given us a method at least, if not a perfect science, whose results amply justify its pre- tensions, and promise all that is attainable in useful knowl- edge of the great subject. But there is really no conflict between these two systems, any more than between the general and special anatomies of the schools of medicine, unless when they are unwarrantably put into a conflict of pretensions. All inquiry, normally conducted, into the generalities of mind, after the manner of the metaphysicians is right, valuable, and necessary, in pro- portion to its success ; and, every achievement of the phrenological method of research and reasoning is, in like manner, to be estimated by the uses, theoretical and practi- cal, which it answers. And it has obviously this eminence of relative rank that, it necessarily includes all the general truths which its reciprocal and cognate philosophy contains, while it carries its own forward into the foreground formal constitution of the mind, and affords a basis for the regulative METAPHYSICS. 233 Sciences which must be built upon its actual working powers and laws of movement. Education, physical, moral and in- tellectual, RemediaJ medicine, Ethnology,- Civil govern- ment, and the science of Character, when that shall be un- dertaken, must all depend upon a special psychology, of which Phrenology is the ground- work and the hope. To justify this judgment of the new science, which Dr. Gall discovered and Dr. Spurzheim constructed, we offer some general considerations upon its principles and their issues : The mind is an agent. It has functions. And, it is adapted to them by its constitutional endowments. For every several office it must have a specially adapted power, which may be called a propensity, a sentiment, or an intel- lectual faculty, according to its nature and aim. It may have a dozen or a hundred of such diverse endowments, each qualified for, and appointed to, its own particular use. The scientific knowledge of the mind must, therefore, em- brace the discerning and distinguishing of these, their rela- tions to their objects, the spheres and conditions of their several activities, the effects of their combinations, and all the laws and facts of their respective agencies. The facts which belong to several, or all, of them alike, abstractly regarded, is not the end of this search. Neither Is simplicity of action * or object the guide and directory of the required analysis. A single mechanical instrument, as the lever, screw, or pulley, may have many applications ; a single organ of the body has relations to many objects ; a single function of the mind has obviously many ultimate uses The eye sees green, white, blue, form, size, number, order, distance ; it is the one organic medium of a thousand modi fications of light. In like manner, the single elementary sentiment of religious worship may be^ capable of adoring a 234 METAPHYSICS. stock, a stone, a star, a man, a demon, an angel, or the true God ; or, all of them in turn, or together. Here, there is, indeed, simplicity of impulse, but complication of objects and results ; and the states of the sentiment may well be as varied as those of the optic nerve must be in the large range of vision. A single faculty can have but one kind of func- tion ; but oneness of office, oneness of application, and one- ness of constitution and character in its objects, are very different things. The love of offspring may be a specific in- stinct, and severed in the mental apparatus from the other propensities whose office is love, indeed, but love of some other kind, and serving some unlike necessity of our lives. Nor does it follow that every compound feeling, which, owing to the poverty of language, we call by the general appellation love, must necessarily have its special working power in the mental organization. A multitude of objects may fall within the sphere of a single power, provided only that its fundamental action is adjusted to them all, or, to something in each common to them all. In such complexity of results consciousness and reflection are not always the reliable analysts of the process, and it is just here that phrenology brings to bear the tests of form and structure, to determine distinctness of faculty. But its testimony must be held under correction of speculative principles wherever these can justify themselves and their authority. Dr. Gall had eminent observing talents, but very little speculative discrimination. He denied the possibility of classing the mental powers in kinds, according to their dis- tinctive natures ; and he even named some of the organs after their abuses, which shows that he looked at actions and results which are variable, instead of at powers which nre inherent and essential. This great error Spurzheim avoided ; METAPHYSICS. 235 but his authority has not been sufficient to restrain certain of his disciples, who are commonly regarded as the exposi- tors of his science, from imitating the empirical procedure of Gall, and so exposing phrenology to the just criticism of sounder thinkers, who are at the same time prejudiced against it. George Combe's organ of concentrativeness is a striking instance of a craniological blunder, which a little philoso- phical reasoning easily corrects. Let skulls testify what they may, and with whatever concentrativeness upon this supposed faculty, a sound logic pronounces it simply impos- sible, and justly rejects their testimony to any such effect. When it is once established that attention is not, and cannot be a specific faculty of mind, the combined attention of any number of its faculties cannot be a distinct and elementary one, but is merely a name for the active states of as many as happen to be embraced in the process concerned. A pro- tuberance on the skull cannot prove a faculty which cannot be* in the mind. What it denotes, even if occurring con- stantly where the character of the man is remarkable for concentrativeness, is to be sought for ; because, it is quite impossible for it to designate this non-existent thing. This is an example of the way in which the settled prin- ciples of speculative reasoning limit and rectify the crude suggestions of anatomical or craniological observation. Dr. Gall at first called the whole front lobe of the brain the organ of educability, and all his observations justified this lumping analysis. For years he supposed that a certain protuberance at the occiput indicated great nervous sensi- bility, but was aware of exceptions, and so refused to adopt it, although he found it predominant in women. When he observed it just as conspicuous in the heads of monkeys he entirely abandoned his former idea, and ascribed to it the 236 METAPHYSICS. function of love of offspring, and found this notion accordant with all examples, and Dr. Spurzheira demonstrated its con- sistency with theoretical truth, after he had attained to that stage of his discoveries which let in the light of metaphysical science upon the facts of physical observation. On the other hand : a principle ascertained by phrenolo- gical discovery is competent to resolve some problems to which reflective consciousness is not so clearly adequate. It shows, for instance, that conscience is neither a single faculty, nor any modified action of such single faculty, and sheds a flood of light upon the grand logical and ethical truths con- cerned in the question. Having first logically resolved the phenomenon into at least three elements, to wit: a recognized standard of right, an intellectual comparison of the act sub- ject to its authority, and a feeling of pleasure or pain resulting ; it proceeds upon its own data and reaches a con- clusion that harmonizes with every known fact, and every principle of reasoning and conduct which is involved in the matter, and so stands demonstrated and immovable. Locke denied not only innate ideas and innate moral principles, but he also derived the moral feelings from the intellect, and treated them as a product of reflection. The logicians of his school think that moral principles must be proved ; phrenology says they must be felt, and ascribes them to primary powers, separate from the intellectual faculties, and brings such evidence of this from its own sources of knowledge as reflective consciousness cannot command. Thus furnished with a ruling principle of the subject, it answers the question propounded in this way : Acts of conscience are always complex, but not of invariable elements. In one case of remorse for crime it recognizes the office of the understanding, first, in apprehending the law of the subject, next, in apprehending the character of METAPHYSICS. 237 the act to be judged ; and, lastly, in ascertaining the depar- ture of the act from the requirements of the standard ; and then, the action of a certain determinate emotional power which feels and suffers the judgment so pronounced by the reflective faculties. The ingredients are, a law, a judge, and an executioner. In another case, the process is further com- plicated : besides the simple and direct sense of duty to an authority, as in the first supposed instance, reverence, grati- tude, love for the law-giver, combine with and corroborate the obligation ; and, in still another case, in addition to all these elements, there are present and operative, compassion for the sufferer, and, it may be, regret for the loss of char- acter and of personal rectitude. Phrenological science besides thus analyzing cases of conscience thoroughly and truly settles the question of the validity of its decisions satisfactorily. It recognizes elements in the function which are each separately, and all together, liable to error ; the received standard may be erroneous ; the proceeding of the understanding, in comparing the act with its requirements, may be a blunder ; the feelings which accidentally mingle in the mixture are blind ; and that one especially which is the main element of the emotion — that one which is the mere hangman of the mind's court of oyer and terminer — is just as likely to strangle the condemned innocent as the guilty. Conscience, therefore, according to this rendering is not God's umpire ; it is not his infallible representative in the human bosom ; but a deputy regulator which, though set right, is just as liable as the rest of the works to go wrong. Its decisions are not our final judgment, as everybody very well knows, and here are the reasons for it, as sound in ethical philosophy as they are safe and wholesome for the direction of conduct. The phrenological doctrine that each special office of mind 238 METAPHYSICS. is the function of a several member of the spiritual fabric leads to the distinction of the perceptive powers into two orders : one external, belonging to the five senses ; and one internal, whose office is the reference of these sensations of the former to their external or objective causes. These internal senses do not necessarily correspond to those external, which supply their material. Touch, sight, and hearing are all capable of conveying those impressions to the mind which give it the idea of size, of form, of number, and of order. Now, one faculty for perceiving, remember- ing and judging size is enough, however many external instruments are concerned in bringing to it the informing impressions ; and the same thing is true of form, number, and order ; and all these internal perceptive powers would be just as necessary and numerous if one organ of sense could supply the material for them all. To each perceptive power this doctrine ascribes the apprehending of its object, the remembering, the imagining, and judging of the thing to which it is appropriated, and, of necessity, affirms that in all these operations the faculty is equally capable and ex- pert. There is no necessity for a higher understanding, a "pure reason," or any other faculty than the perceptive one, to feel, judge or remember the difference between two and three — between red and yellow — between round and square — between large and small. And phrenology very sensibly looks for none. Its system of these important parts of the mind is really the grandest contribution to its philo- sophy which the world has ever received. No man, we think, who has labored through the libraries of metaphysics and physiology for a theory of perception, can lay down Spurzheim's exposition of it without shouting Eureka ! Independently of the organology of his theory, his discus- sion of the questions involved in the functions of sensation METAPHYSICS. 239 and perception presents about all the true philosophy that any man can understand and use, which is extant. His chapter on the mediate and immediate functions of the ex- ternal senses is the most luminous, and the most successful essay in all the range of philosophic literature ; and fur- nishes, besides, a key to unlock a multitude of the mysteries of mind which have hitherto baffled the whole school of idealogists. The system of mental philosophy which we accept and commend is substantially that of Spurzheim, on grounds and for reasons, which the compass and object of these essays do not allow us to present in detail. They are to be found in the series of works of our author, and nowhere else. It would be doing the science, and its great apostle, the gross- est injury to attempt any other formal presentment of its doctrines than he has given in his several treatises upon Phrenology, Physiognomy, Insanity, Education, and the Anatomy of the brain and nervous system. A host of eminent anatomists and physiologists are ar- rayed against phrenology, and their objections seem valid to mere anatomists and physiologists. In a majority of in- stances they are profoundly ignorant of the system which they presume to judge. The celebrated Majendie, who rightfully divides the honor with Sir Charles Bell of discov- ering the double function of the spinal nerves (which, by the way, Spurzheim knew and announced, without pausing to demonstrate, eight years before either of them), in a clinic lecture delivered at the Hotel Dieu, contradicted the function assigned by Gall and Spurzheim to the cerebellum, on the ground that in the instance in hand, where the func- tion had been morbidly and excessively active, the organ itself was comparatively small. But, after finishing this sort of a demonstration of the fallacy of phrenology, he pro- 240 METAPHYSICS. ceeded to notice that the organ bore all the marks of active inflammation during life, and that the patient had died com- atose in consequence ! What is the authority of high rank in physiological science worth, where such ignorance of the system criticised is manifest ? Sir Charles Bell did worse than this — he willfully misrep- resented both the system and its authors. In a paper read before the Royal Society of London, June 19, 1823, he holds this language : " The most extravagant departure from all the legitimate modes of reasoning, although still under color of anatomical observation, is the system of Dr. Gall. It is sufficient to say, that without comprehending the grand divisions of the nervous system, without a notion of the dis- tinct properties of the individual nerves, or having made any distinction of the columns of the spinal marrow — without even having ascertained the difference of cerebrum and cer- ebellum, Gall proceeded to describe the brain as composed of many particular and independent organs, and to assign to each the residence of some special faculty ! ! ! n Sir Charles knew that as long before as the year 1810 Gall and Spurzheim had published at Paris their great work on the anatomy of the nervous system in general, and the brain in particular, in eight folio volumes, accompanied with an atlas of one hundred plates ; in which, not only all that was known, and all that he knew of them in 1823, but a world of particulars besides was contained, which commanded the admiration of all candid men then, and we may add, holds it still. From two such experiences as these we derive the rule that, it is always safest to look for the truths of a doctrine to its friends, and a wholesome warning against allowing an enemy to array the forces against which he wars. But, ad- mitting both the candor and general competency of anatom- METAPHYSICS. 241 ical objectors, it is to be remembered that anatomy has not complete and exclusive jurisdiction of the questions at issue. Phrenology is not a mere physiology of the brain ; it is a system of psychology, comprehending the functions of the material organism, but drawing its resources from, and con- structing its philosophy by the aid of, every means of discov- ery which appertains to its subject. It is, moreover, a curious fact in the criticism which phrenology has encountered, that anatomists are commonly found either denying something which phrenology does not affirm, or else, very busy with the metaphysics of the sub- ject, or, perchance, enjoying themselves over some stupidity of phrenologists, who have wholly departed from the spirit of their science ; or, over some defect or error of its im- maturity, which does not impeach its general truth, any more than new discoveries in chemistry, which correct old theories, destroy its pretensions to legitimacy. In a majority of the anatomical objectors it will be ob- served, also, that they have adopted Jiostile notions of the brain's specialties of function, which they have built upon mutilations of living animals, and diseased manifestations, discovered post mortem. To which we need only reply that when nature is stretched upon the rack she may be ex- pected to make confessions and give testimony that are as false and unreliable as evidence wrenched by the old-time practice of jurisprudence from suspected criminals. It is utterly unphilosophical to depend upon the positive testi- mony of structure alone for the proof of function, and much more so to build a doctrine upon its mere negations. The brain has some testimony to give which is evidence, but it must be ruled by the laws of science in its application and effect. Practical Craniology has its own difficulties, and its pre- 11 242 METAPHYSICS. tensions must be limited in several directions, to make its facts reliable. The actual measurements must be verified incontestibly ; and after that, the effect of qualities of texture as well as of volume must be estimated ; and after that, the value of exercise or education must be weighed and embraced in the inferences derived. All of which, in their nicer shades at least, are not a little difficult of due appreciation. And when all this is achieved, there is a still more material and more difficult task for the man who will apply the science to the reading and rendering of the indi- vidual character — the Logical analysis of the phenomena and functions of the mind ! Who is fairly competent to this stupendous achievement ? In our own judgment, another Shakspeare is demanded to resolve and display the spiritual constitution of the soul, before any science of the organ- ism, however true in principle and in detail, can be perfected for use. For example — what is gratitude ? When some thinker fully endowed for the analysis of this feeling shall render it into its simples, the practical craniologist will be able to say of any man under examination, whether he has the virtue or not, and in what form, and to what effect. The accomplished phrenologist must indeed be the representative man of his race. He must have in himself all, and all vari- eties of, things which he looks for in others, else he will not find or know them. Nevertheless, the rudiments of human character may be rudely known, and have valuable uses and considerable cer- tainty in application. We have seen phrenologists go up and down through characters submitted to them, as if they carried a lighted candle in each hand, starting the secrets of the life from every hiding-place, till there remained nothing to wish for and nothing to doubt ; and, we have seen the METAPHYSICS 243 same wonder-worker blunder shockingly incases where the" qualities of the man under examination lay outside of the con- sciousness and reach of the diviner. But these things are nothing to the purpose. The sci- ence rests upon its proper proofs, and is besides, maugre all its incapacities of every kind, verified sufficiently by obser- vation. As well as the circumstances allowed we have performed the duty to our readers which we undertook. We leave them now at the threshold of that system of mental philos- ophy which we regard as capable of all its promises, and of answering truly to every use that man has for a science of his own spiritual constitution. 244 HABIT. HABIT. The word is in constant use, the phenomena intended by it are familiar to every one's experience, and it is subjected to examination and discussion, more or less formally, by the writers who methodically investigate the conduct of men, and the laws of human nature ; yet, the questions involved in the subject are by no means settled. In mere verbal defini- tions there is sufficient agreement : but Science has not yet afforded a logical definition of the term, or a philosophical explication of the law ; its facts and manifestations have not been analyzed to simplicity and exactitude ; their vari- ous kinds have not been classified according to their differ- ences, ends and causes ; nor has induction ascertained the most general law or fact in which all the particular species are contained. The authorities which have aimed most at definiteness of exposition have been most inaccurate ; and those that have best avoided false definitions have been most vague and unmeaning. In the first class is Reid, who defines Habit to be " a facility of doing a thing, acquired by having done it fre- quently f but, conscious of the error which, however, he can only confess, not correct, he adds, "this definition is suffi- cient for the habits of Art, but the habits that may be called principles of Action (meaning habits of the moral and instinctive faculties) must give more than a facility, they must give an inclination, an impulse to do the actions. v In this he is so far right. The notion of facility and impulsive- ness, as definitions of habit, are false in as many cases as HABIT. 245 they are true, and for any of the services of system are totally useless. To avoid such contradictions, the other class of writers resort to words which mean nothing at all, or, at least, answer no want in the matter demanding explanation. Thus, Bostock says " Habit may be defined a peculiar state of the mind or body, induced by the frequent repetition of the same act." Webster — " a disposition or condition of the mind or body, acquired by custom 7 or the frequent repetition of the same act. 77 Dunglison copies Bostock, but like Reid feels the difficulties, and states them generally to the same effect, remarking that " the functions of the frame are vari- ously modified by this disposition — being at times greatly increased in energy and rapidity ; at others, largely dimin- ished. And the metaphysicians are as much embarrassed as the lexicographers and physiologists. They confess it : Reid says, " I do not believe that we will ever be able to assign the physical causes of either instinct or habit ; both seem to be parts of our original constitution ; their end and use are evident, but we can assign no cause except the will of the Creator." Dr. Chalmers speaks to the same effect of Dr. Thomas Brown's theory ; and the treatment of the question by the metaphysicians, generally, he characterizes as "an obscure and profitless speculation." The difficulties of definition and comprehension encoun- tered by systematic thinkers, are also betrayed by the pro- verbs which express the popular apprehension of the subject. One adage has it that "Practice makes perfect ;" but this is corrected, and, as a general proposition, contradicted, by another, which declares that while " habit strengthens (or perfects) reason, it Hunts feeling." And still a third, and different one, is in use to cover a broader operation of the law, to wit — " Habit is a second nature." Ir jfcsse maxims, 246 HABIT. which embody the world's practical wisdom, the same variety of office and effect are recognized which confuses scientific speculation, viz. the power of Habit in training and develop- ing the intellectual and voluntary faculties of mind and body — its unlike action upon the understanding and some of the emotions and physical feelings — and its very notable power of altering the whole moral character and mental method and drift, while it leaves the intrinsic constitution of the man unchanged. For the ready use of the world's business these maxims amount to a tolerable practical philosophy of the law. But, if the common and uncultured philosophy of experience does, because it must, answer the most obvious and ordinary necessities of life, it is, nevertheless, to science, demonstra- tive, exact and symmetrical, that we look for the highest and best forms of truth. To indicate the defects of both the empirical and system- atic oracles concerning our subject, let us notice the several specific varieties apparent in the offices and effects of this great law of man's manifold life. "Without regarding rank in the order of presentment, such distinctions as the follow- ing are obvious : — Habit quickens and strengthens the five external senses. The practiced eye of the sailor discovers a distant sail, its nation, size, character and bearing in what to the landsman is a mere speck on the horizon. The savage, sharpened by the training of his forest-life, distinguishes sounds in the general stillness which are absolutely inaudible to the man brought up in the customary indifference to the noises of a crowded city. The same is true of the senses of taste and of smell, and eminently so of that of touch, as in the blind. But, on the other hand, habit has the directly reverse effect upon the sensibility to cold and heat, and the HABIT. 247 rude contact of hard or hurtful bodies with the sensitive surfaces, whether of the skin or internal passages. It is familiar to every one's experience and observation how much exposure deadens sensibility to pain : the eye, while it grows ever more and more sensible and capable of those properties of external things which are embraced in the act of vision, by their repeated impression upon the visual nerve, at the same time becomes more insensible to the hurtful glare of heat and light by exposure to them. So the palate learns to bear the most acrid substances with in- difference, while the perception and appreciation of sapid qualities as regularly improves. The wine-bibber discerns the age and country of his favorite beverage by tasting only a few drops ; and the gourmand is a miracle of acute- ness in all the mysteries of cookery and catering. Here, a nerve almost callous to the fiery fierceness of alcohol and cayenne., coexists with another nerve capable of a delicacy of discernment which the water-drinking vegetarian can scarcely imagine or believe. Xothing, therefore, could be more inaccurate than the general statement that habit blunts sensation ; for while some sensations are so diminished in acuteness, others are as eminently sharpened. Xor is the notion a whit more correct when applied to the feelings of the soul than to those of the body. Habit does not blunt the feeling of love, pride, devotion or covetousness ; but quickens and strengthens them. And the same is true of all the affec- tions and instincts which, in general, we call feelings. Again : The pain of a.burn or blow abates steadily while it lingers, until it entirely subsides ; but hunger and thirst unsatisfied go on from mere uneasiness, through pain and agony, up to madness. In this case, neither the abatement 248 HABIT. of sensibility nor the change of nature, affirmed by the common proverbs, have any place or power. Again : Love, devotion, compassion, grow in vigor with all regular exercise ; but grief, shame and remorse, as naturally exhaust themselves by their own indulgence. So, frequency and persistency of action are just as different in their effects upon the various faculties of the moral nature as upon the diverse physical organizations. Indeed, it is most probable that custom, or habit, or frequency of repe- tition, or persistency of causes and conditions (we are indifferent to mere verbal distinctions), varies in results and effects with all variety in the nature of the faculties con- cerned. But not only every different class of powers, and probably every separate power, is affected differently from every other, but each feeling and faculty is within itself capable of remarkable modifications by the agency for which we have but this one name. Thus, practice confers facility of move- ment upon the muscles of voluntary motion, as in the organs of speech and the fingers of an accomplished pianist, but without proportionate or considerable increase of their strength. On the other hand, the training of the porter, blacksmith and drayman, gives its increase in the kind exercised and demanded in their work — strength, massive force, and endurance, without facility or rapidity of move- ment. Again : both these modes of increase may combine, and the appropriate exercise will develop at once rapidity and robust energy in the same action, as in the stage dancer and the pugilist. A similar policy of this law is apparent in the working of the intellectual faculties. Readiness, dexterity, rapidity of thought and celerity of combination result from an adapted HABIT. 249 method of exercise ; of which the clearest examples are in the powers employed in the arts of poetry and popular oratory, and in the several departments of the fine arts. In other combinations and uses the reasoning faculties gain massive force and robust endurance ; and, in yet other cases, this strength and that agility may be blended and cultivated by the appropriately mixed modes of mental action ; of which the higher styles of poetry, and eminent powers of forensic and parliamentary debate, furnish illus- trations. To the effect of custom here on the mind, as in the mus- cles and external senses, the notion of increased facility, or increased force, or both, applies sufficiently well for ordinary purposes ; but as a definition of habit to answer the ends of strict study, as we have already seen, it is not exact enough even where it suits best, and is totally fallacious as a general apprehension. But the capital failure of all the formal explications is in the fact that they make no account of the increased obe- dience of the intellectual and voluntary powers, and the increased resistance of the moral and instinctive faculties, to the will, under the strengthening influence of habit. It is, indeed, just here that Reid's hope of understanding the law breaks down, and it is just here, too, if anywhere, that a true philosophy becomes important to all the ends of knowledge, both for speculative and practical purposes. It is manifest that the voluntary powers — the muscles of locomotion, and the perceptive and reasoning faculties — be- come continually more obedient and more prompt in their service, as their activity and energy are augmented by fre- quent exercise •; while, on the contrary, the affections and instincts grow, at every stage of increase by indulgence, more and more ungovernable by the reason. Cowardice, 11* 250 HABIT. temper, and parental tenderness, for instance, may be culti- vated till they obtain the absolute mastery in their par- oxysms, though the victim be sane and fully conscious of his slavery. Here, the impulsiveness, the loss of liberty, result- ing from habitual action, claims due consideration, and is to be accounted for, if it can be ; but we look in vain for light to the teachings of physiologists, metaphysicians and moral- ists. The New Testament, in a hundred ways, teaches that sin is bondage, and the adage " Habit 4s a second nature" is capable of a similar rendering ; but systematic philosophy has not obtained any available hold of this great fact. It is not denied that writers and thinkers recognize, in some particular instances, the increased freedom of the free facul- ties, and the irresistible impulsiveness of the propensities of our nature, under the law of habit ; nor, that they un- derstand the stability of character induced by the force of custom ; but, it is none the less clear that they do. not know how to dispose of the facts which they encounter, or to provide for them in their systems, according to principles evident or demonstrable, and in such method as might render all the service of scientific truth. An attentive review of the specific differences among the phenomena resulting from this general law of habit, will show how inapt and incapable of its elucidation the Induc- tive or Baconian method of philosophy must prove. This system lays its foundation in instances and the facts of ex- perience, and thence proceeds from class to class, as from circle to circle of ascending generalizations, until the highest is reached at the central and supreme fact of the completed series ; the inductions, which are facts more general, resting upon and rising out of those more particular, till the pro- cess ends in the most general of all, which is the law sought for. Now, it is evident that this method of investigation HABIT. 251 must be nonplused when it encounters incongruous and in- coherent classes of facts, which, while belonging to the same snbject, and occurring in like conditions, nevertheless, re- fuse to take arrangement in the same classification, but, on the contrary, stand out in contradiction to the inferences to which they should conform. The Inductive method cannot march and countermarch upon the same plane in its route to results. From effects it can infer efficient causes ; and from such causes it cbji again anticipate similar effects. But its province is limited strictly to the material world, where forces and phenomena are linked together by mechanical necessity ; and in dealing with its facts, reasoning cannot be too rigidly mathematical ; formatter is but an instru- ment and a slave, having all its references and uses above and beyond itself. But in the world of Mind, the govern- ment is not in a propelling force, but in a moral purpose. Its ends lie within the scope of its own being and destiny ; and Final Causes, therefore, shed upon its phenomena ^and laws the light in which they must be seen and rendered. Matter moves as it is pushed and impelled ; efficient causes are its laws, and the inductive philosophy its expositor. But mind stands addressed to its own destiny, reaching into its own future, and in the highest ends of its being must be sought the solution of its mysteries. Psychological facts, as facts, are to be treated under the same rules of observation and analysis as those of physics ; phenomena, whether they lie in the province of consciousness or perception, must be ascertained with * equal precision and by similar laws of evidence ; but, only; while yet within the proper sphere of experience are they amenable to its pro- cesses ; when they rise into the realm of life and mind, and their laws, that is, their governing purposes, are in question, 252 HABIT. illustration can be found only in the ends to which they drift. Now the most general fact belonging to the effects of habit is not broad enough to cover the whole field, and therefore cannot take the rank of the law required. We notice that repetition or constancy of an action or impres- sion in some of the functions increases their facility, or strength, or aeuteness, according to the kind of exercise given ; but we are checked at the moment of deriving thence a law, or constructing a definition, by the contrary fact that similar repetitions, or continuity of actions and impressions, induce diminished facility, strength and aeuteness, in others. Here, then, the Baconian system, which looks for similar effects from similar causes, breaks down in the helplessness of its unfitness. Its sphere, which is limited to the appar- ent, is quite too narrow to afford a common centre for facts so eccentric, so little convergent, that they can meet only beyond the utmost boundary of nature, in the infinite of spirit, where the future must realize the thought of the Creator. * , It is worthy of remark that Bacon himself applied his method with great reserve and timidity to psychological investigations. It was but natural, indeed, that he should exaggerate the power of his wonderful discovery, and give to it a range something broader than its birthright ; but he felt, clearly enough to acknowledge, that in the sciences which relate to mind and morals, " it must be bounded by religion, else it will be subject to deceit and delusion." In our subject we think we have proof of incapacity of the material philosophy in the frequent confessions and general failure of those who have used its method ; and we make bold to affirm, too, that the history of modem metaphysics HABIT. 253 » is one continuous record of similar catastrophes, and that all of them are fairly attributable to the same cause. Governed by the principles indicated, and chiefly with a view* to elucidate them, we will proceed to notice the most remarkable facts of habit and its most important uses. It is a law of life, universally. It obtains in the vegeta- ble world as well as in the animal and spiritual. It is a law of vital textures as well as of mental and moral facul- ties. It is the law of growth and development in all facul- ties whose education and enlargement are in the design of the being; and, subsidiary to this end, it is a law of protec- tion and defence for all those feelings and susceptibilities whose indefinite increase is incompatible with such design. Its forces and effects are graduated in the several spheres of its action, in proportion to the use and rank of the sub- ject. Upon vegetables it has an observable effect ; but it is much more conspicuous in animal organizations — still more in the' animal instincts ; and in the higher sentiments and intellectual powers of man it discovers its greatest energy ; thus, vegetables, within a comparatively narrow range, are capable of accommodation to strange climates : and, trees tapped for their juices yield the more abundantly the longer they are accustomed to the drain. Animals are more easily acclimated, and their organs take more readily and strongly the modes of action to which they are habituated ; the instincts and propensities, though equal at first to the ordi- nary wants of animals and men, are capable of very great enhancement ; and the moral and intellectual powers have quite indefinite capacities of enlargement, and of cletermin- ateness and strength of character and action. The relative value of the respective subjects determines their rate and proportion of increase under this law, and the End in view 254 HABIT. demonstrates itself to be the law of the facts, and the true guide in their investigation. The powers which habit develops and enhances are those which enter as positive elements into the constitution of the being, and whose highest capacities must achieve his ulti- mate destiny. As the law appears in this class, it is facility and energy accumulated — acquired power become perma- nent— so much per centage added to the ever-growing prin- cipal by frequent re-investment ; like interest gained upon capital, and blended with it to yield interest in its turn — that is, power put at compound interest. As memory is the conservatory of acquired knowledge, so habit is the treas- ury of acquired power, and their gain and growth are the appointed means of all the changes for which conscious life is given, and in them lie all the possibilities of progress. The necessity of such laws of accumulation and expan- sion is obvious. . Indeed, if there were no such provision in nature, there could not be life in the creation, in any proper sense of the word. It is growth and progress only which really distinguish vitality from mechanism. Suppose a man or angel born or created at once in the maturity of his powers with no capacity for further unfold- ing — all progress forbidden, and the fnrthest limits of his nature reached in the first hour of his existence. With his end thus joined to his beginning, he could have nothing that constitutes a future, and could find no object for his contin- uance. Why should he abide ? Though a seraph in the measure of his soul, he is limited to an existence in which hope can have no place, in which perception and thought have reached their felt limit, and actual experience differs in nothing from mere exercise of memory. The past is not only behind but all around him, and the present is swallowed up in an eternal sameness. The heavens may keep time, HABIT. 255 but his duration has no flow ; eternity rolls on, but for him there is no progress ; the highest aim of his being is accomplished, his nature's ultimate is attained — and why should his existence survive its object ? It is in the necessity of things that our birth and begin- ning shall be but a starting point of life ; and ready fur- nished, as we are, with faculties and defences which adapt us to our destiny, it is really no matter in what degree of ignorance and feebleness we start upon the endless career. The happiness and the harmonies of every stage are equal ; for fullness, which is happiness, has reference to capacity only, and not to degree or quantity. In the least favored state the. germ is given, the occasions of development are supplied, the law of increase is inwoven with the constitu- tion, and improvement unlimited is set before it ; and so, the relatively equal good, and the open possibilities, balance all inequality of states, and the equities of the universe are vindicated in the economy and history of every creature. But " Habit Hants feeling, ' J says the proverb. This is true only of certain sensibilities and particular affections of the sentiments, as we have already remarked ; and it is con- clusive in favor of our argument, that these are distinguished from those whose powers are exalted by repeated exercise, by no difference that can explain the apparent contradiction and confusion, except the respective differences of their ultimate use ; in other words, the phenomena are explicable by no philosophy, but that which rests in final causes, or, the intentions of the Creator. The organs of our bodies, which are the instruments by which the mind is exerted upon its objects, while they require the quickening and strengthening that constant growth can bestow for the accomplishment of their high purposes must needs be preserved from external injuries and 256 HABIT. the irregular working of their own parts. To many hurtful * agencies and much abuse of their own offices they are ne- cessarily exposed. Prom these evils fatigue and pain are commissioned, by their reproofs and penalties, to protect us — a provision as beneficent and efficient as wisdom could devise without violating our free agency on the one hand, or abandoning us to destruction on the other. In fact, the human organism is not so adjusted to all its relations as to be absolutely secure from harm. Injuries and offences must come. Now suppose the organic sensitiveness, like the func- tions of the five senses, and the voluntary powers of the mind and body, to fee increased by exercise, and in propor- tion to its frequency and constancy. In such case, the necessary exposure to injuries would speedily exaggerate our capability of suffering till every feeling would sharpen into agony — every offensive smell, to the habituated sense, would become an intolerable stench — every touch a sting— and every ray of light, a burning flame. We must either be taken out of the world, or we must be protected in it. Habit, therefore, blunts sensibility to the pain of heat and cold and other hurtful agents, and that, in a manner and by a rule proportioned to the exigency as nicely as if an- ever-present intelligence conformed the law to the occasion. Within certain limits, whatever is unavoidable becomes endurable under the operation of this law, which so kindly covers the suffering sense with its protecting insensi- bility. In like manner those pains of mind and emotion, which at all events must be encountered in the regular order of human life, are guarded against'intolerable aggravation. In the degree in which they are disciplinary and beneficial they are permitted, but the blunting influence of habit is inter- posed to prevent the growth of a susceptibility w r hich, other HABIT. 251 wise, would be unavoidable, and could only be injurious. The disappointments and bereavements of the natural affections, which in their first paroxysms threaten death or madness, in the healthy constitution decline continually while they linger, until the deepest anguish shades gradually into a tender melancholy that even borders upon pleasure. The grief subsides, but the love remains ; and the interests of life return again, and its duties revive their attractive- ness, and bring with them a happiness that, at first, would have felt like a mockery of the absorbing sorrow. So the mourner's tears are dried, and the natural accidents of life are stripped of their power to destroy through the sensibili- ties which they assault ; and the human heart is at once preserved true to its affections and capable of its duties. Our loves do not die, for their objects cannot perish. The heart's instincts assert the survivorship of all its treasures, and the grief which would contradict this hope is checked by a law 'written in our nature ; so that all the facts and feel- ings of our earthly experience intimate an eternal life, by . their happy adjustment to it and its necessary conditions ; and the Creator is thus pledged to the fulfillment of our highest hopes by the harmony of ends expectant upon given wants and means. The unlike and even opposite effects of training and exer- cise upon the intellect^ external senses, and motor powers of the frame, on the one hand, and upon the instincts and moral sentiments on the other, marked and distinguished by increased freedom in the former class, and increased impulsive- ness in the latter, which Reid despaired of understanding, seem capable of a useful though incomplete explanation even by the rules of reasoning proper to physical philosophy, but have no difficulty or mystery whatever under the system which takes ends and aims for its data. 258 HABIT. The difference seems sufficiently accounted for by simply looking to the inherent difference in the nature Qf the respective subjects so diversely affected by the same kind of cause. The intellect, senses, and muscles of locomotion are constitutionally under the direction and control of the will ; they are voluntary powers in their nature ; and exercise, which has the office of increasing just those functions and qualities which it puts into action, and no others, must nec- essarily increase the freeness, which is an intrinsic quality of these functions, in exact proportion to the increase of their force . Strength becomes stronger, rapidity more rapid, and obedience more obedient, by the same rule. Every free faculty, as is w T ell known, becomes the more absolutely and promptly responsive to volition as it grows in energy and aptness. Exercise cannot change the nature or qualities of a power, because nothing can make itself into anything else. Culture can develop, and inactivity and abuse may abate a force, but cannot transform it in any element of its make, or give it a new quality or kind of action. The Arts are the product of the intellect directing, and the voluntary instruments performing, their commands. Thought, reasoning, perception, and reflection, are the pro- ducts of the understanding alone. Now, none of these have anything of impulsiveness, propensity, or desire, pro- perly so called, in their nature ; only the qualities which they have can be increased by their own exertion, and they cannot become impulsive, or involuntary, or ungovernable, by any possible enhancement ; for this would change their nature, which cannot be done, for another reason besides the incompetency of the cause in operation — a reason that lies back of it in the constitution of things. Creation determines the number, character and office of the faculty of every being, and allows no other modification in them or HABIT, 259 in their actions than augmentation and diminution in degree ; preserving and maintaining them against all accidents, for- ever unchangeable in kind. But the instincts' and morals are marked by propensity, impulsiveness and involuntariness in their proper constitu- tion and character ; of which anger, love, covetousness, fear, and the appetites that minister to our animal wants, are obvious examples and proof. It is a good and useful description of these to call them propelling, while the intel- lectual are well described as the directing faculties of the mind. The latter, as we have said, having no mixture or quality of blind impulse in their nature, are only the more obedient for all their strength, original and acquired ; but the instincts and affections, given as the springs and im- pulses of a determinate constitution, when strengthened by training and indulgence become in due proportion more determinate, importunate and impulsive. Many of them were designed to act before reason is installed in its office, or .in its absence, as in idiocy, sleep and re very, and in emergencies, also, where it is inefficient and incapable. They are, therefore, in their very nature and intention independent, though capable of subjection, within certain limits, to the will. To this intrinsic independence of, and insubordination to, the directing faculties, given for necessary purposes, and regulated in harmony with the general aims of life, habit, by adding strength, adds its proportionate impulsiveness ; the impulse becomes a stronger impulse, the instinct more ungovernable, and the sentiment more stable and determi- nate. In all this, they are altered only in energy or force. Any change effected is only in the general conduct of the individual, and not in the nature of any particular power in him. The higher sentiments established in their proper authority, or, the lower passions and instincts usurping the 260 HABIT. government, is the result ; but in all the general changes possible, the special faculties which effect them maintain their constancy of nature and function. A chemical analogy will illustrate this point, and show the method of the argument : oxygen combined with hydrogen produces water ; but with sulphur, it gives sulphuric acid or oil of vitriol. Here the modifying agent is one and the same, and the difference of the respective subjects of its action occasions the whole difference of results ; so habit exhibits as wide a contrast in its effects upon totally dis- similar powers. The intention in annexing the law of increase to the vari- ous feelings which determine our moral and religious nature, and so, riveting all the consequences of conduct upon them by virtue of a positive law, is as obvious and as admirable as the educability conferred upon the intellect and the voluntary muscles. These feelings are subjected, in like manner, to the influence of education and culture, that men may reap the fruits which they sow, and receive the exact reward of all their deeds — that they may become finally what they choose continually, and thus, make their perma- nent character by their own conduct. The instincts, pas- sions and sentiments are given in the variety and force which in the, whole species insure the means and possibilities of good, and their training and actual working are intrusted to every individual for himself, that the natural issues of his stewardship may attach in permanent consequences as reward and punishment, under this law of nicely adapted equities. Distributive justice keeps its records, has its judgment-day, and awards to every one according to his works by the standard of a prescribed law, and so adjusts the relations of its subjects among themselves ; but this law of habit executes its own decrees instantly upon the HABIT. 261 act, and fixes every fact into the nature, and so, into the fate of every responsible being ; his deeds it records, not for or against him, in reserve for a trial day, but it inscribes them in him, so that his ultimate condition shall be at once the issue and the index of his life. That these most important endowments of our nature are capable of neglect and abuse, is a necessary result of that freedom which was conferred for very different ends. Some of them prompt us to provide beforehand against those in- juries which pain warns us of only after they are suffered. Fear impels us to avoid, and anger to resist, assaults ; parental love, to nurse and educate the young ; and vene- ration gives the necessary docility to the subjects of author- ity ; the possessory feeling prompts to industry, that benevolence may tax our acquisitions for the relief of the helpless and the needy ; self-esteem exhorts every man to conduct worthy of his position ; and even the love of ap- probation may check selfishness and lawlessness by the restraints of opinion ; faith and hope, with the sentiment of worship, put us into unity with the Divine ; and brotherly love and conscience establish the noblest relations with our kind. All these are active within us as by an instinct ; their movements are spontaneous, and they are capable of such strength of impulse as to determine the character of a human being beyond the risk of accident, caprice and choice, except as they work through the regular exercise of his powers. This law of habit, when enlisted on the side of virtue, strengthens and makes sure our resistance to temptation, and renders easy the most arduous performances of duty ; the struggles of the frequent conflict win at last for the moral hero the sway of a complete dominion. He who steadily repels the suggestions of avarice, licentiousness and 262 . HABIT, revenge, will finally attain, not only a truce with these foes ; but will bring them as friends into prompt and helpful accordance with his better nature. Frequent achievements in moral conflicts in time pervade the whole character with their accumulating and abiding consequences. In the strength of an inwrought morality, its disciple and servant, by force of the double gain which every resolute effort brings to him, goes on, without limits, to still greater deeds and nobler sacrifices. This it is which is intended by the injunction " grow in grace." It is recognized in the terms " children, young men and fathers in Christ ;" and it is formally and explicitly stated by the Apostle to the Hebrews — " Strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern between good and evil." The virtues thus gain their stability and assurance from the strength which exertion yields them, and the beauty of the provision is apparent. But the vices, also, by the same law, become the despots of the soul ! The origin of moral evil, its issues, and the reason for permitting it, we need not here attempt. It is enough for our purpose to remark that the fixedness of habit is not fastened upon either the virtues or vices proper ; but the law is inwrought with the powers whose actions are virtuous or vicious as they are exerted and directed — used or abused. Evils are not enti- ties ; no substance or faculty is bad ; and the laws of the universe are, like its Maker, always good. But abuses are evils ; these are only wrong uses ; and the growth and strength of good and evil in the life of moral beings is by force of one and the same necessity. Worship often repeated will energize the religious sentiment equally, whether it be directed to a stock, a star, or the true Deity. Exercise must strengthen the spirit and temper of the shed- HABIT. 263 der of blood, as well as of the doer of good ; in a word, God created man, and gave Trim all his powers, and attached the just responsibility by making him the master of his own fate, that the endurance and the enjoyment, alike, might equita- bly follow upon the conduct of the agency intrusted. " Practice indeed makes perfect ; " "Habit, truly, is a second nature. " The world*s experience of the stability and determinateness of drift, which it gives to moral tenden- cies, and the certainty which it insures in conduct, is the basis of all confidence in character. Reputation is evidence in courts of law, as affording a safe presumption that a man did or did not do a particular act. It is an element in all calculations of policy, a philosophical basis of prophecy, and the ground of all that trust in the future for which we train the present. The principle is, that men will — must — live as they have learned ; that the law of life is continuity in char- acter with increase in activity ; that duration must add strength, and repetition give permanency ; that what men do they must become, as much as if God had made them so at first. A different constitution, one that would exempt us from the bondage which evil practices induce, would also unset- tle the security of our virtues. It is clear that that which is, is necessary, and also best. Some important consequences flow from this apprehen- sion of our subject. For instance — if the virtues thus grow by their own exercise, and in proportion to it, sudden changes of opinion and instantaneous conversions cannot give truth, and purity, and strength, like long practised righteousness ; and a man's deeds, and the habitude of his affections, rise into a high rank in comparison with the doc- trines of his creed. The law and the prophets are not sum- med up in one but in two tables of duties, and the second has 264 HABIT. respect exclusively to every-day practical morality. He that would found his house upon a rock must be a " doer of the works." Let those who neglect their duties, and hang their hopes upon the cross of the dying thief, while they refuse their own, look to it. A death-bed repentance, and an after-death salvation, are, doubtless-, acceptable, and so is a plank when the ship with all its freight is sinking, yet, there is still some danger, notwithstanding all the divine mercies, that the kingdom of heaven, which the great Teacher, and all his first disciples preached, may not be a mere point in celestial geography, but really a great sys- tem of practical righteousness. If the laws of the kingdom were made for the government of this life, then " obedience, and not sacrifice " is required, and it will be totally vain to expect worship to sanctify wickedness, and to change our destiny without changing our real character through the agency of its constitutional laws. Again : If our views are correct, Education must be in fact, what it is etymologicaily — the drawing out of the powers — the putting them into action — educing their energies, and right direction of them. Moreover, the pro- cess and method of it must be alike in all the faculties of our nature, whether they be intellectual, moral or physical, for the reason, if for no other, that in all these kinds it is the employment of the organism as the instrument of every species of activity. How well St. Paul knew, and how forcibly he puts the impediment of the unsubdued and un- trained instruments of "the flesh" against the efforts of the "spirit" to obey "the law." The intellect may perceive, approve, determine, and endeavor, but the refractory organi- zation, and the insurgent passions can defeat all power of virtuous resolution. If we would know how to educate any power of mind or HABIT. 265 heart, we may learn the whole secret in a gymnasium ; there, every nerve and muscle, whose force is to be made available, is trained and strengthened by its own faithful exertion ; every fibre is educated and > made promptly obedient by being vigorously employed and often com- manded. In like manner, the instincts, passions, and intellect are grown and governed, and not otherwise. If supernatural influences have any part in our mental and moral culture (which is as clear in principle as it is certain in experience), they act not without, nor contrary to, but through the natural laws of our constitution ; for our relations to, and dependence upon, the heavens were in con- templation at the creation, and so were regularly provided for in the structure and laws of the human spirit. As a rule of conduct, this theory of habit teaches that there is an absolute, terrible, physical necessity that the practice of evil shall grow, and at last confirm the tendency to evil — that, vice, which is but an abuse of our moral faculties, by indulgence becomes their only use, as though it were their nature — that, the propensities and blind animal instincts may grow into irresistibility — and, that, in the strictest truth, every immorality is pro tanto a forfeiture of moral liberty : — Habit is a second nature. We are, indeed, unconscious of the growth of our habits, as we are of the growth of our bodies. We do not feel that the minutes in their silent lapse move us forward toward our mortal term ; we observe not how a single meal increases our stature, or a siDgle effort swells the muscle which it exerts, but reflection, and observation, at distant intervals, confirm the facts. Could we but feel that our whole nature is under laws as certain as these, we would not trifle with our highest interests as we do. The robust consciousness of liberty delusively persuades us that we shall always have 12 266 HABIT. the government of ourselves, and that we shall be as free to choose our course after frequent departures from pro- priety as we feel while they are yet only in contemplation. We imagine that when we will, we can take our stand in unbroken strength of soul upon the furthest verge of irre- gular indulgence, and say to the torrent of our passions, " thus far shalt thou come and no further, and here shall thy proud waves be stayed." We forget that Sin is bondage, and that forgiveness itself can only remit pen- alties, while it leaves all the slavery of habit bound upon the faculties whose health and life are in their freedom. Some one may say, " but Paul was arrested upon the highway, and converted in an instant." Well, suppose his change an instantaneous one ; it is not in contradiction to our doctrine. His moral and religious faculties were neither feeble, untrained, nor unprincipled. The very earnestness and violence of his hostility to Christianity proved their strength and zeal in the service of the truth as he received it. " He verily thought within himself that he ought to do many things against the name of Jesus f and " In all good conscience he persecuted this way unto the death." - The religion which he opposed was in his apprehension a gross idolatry ; its leader had been crucified for blasphemy ; for the breach of the Sabbath ; for contempt of the priest- hood ; and for evil predictions against the temple and the ceremonial of worship of the true God. If Paul believed a lie he never loved its falsehood. His was mainly an error of opinion, and his conduct was rather mistake than crime. He was in a moment convinced of the truth : The "Naza- rene," whom he religiously abhorred, spoke to him from heaven, and the mind that saw nothing but the obstinacy of error in the martyrdom of Stephen, felt all the force of a divine warranty in the resurrection of the Lord. Quickly HABIT. 267 as thought could compass the great argument all the energies of his noble soul enlisted in their new service with the vigor and devotion acquired by an honest practice in the hostile faith. He changed his banner, party, opinions, and their incidents, but he was new-born a man. The devotee of the old faith became a hero of the new — " straightway he preached the gospel in their synagogues." A bold, brave, true man belongs to the right, even when he is most zealous for the wrong, and is always in the spirit of the truth ; but no miracle could convert an unprincipled compromiser, a timid time-server, a fellow who consults the rascally doctrines of a selfish expediency for the direction of his conduct, a slave to party, a cheat, a coward. A respectable devil is cast out by a word of any disciple of the truth, but the shabby, driveling sort, the poor, " deaf and dumb ones go not out but by long fasting and much prayer." Reasoning by the rule which rises out of the purposes for which the creature is made, and inferring the destiny from the constitution of the being, our premises afford us the following among many noteworthy results : — Activity of all our powers to the extent of their capacity is enjoined by the fact of their bestowal. Liberty, accord- ing to law, is implied in their mere existence. They must be exerted in harmony with each other, and in due subordination of the lower to the higher ; and the relative rank of each is to be ascertained by the breadth of its range, and the value of its object. Nature has provided for the activities of life by the promptings of organic and mental uneasiness under pro- longed repose, and by the attractiveness of their several objects to the multiform powers aud capacities of our nature. Abuse is checked by pain and fatigue. But neither these promptings nor restraints are irresisti- 268 HABIT. ble so early in the states which they were designed to remedy, nor are they so accurately adjusted in the force of urgency, as to secure perfect conformity to the supreme law of our life. The boundaries of choice thus fixed, by the spontaneous impulses on the one hand, and by the limitation of our powers on the other, may be narrowed or widened by the conduct of life ; and within this domain — the area of moral liberty — all our virtues and vices display themselves. The laws of mind and morals are to be sought for in the will and purpose of the Creator ; and these may be dis- covered both through reason and revelation. The facts of psychological science are experimental, and subject to the rules of the Inductive philosophy ; but its principles and method, rejecting Efficient causes of phe- nomena, rest upon, and answer to, Final causes or the ultimate ends of existence. POLITICO-ECONOMICAL. POLITICAL GOVERNMENT. Monarchy, Aristocracy, Democracy, are the principal forms of political government. In a Monarchy, government is exercised, laws are made and executed, by the authority and will of one individual. This form may be either elective or hereditary. Autocracy describes a monarchy in which the prince rules by himself without a ministry, council or advice. Originally, despot and tyrant meant only master and monarch ; but the abuse of power, so held, brought the words to imply cruel and oppressive governors or rulers. King primitively signified wise man, and the title was bestowed to designate the emi- nently wise man of the community. An Aristocracy is government by the nobles. It is also either hereditary or elective. The Feudal system had all the qualities of an Aristocracy. Monarchy and Aristocracy, in their various forms, and in various mixtures of them, claim to be the best modes of securing order in society ; and they base this pretension upon their greater efficiency, and the higher wisdom of their functionaries. Democracy is the special guardian of Liberty. A sim- ple Democracy is a government of the people by the direct- 2T0 POLITICAL GOVERNMENT. est agencies. Representative Republicanism, while it re- spects the self-government of every individual as a leading principle, imposes more or less incapacity, and interposes, also, more embarrassments than the simplest and purest liberty would allow. The argument of inconvenience is alleged, and so, incompetency is managed without being offended, and the will of the people gets expression only in emergen- cies when, from some extraordinary cause, the community is aroused to assert it. Servants, to whom government is dele- gated, are under the same temptations to abuse the trust that masters are to whom it is surrendered ; but, as they are responsible, and elective at short periods, they must rely upon fraud, instead of force, to accomplish their ends. Democracy rests upon the innate right of all men to self-government. It is worthy of note that in New York, where suffrage is freest, only one-fifth of the population are qualified voters, and the Commonwealth is governed by a majority of these, or one-tenth of its people. In represen- tative democracies of the freest form the incapacities of non- age, sex, alienage, and imprisonment for crime, disqualify four-fifths of the people for the exercise of citizenship. All existing forms of government thus sacrifice or repress liberty to secure order. Absolutism, feudalism, republican- ism, alike, have their arguments for government by the wisest and the best. The difference in practical results is immense — as great as the difference between the one and the hun- dred or the million mass ; but still they agree in the princi- ple, that some natural rights must be surrendered in order to secure the rest. They differ in the extent, but not in the principle of their respective demands. Liberty and order have long been supposed incompatible : but they are not so ; else, men must either be slaves or demons, There is something, an element in each of the GOVERNMENT POLITICAL AND NATURAL. 2 ?1 forms of government which we have enumerated, that is capable of agreement and harmony with something essential to each of the others. What each form affirms consistently with that which is affirmed by every other is true ; what they contradict in each other is false. Monarchy is unity of purpose exerted through a single exponent of the public will. This is true ; but, when monarchy denies individual liberty, it is false. So, popular freedom is true, but when it denies unity of purpose it is disorder. Hereditary Aris- tocracy is so far true as it affirms the physiological descent of high qualities from parent to child as a general law. It is false, when it claims government as an appanage of birth without respect to qualification. A true order would provide the government of the wisest and best on earth as in heaven, and so as to secure indi- vidual liberty, and guarantee the supply of the natural wants, and the highest culture to each and to all. GOVERNMENT— POLITICAL AND NATURAL. Democracy affirms that " the world is governed too much," and that " that is the best government which gov- erns least." If this principle is strong enough to carry all its consequences, it is then true that no government at all would be the perfection of political science. This doctrine, however, is checked up by that other general principle — government is necessary to the protection of the weak against the strong, and for the general good order and safety of society. To this end organic laws, called state constitutions, are formed, which protect the minority by tying up the 212 GOVERNMENT — POLITICAL AND NATURAL. hands of the majority in the very teeth of the principle, that the right of government is in the greater number of voices. Here we have a pretty parcel of apparent contradictions ; to wit : The least governing is best, but the completed and consummated idea, no government at all, is absurd ! The majority has the right to rule, and is the only legitimate method of settling the right and wrong of any question which concerns civil life and conduct, but — constitutions must be adopted to secure the weak, the rights of the weak, against that right ! Can these things be reconciled ? We think that all these propositions are in their way true. Self-government is everywhere encroached upon by the politi- cal power ; everything ordained or forbidden by the munici- pal law is so much taken away from the freedom of the sub- ject. Consulting the individual's liberty only, the least governing is best, and none at all the best of all ; but this must be understood only of government by the majority of voices, which rules in the sole right of numbers, and enforces its will with pains and penalties. When men are utterly rid of that sort of government they will be better and hap- pier than they are ; but they must be better and happier before they can be rid of it. Government is indeed necessary to the protection of the weak, and constitutions are necessary in democracies to guard the rights of the minority ; but it does not follow that government and constitutions must be political and separated, as they now are, into a distinct function. The general organic action of society might be made to answer all the ends of life, and the office and use of political government might be fulfilled perfectly, by the regular and integral activities of such natural organization. The family, as nature institutes it, has no distinctive apparatus of political system in its economy. The parents levy no taxes — they GOVERNMENT — POLITICAL AND NATURAL. 273 take all the children's labor. They reserve to themselves no separate aims and interests — they give all they have in return. Parents and children have each their individuality and all its incidents, but they are in effect a unit, a family. Conflicting rights are not jumbled into a paradox to afford protection to the weak ; the principles of the societary structure devote all the kinds of strength in the strongest to the service of the weak ; the elder serve the younger. The father charges no salary for his services to -the little community, and the mother runs up no milk bills against her babies. Here is one good government without a supplementary political apparatus. Cannot Democracy find some way of organizing the human family, which will really recognize the natural brother- hood ? Can it not find some method of action which will really protect the weak and nurse them too, and that with- out oontradicting one of its fundamental principles by anoth- er ? Now, that it has fairly overthrown the one-man power, we next need to have the despotism of majorities dethroned ; we need some better method of determining the right than by counting noses ; and some mode of making every man competent to every act of government which he must exer- cise in the general economy. Democracy will never be self-adjusted, nor self-justified, till it has organized institutions in which all its instincts are harmonized in a natural order. The compromise of "the greatest good of the greatest number," is as meagre and mean as the policy of the old time feudalisms. Every system of slavery in the world rests upon this pretence. It is purposely false in some of them ; it is in effect false in all systems which acknowledge it. It is the rights of all, the greatest good of all, which the 12* 214 GOVERNMENT, AN ACCIDEN world demands nt the hands of world menders and mana- gers. It is curious that the New Testament, which is the very gospel of liberty, gives no authority to the representative republican system. Is not this because the Great Reformer looked with impartial eye upon all political systems, allow- ing them all, preferring none, except as it is adapted to induce the permanent, the divine, order of actual brother- hood ? He could not sanction, fully, any system that allows any man to prey upon his fellow man. GOVERNMENT, AN ACCIDENT— OUGHT TO BE A SCIENCE. There must be a Science of Society. Men have a deter- minate nature. The structure of the human body is the same in the Egyptian Mummy . as in the latest born indi- vidual of the race. Every age has exhibited virtues and vices substantially the same. And the nations are only so many translations of humanity into different climates and conditions, all meaning the same things in different ways. It is clear that man is the creature of law, and that his freedom does not alter his constitution, however it affects his conduct ; and it follows, that the relations of men, which shape themselves into Societies and Governments, have also a fixed character, and are not to be invented, but only await discovery by human research. Man has not made himself, and he cannot, in any essential, change himself ; his inter- ests and happiness lie in conforming his institutions and con- duct to his nature, and so fulfilling the will of the Creator, instead of following his own caprices. OUGHT TO BE A SCIENCE. 215 The duties men owe to each other, the rights which they have with respect to each other, must be matters of natural law and divine constitution ; and government can- not owe its origin to compact, or to any perception of the mutual advantages which it is capable of affording ; nor, can it be founded in experience of the evils of what is called u the state of nature." Writers have been accustomed to treat society as a con- ventional arrangement, and its policy as an expediency merely ; but this is manifestly absurd. Historically, it is false, and, philosophically, it is impossible. It is monstrous to imagine that God made every man without any reference to any other, and left him to form such relations as he could with his brother man, without providing for the harmonies of order in his constitutional instincts. It is false, because the so-called state of nature never existed anywhere. One or two idiots and misanthropists, in a generation, have lived alone ; but men are as naturally societary as the flocks of the air and the herds of the field. It is unphilosophical, because no such effects as human societies could exist with- out the special causes in the nature of man that are fitted to produce them ; and it is disastrous to human welfare to leave the relative rights and duties of men open to the quackery of experiment, deprived of the authority of the Governing Mind, and the homage and obedience due to the acknowledged will of the Creator. And sorely has the human family suffered, and grievously has it sinned, in this ignorance. Popular authors have taught, until they have made the opinion popular, that men, on entering into society, must surrender certain natural rights in order to secure themselves in the enjoyment of others. If this necessity were attributed to its true cause, and so under- stood, it would not be so bad ; but, laid down as philosophi- 216 GOVERNMENT, AN ACCIDENT cal truth, it is eYery way pernicious. For the notion that we must give up some — an unlimited and indefinite number — of our rights, in order to enjoy the remainder, is all that despotism wants to stamp itself orthodox, and make it duty, patriotism, and religion to submit to its villainous exactions. The fool or rogue who invented that phrase may boast a success in mischief, that must put to the blush the pretensions of that other fool or rogue who tempted our Saviour in the wilderness with just such other oracles of moral and political policy. Concede to the governing class the surrender of any right as a price paid for the enjoyment of any other, and we have perpetrated a double folly — we have given up a right, and we have meanly purchased permission to enjoy another right ! That is, we have thrown away much, and reserved nothing in its sacredness ; we have put everything at hazard, and consented to hold our birthright by contract with some other pieces of just such clay as we ourselves are made of. The consequence is, that rulers have charged just what they pleased for taking care of those who were unwise enough to grant them the power for the sake of the favor. No form of slavery is intrinsically meaner, though some others may feel worse. It is certain that government must arise out of the human constitution, to be adapted to it — that its forms must answer to the nature of the subjects, and its ends to their wants, with exactness and truth ; and, it follows, that any particular form is false in principle to the extent that it is deficient and injurious in effects. This in its turn involves the necessity of a true philosophy of human nature ; for nothing less or other than a perfect system of mental and moral philosophy can be a true basis for the science of society. To adjust men to each other harmoniously, in all their relations, we must know all OUGHT TO BE AS CI EXCE. 271 their nature, understand all their faculties, and respect all th£r rights, so ascertained. The wheels of a machine must be truly placed and related, or they will damage each other in the working, and in the same degree, disappoint the general end intended. It is not true that one must suffer a crush, and another lose a cog, in order that a third and a fourth may get room to swing out of their place, and a fifth to revolve slower in its appointed task than equal distribution of motion requires. On the contrary, all counter working is disastrous, and all friction is so much loss of power in the whole and in all the parts. It is the same in societies. Capacities ought to determine spheres and regulate functions, and the general system should find a place for all. The conceit that a sacrifice must be incurred at every turn, in order to square the movements of the whole, is no better than a confession that the machinery is not made fit to work upon the principles of its construction — in other words, that it is self-destructive. The system of political economy now in use has happened as a result of experiment, accident, conquest and compromise. Early errors produced permanent evils ; revolutions abated their sharpest and most obvious mischiefs, and altered their forms. Necessity taught some truths and philosophy re- vealed some others ; but monstrous grievances have always been tolerated, for the reason of their vested rights, or, the difficulty of overturning them. The notion that society is a matter of compact, and that policy is a system of compromise, has always been present to sanctify abuses and check radical reforms. The eternal right has been ever postponed to the conflicting claims of custom and possession. Government as it is. is only a cunning contexture of cobbled expediencies. There is not a government on the earth that knows whether it ought to educate its people or not, or, the reason for doing 218 GOVERNMENT AN ACCIDENT. so, in any case where popular sentiment has induced some plan of elementary instruction in literature and science. -The true theory is not known, or it would be known how far such education should be carried ; and it would be done as early and determinedly as rivers aad harbors, and roads and forti- fications, are improved and constructed for public convenience. The men who insist most upon common schools, cannot answer why instruction should or should not be extended to all the arts, useful and ornamental, and to all professions and avocations, as well. as to letters and arithmetic. Just because the principle is not understood, its limitations in practice are not known, though its force is, in some blind, partial way, perceived. Again, no man can tell why, upon principle, Church and State should be separated ; and it is, therefore, not known why Sunday should be kept, or how, nor how and why it should be enforced. But, especially, no one can give a reason for separating religion from politics, nor the Church from the State, because, he cannot find any such separation and indepeDdence of religion and morality in the constitution of any individual man. And as the whole man is the subject of political government, and every act of duty involves its religious reason and obligation, as well as its sentiment of fraternal right, it is a curious jugglery of judgment that excludes from the government of the mass what must always exist in the conduct of each individual of that mass. Above all things, theorists tell us that society rose out of the savage state, in which every man is every other man's enemy, and lies in wait to take his property and life ; and yet, they construct their system on the principle of a perpetual antagonism, reduced from the confusion of chance and acci- dent, to the settled order of a regular competition. The whole scheme of our institutions and relations being nothing POLITICS — PRINCIPLE VS. PRACTICE. 219 else than a warfare of interests, under an armistice which is to continue until one or other of the parties makes too much advantage of the rules given it to work by for its own interests ; and then the system allows a resort to first princi- ples again, or the employment of force, and revolutions are sanctioned by the very philosophy which upholds government! The prevailing compromise of Paganism and Christianity does not hesitate to teach the duty of obedience to the laws of the State, whatever conscience may say, and at the same time holds, that the people, or any part of the people, who are strong enough, may overturn the law-making power, at any expense of life and peace. A system that enjoins both obedience and rebellion, can have no pretence to a philoso- phical basis, or, to the character of a true thing. Societies, as they are constituted, allow a million, a thou- sand, a hundred men, to monopolize the entire soil of the country. They have no science of prevention, and they have no power of cure ; and poor-houses and prisons are witnesses of their impotency and of their barbarism. Civilization is 'a compliment that all nations pay themselves. The Jews, the Romans, the Chinese, have plumed themselves upon it, and why not the European people ; and why should it mean more in our case than in theirs ? POLITICS— PRINCIPLE vs. PRACTICE. Tse establishment of the French Empire, with its almost autocratic Constitution, is of evil omen. It stands upon popular suffrage, indeed, and so far confesses the popular sovereignty in theory ; in effect it is a nullified abstraction • but even if the principle held its latent force for the proper 280 POLITICS — PRINCIPLE VS. PRACTICE. occasions, it is ho more promising for future changes than the intrinsic instability of the French character. The first Napoleon and the Citizen King, Louis Philippe, as well as the present usurper, broke through the rule of legitimacy with impunity. The Dutch dynasty of England obtained the crown by election, in the revolution of 1688; and again, the Hanoverian succession was settled by Parliament, repre- senting the people, in IT 01. The catastrophe of Louis Napoleon's coronation is not at all relieved by the fact of his election to the throne. Mon- archy is but little concerned about the links in its chain of title, if only its conditions and powers are satisfactorily settled. The coup d'etat of December, 1851, was very cor- dially received by the despotisms of Europe; and the Empire is already formally acknowledged by all the King- doms and States concerned in the matter ; and nothing threatens disturbance to the present order, or promises advantages to popular liberty, in the immediate future, except conflicts of interest and ambition among the rulers themselves. The refugee republicans of 1848 are in the deepest despair. Nations, like individuals, feel oppression, and resist it, either in a passion, or with a purpose based upon principle, as may result from their character or from circumstances. Insurrections and rebellions are as natural as disobedience ; they are often nothing else. Communities are made up of individuals, and are just so much more of the same thing; and it depends upon intrinsic character whether a successful rising turns out a revolution or a row. Forms of government are questions of blood and creed, more than is commonly thought. Republican freedom and the spirit of Protestantism, or the right of self-government in civil affairs and of private judgment in religion, go together, POLITICS PRINCIPLE VS. PRACTICE. 281 and illustrate the results of race and creed combined, both in the ancient world and in the modern. Infidel Greece, Rome, and France, and Protestant Britain and America, show a similar repugnance to the divine right of Hierarchy and Monarchy. The historic examples show that the religious institutions and the civil constitution of a people correspond closely. Blood and temperament are not so steady, though they give the law and control the destiny in the long run, however they may occasionally suffer a temporary suspension of influence. The people who appoint their Priests will elect their Governors. A Protestant Prince is but a symbol of sovereignty; the Executive Ministry must represent and obey the Commons. Ecclesiastical independence and supremacy consorts with political absolutism. Governments, sacred and secular, which do not ask the people's leave to be, on the one side — on the other, Rulers and Priests, mere minis- ters of the popular will. Thus, those nations who form their own religion, and those who acknowledge none, are politically free. Freedom in religion makes unbelief possible. Submis- sion to authority secures faith, and, tends to superstition and slavery in all its forms. Atheism and Fetichism are respect- ively the ultimate abuses of which the opposite principles are capable in religion ; in politics, they run out respectively into pure democracy and absolute despotism. There may be an absolutely best form of Government for all men, but it is, nevertheless, clear that special adaptation and present practicability decide the relative excellence of systems for the various kindreds of men. It is not a question whether freedom is best for every people, but, how freedom and order can best be balanced, where a people are less capable ; and harmonized, where tbey are fully fitted for democratic institutions. It is very certain that more than twenty centuries ago the 282 POLITICS PRINCIPLE VS. PRACTICE. rights of man were well enough understood to get a fair recognition in the forms of civil government among highly cultured people. Some of the ancient States were very pure democracies. Among barbarous tribes, civil liberty, suffrage, and eligibility are almost universal. Fitness is right with them. Perhaps the masses are never anywhere without the knowledge of the first principles of political justice, or indif- ferent to the advantages of personal and civil freedom. If it can be said of our slaves, that they so far desire, as to be capable of, enfranchisement, the sentiment cannot be denied to any people under the sun. Mere selfishness and wilfulness are enough to inspire the wish, and a very little understand- ing is sufficient to underpin it with logical principles. Doubtless, the aspiration for liberty is instinctive in every human breast ; and among every people there is philosophy enough to digest the impulse into a system of doctrines. Democracy is, therefore, not a discovery so recent, or so local, that its happy realization among us must needs be* fol- lowed like a brilliant star just risen in the heaven of human hope. A few wise men of the East may come to worship where the young child is laid in its cradle, but the nations will pursue their favorite idolatries none the less. Psychological constitution, climate and other material conditions determine the social and civil institutions of men. Monarchy suits not with one kindred, democracy is ill-suited to another. These differences, with their intervening shades, are demonstrated by a sufficient experience, and they seem inevitable because they are constitutional ; but there is no ground in all this for despair ; oppression is not therefore the fixed fate of any people. Feudalism reigned over all central Europe during the mid- dle ages. It must have had some sort and degree of adap- tation to the people, and some correspondence to their neces- POLITICS PRINCIPLE VS. PRACTICE. 283 sities and interests — even to the very lineage from which our own republicanism springs. Somehow our freedom grew up in that bondage ; and the fact that such slavery and such emancipation and freedom are true of the same stock of men, though separated by a long interval and many changes, suggests the possibility and the prospect of some harmonious mixture of these antagonist forms, which may combine their several adaptations, and give us an eventual higher form of civil polity than any yet known — the feudal order to adjust government to the varied capabilities of the subjects, the democratic principle of election or appointment, modified in some fashion, which shall secure the essential liberty of the subject, while the elective franchise is guarded against the abuse of incompetency. Such conciliation of liberty and order is certainly not impossible, for, if it were, the equities of civil rights and the obligations of civil duty must remain impracticable among men till the millenium — a doctrine not to be tolerated, because it justifies oppression, and makes the wrongs of the masses inevitable, and there- fore relatively just. Democracy, direct or representative, is possible and expe- dient in the most advanced societies, for its mature mem- bers ; bnt in a high civilization, with its vast interests and complex functions, about four-fifths of the population are excluded from the exercise of government by the legal dis- qualifications of sex, minority, and alienage. In iSTew York, where suffrage is nearly what is called universal, only one- fifth of the whole people are voters. In England, Wales, and Scotland, the number of registered voters in 1851 was but one in forty-one of the whole population (half a million out of twenty-one millions), and the votes actually polled in 1852 were but one in sixty-seven. The abstract principle that, Governments derive their just 284 POLITICS PRINCIPLE VS. PRACTICE. powers from . the consent of the governed, as yet, receives only a constructive, and not a practical or veritable, allow- ance in the freest Governments of the earth. It is obvious that representative democracy, as we have it, is not capable, even among ourselves, of a rigid realization. How much less so in southern Europe, the East Indies, and Africa ! Republican America has not yet discovered or employed the method by which every one of the governed may have an actual voice in his own government ; because, by our sys- tem, the suffrage in general elections also confers the power upon each voter of governing others as well as himself ; and for this, a safe amount of qualification is required, and the exclusion of the incompetent rendered expedient and neces- sary. Such a system always fails where the masses are ignorant and degraded, as in Mexico and France ; witness in the latter, seven millions of votes for the new Empire, and a half million of soldiers to enforce the people's will upon themselves ! The puzzle is, that the broad principle is true, but the con- forming fact quite impracticable in the circumstances where it is required ; and the mischief is, that the constant failures in endeavored realization cheat the revolutionists of their hope, and shake the faith of just men in the great truth which they worship. If I leave these points stand as an unresolved riddle, the facts of history are just as perplexing. The truths involved serve only for criticism. The principles which should serve for construction are to be discovered. Allow me to say now, that the communities of men, as they are in the earth, are capable of both liberty and order. My complaint is made only against the received science of civil society, and not a tithe of the objections are yet named. 'physician, heal thyself. " 285 "PHYSICIAN HEAL THYSELF." The essential nature of all races and classes of men is so far alike, and the resulting harmony of their interests so complete, that no difference of conditions among them are favorable f(5r any party, except such as relate them in help- ful correspondence to each other. All hostilities are mu- tually destructive. The laws of chemistry are laws of dead matter, and their work is death. An acid destroys an alkali, and is itself destroyed. Neither of the elements properly survives the conflict. The changes of mere matter are transforma- tions ; but in the domain of life, all reciprocal action is for growth and development ; its aim is perfection, and the law is harmony. Everywhere in living nature the individuals of a kind are at peace with each other ; and as the rank and endowments rise in dignity and excellence, social relations grow, with equal pace, more numerous, intimate, and benefi- cent. But the principle of liberty enters the system of exis- tence along with vitality, grows with its growth and strength- ens with its strength, and disorder and strife become possi- ble in correspondent augmentation. Still, the scheme of life is unity, and its policy is peace ; and the law of harmony must be obeyed, or it will be vindicated by its natural pen- alties — not that vengeance is the end, for the sovereign pur- pose is not more defeated by rebellion itself than by the punishments which correct it. Hell is a continued insurrec- tion, and annihilation would be utter failure and its com- pletest acknowledgment. Suffering is the corrective of evil, and the discipline of the wrong-doer, that, in the end, good may prevail ; or, as St. Paul has it, that God may be all in all, when all things shall be subdued unto Him. 286 "physician, heal thyself. " To the working of this grand scheme it is obviously essen- tial that service and sacrifice be rendered by the higher to the lower ; that the elder shall serve the younger, the angels minister to the heirs of salvation, and the Divine atone for all. The great law of our life, the righteousness which is of God by faith, in the apostle's apprehension, is that the disciple "may know the fellowship of His suffer- ings, being made conformable to his death/ 7 and " fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ." This doctrine of human redemption has been rendered vague and mystical by theological speculations; but it is based in nature and necessity, and must be understood before we can have the rule of duty, or guide of policy, for the aims of social benevolence. The idea is, that it is the office of the wise to instruct the ignorant, and of the strong to help the weak; for the fact is, that they can be enlight- ened and strengthened in no other way. It is this moral necessity that dedicates the good to the service of the evil; that sends the disciples out as sheep among wolves; that compels the surrender of life to the toils of study, to the sacrifices of the battle-field, and at the martyr's stake, and gives us all the forms of heroism which we worship among men. This being the economy, the policy, of the social system, what are its requirements, and the conditions of its success, in any enterprise of civil or political amendment of the condition of one class of men by the agency of another? If it be the system of domestic slavery, such as exists among us, which is to be remedied, it is clear that to be capable of the work, we must not cnly feel the wrong and design the relief, but we must know the means and possess or provide the conditions which shall avail in practice for the purpose. How does the case lie before us ? We are politically free "physician, heal thyself." 281 as individuals, and independent as a nation. — The slaves are denied every civil and political right of human beings by our laws; they are chattels to their masters, and only sagacious animals to themselves. Are we qualified for their elevation, and are our institutions capable of receiving them into the freedom which we contemplate for them ? Legal emancipation might be effected in several ways. By legislation of the constitutional majorities, enforced by the peaceful powers of Government — by force of arms, employed by the free people of the nation in the compulsion of the masters — by successful servile insurrection — by colonization, and, by other means, or several of these combined. The relation of master and slave could be dissolved by either of these methods ; and, if the right of freedom were perfect, and the aim could certainly be well secured, the precedents which the world respects would warrant any of them, and they would be both allowable and obligatory upon the parties who pos- sess the power. But it is felt that there is something in sev- eral of these possible plans which forbids their adoption. Ko sound heart or clear head would consent to civil war, much less to servile insurrection, to effect the object. The reason- ing which justifies our own national revolution does not satisfy the conditions of this case. The abstract right is the same, in both white and black men, for, their ultimate destiny is the same, and the highest interests of each demand equally favorable institutions and order. Why, then, do we pause, both in thought and action ? I think the true reason is, that we are not fit, and that our civil and social economy are not adjusted to the necessi- ties of the enterprise. Our own liberties stand upon the principle that all men are created equal, and our institutions in theory recognize the right of self-government in every human being. We 288 "physician, heal thyself. n provide for the impracticable exceptions, however, by our laws which exclude infancy and womanhood from participa- tion in the administration of the Government; and we run the risk of incompetency among adult white men, in the con- fidence that there is safety in the majority. For, after all, it is only a legal fiction that every man is his own governor, and assents to the laws which he must obey. Our American republicanism is, therefore, much narrower than the sweep of its theoretical maxims, and our institutions in no tolerable measure cover the ground of their basis; and, it is this very point of incompetency for the functions of government which breaks the correspondence. Still we hold by the principle none the less that we refuse its proper force in our forms and facts. Now, the principle is true. No man can own another man as property, and no man can own anything that belongs to that other man ; they are his benefits, and deprivation of the least is an injury and a wrong. But, general propositions need to be carefully examined and fully understood, or they lead to confusion. We say every man has naturally the right of self-government •* and our system in fact goes much further — it empowers every man to govern his neighbor also. In a particular exigency, a single vote may decide the policy of a whole State. Competency for political liberty in our repre- sentative system of legislation is, therefore, a matter in which everybody else is concerned, as well as the man who claims the right; and it is not unreasonable to make it a condition of enfranchisement and citizenship. But on the other side — the disfranchised man and woman may plead their natural right of self-government, infringed by the denial. Such rights as these in such conditions, may and do conflict. Where is the mischief that begets this confusion, and dislocates the logic of first principles ? "physician, heal thyself." 289 These principles are respectively right, and cannot, there- fore, contradict each other. It must be an accident, it must be in the sphere of some falsehood where they meet, that they go thus to war. I can find the error nowhere else than in the constitution of the civil state. If that were true, if it were the true focal point of action for any right principle, it would not embarrass or destroy the force of any other. The primary rights of all men issue fairly out of the abstract truth, but they get entangled in the forms of our organic structure and the facts of our condition. It is not so in the institutions of nature. In the family economy, infancy and incompetency work no forfeiture of rights, and cripple no interests, and sacrifice no benefits, of individuals. Liberty and authority are there well balanced; parental instincts and natural affection promote the highest good of all. The wis- dom and strength of the little society supply its ignorance and weakness ; the inequality is without oppression, and the Government is in the best hands for the best uses of the whole community. The new-born child and the immature youth are governed so far as they need direction. They are not invested with offices of which they are incapable, but their powers are not crippled; their freedom is conceded to the full measure of their capabilities, and its exercise is encou- raged. Until the institutions of civil society are in like manner adjusted to capacities, and fitted for the protection of the interests of all its members, republics, as heretofore, will serve only for the greatest good of the greatest number which they can accommodate of the people concerned in organizing them. Government by representation in the higher counsels of State is said to be necessary, on account of the inconvenience of primary assemblies of the people for such purposes ; but ti has also another effect : it removes 13 290 "physician, heal thyself." the power by many a step in many an indirect path, from the populace ; and the majority principle in the election of legislators is nothing else than a plan for ascertaining truth by counting the noses of the opposing parties, however neces- sary it may be for the purpose of attaining a decision of the questions submitted. Now, with imperfections such as these which have been presented, and other violations of its fundamental principles which are obviously unavoidable, it is clear enough that our representative democracy is incapable of providing for the rights of all the people, and, at the same time securing the order civil and social, which exists among us. If we had a perfect order, no man would be any more dis- posed to hold a slave than to be one. A perfect system would be an adapted one, and of course, under it, no man's ignorance or weakness would be mischievous to any other, because provision would be made for him which would keep him in place, while his best interests would be kept within his reach, and so his own well-being would flow into and swell the tide of the general prosperity. I am not denying that republicanism is an advance upon monarchy and aristocracy, or that government of all by the many is an improvement upon the one-man power. I reckon, on the contrary, that our liberties are worth all that their purchase and conquest have cost in the past ages. 1 am only exhibiting the discrepancy between the first prin- ciples which we hold, and the forms through which we endeavor to give them effect. The exposure shows the dif- ficulty which there is in according to the disfranchised classes the rights which first principles demand for them. The radical reasoner has no trouble in displaying his doctrine of human rights, and good conscience and highest policy cor- roborate his creed with their instant endorsement ; but the "physician, ueal thyself.'' 291 objector who stands upon the incompatibility of universal justice with the existing system, has advantages in his posi- tion from which he is not so easily dislodged. When the emancipationist waives for the present the slave's political rights, and only insists upon his lawful owner- ship of himself, and his right to the rewards of his own labor, he concedes the alleged incapacity for full citizenship, and damages very materially the force of his argument for the simpler rights demanded. It greatly affects the entire- ness and beneficence, as well as the policy, of the individual's personal freedom, to strip him of its political safeguards and auxiliaries. This is what is meant by the assertion that the emancipated slave is changed into a nuisance, and crushed into the degradation of an oppressed caste, and held there without hope of change by the repugnance of the higher classes. I apprehend that there is no certain or immediate prospect that the free States will admit their colored inhabi- tants to the rank and rights of citizenship. If this be so, the objection, to this extent, is supported by the fact, and the incompetency of our institutions for complete emancipa- tion, affected as they are by the public sentiment which con- trols them, is established. But our industrial system, or the economy of property and commerce, and the social order which results, confront the proposed personal freedom of the three millions with other incompatibilities, which touch the very substance of our fitness to grant the right and to confer its real blessings along with the form and name of freedom. The Great Teach- er said to one of his disciples, " After thou art converted, preach my gospel ;" and we must not be surprised when the enemy retorts the advice to the friends of universal freedom. What, hitherto, have our laws done for the rights of labor, that may authorize us to reproach any form of oppression 292 "physician, heal thyself." which touches the life of those who have no other capital ? Are they free from the faults which occasion the pauperism of Europe ? Are they not essentially a copy of the property feudalism which still survives in the Old World ? Nature and the necessities of our condition have made for us all our boasted difference. Imprisonment for debt, and the sweep- ing desolation of legal executions, are only now beginning to abate their barbarous rule among us. And the natural right of the landless man to his own patrimony in the public domain is still obstinately withheld ! ! We are still patch- ing up our systematic injustice with alms-house charities, and calling the necessity which this injustice creates Chris- tian beneficence. Our industrial system is still a cut- throat competition between labor and capital, and as much a war of classes as it was when the feudal baron was the task-mas- ter, and the hereditary earl was sheriff of the county. Abundance of land and the demand for labor of a pioneer epoch holds the mischief in check, but there is nothing in the nature and spirit of our industrial system which provides the conditions for general and effective emancipation of the enslaved, or fortifies our logic against his master. John C. Calhoun, about the year 1839, in a speech against the reception of abolition petitions, warned the gen- tlemen of the North who were then yielding to the enthu- siasm of their constituents, that there are other rights of property wholly artificial, and as much the creatures of mere positive law as the slaveholder's, which would come in time under the samecondemnation 4 He alluded to monopolies, private corporations, interest upon money, especially upon the debts of banks, circulated as money in the community, and titles to unlimited quantities of land, with other heir- looms of the old-time despotism, which will be brought to judgment when the principle of natural rights shall get "physician, heal thyself. " 293 inaugurated in the government of the Union. He thought that the new patch on the old garment would tear out a large margin in the rotten fabric, under the strain of wear- ing ; and that the abolition gentlemen of property and standing would make the rent a great deal broader than they intended. I think they took the hint, and that the Balti- more platforms are well crammed with its prudence. The feebleness and fear of our defective system are only too strongly indicated by the stand-still conservatism which our magnates everywhere discover. The white free working- man is their real terror. Land reform, non-imprisonment for debt, homestead exemption, limitation of working hours, uni- versal suffrage, education of the people to their highest capacity, and democracy realized in all the interests of private life, are in the threatening programme of reform; and so, the appeal to conscience and absolute right in behalf of the chattel slave is branded as the rebellion of the higher law against social order ; and the fraternity«of nations, urging the natural sympathy of the republic for the freedom of Europe, is formally denounced in the creeds of the ruling parties. Precedent is resorted to for handcuffs upon progress, and the example of the fathers is paraded to show that mummies are the most stable forms of the human organism, and the very best models for a permanent order. To say nothing of the likelihood of advancing general liberty just now, what fitness for such work has that people acquired, who have enacted the outrages of the last ^eight years— the series which began with the admission of Texas, and was rounded up with the Fugitive Slave Law, and sealed with the finality resolutions ? Can a system whose elements may be worked into such results easily confer a capricious gratuity upon the victims of its habitual oppression 1 I conclude that we are not fit, and that our institutions, in 294 ASSOCIATION. their present form, are not capable of the proposed justice to the slave, and I predict that neither slavery in the States, nor its propagandism by the Federal authority, will sensibly abate till our democratic doctrines get a formal and positive application to the individual and private interests of the industrious classes. The multitude, which is the majority and the material force of our Government, must learn the common rights of humanity, and strike upon the method of asserting them effectually for themselves, before they will lend their power to the emancipation of the slaves or the repres- sion of the system of chattelism in man, and the degradation of labor which domestic slavery involves. 1852. ASSOCIATION. We have but little acquaintance with the system of social and industrial organization which it proposes, but that little has made such impressions that we cannot doubt the good which will follow from the propagation of its doctrines. We are not of thQse who reject a theory because some of its most remarkable points seem impracticable, or because it rudely puts us upon the defence of our most cherished opinions. But there is a still stronger reason why we would not hastily reject revolutionary novelties — the feeling which we have in common with everybody else, that the system of things in which we live is not so good that it ought to be blindly defended against all change. Stubborn conservatives ought not to forget that their opposition to all proposed reforms really involves them in responsibility for all the evils which' they passively maintain. The people of this generation are terribly worried with revolutions and reforms, but they would ASSOCIATION. 295 not be at peace if philanthropy, real and pretended were to desert the earth to-day. The world is not good enough, nor well enough ordered to ensure comfort and quiet, if all its fanatics were dead. It must be mended, and this felt necessity will ensure every plausible reform a hearing from somebody, and those who accept it will press its claims, whether men will bear or whether th>ey will forbear. On every side our understanding is challenged to inquire and our hearts are courted to act on the vital interests of humanity. All our institutions, religious, civil and economi- cal, are undergoing the boldest and most earnest investiga- tion. Some minds are occupied with questioning particular points in the established order. Of these there are so many sets, each pressing a special reform or a single idea, that our whole inheritance of usages and opinions, creeds and conven- tionalisms are attacked in detail; and there are others that with a universal sweep, strike boldly at the entire system of society, and put us at once upon the defence of creed and party, 'position and property. In the hurly-burly of this general war there are doubtless errors and excesses committed by all parties; as well by conservatists as by the most radical revolutionists. In the great strife we may, if we will, remain comparatively inactive, but we cannot be indifferent. We do not evade the questions presented* nor escape their effect upon ourselves, by merely declining the open championship of the opinions which we hold. Indeed the refusal to investigate and dis- cuss, only puts us more quietly, but not less positively, into the defence of things as they are, for if I reject all the reforms which solicit my aid, I am supporting the institutions which exist, and the powers that be, as decidedly as if I were doing battle for them in the open field of public controversy. We think there are but few reflecting people who would volun- 296 CAPITAL V5. LABOR. tarily make themselves answerable for the whole sytsem of things as they are. Utopia can't be made so drunk and crazy and wretched as the world we live in, and the prophets and philosophers who propose a new heaven and a new earth meet our wants and necessities so nearly that they ought neither to be mobbed nor scorned. If men could be wise and honest and happy, as we are, they might turn up their noses at all innovation, but they are not now exactly in the cir- cumstances to be saucy to any fool or madman that has a higher hope and a more equitable system. We have a world to put in order, and why not receive proposals and examine the terms of all the world menders who wish to take the contract ? Some of them have excellent suggestions to make, and among them all, a good plan may be found. CAPITAL vs. LABOR. "Under this head the Pennsylvania™ of yesterday quotes a speech delivered by a Mr. Butler at Lowell, upon the threat, ened or expected reduction of the operatives' wages, accom- panied with its own comments upon the speech, and opinions upon the topic. The facts appealed to are matters of the highest concern, and the views advanced as interesting, and true, too, as a partial and partisan investigation can well be, It is to be regretted, however, that the drift of the discussion is so deeply tinged with party politics. > Capital is of no particular creed, religion, or party, but has its own instincts, and naturally pursues its own interests. Differences of sentiment modify the character, and within certain limits, affect the conduct of particular capitalists, but the system and its necessities control them in essentials, and level all CAPITAL VS. LABOR. 2 9t other distinctions in effecting their classification. Demo- crats as well as Whigs hold bank stocks and own factories ; and the law of their order generally determines their rela- tion to labor, and governs their behavior towards it. The principles of Democracy, indeed, would righteously regulate and harmonize the respective interests of the employer and the workman ; but, in fact, the mere profession of these prin- ciples does not induce conformity in the capitalists of either party, nor secure the rights of the persons in their employ- ment. Moreover, money is not voluntarily guilty of all the oppres- sions which it inflicts, and labor is not wholly innocent of its own wrongs. The accidental embarrassments which wealth suffers, and its own disturbing antagonisms, take away much of its free- dom and moral responsibility ; and the ruinous competition among workmen themselves, and their unequal strife with machinery, still further influence their condition, and confuse the question. Just as long as labor must sell itself for wages, in the open market, it must accept the market price, though life, liberty and happiness are thus converted into commodities. The principle which lies at the bottom of the whole mat- ter is overlooked in all class legislation and partisan reason- ing. Justice and humanity plead for the rights of the opera- tive ; avarice and order advocate the interests of the employers — both alike maintain the existing war between them ; and the result is that the victory always falls to the side of the most powerful. In the language of the good book — " on the side of the oppressor there is power." But, whatever benevolence demands, men cannot be made better on the one side, nor wiser and stronger on the other, than their respective circumstances will allow. 13* 298 CAPITAL VS. LABOR. They must be otherwise adjusted to each other before the evil can be remedied. Mutual hostilities cannot result in anything but mutual injuries. They must be harmonized. The capitalist must be made secure of equitable returns — the laborer, of all that he produces, and they must both be interested to do each other justice before they will ever be so disposed. Labor is the efficient producer of values — wealth is an indispensable instrument. Labor is the creator ; wealth is a necessary condition of its productiveness. They must be adjusted — married to each other, that their legitimate fruit may be mutually and rightfully enjoyed. Nothing that is bought and paid for can be free. Labor must be taken into partnership with capital before it can receive the issue of its own energies. The whole system is incoherent and unnatural. Wealth is the product of labor in its largest meaning ; nothing that human labor creates is indestructible — what- ever hands produce perishes either in the using or by neces- sary decay ; yet money, the mere representative of industrial products, by the necromancy of legislation, is made immor- tal. If by any effort or accident I get money enough to maintain myself for twenty years without labor, I can, by lending it at five per cent, interest, make it last unimpaired my lifetime, and the lifetime of one representative heir in each generation through all time to come ; and so discharge one man for ever from the necessity of labor, and cast his support upon the industry of others. The things, sub- stances, products of labor, for which it was at frst exchanged, all perished, perhaps within the first twenty years of that endless term ; but the bonds and stocks endure eternally. The bush in the mount which burned without being con- sumed was nothing to this. The miracle of perpetual inter- CAPITAL VS. LABOR. 209 est npon capital eclipses it as much as Vesuvius surpasses a farthing candle. The British debt has been paid, fully paid, again and again. That it never can be paid under the present system of perpetual interest, which leaves the capital undiminished, proves the falseness of the principle— that which is impossi- ble is not according to nature and law. The money of the world is owned by a few. The very gold originally given for the values exchanged has worn out, but the paper and parchment assurances suffer no change, and the labor of the world is taxed to maintain the amount undiminished. But all this is not the fault, the crime, nor the shame of the capitalist ; but of the system which enforces his submission and oppresses him, also, in his degree, as sadly as the poor- est dependent in his employment. The rich man's gains are as insecure, and he dies in as great apprehension for the well being of his children, as the poorest. The beggar has nothing to leave to his children — the millionaire can only provide for his, by entailing his wealth upon the third gene- ration, and he does not feel safe when he does that. If labor and wealth, hands and purse, were but well reconciled and harmonized, the mutual insurance would protect and bless both with peace and plenty. " Seek first the kingdom of heaven, and all these necessary things shall be added unto you f contains the philosophy of the divine order, and indi- cates the only conditions upon which its blessings can bo secured. The societary family must be organized, the actual brotherhood of man must be established, if we are ever to be relieved from anxious thought for to-morrow, and delivered fram the pressure of want to-day. The cry of the " poor against the rich," is often translated into the cry of " bread or blood ; and the stubborn conser- vatism of wealth must expect at last to meet its victims at 300 CAPITAL AND LABOR, the barricades. We will have no hand in provoking and prosecuting such unnatural war among brethren, and we will preach no gospel to the poor that does not work by love and purify the social system. We would urge reform, because men must choose between that and revolution. Throwing the restraints of the civil law and established order into the current may dam it for awhile, but the accumulated tides will at last break the barrier, to find the channel again, and will then overflow the banks in its desolating rage. Gradual reform or violent revolution is the necessity of our condition. There are some men who depend upon their crutches for their progress, and hug their chains as their only security. Nothing is so fearful to an essential slave as freedom. They need not tremble at the threatened change. Their system will necessarily last for them as long as they live. The his- tory of humanity might reconcile them to the necessity of change of some kind. The annals of the world's progress are but so many tomb-stones of its departed kingdoms, societies, and systems. We must go forward — we are embarked upon the tide, and if the head reels and the shores recede and sink, it is because we are drifting toward our destiny. Better bravely trim our sails to the breeze, than cowardly to depend upon anchors which cannot hold. CAPITAL AND LABOR, There is nothing in the spontaneous action of the social economy to limit the accumulation of wealth in single hands, and municipal law nowhere interposes to say thus far shall CAPITAL AND LABOR. 301 individual appropriation go and no further ; nor, on the other hand, does the constitution of society or civil law make any provisk n, other than poor laws and voluntary charities, to prevent absolute destitution. The distribution of wealth is left to unregulated individual competition. The natural ten- dency, and the actual operation of this system, are to increase all existing inequality of distribution until it ultimates in the very extremes of pauperism and of opulence. All the causes which are primarily concerned in breaking the balance con- tinue to act, and with a force multiplied at every stage by its own effect, so that every new result is an increased departure from proportion and equality. Capital does not, in nature and fact, reproduce capital, for " money is barren," and all commodities perish in the using. Capital and labor co-operating have the function of reproduc- tion, — separated, they are both alike incapable. In the present order of things they are divorced, or, rather, they are unmarried ; they hold no true relation to each other, and their issue is not legitimate. Capital purchases, and by pur- chasing, dishonors labor, and at the same time corrupts itself. Their union is necessary to their fruit fulness ; but labor is denied any natural right in the issue, and accepts wages instead. This is the principle of the mis-alliance, and the degradation corresponds to the wrong. Labor is honorable in union with capital, and its wedlock unclefiled ; but its prostitution is not relieved by either custom or necessity. The labor that sells itself every day in the market would not be so much flattered if it were really respected. Under our system of hostile ownership, the soil, materials, and implements are under the dominion of one party and interest, and wherever the system has become considerably matured, the other party is at its mercy, and must accept such conditions as it has to offer. Against political and 302 CAPITAL AND LABOR. religious despotisms, revolutions and rebellions are often suc- cessful ; but against the money power, never. The law of property, established in the world's conscience, and strong in every man's instincts, sanctions the mischief, and protects the abuse, while it supports the right that lies under them. Men cannot do what they know to be wrong in principle and inconsistent also with the tacit agreement of the social organ- ization. The evil is in the system. It is an organized warfare. Man is armed against his fellow man, and life itself depends upon the struggle, and compels it. The laborer exhibits his sufferings and makes his complaints ; the capi- talist answers by showing his own necessities, and so justifies •his monopolizing acquisitions. In impulse and purpose both are right ; in method both are wrong, and equally anxious, uncertain and unhappy. The method only is wrong, for exclusive property and differences of taste and necessities are just and natural. But nature is consistent with herself, and no man's interest is in another man's loss, by her constitution. The parties must be reconciled in action as they really are one in interest. The brotherhood of the race stands translated into partnership in business. Instead of buying and selling, hating and rob- bing, each other, give each his equitably adjusted benefit in the mutual product of combined means, skill and toil ; inau- gurate justice, conform the system of life to the truth of things ; and we shall have reciprocity of feeling and mutual guarantees out of our harmonized interests, and all the ben- fits and blessings of a true commonwealth, industrial and social, as well as political, will result. It may be difficult, but it cannot be impossible, to organize society naturally. In truth, there is nothing so practicable as the right. Human experience proves that all false systems fail ; sound philosophy insures the success of the true. To THE OLD fiRUDGE. 303 call the hope of better things visionary, is in effect to preach content with the existing falsehood and evil, and virtually to defend and support them. THE OLD GRUDGE. The war between wealth and poverty cannot be compro- mised, for there is nothing in the demands of either that the other can afford to grant, and nothing in their respective wants which can be surrendered. Poverty needs all and more than wealth possesses; and gives no pledge that it would use it any better or be any better satisfied than the present holders. Wealth has as hard a fight against pros- pective as poverty has with present want. Never a million- aire dies but he endeavors to entail his property, that is, encumber it to his immediate heirs for the security of those most remote from him, which the law allows him to provide •for. Wealth has terrible fears which compel it constantly to increase, and anxiously to secure, its possessions — poverty has pains which goad it to continual assaults upon the cruel inequality of distribution by which it suffers. The conflict of these belligerents has not the formal array of the battle-field, for it is not fought across any fixed party line. It is a promiscuous hand-to-hand struggle. Every man strikes the man next him, employing at once all the stratagems which can deceive, and all the force that may crush, his victim, having no other cause of quarrel than the spoils of victory. There can be no end of a war which gives no combination to the combatants, and makes every conquest a cause of strife among the victors. It is a free promiscuous fight in which every man's hand is against every other man, and every other man's hand against him. 304 THE OLD GRUDGE. The picture cannot be overdrawn. "The battle of life !" It has become a proverb; and men have submitted to it as to a necessity. They have even digested it into a philosophy and given it a shelter in their religion. Either as penance and atonement, or as discipline and means of growth, the sufferings, privations and disabilities of the strife are com- mended to the acceptance of men. A false philosophy teaches us to ascribe our virtues to our wants, our achievements to our necessities, and quotes his- tory and distorts logic, to prove the paradox. Such doc- trine, if it proves anything, proves the Millenium an impossi- bility, and reduces heaven to a dream. According to it^ some kind or degree of hell is an essential condition of human existence. While it insists upon the growth of change from evil to good, it denies that from good to better, and from less to more. Whence came the idea that activity must be extorted by suffering ? not in the music saloon, the picture gallery, the ball room, the library, the social circle, the church, nor from any place or thing we call a joy. — The slaveries and curses of life are so much in the foreground that they hide its blessings and beauties from observation. Men must be reconciled with each other, and with nature, or they cannnot be in harmony with their Creator and their destiny. Society must be reorganized — conflict must give place to confidence, strife to unity, and competition must be swallowed up in brotherhood. It is sin to preach submission until there is peace. CLUB HOUSES. 305 INDUSTRIAL COMPETITION. Free industrial competition is, in principle, a system of masked fratricide. What it calls a fair chance is the dance of a rough-shod donkey among chickens, with a free fling of his heels at the crippled and haltered nags that occupy the adjoining stalls. That liberty which dissolves society into separate individualism, and turns everybody into the melee of a deadly antagonism is, in effect, the political system of the savage state mixed with the social and industrial economy of civilization. Landlordism and monopoly of wealth, severed from the old feudal ownership of the laborer, in the end converts those who were once serfs, through the process of emancipation and wages slavery, into public paupers, but not until the free toilers have first con- verted the wilderness into a garden, and covered the land with palaces, and delivered its mines into the hands of its masters, and then they get leave to perish in their poverty. So far as the tendency of the system goes, it is a refine- ment in cruelty for wealth to claim credit for emancipating the body and bones of a man while it keeps its clutches tight upon all the labor they can yield, and at the same time keeps itself discumbered of the carcass. He that buys the use of a man, buys the man himself and should take care of him — accordingly, a poorhouse support is felt to be the fag end of the wages bargain between wealth and labor. CLUB HOUSES. Club Houses and Unitary Buildings for united families are being considered and will doubtless soon come into fashion. 306 CLUB HOUSES. If they were confined to the use of people in moderate or in merely independent circumstances, the argument for them would be irresistible. At present nothing short of an im- mense fortune can secure all desirable conveniences, and afford all necessary defences to the separate household. In our cities, among the poorer of our respectable buildings, the very same cooking and slopping are carried on in all the adjoining rooms throughout a whole court, row, alley, or street. The common walls are thinner than good partitions ought to be; and if a child cries in its bed, half a dozen neighboring house- holds must lie awake to listen to it. The front door is in the street, and the back door opens upon the nuisances of the whole range ; cleanliness and privacy are impossible, and the proportion of expense borne by each establishment over what it would be in well regulated associations, is the difference between hiring a sorry cab for fifty cents and riding in a handsome omnibus for sixpence. Society still retains so much of the savage spirit of isola- tion that families will slink into a cell or kennel in dismal distrust and defiance, rather than club their means, and live together in palaces, the way the households of princes do. The unitary building, by putting whole families on the same floor, covering in the common stairway, and supplying heat and light, and cooking and washing, on the principles of a part- nership, would secure all the economies of large capital well managed for the benefit of the smallest stockholder. It would spare to every family the necessity of at least one servant ; it would easily provide a library and reading-room out of the joint stock in books and papers of the whole establishment ; it could keep open an agreeable resort for the leisure hours of all the inmates, and supply the instructive method of neighbourly intimacy. The rate of rent would be regulated by the level of the floor occupied, so that a fifth story PROTECTIVE UNIONS GUAKANTEEISM. 307 would be as cheap as a hut two miles up town, and be at the same time so contrived that the family need never descend except when in other circumstances^they wished to go down street. But we cannot pretend to enumerate all the benefits of the scheme, and we see none of its inconveniences. The unitary building must not be judged by any supposed resemblance to one of our horrid barracks of dwelling-houses, crowded with ten or a dozen families tumbled in as if they had been dumped down out of a cart into the rooms. We are speaking of a palace cheap enough for the poor, and grand enough for the rich, because large enough for a variety of both. PROTECTIVE UNIONS— GUARANTEEISM. These associative movements are attracting general atten- tion, and are in several places in successful operation. Yery recently we have one started in this city, which numbered one hundred and ten persons within a fortnight of its first effort. The objects are generally stated to be protection and co-operation in the prosecution of such branches of mechani- cal and mercantile pursuits as may be found necessary and expedient for the mutual benefit of the membership. Pro- vision for the relief of sick and disabled members and the defraying of funeral expenses, is also made. The economy of the association is somewhat complex, as it must be (however well devised), to embrace and arrange all the functions which it is to fulfil. An initiation fee is required, for the purpose of securing a capital for the business of the society. 308 PROTECTIVE UNIONS — GUARANTEEISM. The candidate for membership must be at least twenty-one years of age, " and of a moral character/ 7 and is admitted to membership by an unanimous vote. Members are to have stated and proportioned benefits of the association in sickness, &c, on their farther compliance with certain terms and conditions, and making certain stated contributions to the fund provided for that purpose. A contingent fund also is raised by a tax of five cents a month upon all the members, to be applied in charitable relief of sickness and misfortune of the membership. The business of the society will embrace the purchase and sale of such commodities, goods, wares and merchandise, a3 are required by the ordinary necessities of life, i. e. it will keep a store where the products of its members' industry will be taken at the ordinary market prices, and sold again at the usual profit. The capital will be invested in the variety necessary to such general trade. The members are required to sustain the Union by the patronage of such employments and business as it may he engaged in. Xo portion of the funds or property of the Union shall be loaned. All operations of the Union shall be for cash. Each member shall have the privilege of purchasing for the use of himself and family and shall be allowed upon his pur- chases five per cent., which he may withdraw at the end of the year. Members may purchase at wholesale, and the discount shall then be made at the time of the purchase. The branches of trade prosecuted by the Union shall be determined by the Union in session. Traffic in intoxicating liquors and tobacco, excluded. At the expiration of five years that portion of the profits which may have accumulated upon sales to the public, and the property on hands, will be divided among the members, in the ratio of their respective purchases. PROTECTIVE UNIONS GUAR ANTE EISM. 309 This is a hasty, very hasty, and imperfect account of the organization, obtained by a glance at the Constitution, with- out leisure for examination, or explanations, from those who are most interested in, and best acquainted with it. The main object is to effect the exchange and purchase of necessaries, and save to the consumer the profits usually paid to the exchanger, in the form of 5 per cent, on the amount purchased at the end of the year, and an equitable dividend of the resulting profits at the end of five years. Incidental advantages will be derived by the management of the concern to the mechanic who may find steady employment and fair wages for his work from the Union. The "beneficial" feature added, makes it a health assurance also, and the contingent fund is a provision of benevolence. It is difficult to reason from first principles upon schemes which are not broad enough for all the purposes of society, and yet are so far complicated as to embrace a considerable number of its functions and interests. The general policy of guaranteeism has demonstrated its efficiency in a great number of single interests ; but those enterprises which include productive industry and exchanges together, are as yet matters of experiment ; and integral association, which first principles alone would safely and certainly direct, has never been fairly attempted. Communism has had repeated trials, and frequently attained and enjoyed such success as it aimed at for considerable periods, but it never was self-sus- tained, and *t never can sustain itself. The coarsest and lowest necessities of life may be secured on the lowest level of our common nature, but provision for the development of the whole man and the growth of the race, must respect the individualism that corresponds to the natural differences of men. We are not offering any opinion or venturing any predic- 310 PROTECTIVE UNIONS G U A R A N T E E I S M. tion upon the principles and prospects of Protective Unions. It would be rash as unavailing to do so. Every thing new must be learned, which is as true for the experimenter as for the thinker. If there were or could be enough people engaged to sup- ply the whole variety of uses on which we all depend for our daily wants ; and if the exchanges of service, and products of skill, capital and industry, were effected so as to prevent speculation and antagonism of the money power, we could answer in a word for the success of the scheme. But to a partial and incomplete one, there attaches the difficulty of guarding it against the power of all that is necessary to it but not within its control, nor linked into its harmonies. This, however, is only a difficulty, and there is wisdom and virtue enough somewhere to meet it The world is busy all around us in the preparatory studies and experiments of which this is an example. Guaranteeism is the marked character of the era. Odd Fellows, Sons cf Temperance, Beneficial Societies, and other voluntary asso- ciations with practical ends in view, under a hundred names and forms, and embracing, perhaps, a million of our country- men, indicate the transition from hostile and indifferent indi- vidualism to the societary organization which the nature and necessities of man demands and predicts. People are beginning to understand that it is association which builds magnificent churches for the parish which can- not afford a single fine dwelling-house for any one of Us members — that by accidental association of the community a man can ride twenty miles an hour in a floating palace for a shilling — that by the contribution of a trifling sum, securi- ty against want in sickness can be had, or a little fortune laid up for the family, bereaved of its support by death ; and men, however slow to understand their own experiences PROGRESS OF THE AGE. oil and learn their largest applications, will at last employ them for the most beneficent, and the grandest purposes — -just as the long neglected power of steam has been elaborated into omnipotence, and the simple phenomena of galvanism are made to answer the purposes of omnipresence. It was necessary — it is orderly — that the physical triumph should be first achieved, and then the social becomes possi- ble, obvious and necessary. From the isolated savage to the associated man there lies a long infancy of error, suffer- ing and resulting education. The world has some hard les- sons to learn yet, but it is very busy just now with its stu- dies, and will at last reach the Q. E. D. of the great pro- blem of human existence. i84a The Progress of the Age, in its material aspect, as well as in its intellectual and moral, rightly interpreted, means association, neighborhood, brotherhood, unity — Distance is the enemy to be overcome. The American Railway Guide reports that on the 1st of January, 1853, there were in the United States, 13,221 miles of completed railroad ; 12,928 miles of railroad In pro- gress of construction ; and about 7,000 miles under survey, which will be built within the next three or four years — making a total of 33,155 miles ; which at the average cost of $30,000 (a well ascertained average) for each mile, including equipments, etc., will have consumed a capital of $994,650,000 ; in round numbers, one thousand millions of dollars. Add to this the canals and navigable streams in the nation, and the telegraph lines, of which we had 16,729 312 PROGRESS OF THE AGE. miles in December, 1852, and the post-routes traversed in the year to the extent of fifty-nine millions of miles, and we have some idea of the apparatus provided for the intercourse of the people of the Republic. Twenty-five millions of peo- ple have invested at least fifteen hundred millions in the ways, and perhaps five hundred millions more in the means or vehicles, of inter-communication — eighty dollars a head invested by the people in the routes of travel and transpor- tation (railroads, canals, turnpikes, plank roads, and river improvements). One hundred millions is the interest of two billions, at five per cent. ; and if the stock is worth par in the average, one hundred millions is the expense of travel and transportation to the good people of the Union. Nine millions more is the cost of the General Post Office, and four dollars and a half is the apportioned expense of each individual, for all the advantages of intercourse in all these ways secured to us. One hundred and ten millions per annum, the aggregate cost of our war with space. By some of these routes, Time is almost annihilated ; by others, he compromises for about five hundred miles a day ; while on others, he still holds us at the old jog trot inconve- nience. But materialism is everywhere giving way, and the sovereignty of mind is rapidly getting itself absolutely estab- lished. The hostile forces of geography hold but little against us, except its mountain fortifications ; but ere long it will be driven from these, also, and have no real resting-place but in the atlas. It will always make a show in maps, but in the fact it will amount to nothing. Time and space are nothing to disembodied spirits. When we have disembodied them, our own bodies will be less troublesome, and much more convenient for our use. Bishop Berkeley denied the existence of matter ; but even those who, by his philosophy were able to overcome their preju- CALIFORNIA GOLD FEVER. 313 dices, were none the better able to get over the distances which it interposed. The German metaphysicians think that time and space are mere forms of the understanding. Well, no matter about the logic that undertook so to dispose of the matter ; we are hopefully busy working out the fact, which will answer our purposes something better. CALIFORNIA GOLD FEYER— LUXURY— ASSO- CIATION. There are at least twenty vessels at New York, getting ready to sail for California. New Orleans is as much excited and as active in the enterprise, and the same may be said of every city and perhaps every village in the coun- try, each in its degree. It is plain enough that the business of colonizing will go bravely on, and the gold country will be crowded with adventurers as quickly as travel and trans- portation can possibly effect it. Will the workers of those mines, and the laborers who furnish their, supplies, permit themselves to be under-worked by slaves? Will not the colorophobia of the adventurers, itself, begin to work for the cause of freedom ? And will not the emigrants carry with them enough of sense and principle to take care of them- selves in this respect ? It seems to us that there is a clear streak of light breaking out on the coast of the Pacific. What a glorious recognition of the right it will prove, if all our acquisitions in Mexico turn out at last as so much advancement of truth and freedom. The gold and silver of the whole earth, emptied out into our lap at once, need not work to our injury. Give us free men — free principles — -justice, honesty, and equality — give 14 314 CALIFORNIA GOLD FEVER. us a tolerable approach to human brotherhood, and the lux- uries of the East and the wealth of the West will do no harm. The upward tending soul of man will know how to find the hidden blessing that there is in abundance. Gold is a good metal, and it will be all the more useful as it grows more abundant. Real freedom need fear no evil in the free abundance of anything the Creator has made. God has not hidden away in the bosom of the generous earth any stores of essential evil for the destruction of the human race. The fruits of its bosom, for whose abundance we annually send up our thanksgivings, are as liable to conversion into instruments of destruction, as are the minerals beneath its surface. The love of gain in merchandise is just as corrupt- ing as the rage of gold digging — and scarcely as generous. Evils are not things, but abuses ; and the religion that is limited to charity for man, without any faith in him or hope for him, is essentially defective. It is just as dangerous to set a slave legally free as it is for a white man to come of age and assume the government of his own life. It is as dangerous to live in a city as it is to own a gold mine. Freedom in every degree, and of every kind, is full of dan- ger, but slavery of every degree and kind is death. Sin is bondage, and bondage is sin. Liberty only is life. Luxury is abused indeed, but never more so than when it is evil spoken of, and never so much misunderstood as when it is feared. Why, health is luxury. Ease and happiness are internal luxury, and depend upon that which is external. And poverty, with all its pains, is an essential curse, how- ever it may be subdued or controlled for good, and however its direct results are evaded and avoided. Ireland is starving poor; is that a blessing? The majority of men must labor with their hands during all their waking hours to keep the animal alive ; is that a blessing? And nearly everybody is CALIFORNIA GOLD FEVER. 315 a slave for the means of subsistence, and dies in terror of his children's destitution ; is that a blessing ? Is it shocking to see whole communities crazed with the greed of gold ? then turn to the sober, settled insanity of our plodding business marts, and see how general the appetite, and learn how strong the necessity ; and learn, also, to recognize in all these forms of the feeling, a natural impulse. Examine its laws, its ten- dencies, and adjust the order of society to it ; for it can be balanced and made at once beautiful, beneficent and har- monious. Special, extraordinary and extravagant manifestations of the desire for wealth, excite attention, and its misfortunes are recorded against it and reasoned from and feared as if these exhibitions were the evil of money loving and money getting. This is a view at once partial and false. The avarice that spreads itself over a whole life is not so favorably distin- guished from that which explodes upon a particular enter- prise. Xor is either the one or the other just such an unmitigated sin as moralists imagine. The world's crime is not in its necessities or in their activity; and opinion will make nothing by rebuking the pursuit of wealth, until the order and institutions of society enable the world to obey the injunction, "take no thought for to-morrow, what ye shall eat and what ye shall drink, and wherewithal ye may be clothed." Except within the institutions of the true church and under the shelter of its economy, this is com- pletely impossible. Organize the Church of Christ first, then preach its prin- ciples and policy to the world from the practical position which makes its laws practicable. The man who loves his wife and children must take thought for their to-moiTOw. But give us institutions which shall relieve the fear and supply the want — give us the brotherhood of the race — give us its 316 CALIFORNIA GOLD FEVER. family arrangements, its mutual dependencies, harmonized by its mutual interests ; let all its wants be supplied by that which each member ministers to the whole, and in that inte- gral, natural and necessary order, the impulse to acquire will be kindly, social, holy, as the industry of the human mother or the mother bird to supply her young. It is not the love of wealth but the strife of wealth — the battle kept up by hostile individualism of property, which wastes the bounties of heaven and perverts them, both in pursuit and possession, into a curse. In the meantime we ought to deal kindly with the crimes and follies which we virtually compel. It is reported that those rough, greedy men, who are digging and gathering gold in California, do not rob each other or quarrel over their gains. They have abundance within their easy reach ; they leave their uncounted and unmeasured ore in their huts, undefended, day and night, and no one takes it. The natural sense of right, relieved from the pressure of necessity, and from the feeling of inequitable distribution, is enough to guard the treasures honestly acquired, without the aid of law, society, or the presence of womanhood, and the refining conditions which we have in more orderly communities. The men are free — utterly free — the gold is free, and each man's acquisitions are measured by his industry and strength ; and natural conscience rules with its natural force and justice, because its decisions are unembarrassed by artificial rules. Even among such men, in such circumstances, all the interests and all the functions employed in that mean and partial association are marked with justice and harmony. But let some lordling bring in his bond slaves to work for him, and we will not answer for what is called the peace of society and the rights of property — nor for the lives of the REDEMPTION. 317 innocent victims of oppression, either. They, like established societies, may expend their vengeance upon the wretches whom others compel to inflict their wrongs. Oh, how much there is in that prayer, " thy kingdom come ; thy will be done on earth." If our metaphysical religion were but fully translated into actual facts, and put into practicable forms, we would have, every day, our daily bread, without fighting or begging for it. January, 1848. REDEMPTION. Our brother's crimes are our diseases- — His sufferings are our sin. In the local item column of our newspapers we have an almost daily report of casualties and crimes, which bitterly reproach the social organization in which they can occur. Thefts and suicides by men, compelled by want, — profligacy and self-destruction of women, to escape the evils which they can no longer sustain ! All the offences committed against self and society are not chargeable to the mere wantonness of the will. The world's wealth is not equitably distributed by the system of property and the constitution of society. In Europe there are millions who are, of necessity, trespass- ers upon every foot of appropriated soil, and nuisances in the highway! We have essentially tjie same industrial and property institutions. The difference in our political eco- nomy, and the vast difference in the quantity and price of land, make all the distinction which we can rightfully claim. The helpless poor in our cities, who cannot avail themselves of these advantages, are in the same pauperism that curses Europe. 318 REDEMPTION. Alms-giving is the remedy relied upon there, and the same form of benevolence is the remedy here. In neither is it adequate. It is unavoidable, indeed, and as suitable as patching an outworn garment is, until it can be replaced by a better one. Misery, present and pressing, must be relieved, though the means only aggravate the mischief. If the Kingdom of Heaven, which the gospel promises, could any way be established upon earth, all these necessary things, for which so many toil all their lives, and so many perish for the want of, would be happily provided for all. The Creator and the material creation are not in fault. The heavens and the earth are genial and generous; but human society is a terrible failure. Its order and economy are essentially vicious. Living costs everybody too much; some, more than they can pay. The three learned professions, embracing a large share of the learning and talent of the community, are all the time at work cobbling and tinkering the sins and sufferings of society, without much success. Governments are quite as busy trying to hold the incoherent mischiefs of the social and political systems in merely tolerable order. Nations consider each other natural enemies. Chris tendom at large disowns the brotherhood of the race; and the average of religious conscience is not above the municipal law. So, we have faith without works, and religion and morality are practically divorced. Scarcely anything of all that heaven and earth tenders for our use answers its purposes except sleep ; millions are denied the blessings of that, and to nearly all, the excellent uses of life are postponed till after death. Fortunate people secure the means of good at a sad expense to the unfortunate, whether they know and intend it or not — like the rank grass that grows upon graves, the rich riot upon the wretchedness that rots beneath them. Bad people find gratification in such luck as this, strive for it and glory REDEMPTION. 319 in it. Good people cull some happiness out of their cares, while suffering for the present, and laboring and praying for the " be.tter time coming." But the average of human his- tory is a mournful story, punctuated all along with tomb- stones, and embellished only with the monuments of those who have died to atone for the sins of the world. These deaths, however, mean something that more than compensates for the melancholy which they awaken. The Cross of the Sacrificed is the mystic symbol of the world's eventual redemption. Every martyr ascends to the Father to receive good gifts for men ; every life loyally devoted and generously offered up, swells the treasures laid up in heaven for the world. The children of the slayers become the heirs of the slain. The victims which their fathers slew become sacrifices to them : the slaughters of each generation are the sacraments of its successor, till humanity shall be regenerated in the blood of its own innocents, the wide earth become one great altar, and the promised new heaven and new earth ' are established in consummated righteousness. This must be the divine philosophy of that Providence which sends its chosen ones out into the world like sheep among wolves, and makes its angels servants unto the heirs of salvation. The world must work out its own redemption through the divinity of labor and the sacredness of suffering. " This cup may not pass " till " it is finished," but the last expiatory cry of suffering love that darkens the heavens and shakes the earth, will herald in the resurrection and the life, and the long procession of cross-bearing disciples who have followed Him in the regeneration, shall end in the rnil- lenial triumph. 320 BENEVOLENCE, ETC. BENEVOLENCE— SIN AND SUFFERING— CIR- CUMSTANCES. At a meeting held in the Commissioner's Hall, on the 27th inst., resolutions were adopted, and a society organized for the establishment of a Dispensary in the District. Mr. William J. Mullen was elected President for the ensuing year. Dr. James Bryan and Dr. Matthew F. Groves, Vice Presidents. Henry S. Godshall, Secretary. Samuel M'Me- nomy, Treasurer, and thirteen gentlemen of the District, Managers. From the resolutions published and from other sources, we learn that during the prevalence of the ship-fever last year, eight hundred persons were sent to the alms-house from that District, and that the District expenses incurred for burying the dead amounted to six hundred dollars a month. It is said that the first case of cholera in the city (1832) occurred in Moyamensing, and that it has been a generator of typhus-fever, and other contagious and infectious dis- eases, for years. The poverty, wretchedness and impurity of some portion of that region get expressive manifestation in its pestilences. The causes are daguerreotyped in the symptoms of the resulting diseases. Ship fever is the rude rhetoric of Baker street wretchedness, the very echo, the ideal, of its sin and suffering. The infected region lies but half a dozen squares from the State House, and although the veriest extremes of human life lie within so easy a distance, not one in a thousand of our citizens has ever seen the utter destitution and beastly degradation which infest that horrible place. Its cellars, garrets and hovels, defy all description. Our first view of BENEVOLENCE,' ETC. 321 it brought to mind the reply of Mr. Dickens to a gentleman in Pittsburgh, when he was asked if he had not overdrawn the horrors of low life in London. " Overdrawn, overdrawn !" said he, " human language is not adequate to a just descrip- tion.' 7 Everybody ought to see everything once in their lifetime. Go clown there on Sunday afternoon, when the sun is shin- ing, just at the moment when people are coming out of church, thread your w r ay through the well-dressed crowds upon the pavements on your way, turn into St. Mary's, find the narrowest avenue and take it ; somewhere near you will meet Mr. Mullen, and he will help you to a view of human life in its lees. Make your observations and take your notes. You need not fear that you will be solicited for pen- nies or have your pockets picked. Your presence will scarcely be felt, and you will suffer nothing from rudeness. Life is too languid there to be insolent, and hope and desire too feeble to be importunate. Return again some dismal •December evening in the twilight, dive into the cellars, climb into the garrets — take it coolly. It is not the place for emotion. Observe, treat the whole matter as a fact. "When you go home think it all over. Examine it as a pro- blem, and do your duty afterwards. You need not carry a sixpence along with you. Your donations will make but little difference upon the destiny of those people. The House of Industry last winter demonstrated that the worst of them could support themselves by sewing carpet rags when they got the whole profit of their own work. The women there who have not clothes enough to keep them warm, or food enough for one satisfactory meal a day, and have not skill of fingers enough to hem a kitchen towel well, can be maintained the whole winter at an expense of about a dollar apiece. Pay their room rent, buy rags for them, 14* 322 SIN AND SUFFERING. and give them only the profit of their work, and they will make from fifteen to thirty cents a day, and live well on it. If the profit on the provisions which they must buy in penny worths could be saved to them, they would get rich. We are not now suggesting a costly edifice, and a grand system of management, with the forms of pauperism pursued in the whole economy of the institution. A big warm room, and plenty of coarse work, all arranged • on business princi- ples, with an efficient agent, and no domineering and no parade — no begging, no anniversaries, no lecturing, and, above all, no benevolence and no show of it. Put fifty of those people on such a footing, and not one of them will dare to receive a gratuity from anybody. Do you believe this ? If you doubt, you have no vocation for the alleys and gutters of a metropolis. Something more than a year ago there were three hun- dred grog shops in the first ward of the District of Moya- mensing. In these rum was sold by the cent's worth, and lottery policies as low as three cents a share ! ! But these were not the causes of wretchedness that abounded there ; they were the consequences — -just as drinking and gambling in high life are the consequences of its particular kinds of want and destitution. A man can't die because he has nothing to do worth living for. If his best faculties are dead or suppressed, his lower life must come out the stronger. Death and hell — inactivity and perversion — go together. One of the companions of our childhood, a noble natured fellow, with the frame and energies of a giant, and the char- acter of a gentleman brought up in the woods, became. a drunkard in contempt of the meagreness of actual life. We left him one day drunk, playing the ruffian at a sign-post in our native village. Seven years afterwards we found him in exactly the same place and circumstances. There he CIRCUMSTANCES. 323 stood, in the undilapidatecl strength of his manhood, with a certain wholesomeness of look, and grandeur of physical proportions, which neither time nor intemperance could destroy. We accosted him bluntly with — ""Why, Alick ! have you been drunk ever since we parted seven years ago V 9 He roused himself, cleared his broad brow of its matted locks, looked steadily into our eyes, and answered soberly and meaningly — " Xo, William, I got sober once, to see how things looked ; and when I discovered that the rule of life is boot hog or die, I got drunk again in disgust." The root of the matter is not reached when we are told that sin is the cause of suffering. What is the cause of sin ? — not its remote metaphysical cause, but its immediate cir- cumstantial cause. There is the place for us to meet it. The morality of the best of us owes much to our surround- ings. The unspiritual omnipotence of circumstances is an overmatch for the spiritual influence of opinions, in the majority of men. The laws of Heaven cannot be obeyed • anywhere but in the Kingdom of Heaven — within its organ- ization and economy — in its circumstances. Women have eaten their own children in the famine of besieged cities. Drowning men will fight like demons for a plank that pro- mises to float them ashore, and the hopeless will seek refuge from despair in the temporary insensibility of drunkenness. It is meat, drink and lodging to those that have no other — or, it is blessed forgetfulness. Let us look into it bravely. It is not restraints, prospec- tive penalties — repression, that regulates the life. Every faculty of humanity is given in reference and adaptation to its object. Attraction leads out our actions. Desires, affections — our lores — constitute our real life ; restraints are only negatives — so many nothings. Abraham abandoned his native country on the promise of a letter one ; he offered 324 POOR-LAWS. up his only son in the certainty that he should receive tiim again. It is for the joy set before him that any man endures his cross and despises its shame. I Human nature, as long as a spark of it remains, will respond to its appropriate stimulus ; it will not resist the full play of its natural affini- ties. Prayer in the closet — tears at your own comfortable fireside ; but, in the highways, in the lanes and alleys, work, work for the sinning and the suffering. Preach repentance if you will, but in Heaven's name plant a ladder in it on which the wretch ean climb out of the slough of despondency. 1848. POOR-LAWS. The present system of English Poor-Laws dates as early as the reign of Queen Elizabeth, A. D. 1600. The rates, as the poor-taxes are called, amounted, in 1600, to .£190,000; in 1100, to £820,000 ; in 1800, to four millions of pounds ; in 1815, five millions and a half; in 1820 to above seven mil- lions, and 1830 above eight millions ; in 1835 to six and a quarter millions ; in 1840 and 1845 they stood at five and a half millions per annum. Wealth is badly distributed in a nation where so large a share of it must go back by force of necessity to the poor every year. There is nothing worse than poor-laws except the laws which make men poor. Indeed it would be hard on principle to show why only enough of the surplus wealth of a nation should be redistributed to keep the wretched barely alive. There is no foundation in right — it does not belong to HOMESTEAD EXEMPTION. 325 the system of truth and justice, to force one man to sup- port another, either by poor-laws or othsr laws. If the rich have one dollar lawfully which they may not keep rightfully, let who will live or die, they hold it by wrong, not by right. Poor-laws are a bad cobble of a bad system. They are not just, but it is injustice that has made them necessary, and they are a confession of it, if rightly viewed. Property is a natural institution, but the laws of property rest, both in theory and fact, upon the policy of barbarism. — See Blackstone for the one, and the landed aristocracy of England for the other. HOMESTEAD EXEMPTION. The exemption of the homestead from compulsory sale for the payment of debt, though one of the principles of a new party in this country, is not a new policy in the history of landed property. Under the common law of England, real estate could not be sold or conveyed by the owner, nor could he subject his land to the payment of his debts, nor in any manner treat it as capital, or make it the basis of credit in business. Not even the consent of the lord from whom the land was imme- diately held, could enable the owner of a freehold to convey his estate to another, unless he first obtained the consent of his own next apparent or presumptive heir. The policy of these restrictions arose out of the feudal connection between the lord and the landholder, and was designed to preserve it; but it also comprehended and provided for the interests of the heir, with some reference, doubtless, to his rights and necessi- ties. The owner was also, for the same reasons, incapable of devising his real estate by will to another family, or even of B28 HOMESTEAD EXEMPTION. altering the course of its descent in his own, by imposing parti- cular limitations. Alienation was in theory impossible, because the grant was made on condition of personal services and fealty, which he could not at will devolve upon another ; and the heirs of the tenant in fee, always named in the grant, were held to be beneficially interested in it, and could not, therefore, be dispossessed without their consent. By degrees these restraints wore off. Trade and com- merce, growing with civilization, required increased capital, and property in land was gradually converted into a market- able commodity, and estates were unfettered to answer the enlarging exchanges. By a statute of Edward the First (A. D. 1292), all per- sons were enabled to make voluntary sales and conveyances of their freehold estates. But it was not until the time of Charles the Second (about 1670), that devising lands by will was allowed. Under the common law, the creditor could have satisfac tion of his debt only out of the goods and chattels of the debtor, and the present income of his lands ; but could not take possession of the lands themselves. The statute of Edward the First, five years earlier than that which allowed the sale of land by the owner without restriction, gave the writ of elegit to the judgment creditor, by which the defendant's goods and chattels were seizetl, and after being appraised, were delivered to the plaintiff at the price fixed, in satisfaction of his debt or claim. If the goods were not sufficient to dis- charge the debt, one-half of his freehold lands were also delivered to the plaintiff to be held till out of the rents, issues and profits the debt should be fully paid. By another law, made the same year, persons engaged in trade might pawn the whole of their lands until in like manner the debt was satisfied. This pledge is called statute merchant, and is of HOMESTEAD EXEMPTION. 327 the nature of a judgment entered before the mayor of Lon- don or some chief magistrate of a city. Afterwards, a similar recognizance, with similar effects, was directed to be registered before the mayors of certain trading towns ; but these were permitted only among traders, for the benefit of commerce. In pursuance of the same policy, and limited to the same class of persons by the several statutes of bankruptcy, the whole of the bankrupt's lands are now subject to be sold for the benefit of creditors. Tenderness towards the heirs of real property, and regard for the family home, appear very distinctly in the charter of liberties granted by "William Perm to the Freemen of the Province of Pennsylvania, dated 1682, and commonly called "Laws agreed upon in England." By these laws it was provided "that all lands and goods shall be liable to pay debts except where there is legal issue, and then all the goods, and one-third of the land only." By an early act of the General Assembly, this liability was extended, providing "that all lands and goods shall be liable to pay debts, except where they shall be legal issue, and then all the goods, and one-half the land only, in case the land was bought before the debts were contracted." In 1688 the Legislature of the Province enacted "that all lands whatsoever, and houses, shall be liable to sale upon judgment and execution against the defendant, heirs, executors and administrators." But in 1705 it was provided "that lands which within seven years may yield yearly rents or profits beyond all reprises, suffi- cient to pay the debt, interest and costs of suit, shall not be sold, but be delivered to the creditor at the appraised value, until his claim shall be satisfied in the same manner as lands are delivered upon writs of elegit in England. This law is 328 HOMESTEAD EXEMPTION. now in force in Pennsylvania, modified as to the method, but not affected in principle. In nearly all the States of the Union, some reluctance and delay is shown in respect for title in landed estate. One very general restriction of the creditor's right of execu- tion is imposed, by forbidding him to resort to the land until the personal property of the debtor is first exhausted and found insufficient. In several of the States the debtor may redeem his land within a year after its sale under execution, by refunding the purchase money with interest. In some of them it cannot be sold unless it brings two-thirds of its appraised value, and in all, except four or five of them, there are some checks upon the sweeping desolation of a writ of execution. The old Hebrew rule which declared, "the land shall not be sold for ever," seems grounded on a principle worthy of the authority which Moses claimed for it. It allowed the owner to transfer the possession and sell the produce and profits of his land until the jubilee, but secured to him the right to redeem it sooner if he became able and willing. His own and his family's property in the soil could not be absolutely alienated. Law and religion combined to give sacredness a title at once necessary to happiness, independence and life. This divinely equitable and beneficent policy checked and limited the hungry mammonism of speculation, and long preserved the nation from the destructive inequality and desperate degradation of the mass, which an unlimited traffic in land alone can produce. To this periodical restitution of each parcel of land to its former owner, there belonged none of the evils which attached to the modern entailed estates at common law. In England no limit was set by the law to the extent of a man's acquisi- HOMESTEAD EXEMPTION. 329 tions ; and entails, by preserving within the family for ever all the lands which in a succession of ages could, by the various luck of many generations, be acquired, and guarding the constantly augmenting domain from all possibility of diminution or distributions, tended only to aggravate the evils of land monopoly for the few, and land destitution for the many. The Hebrew system, by preserving every man's portion of the earth for ever for himself and his heirs, main- tained equality. The law of Entails acting upon unlimited acquisitions, although in principle every way consistent with the doctrine of absolute dominion over the soil, and the right to appropriate it in perpetuity, threatened consequences so intolerable, that the courts were obliged to interpose, and by a species of judi- cial legislation, break up the perpetuity of Entails, which the House of Lords prevented the Commons from doing by direct enactment. If Parliament had made the change, the juster medium would have been chosen, no doubt, and the homestead would have been exempted, while the excess would have been left to distribution by the accidents of fortune and the laws of descent. The Xational Reformers do well to guard their policy of exempting land from execution by limiting it to the home- stead ; and they prefer, their scheme by ascertaining and determining the quantity which any individual may acquire and hold under these conditions. Their plan, as we under- stand it, does not propose to distitrb vested titles, or to question rights created by existing laws, but leaves the} required equalization of landed property to the accidents of trade, and that distribution which follows the death of the present holder. In this country, the next generation would witness a gene- ral correction of all injurious inequalities, and the system of 330 HOMESTEAD EXEMPTION. the reformers would prevent any recurrence of the evil by limiting the quantity that might be thereafter acquired. To us this seems all well devised, prudently guarded, not difficult of adjustment to things as they are, and founded also upon the principles of justice and enlightened policy. The subtraction of the market value of the soil from the commercial capital of the country, would not, in any degree, or to any effect, diminish the actual wealth of the community. The land would yield its fruits as before, and the real money and conventional credit would still perform their wonted functions, and would easily adapt themselves, without con- vulsion or violence, to the remaining values in exchange. Debt has long been treated as a crime of one of the par- ties to the offence, and punished in him with loss of land and goods, and forfeiture of personal liberty, with all the consequent suffering to his dependencies. This barbarism is passing away. It was not based upon any principle of trade, and could not promote any of its interests. The im- prisonment of the debtor, and the starvation of his wife and children, are now perceived to be more than a just protec- tion to the creditor, and severer punishment than misfortune and innocence should incur. To strip a man of all the means and comforts of life for debt simply, is to confound mistake and misfortune with crime, and to punish civil inju- ries as^if they were criminal offences. The nearer we can come to converting legal debts into debts of honor the greater security will be given to credit. Law remedies avail but little against roguery, and there is the less reason for retaining their barbarities against honest men. Opinion would give us a better government than constraint has ever yet afforded. FREEDOM OF THE PUBLIC LANDS. 331 "FOR OUR ALTARS AND OUR HEARTHS." Under the Hebrew Common wealth and kingdom, the land could not be sold or alienated for ever. Neither king nor creditor could divest the meanest citizen of his right in the soil. The misfortunes or the crimes of the father could not oust his child from the possession. The cultivator of the land stood upon it the free tenant of the Lord of Lords, owning no other landlord. The homestead exemption, the home- stead sacreclness, gave to the man such dignity, and to the citizen such importance, that he could feel all the inspiration of the phrase, "My native land." Neither in conquest nor in defence were the soldiery of Israel ever excelled, while they had their own firesides and altars to fight for ; and the noble institutions of Moses operated by their own inherent force in achieving the gran- deur of the nation, accomplishing really much more for it by . their natural potency than the miracles which only relieved the people occasionally in great emergencies. FREEDOM OF THE PUBLIC LANDS. Secretary Walker, in his late annual report, recommends a reduction of the price of the public lands to twenty-five cents an acre. According to a table of the Commissioners of the General Land Office, hereto annexed, marked P., it appears that our whole public domain amounts to 1,442,217,889 acres, which, at the present mini- mum, price of $1 25 per acre, would make an aggregate value of $1,802,772,296. Regarding them, however, including our mineral lands, at twenty-five cents per acre, they would yield $'380,554,459. 332 FREEDOM OF THE PUBLIC LANDS. Large as is this sum, our wealth as a nation would be more rapidly increased by the sale of all our agricultural lands, at very low rates, not exceeding twenty-five cents per acre, in small farms, to actual set- tlers and cultivators, and thus by enlarged products and exports insuring increased imports and augmented revenue ; as it is obvious, even with liberal appropriations, that our revenue from lands and customs will enable us to pay the public debt before its maturity. This proposition bears marks of a concession to the rapidly increasing opinion that the lands of the nation are, and ought to be, the property of all, and an object of speculation to none. But, this abatement of price, while it looks toward meeting the ability of the industrious poor to purchase, and so rendering them more accessible to the most needy and deserving, is fatally faulty, in the fact, that it, as much as the higher rate, denies the principle, and still more than any higher rate exposes these lands to speculation. At twenty- five cents per acre, money will be able to increase its mono- poly of them five-fold, and so more than counteract any good that the plan is otherwise capable of. The true doctrine is, let not the land be sold at all, but given in limited quantity, say 160 acres, to the actual set- tler. Forty dollars would be the cost of such a lot to the man who must strain every nerve to reach his location. This effectually excludes nine out of ten of those for whom the change is demanded, both on their own account and on that of their fellow-laborers in our crowded cities. The policy of the measure is to withdraw the industrious and enterprising man, whose labor gluts our markets, from a destructive competition with his fellow craftsmen around him — to avoid the reduction of wages to him and to them, which results from his presence and necessities, and so at once to secure the well-being and independence of all, and at the same time distribute productive industry better than FREEDOM OF THE PUBLIC LANDS. 333 limited means for travelling and purchasing lands at the present or any price will allow. A man of some means can choose how he will invest them, and the business for which he is best qualified. Destitution of funds compels the poor man to work at the business that demands or admits him, and, fit or unfit, he must submit. Freedom to labor is not too much to ask from the govern- ment, so far as it can give it, and this means opportunity for adapted labor, if it means anything. I am free to work at painting and engraving, but I am not capable of either. This is like the freedom of the gospel to the Indians, printed only in Greek. So of the trades and occupations from which the people and the children of the people must choose. The men of property and influence in our cities have not given the subject the reflection it deserves. Economically, merely, it must relieve them of their poor-rates and cheapen their provisions. The temptation of lands for the settling, would attract thousands of stragglers from the crowded workshops, who would not be able to appropriate forty dol- lars, besides travelling expenses, to the enterprise. And the control it would exert over the effects felt and feared from the constantly increasing immigration of foreigners, is of the highest importance. We do not now stop to argue the justice of the measure. The beneficence of it is proof enough of its rectitude and of its obligation. Who can tell how mspirmgly it would come to the hovels of poverty ? The unfortunate who has lost his faith in the world's equity and in the care of Providence, would look up with a start at the word which announced to him his right to a home, accorded by the justice of society. He would feel no longer that he is a vagabond upon the face of the earth ; but that he is only a traveller with a home awaiting him. The bitterness of his rebellion against 334 FREEDOM OF THE PUBLIC LANDS. the laws of property would be taken away. Benevolences degrade while they relieve him, but the justice which offered him independence must compel his respect. Justice? In one respect anything less than this is a fraud. If the lands of the nation belong to the whole people, the extremely poor have no other way of getting their share. To put their price into the treasury for the support of government, relieves only those who have other property to be taxed. The destitute man has none, and his land is thus given to those who are enjoying their own share and other property besides. Fourteen hundred millions of acres ought not to be all taken away from the poor. The cheapness of land is all that makes the difference between the laborers of Europe and America now. The absolute freedom of our vast public domain from monopoly and speculation, and its consecration to the life and liberties of the poor, will protect us from the fearful curse of a degraded and hopeless caste, tQ consist of our own country- men, born to no inheritance but toil ; and of the immigrants from other countries, who have been torn from the bosom of their mother earth by the wealth which wrenches from them their blessing and birthright. Even for the sake of the rich, let there be no class of landless men — miserable multi- tudes, arrayed against the more fortunate class under the horrid battle-cry of " bread or blood." Capital has ample means and materials, without convert- ing the free deserts on our borders into a marketable com- modity and a field of ruthless speculation. Our National Independence and honor are secured ; — the personal liberty and dignity of the individual man, whose pauperism converts his share of the Republic's glory into mockery, must be pro- vided for and maintained. Freedom of the public lands to actual settlers in limited quantities and exemption from exe- WAGES ON THE RISE. 335 cution for debt, alone can put the masses into the actual enjoyment of that liberty which our institutions promise in words. This will provide for the wants of those who may avail themselves, and relieve the manufacturing districts of the pressure of competition for work, which must be removed, or — wages become the price of liberty, and labor sinks into bondage. 1848. WAGES ON THE RISE. The average wages of agricultural laborers in England, last year, were forty cents a day. The wages of journeyman carpenters now, in Waterford, Ireland, are eighty-three cents a day. In Central India the wages of field laborers are now six cents a day, he finding his own food ; women receive four and a half cents, and boys three cents. House servants are bet- ter paid, as they are obliged to wear rather better clothes. Thirty years ago a field hand cost his owner, in the Southern States, less than a dollar a week (interest on his price, and cost of keep) ; now, the cost is twice as much. In 1851, average wages at Lowell, Massachusetts, in the factories, for females, thirty-three cents a day ;. for males, eighty cents, clear of board ; or fifty-two cents a day for females, and one dollar twelve cents for males, without board. The wages in 1840 were precisely the same there. The wages of labor at Greenwich Hospital, England, for carpenters, bricklayers and masons doubled from A. D. 1135 to 1828, (from two shillings and sixpence to five shillings per day). 336 WAGES OX THE RISE. The wages of husbandry labor in England, in the year It 00, were equal to the then price of fifty-four pints of wheat ; in 1190, to eighty-two pints ; in 1832, to ninety pints. (Sixty- four pints make a bushel.) Prom "William Penn's cash book it appears that in 1699 it required 131 days of unskilled labor to earn a ton of flour — cash wages, thirty-three cents a day. In 1834, such a laborer at Philadelphia could earn a ton of flour in seventy- eight days — cash wages, seventy-fire cents per day. Flour was, at the former period, $45.34 ; at the latter, §58.32 per ton. Thus, in 132 years in England, the wages of unskilled labor had nearly doubled, when estimated in wheat. In cash they had quite doubled, and in nearly all other commodities required for the support and comfort of life, they had many times multiplied their nominal value. Even in the year 1813, a cottager's Sunday hat cost 20 shillings, now 1 shillings ; a shirt, 10s. 6d., now 3 shillings ; calico, 2s. 9d., now 6d.; brown sugar, 10d., now Ad. In 14 years, from 1820 to 1834, cotton cloth fell from 12fd to 6d. In these years the price of cloth diminished 51 per cent.; wages remaining in money- price the same. But what is more remarkable, the money- price of all the British and Irish products and manufactures exported from England had fallen in these fourteen years full forty per cent. The reduction continued steadily till, in 1850, §41.63 would purchase as much of all the articles which make up the multiform exports of Great Britain, as §94 would have purchased thirty years before. The money wages remaining the same, the real wages had more than doubled in thirty years in perhaps everything but wheat and house-rent. The wages of women in the United States, measured in the same way, have trebled since the year 1818 — the period of the general introduction of machinery into manufactories. THE UNITED STATES OF THE UNITED RACES. 337 The wages of husbandry in France have in like manner trebled in 130 years. While the process of doubling the real wages of labor was going on in England, the population rose from five to fourteen millions. The facts of political economy must have another and fairer hearing than the old school authorities could give them. Increase of population, and the unlimited multiplication of products by the use of machinery, do not depress wages, but on the contrary, the improvement of the condition of the laborer everywhere keeps even pace with all such increase. The laws which govern society are better than the disciples of the dismal science imagine. Life is not necessarily a bat- tle, nor is humanity a failure. We have, indeed, a great deal to learn, but we have as much to hope for, which will come in the fullness of time. The present good of this faith is, that we can thank God and take courage. THE UNITED STATES OP THE UNITED RACES. The Chinese are flocking into California ; the Hindoos are being transported to Jamaica, Cuba, and Guiana, with the current drifting thence, as well as directly from the East, into the Union, to be increased by the proceeding revolutions, whether successful or disastrous ; Hungary, Italy, and, ere long, Turkey, will be swelling the tide ; Western Europe is here already, principal and interest ; we have four millions of Africans and their descendants ; and Scandinavia is float- ing in, like the icebergs, to melt into the current upon our shores. Whether the varieties of the race began in one family or not, they are destined to meet in one family of people at last. 15 338 THE UNITED STATES OF THE UNITED RACES. Here mountains cannot divide, nor tongues distinguish peoples. When Pagan Rome subdued the world into one empire, she still held the nations at a provincial distance from herself, and from each other ; she tolerated their distinctive religions, and perpetuated their social diversity. The rela- tions established by force had but small tendency to induce those which bring unity and harmony. But Christ was born, He proclaimed the equal worth of every human soul. He was a son of David, but he described himself the son of Man — the second Adam. He died for all men, giving them the new commandment — "Love one another, as I have loved, you," and " He is not ashamed to call them brethren (to himself and of each other), for he that sanctifieth, and they who are sanctified, are all of one." Papal Rome carried the idea one stage forward towards the destined fulfilment ; gathering the tribes which accepted her faith into one spiritual fold, and, in a good degree, recon- ciling and uniting them in interest and policy. But it remained for Protestantism to shake off the shackles of civil and ecclesiastical despotism, which still hindered the brother- hood of the race ; and, for Republicanism to furnish the institutions, and find the theatre, for the actual realization of "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity" to all men. It is coming, and must come. America has every variety of climate and soil, with all the accommodations of political and religious institutions, and room enough, besides, for the wide world's widest range of wants, and the happiest condi- tions for the furtherance of its welfare. Our system of federal unity will be found as capable of allowing and ordering, retaining and restraining, Mormonism as Slavery, in its separate States ; and Catholicism and Pro- testantism will no more unsettle it than the gyrations of the earth and moon, in their scuffle for a compromise orbit, can THE UNITED STATES OF THE UNITED RACES. 339 shake the solar system out of place. The sun ;>an stand the perturbations with which the sovereign States in his empire agitate his throne. They tug him about eternally ; but with all his wriggling, his orbit, as he is pleased to call his constitutional stagger, never falls out of his own diameter, so that he is always about home ; and even his eclipses abate his power and dim his glory, so little, that you must look through a stained glass, to see and enjoy them, if you like to catch him in an occasional difficulty. There is no use in falling into hysterics about our doings and destiny. "We are wound up to go, and need nothing but a little regulating to keep us exact to the time. The pendulum swings on, regular, steady, and true ; and when we strike, the world knows the time of day near enough for the regulation of its affairs. Xice calculations mav show that we gain or lose a little upon the chronometer of the heavens, but it does not frighten us, for we are so well on with our work, that we have a handful of minutes to spare. We have a good start ; we are on the right track ; and, if we don't tunnel right through every obstacle in our direct pathway, we will, nevertheless, recover the route, with the loss of a little time and distance, and so reach our destination at last. It is bad citizenship to despair of the commonwealth. A man ought to love his country something better than a fellow who is always kicking his mother, to mend her manners. The dear old lady may "have so many children that she don't know what to do f and when they "growl and fight as bears ami lions do," she may be obliged sometimes to settle the hash without doing exact justice to all the little belligerents that she has to manage ; but the family is safe, and will learn to behave themselves as they grow older and wiser. Some of the children are so stubborn, some so sharp, others so bois- 340 THE UNITED STATES OF THE UNITED RACES. terous, and some of them so nearly silly, and all so selfish, that the household is always in disturbance. And, there are the servants ! "But everybody knows what a plague servants always are, and ours do seem to be the hardest to manage in the world. If there was only some way of doing without them altogether, it would be such a relief. Some people say there ought not to be any. They are infidels, of course ; for the Scripture says that there will always be poor people to be taken care of, and one oughtn't to wish what isn't allowed. But it does seem almost as if they were sent upon us for our sins." So runs the complaint, translated into the gossip dialect « — which is the fittest for such grumbling that we are acquainted with. And now there has arisen a new trouble : the Chinese are gathering in such numbers in California, that the question arises, What if they were to apply for naturalization ? They are not white, certainly, and just as certainly they are not black ; and, partus sequitur ventrem ! (which is Latin for cursing a nigger) these barbarians are free born, and cannot be legally reduced to chattel slavery; for they were not caught in Africa, nor smuggled into the State in handcuffs. And what is to be done about it, the Alta California and the St. Louis Intelligencer are in a pucker to guess. They are not white, it is agreed, and this these editors would fain believe sufficient; but that will not do. White in slave-law language does not mean color, but descent. A negro is a slave, though an albino, with alabaster skin, pink eyes, and silver white hair. Trace the whitest and handsomest woman in Charleston to the stock for two centuries devoted to the Ame- rican yoke, and she goes to the auction block, and the dark- est-colored man in the nation may buy her and be her owner. THE UNITED STATES OF THE UNITED RACES. 341 It is not color, but kindred, that settles the question. Cursed be Canaan, or Cush, or Quashee, or whoever has wool so curly that it first grows out of his head, and then grows in again ; but any human being whose ancestors had hair long enough to wear tails to their heads, are out of the scrape. It won't do, gentlemen, to take the people who manufacture your silks, porcelain, fans, crapes, and carved ivory, and exchange their tea for your dollars, and reduce them to slavery. Isor will you attempt it. They actually have treaties with our Government, and our Executive sends no less a dignitary than R. J. Walker a minister to the head of their nation ; and you are without principle, prescription, precedent, or prophecy, for your purpose. What then will you do with them? If they have the arts, industry and frugality, that are available in the civil- ized scramble for wealth, and you let them into the country, the municipal laws which are equal in their operation upon all the inhabitants, will secure their prosperity, and you will not be able to deprive them either of personal liberty, or civil rights and political power. You may exterminate the Indians, and hold the Africans in chattel slavery, but you cannot put civilization, well advanced in the industrial arts, under the ban of barbarism or of color. Their idolatry was an objection yesterday, but to-day there are a million of them professing our own religion, and to-morrow Christianity may be on the throne of the Celestial Empire. When they come to us baptized, with the ten commandments in their hands, and the faith of the Redeemer in their hearts, your religious reason for degrading and enslaving them will be nonplussed, and your piety itself will be their pleader. In short, the doctrine of despotism, ecclesiastical and poli- tical, which has served you so well and so long in the extreme cases to which it has been applied, is going to be gradually 342 THE UNITED STATES OF THE UNITED RACES. dissolved in the intermediate shades of coloring to which it will be exposed, so that you will not be able to tell black from white, for any purpose that you now make the distinc- tion. Reason, religion and republicanism, have all failed with you ; but now Providence is about to take you in hand, and you are as good as done for. If Fum Hoam can learn Christianity as well as silk-weav- ing and card-painting, he can substitute phonography for his alphabet of forty thousand characters ; and, after call- ing you brother for a generation or so, in good Yankee, he will marry your cousin, and then, how will you keep him out of Congress? The "home of the exile and the asylum of -the oppressed" will surely vindicate its pretensions, and justify its boast, by vindicating the liberty, equality and fraternity of man, in despite of your resistance. When the United Colonies revolted, they did not think of limiting the controversy to the Anglo-Saxon race, but they appealed to God and the world for the right of all men to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. God and the world took them at their word, and will hold us to the con- tract ; and here, in these United States, every kindred and tongue and people under heaven will, ere long, sit down and enjoy the blessings which you think our fathers should have reserved as well as "secured for ourselves and for our posterity." And so, you will please to consider this matter settled by the fiat of Fate, and comport yourselves accordingly. 1863. ENGLAND AND THE TURKISH QUESTION. 343 EXGLAXD AXD THE TURKISH QUESTION. In 1116, Adarn Smith said the whole object of the Eng- lish system was " to raise up colonies of customers — a pro- ject/ 7 he added, " fit only for a nation of shopkeepers." In- deed, he thought it " unfit even for a nation of shopkeepers, although extremely fit for a nation whose Government was influenced by shopkeepers." That was her portrait in pro- file, three-quarters of a century ago. To give a full-face view of the nation, justice required that the beer and beef should be laid in, that the bully side of her character might fairly appear ; but since that day, traffic has taken the tone out of her temper, and she has little left but the tricky pliabilities of a confirmed huckster. A little while ago she had pluck enough to mingle the " balance of power" some- what bravely with the "balance of interest" in her foreign policy, but now she has so interwoven her own existence into the web of universal commerce, that she dare not for her life offend a customer. Her policy has long been to make herself the workshop of the world, the sole buyer of all the raw products of the nations, and sole seller of the manufactured commodities to be exchanged for them, with the power to fix the prices of both. By her treaty of Methuen with Portugal, in 1103, she obtained the control of the market of that country for the sale of her manufactures, agreeing to give, in compensation, the Portuguese wines a great advantage over those of Prance. The result is that the manufactures of Portugal have sunk to nothing, and her commerce, once the medium for interchanging the products of the East and West, has become a mere shadow. Her wool and salt go to Eng- land, her wines are monopolized there, and she has at last become a burden to her destroyer. 344 ENGLAND AND THE TURKISH QUESTION. Turkey, also, has a treaty with her, now more than a century old ; by the terms of which, that Governmet bound itself to charge no more than three per cent, duty on Brit- ish imports. Her industry has long been paralyzed. ■ Up till the close of the last century Turkey still exported cot- ton yarn in considerable quantity. Now, even its culture is abandoned ; and her internal trade is in the hands of foreign peddlers. Mr. Cobden has recently said that these ancient allies of Great Britain have become a curse to her, and are no lon- ger worth preserving. The fate of these two colonized cus- tomers of John Bull is well illustrated by the story of an Irish tenant of an English absentee landlord. The poor fellow had been for a series of years paying his rent out of his little capital, until it was well nigh exhausted ; but as he had no better choice, and was still able to meet the rent, he asked a new lease. He was answered: "You are no longer entirely safe at quarter-day, you have been growing poorer year after year, and I must have a sounder man." India is another instance of the effects of the British sys- tem of centralizing the trade of the world in her own hands. Bengal was once celebrated for the finest muslins ; the Coast of Coromandel for chintzes and calicoes ; and "Western India for the manufacture of strong inferior goods of every kind. Nearly a century since, the battle of Plassey estab- lished the British power over that wealthy, prosperous and happy country. To suppress the native rivalry of manu- factures, every loom, anvil, barber's hone, cotton-beater's bow, carpenter's tool, oil mill, potter's kiln, iron manufac- tory, fishing beat, fishing net, was taxed to the utmost value of its productive power, and the result is told in the language of Bishop Heber — "an impenetrable jungle now surrounds the once great manufacturing city of Dacca." ENGLAND AND THE TURKISH QUESTION. 345 Mr. George Thompson, not long since in the House of Commons, reminded the Government that at the close of the last century cotton abounded, and to so great an extent was the labor of men, women and children applied to its conver- sion into cloth, that, even with their imperfect machinery, they not only supplied the home demand for the beautiful tissues of Dacca, and the coarser products of Western India, but they exported to other parts of the world no less than 200,000,000 of pieces per annum. After the improvements in manufactures were fairly introduced into England, the export of machinery and artisans to India being rigorously prohibited, and free trade in foreign commodities established, so as to expose the native manufacturers to unlimited competition, the export of cotton from Bengal, in lo^T sunk to £285,121; and in 1847, a whole year passed without the export of a single piece of cotton from Calcutta. Since 1813, the export of cottons from India constantly declined, until it has at length ceased altogether ; and the export of raw cot- ton has, at a corresponding pace, risen until it has attained the height of sixty millions of pounds. England sends back about twenty-five millions pounds of twist, and of cloth two hundred and sixty millions of yards. Thus every pound of raw cotton sent to England is returned manufactured, after having travelled twenty thousand miles in search of the spin- dle, and left nearly its whole value in the hands of brokers, transporters, manufacturers, and operatives, thus interposed between the producer and consumer. Mr. George Thompson, in one of his lectures upon India, sums up the results of the British rule there in terms so striking that we cannot forbear a few extracts : " Some of the finest tracts of land have been forsaken, and given up to the untamed beasts of the jungle. The motives to indus- try have been destroyed. The soil seems to lie under a 15* 846 ENGLAND AND THE TURKISH QUESTION. curse. Instead of yielding abundance for the wants of its own population, and the inhabitants of other regions, it does not keep in existence its own children. It becomes the burying place of millions crying for bread. This, in British India, in the reign of Victoria the First !" The same system extended to Ireland, has reduced her population to exclusive agriculture, that they might be the purchasers of English manufactures. Ireland was prohibited from exporting woollens and glass to the colonies. In 1800, Dublin employed 4,918 hands in woollen manufactures ; in 1840, 602 ! At Cork, in 1800, there were thousands of cotton spinners, bleachers, and calico-printers ; in 1834, there were none. This is a fair sample of the condition to which the whole island has been reduced by British rule. The loss of 1,659,000 of her population, between the years 1840 and 1850, by famine, pestilence and emigration, expresses the facts, and indicates the tendencies, with the solemnity of a tombstone. The London Times utters the inference of Tory logic from the data afforded by English policy, with the terseness of tragic poetry. Speaking of Ireland, that paper says : For a whole generation man has been a drug, and population a nuisance. Ireland has been England's customer, till the expulsion of her people is the only remedy left for the bur- den which their redemptionless poverty inflicts upon those who have exhausted them. The British West Indies, kept carefully by taxation and prohibition from manufacturing any of her own products, were driven, first to insolvency, and then compensated for the sudden annihilation of their slave property, by an appro- priation of twenty millions, which just covered their indebt- edness to British bankers, brokers and jobbers ! And so, in one grand round of ruinous repetitions, Turkey, ENGLAND AND THE TURKISH QUESTION. 317 Portugal, Ireland, India, the West Indies, have been sacri- ficed to her rapacity, and she all the less able to spare a cripple that she has made, or a fresh victim that she is watching for. The policy that in a century has reduced India from wealth to ruin, driven its population from prosperous indus- try of every kind into the cultivation of opium for the destruction of China, and the Hindoos themselves to the swamps of Jamaica and Guiana — that has impoverished Turkey and Portugal, and more than decimated Ireland — is distinctly propounded in Joshua Gee's work " on trade," published in 1750. He says : "Manufactures in American colonies should be discouraged, prohibited. We ought always to keep a watchful eye over our colonies, to restrain them from setting up any of the manufactures which are carried on in Great Britain. Our colonies are much in the same state as Ireland was when they began the woollen manufactory, and, as their numbers increase, will fall upon manufactures for clothing themselves, if due care be not taken to find employment for them in raising such produc- tions as may enable them to furnish themselves with all the necessaries from us." The reasons given are summed up thus : " If we examine into the circumstances of the inhabitants of their plantations and our own, it will appear that not one-fourth part of their products redound to their own profit ; for, out of all that comes here, they only carry back clothing and other accommodations for their families, all of which is of the merchandise and manufacture of this kingdom." Lord Grey, in 1850, phrases the policy differently, but presses it to the same object and effect. The system of a century, growing ever stronger and stronger, is, indeed, fully expressed in the " Centralization 348 ENGLAND AND THE TURKISH QUESTION. of Commerce in England/ 9 making her " the workshop of the world/' making of themselves " a nation of shopkeepers," and substantially " colonizing every country she trades with." Let us see, now, how this system affects her in her proper function of maintaining the balance of power in Europe, and vindicating the public law of nations. The London Times of a late date has drawn out the argu- ment, in an article upon English intervention in the quarrel pending between Russia and Turkey. Let the reader look at the involvement which this article confesses, and apply to it the criticism which our suggestions afford for the true comprehension of its meaning and drift : "Byway of set-off against the novelty, the excitement, the enter- prise, the popularity, and the possible glory of a war with Russia, let us just set down and count the cost. We could shut up the naval power of Russia in the Black Sea and the Baltic by costly fleets at both stations ; steam always up, wind and water always having their way. We could easily enable Turkey to make a desperate fight, by enormous subsidies. We could protect our commerce from Yankee privateers, and other free-and-easy gentlemen who could take out letters of marque from Russia, by a recurrence to the old system of merchantmen sailing, like wild geese, in flights, with a frigate or two leading the way. We could suspend the whole foreign commerce of Russia, by a process which would double the price of our corn, hemp, and tallow. We could engage half the continent on our side of the quarrel, by surrendering every other question of honor, duty, or interest, we happen to have with each separate State. We could pro- long the war indefinitely, by another national debt. We could stop it at our pleasure, by allowing Russia to take all she wants, with a little over for demurrage. With proportionate bribes we could secure the concurrence of other nations. " On the other hand, all the nations of Europe would be bankrupt, their principal creditors being in this metropolis. Their manufac- tures and commerce would be ruined, to the injury of those who con- sume what they make, and make for them in return. We are all so ENGLAND AND THE TURKISH QUESTION. 349 bound together that it is hard to say whether, in material conse- quences, we should suffer more by victory or by defeat. It is our unhappiness to have the largest stake in peace of all nations on the face of the earth, and, so long as we stick to that game, we are sure to win. The most orthodox war ever fought is only an Irishman's row — a game of cracked skulls and bloody noses — very amusing to those whose clothing is of little value, and whose natural integument is rather hard ; but far from amusing to a gentleman who has paid five guineas for his coat, and whose face is susceptible of contusions. There is not a point in which that immense glass house which we call the British Empire is not liable to damage. ' A man that hath children,' says Bacon, ' hath given pledges to fortune.' We have chil- dren — we have colonies, we have dependencies, we have ships, we have investments, loans, railways, private debts — all over the world. By dint of hard peace-making, we manage to keep our creditors in tolerable order. They pay, as an omnibus-horse does its work, by the momentum of their misery — by being kept in harness, well up, and continually flogged. Once give them the opportunity of war, and that general dissolution of morals that is sure to ensue, and every quarter-day will add to your defaulters. All this, of course, is very extraneous to the real merits of the present question. Those merits we do not here discuss. But you have known people who in private life went to law, or rather resisted actions, when the right was most clearly on their side, and when the verdict was given accord- ingly, but who, nevertheless, lost thereby, both in purse and in fame, having to suffer much annoyance to pay large costs, and to incur, also, the reputation of being litigious and troublesome fellows. That which happens in the regular and genial atmosphere of English society, and under the pure and impeccable administration of Eng- lish justice, may easily happen in the society, and forum, and arena of nations, viz : that the prosecution of the justest quarrel may entail a martyr's obloquy and cross. 11 Does this mean anything but that Great Britain is bound to keep the peace of the world, against its interests and her own honor, and to submit for herself to any injury and indignity that her universal trade and monopoly of manu- factures may in any emergency require ; and aid and abet, besides, any outrage upon the oppressed nations of the Con- 350 CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. tinent, whose defence might involve a general war ? Call upon her now, for any influences agency that justice and duty demand; and her honest answer is, that she cannot afford it. How have the mighty fallen ! This it is, to be a nation of shopkeepers ; this, to have converted herself into the work- shop of the world. England is rapidly running down to rank among the meanest of the nations. She is a bully, indeed ; but then she is also a huckster, and her duties are measured by the yard-stick ; and all her fine qualities and all her traditional honors go for nothing, whenever her trade is endangered ! Russia can browbeat her ; South Carolina can bluff her off; for, behold, she has adopted peace principles as a fundamen- tal morality in the policy of trade. Perhaps she may discover that it is best, upon the whole, to get France em- broiled on the continent ; perhaps France may precipitate her into the struggle ; but an embargo or a blockade is her terror, next to extermination. 1S53. CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. A friend has handed us an editorial article cut from the North American, which was published some months ago, when the bill for the abolition of the death penalty was before the legislature. It takes the ground that the " object of punishment is self defence ;" "it is the protection of soci- ety by inspiring a fear that may deter from the commission of crime. ' Society must deter from crime by the terror of punishment.' ' The question is, what penalty will, without CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. 351 unnecessary torture, inspire the greatest horror ? It is death for death.' ' As most powerful to deter, it is necessary to the safety of society.' Murders are multiplying with frightful rapidity : is such the proper time to relax its penalties ? ;? Yes, murders are multiplying with frightful rapidity. A week or two since there were eight persons in our County Jail charged with homicide. This is indeed a frightful increase. In fifty years, the criminal calendar of this county exhibited but one hundred and ten cases; only ten of these were convicted of murder in the first degree, and no more than five of them were executed. And of these five, it is worth remarking, that Lieut. Smith, who killed Captain Carson, was perhaps the only gentleman — the only man that anybody cared to save from the gallows. Xow, the death penalty has not been abrogated. It is in full force ; nothing of its proper power to protect society by legislative interference has been abated ; and nothing, for which the opponents of the gallows 'are responsible, dimi- nishes its influence to defend the lives of the people. It has the freest, fullest sweep that, in its own nature, it is capable of ; and therefore, has had among ourselves the fairest trial of its supposed efficacy. Its friends have the unembarrassed use of all its power, to " deter from the commission of crime." Every man who is opposed to inflicting death by law for murder, is, by the rules and practice of our courts, excluded from the juries which pass upon the guilt of the offenders. Every man is put to the question, by the attorney-general, concerning his senti- ments upon this subject, before he is permitted to enter the jury box. We have seen more than twenty persons rejected in this city in one murder case, on this account. The ten- derness or conscientiousness of the abolitionists is never in any case permitted to affect the result. They are not 352 CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. chargeable with the escape of a single criminal, who by the law incurs its utmost penalty. No man either on the bench or in the jury box, except those who have no scruples or objections to hanging, ever sits in judgment upon the life of a murderer. Where then is the fault that murders multiply ? Wherever it lies, the gallows does not deter as its advocates assume. There is the North American's mistake. It is not a foolish philanthropy of ours that leaves life defenceless. If there be any better way within the reach of the community, it is the mistaken cruelty of the gallows party which must bear the blame. The editors simply assume the position that, "death for death is the most powerful to deter," and quote poetry to prove that "the weariest and most loathed worldly life is paradise to what we fear in death." They make no appeal to the world's experience of the scaffold's protective power, and they offer no philosophy for the opinion. We cannot now, within the space allowed us, confront them with the facts which might determine the point most conclusively. They can find them, if they wish the informa- tion, in unanswerable 'array, in Livingston's Criminal Code, page 213, et seq., and elsewhere in works of acknowledged authority. They must know that many a foolish notion has passed current in the world, for a long time, though right reason and every day's experience contradicted them. This imagined dread of violent death may be one of them. Death on the battle-field is, in general, a pretty fair probability, yet men enlist without the impulse of the highest motives. Street rows and suicides, brawls and duels, afford no evidence of this terror ; and reckless wretchedness and furious passions are notoriously blind to the risks they run. Nay, thousands of violent men distinctly contemplate the fatal issue, and CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. 353 adventure it deliberately. The fear of death is not the strongest instinct of disordered or distressed humanity. We agree with the advocates of capital punishment that, society has the right to defend itself — that, it is its duty to protect its members against the murderer, and that, it may take life if that is the remedy. But we deny this — -just this. Give us something more conclusive than poetry or ill consi- dered opinion upon this point. We deny that either the facts of experience or the truth of philosophy, support the position which the North American assumes, unquestioned and unproved. If they can settle this point for us, we may inform them what we mean by our duty to the criminal himself. In the meantime, we have the right to tell them that scoffing at our kindness to the criminal is unbecoming Christian men, and that charging it to improbable and impossible motives, is not creditable to their understanding. Do they really think that any reformer of the criminal code prefers the com- forts and happiness of the murderer in prison, to the life of his victim, and the security of society ? If they do not, it is extremely improper to employ the language which they use in this part of their remarks ; but if they do believe that the reformation of the offender, and such kindness as may consist with that object, means indifference to his crime, or to the safety of the community, they have something to learn that will make them better and happier when they know it. Their allusions to the New York prison festivals ought to be reconsidered. If they had witnessed one of them, and fairly understood it, they would never again speak of Mrs. Farnham's sentiments and policy with disapprobation. It is very sad to perceive how inconsiderate men become under the influence of prejudice and partial knowledge. " What O04 CAPITAL PUNISHMENT, becomes of punishment," they ask, "amid all this kindness, this luxury of smooth- beds and luxurious boards ?" "Will the Editors tell us, if hell itself reforms no sinner, how human hatred and harshness will achieve it ? Or do they hold that our penitentiaries are properly the shadows of bad things to come, and that hope and mercy are out of place for those whom human laws condemn ? We know one story that would make them believe it bet- ter that ninety-nine offenders should escape than that one just person should be destroyed. We know another, of a Sing Sing prisoner that would reconcile them to any prudent effort to reclaim a vicious woman : A profligate from the Five Points, who had never known anything of the law but its severities, or of society, but its injustice, was committed for a long term on the charge of larceny. When she reached the State prison, supposing that its superintendent must be an ogress, when constables and judges were so unfeeling, she resolved upon resistance to the death. For weeks Mrs. Farnham met with nothing but blasphemy, curses, foul obscenity, and threatened violence, in answer to the kindest management. Her conduct was horrible past description. Here was a case that scorned benevolence and invited force. The philosophy of tender- ness seemed at fault, at first, but Mrs. Farnham knew human nature better — she wrote to Xew York, learned the woman's history, learned that her infant had been taken from her, and that she had been convicted upon very uncer- tain testimony. She was indeed a profligate, but had some wrongs also to revenge upon the world that crushed her. Mrs. Farnham, with a mother's instinct, gave this girl her own child to nurse — it calmed her fury, convinced her reason, and softened her heart. In a moment the ruffian wretch shed tears, and submitted to the law of kindness. CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. 355 We saw her one year afterwards ; her cell door was never locked upon her. She read " the pleasant pages of London and Paris literature in her luxurious hours of leisure," the Bible, Episcopalian prayer-book, Walter Scott, Miss Mar- tineau, Mrs. B.'s Conversations on Philosophy, and the North American, perhaps, occasionally. On the 4th of July, a gentleman of New York sent bouquets of flowers to each of the seventy women in prison, and one costly and specially beautiful one, to be presented by the matron to the most deserving. She referred the decision to the free vote of the women themselves ; with one dissenting voice only they awarded it to that wretched girl, in testimony of their regard. Mrs. Farnham approved their choice. And the Editors of the North American would have felt the " luxury of philanthropy " and understood its policy, too, if they had been there to see. It is only fair justice, however, to state that some of the criminals themselves disapproved the system. One old lady ■ of sixty, thought " there ought to be more preaching and less lightness of behavior among them young flirts." She knew human nature, and hated everybody accordingly, but she liked whisky and petty larcenies. The happiness of those around her was rudely discordant to her staid principles. The Editors are entitled to another authority in confirma- tion of their opinion. A good old lady saw Mrs. Farnham on a steamboat, and when she learned her name, broke out with " That's the woman that lets them nasty abominable girls in the penitentiary jump the rope and dance in the yard, and sing so that they can be heard clear outside of the wall ! It's too bad ; if the jades must sing, why don't she make -them sing in to themselves !" Xo danger that " the wisdom of centuries will be over- turned " universally. There are some specimens of human 356 THE FOURTH STREET MURDER: clay too hard baked to allow M horror of crime " to be oblite- rated by the tears of a " sickly sentiment ;" no danger that the M reform of the criminal " will ever be their "main object. 7 ' But there is no telling what may happen when these bally- rocks of conservatism are all dead. 1843. THE FOURTH STREET MURDER— CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. We need not give the particulars. They are published in detail in the dailies, and known to all who take any kind of interest in them. The murderer is in prison. His examina- tion shows that he is a brutal creature, capable of almost any crime. He shows but little sensibility of his own danger, and no compunction for his shocking crime. It is said that he is one of the wretches which foreign governments are in the practice of transporting to our shores from their jails and poor- houses, to serve out their time here as paupers or criminals, just as they are disposed and qualified. The lex talionis party have possession of the case, and he must either be hanged or lynched ; and even then the senti- ment which demands vengeance will not be half satisfied. It is in fact true that a dozen such lives as his could not expiate his crime, or settle his account with public justice. But what more than killing him can be done, or might be desired, we cannot say. A lady (one of a thousand perhaps) insisted to us that the punishment of death is not nearly severe enough for the case ; we quietly suggested that the unsatisfied bal- ance of her indignation might be transferred to his account in the next world, and the Judge of the dead requested to CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. 35? wreak its full measure upon him there, after the utmost pen- alty of the law is inflicted upon him here. She seemed startled at the thought, and changed the argument from revenge to that of the public defence ; but in this aspect the case in hand is particularly unmanageable. The apprehension of the death penalty did not prevent this murder ; this, the most monstrous of its kind, the strongest instance in its class, is the very case for which the gallows is no prevention. Langfeldt had neither friends nor wealth, nor was there any reasonable prospect of concealment or escape. Xo conceivable case could more fairly test the pro- tective quality of the death punishment. The crime and the penalty stood together, as close linked as cause and effect, and clear enough for the bluntest intellect that leaves a man responsible for his deeds. And just in this case it proved utterly worthless. Langfeldt is familiar with public executions ; he knows nothing of government but its severities. He was born to infamy, educated in crime, his whole life has been a warfare with the law, and the gallows has ever been the clearest probability in his fate. He, a foreigner, a convict, friendless and odious, could promise himself no advantage of that ten- derness of life which is blamed with favoring these atrocities. On the wide earth there was no eye to pity, and no arm to rescue him from the death he deserved and dared. Yet the frowning gibbet, with all its terrors full in his view, afforded no protection, not the least, to his hapless victims. It never did, it never will deter a Langfeldt from shedding blood. The gallows is a miserable reliance against the brutal wan- tonness of all such criminals as this man. Upon what proportion of lawless men it operates advan- tageously we cannot say. But that it is small we feel assured. The cunning and cautious criminal expect3 to 358 THE FOURTH STREET MURDER! evade it; and the man of furious passion gives it no thought or heed till the deed is done. The few upon whom it acts as a restraining dread, have but little of the character that makes men dangerous, and are as likely to be deterred by the apprehension of life-long imprisonment. The cold-blooded murderer is as unfit to live as he is to die. Say he deserves death here, and if you please, eternal pain hereafter ; does it follow that it is right and best for us to inflict the one in vengeance, any more than to pray and labor to involve him in the other ? May we hurry him off in unrepented guilt, and so secure his final ruin ? Hatred cannot go so far as this without becoming more horrible than the crime it seeks to punish. Or should we give him a little time for repentance, and then, when justice is appeased and guilt atoned for and removed, despatch him? In plain words, shall we hang him either into hell or into heaven ! ! The first seems too bitter even for an enemy, and the latter is not kind enough for a brother, redeemed and sanctified. Human tribunals never can measure the absolute guilt of crimes; they are not qualified, and they have no right to inquire into this quality of wrong-doing. Self-defence belongs to every individual in society ; self-defence belongs to the aggregate of individuals in a community : revenge belongs to neither, it is a sin in both, and as much a wrong to the subjects of public as of private hatred. The Heart-searcher and Rein-tryer alone is competent to ascertain and discipline the guilt of sin. Men and communities may and ought to protect them- selves against injuries. If this requires life, let them take it ; if it does not, the deed is as much a murder as if the victim were as innocent as an infant. Confinement for life is as complete security against the convicted criminal as the scaffold ; and executive clemency is even less likely to be CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. 359 interposed in favor of liberty than of life. And, that it will deter others as effectually as the risk of a speedy execution, is at least probable enough to authorize the experiment. We do not rest our opposition to the death punishment upon the ground of the inviolability of life, but because there is no sufficient reason for it in civilized societies, fully furnished, as they are, with all the means of self-protection and defence, and under heavy obligations, besides, to the criminal whose provocations and temptations to commit offences are, in most cases, chargeable upon the political and social systems which claim the right to punish them. Until society has done its duty to the poor, the ignorant and the profligate, it cannot justly demand the last drop of blood from the wretches who violate its laws. When the fortunate and unfortunate, the respectable and the abandoned, meet where the force of circumstances are justly estimated, and the standard of judgment is absolutely perfect, we will know why God requires mercy rather than sacrifice, and why is it fitter for us to forgive than to revenge our wrongs. We plead for the life of the criminal because we doubt both the propriety and policy of destroying it, and especially, because we believe that additional security would be given to the community, by the sentiment that, no cause whatever can justify the shedding of human blood for crimes commit- ted against either communities or individuals. 1848. RELIGIOUS. RELIGIOUS. THE SABBATH. The word Sabbath, in the Hebrew language, signifies rest, or cessation, and is, strictly, the name of the institution. Sunday is the name of the day adopted, by the majority of Christians, for its observance. The ancient Greeks and Romans had no division of time properly answering to our weeks. The former divided the month into three decades of days ; the latter had their nundince, or market days, occurring every ninth day; but neither of these had either the refer- ences or uses of the week and the Sabbath. But the Egyp- tians and the oriental nations, in the still more ancient times, had a week of seven days. It is believed that the Romans adopted the hebdomadal division about the beginning of the third century after Christ. They named the days after the planets or heathen gods. It is worthy of notice also that our names for the days had a similar origin, as will be seen by traciug their Saxon derivation. Pritchard quotes Bosman for the fact that the Karabari, and several other tribes of Western Africa, have been long acquainted with the division of time into weeks, and each day of the seven has its proper name in their language. Their Sabbath falls on our Tuesday, except at Ante, bordering upon the Mohammedans, where it agrees with theirs in being fixed upon Friday. Among these barbarians, fishing only is prohibited upon their Sab- 16 362 THE SABBATH. bath ; in respect to other occupations they make no differ- ence. The division of time into periods of seven days among nations, not governed by our sacred books, or not indebted to Moses for the sabbatical institution, may be accounted for, perhaps, by the fact that it is a natural quartering of the lunar or apparent month, and the nearest that can be effected without breaking a solar day into fractions for the purpose. That is, if the lunar month is divided in half, and again into halves of that half, measured by whole days, which would be natural enough among barbarous people, seven days are the result, and so the week would occur in their computations of time. There is another natural measurement of time by weeks, which we will take the opportunity briefly to exhibit, without designing now to offer all the instances which we - think support it, or to exhaust the argument on which it rests. The proposition which we submit is, that the weekly period and the rest-day are well founded in the natural constitution of man, and might even be inferred from it; or, more specific- ally to present the point now in hand, there is a physiological reason for such a period and such an institution — a hebdoma- dal circle in the movements of the human organization — a cycle of actions which complete their round in seven days, and this circuit of movements is specially adapted to our week and rest-day. Hippocrates, who lived six hundred years before Christ, and in a country which had not the weekly apportionment of time to suggest his idea, taught that fevers changed for the better or worse on the seventh, fourteenth and twenty- first days. The highest authorities in medicine, for ages, recerred and endorsed this opinion. In modern times, by THE SABBATH. 363 the interpolations of an humble race of physicians, the critical days of fever were made to embrace other minor periods of marked changes, until the whole twenty-one were filled up, and the doctrine fell into disrepute — a misfortune that scienti- fic truths often suffer by the improvements of decidedly unin- spired men. There is, beside the septenary period with which the true critical days- correspond, a clear diurnal movement in the system, very well marked in health, and often exhibiting its effects in disease; as an ephemeral fever, the quotidian, ter- tian, and quartian ague — the first exhausting itself in one day; the latter recurring at intervals of one, two, and three days. Changes in the progress of fevers at these properly diurnal periods have been confounded with the septenary movement, and, of course, obscured its manifestation. More- over, the vigorous remedial treatment of modern times, doubtless, interrupts the more natural progress of febrile phenomena, and further contributes to conceal and confuse the facts upon which the old doctrine of crisis rests. Nevertheless, it is well supported by our most distinguished authorities. Hosack and Dickson of New York, and Eberle and Wood of Philadelphia, are clear in their adhesion to it ; and one of the sects of modern medicine makes that obvious periodicity, of which this is one of the instances, the basis of its distinctive theory and practice. Among the great names of foreign countries, whose observations have confirmed the doctrine as it was taught by Hippocrates, we may mention Cleghorn, who practised on the shores of the Mediterranean; Balfour, in the East Indies; and Jackson, in the "West Indies. A striking fact, at once clear and unembarrassed, deserves especial regard, to wit: the tendency of miasmatic fevers to return after being checked, at the end of the first, second, 364 THE SABBATH. and third week— most frequently at tie end of the second. Professor Wood, of the University of Pennsylvania, who has no theory to support by the observation, says "this tendency is quite inexplicable in the present state of our knowledge." Practitioners, we know, who reside in the middle counties of Pennsylvania, continue the use of quinine and bark till the eighth day after the last paroxysm, or resume it the day before the seventh, to meet the known liability to relapse at the septenary period. Doctor Samuel Dickson, formerly of Charleston, and recently of the New York University, says : "The septenary period is almost as well marked as the diur- nal." Again: "The combined influence of the diurnal and septenary revolutions, liable, perhaps, to other complications more obscure in their nature, will account for all the types of fever, and all the phenomena of periodical repetitions of diseases, as well as of crises, or the agency of critical days." Speaking of the latent period of fever, or the time intervening between exposure to marsh effluvia and the development of the disease, he says : "This period is known to be under the influence of the ordinary revolutions which give periodicity to disease in general. The apparent influence upon it of the septenary revolution, is familiarly noticed in our climate (South Carolina), where the opportunities for observation are unfortunately distinct and frequent. Our 'Country Fever' is expected to invade on or about the 1th or 14th day, and if the 21st passes without an attack, most persons consider themselves entirely safe." The small pox and vaccine disease, and several others which run their course unaffected by treatment, in a very marked manner, show this seven-day movement of the system ; and there are, besides, a host of observations which help to esta- blish it as a law of the human constitution. In the healthy state, the reproductive functions are singularly well marked, THE SABBATH. 365 not by periods of single weeks, but by exactly integral mul- tiples of them. Attention to this point will abundantly sus- tain this assertion. Diseased manifestations are the better indexes, because they exaggerate the natural movements in the human system, and the more distinctly proclaim them ; but the facts of health are also very conclusive. Let us look a little more closely at the general law of periodicity as it rules the human organism, for the help and direction that its specialities afford to our inquiry: Alternate action and repose, in the actions of animal life, is a general law. The diurnal revolution is well understood. The complete rest of all the functions of relative life, and the comparative abatement of activity in the vital organs, once in twenty-four hours, is a plain necessity of our existence. This law obtains even in vegetable life. And it is a perti- nent remark that, wherever the instincts of animals and plants absolutely rule the actions of the being, the law isnpunctually obeyed. The simple day and night revolution of animal and vegetable life suffices for their constitutions. The external senses, the muscles of locomotion, and the nerves, which co- operate in their activities, are often held to their objects and exerted in their offices for hours together, without the least intermission, for they are under the direction of the will; but they obtain a complete release during sleep, and all the res- toration which they ^ require. The animal portion of man, and the entire nature of birds and beasts, living according to nature's free impulses, are sure of their daily repose, and guarded, besides, by the feeling of fatigue, which restrains abuse, need no Sabbath for periodical recuperation. But the organs of thought and feeling are not so well protected. They are usually more severely tasked, their weariness is less distinctly felt and understood, and their pleasures and excite- ments are more impulsive. The faculties employed in the 366 THE SABBATH. business atocations of life, embracing literary as well as com- mercial and industrial pursuits, and the passions involved in their activities, are in all active temperaments burdened every day, quite beyond the moderation consistent with health. The merely animal functions of the frame take bet- ter care of themselves than these higher and freer faculties of our nature usually do. Moreover, the excesses and dis- eases of those organs which are the material instruments of mind, -do not generally originate in themselves, but in the irregular excitation which they suffer from the mental and passional powers. It is these master-wheels in the machinery of phrenic life that drive the subordinate activities of the frame into abuse. It is, therefore, for these controlling for- ces of the mind that regulating and restraining checks are specially required. Day after day their tyranny tasks the inferior powers to exhaustion, which otherwise would take care of themselves, as they do in the animal kingdom; nor do they always rest even in the sleep of their wearied instru- ments ; dreams prolong their vigils, and they lie waiting and watching the first waking motions of the day-laborers in their service, to drive them yawning to their endless work. It is the engagements which we call the business of our lives which transcend their proper limits, and break the natural balance of healthy moderation. It is these, there- fore, that need a regularly recurring rest-day. It is too much that every waking hour shall be given to our common work — that every day of our lives shall be crowded with our ordinary anxieties of thought and feeling. All this should be wholly intermitted at regular returns, adapted to our constitution, and calculated to obviate the evils of artificial life. The fourth commandment, it seems to us, answers exactly to this necessity: " Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work. * * On the seventh day thou shalt do no THE SABBATH. 36? manner of work." It does not, in terms, enjoin public wor- ship; perhaps it does not imply it as a universal requisition; and our municipal laws are all the more just and right that in this they very exactly correspond. They forbid ordinary labor, but they do not compel worship or any religious observances. The necessity for a rest-day is so universally admitted that it need not be pressed. It is required only that it should be more accurately understood, and it is to this point that our remarks are specially addressed. Our thought is, that only those faculties which are usually overstrained, and the instruments which they employ in their service, need the rest of the weekly Sabbath. Those parts of the body which, under the compulsion of business, get insufficient exercise through the week, even require such opportunity as the rest- day may consistently be made to afford them. " The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath." The seven-day periodic movement in the human system, conspicuously shown in disease, and not less certain, though less obvious in health, indicates one day in seven as the appropriate portion of time to be set apart for the renewal of the animal vigor wasted by the ordinary labors of our life. The intellectual powers, when they have done their six days' common work, require this relief. The full freedom and force of heart and mind cannot be preserved unless the dominant interests of ordinary pursuits are resolutely thrust aside at frequent intervals, and the powers, absorbed by them, are relieved by periodic checks. The higher and nobler faculties need the day also for dis- cipline and development; and all these necessary and benefi- cent objects are attained, in the happiest harmony with the natural laws, by the proper and well-adapted observance of 368 THE SABBATH. the day which Christianity has established among us. It should therefore be accepted. It is not necessary to the claims of a revealed or superna- tural institution that it should be a novelty in human expe- rience, or incapable of discovery by natural reason, or a violation of natural law. It is enough that it is right, and the authentication of such right is well worthy of the divine interposition. Indeed, the entire code of Christianity is declared by Bishop Butler to be but a republication of the natural laws of morality in their primitive truth and purity. The doctrines and ordinances of a revelation are even corro- borated by their accordance with reason and nature, more especially, when such teachings are delivered in a dark and corrupt age. Thus far, we have spoken of the Sabbath chiefly as a day of rest for those functions of the frame and mind whidh con- stitutionally or accidentally require it, and we have admitted, also, that it may be a day of exercise for those which may thus most beneficially employ it. On this ground we hold that moral and spiritual culture, public or private, or both, as the case requires, should be specially attended to on the sacred day. This part of our nature needs such culture, certainly, and there is great advantage in making it exclusively the active business of the day, for the reason of its own high necessity, and for the additional reason that we cannot otherwise effectually throw the working faculties out of gear. The mind will not submit to absolute inactivity, and if not forced into a new track, it will obstinately pursue the old one, and so the over-worked week-day faculties will be cheated of their rest. It does not meet the case to answer that every day is holy, and that religion and morality should rule our whole life. THE SABBATH. 3G9 These faculties demand a special and exclusive cultivation. There ought to be a whole day in the week kept holy to God and Humanity. Not only should the hurry and solicitude of business be suspended for the health of the powers which it burdens, not only should there be a break in the headlong current of mercenary speculation — a dyke to check the ruth- less tide of selfishness — a day for clean clothes and fresh air — an interval of peace in the battle of life — but, the purest and highest sentiments which connect us with the spirits above and around us, in the holiest and most beneficent relations, ask such opportunity for fitting development; and we say that a sabbath should be devoted to all these resto- rative and educational uses. It is just because one day, at least, in seven, is not given to morals and religion, that their science is less understood in the present age than any other matter of human concern. We do not postulate the inspiration of Moses. Few per- sons know what they mean by the word, or how to govern .their own thoughts and conduct by- their notion of it ; and in such discussions as this, it more frequently raises a war of words than leads to any useful conclusions. We believe it for ourselves in a very useful way; and we believe, further, that all the positive institutions of the Old Testament system will be found, upon candid and enlightened investigation, to be in accordance with natural law, though much modified by the exigencies of the times and people to whom they were given. An over-ruling idea with us is, that all the laws of God are made for the benefit of their subjects — that he does not give us wants and deny their healthy gratification — that he does not confer powers and forbid their legitimate activity — in a word, that he did not bestow life, and then take back one-seventh of it arbitrarily for his own purposes, to the injury or deprivation of his creatures. We look, therefore, 16* 370 THE BIBLE QUESTION. for the beneficial reason of commandments imposed in his name; and when we find such utilities as the rest-day embraces, we have no doubt of the obligation, as we have none of the resulting benefit. Religion and morals, we are aware, are separate and dis- tinct things. They are often divorced; as often, unhappily, by the devout as by the profane. Pious people often over- strain the sanctification of the Sabbath, from an earnest fear of injurious consequences that might follow a reasonable relaxation of the Jewish Sabbath's severities. Our appre- hension is, that divine service is not human sacrifice, in any technical sense, under the Christian system, and that the observance of the sacred day is put within the devout dis- cretion of religious men, restrained by all that cautious con- sideration which is due to the general well-being of their neighbors; but what we write is intended rather for the use of those who reason so well that, though they are not con- stitutionally defective in reverence, are yet without the caution which it so usefully supplies to ardent minds. The freedom of the soul is even more precious than the truth itself; but boys do not know everything, and brains, like cats' eyes, however keen, are none the worse for the help of the feelers in dark corners. THE BIBLE QUESTION. iso book, since the introduction of Christianity, has had a tithe of the influence upon the opinions and conduct of the world, that is justly credited to the Bible. Since the Christian epoch, all private and public economy, all institu- THE BIBLE QUESTION. 37] tions, domestic and civil, all international relations, and the whole range of the natural sciences, have been changed. The progress of the race in this period is so great and so varied, that conception fails to grasp it with adequate com- pleteness and clearness. Nothing in recorded miracles is so wonderful as the difference between the facts of the world's life to-day and eighteen hundred years ago. Yet it is true that, at every advanced stage of all this change, Christianity was still nobler in sentiment and richer in practical good than the highest actual realization ; and it is just as true that it is still as really in advance of all present attainment. Nay, the distance increases as the world advances, just as the view expands and the horizon recedes, to one ascending a height. Whoever applies the New Testament morality in the regulation of his affections and the conduct of his life, will find its correspondence and adaptation to his noblest powers and worthiest impulses. The system itself allows and authorizes its receivers to submit it to the test of such experience, and consents to be judged by the consequences of its adoption. But it does not submit its claim upon the faith of men to any of the thousand other modes of scrutiny which an indifferent criticism may choose to apply to it. St. Paul says, emphatically, that " the carnal mind is enmity against God ; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be." Again, he says, " the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God ; for they are foolishness to him ; neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned." St. John says the same thing : " The light shineth in darkness, and the darkness compre- bendeth it not." Jesus told the Pharisees that they heard uot his words, because they were not of God. To his disci- ples he said — " Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." Ho did not say they knew it in advance 372 THE BIBLE QUESTION. of their acceptance, or in the attitude of resistance On the contrary, he declares, "If any man will do His (God's) will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God." In these grand fundamental propositions the philosophy of the gospel system is found, so far as concerns the investi- gation of its truth and authenticity. It comes to men with the distinct assertion of their incompetency to judge its claims by any maxims or standards which they have, inde- pendently of it ; and all criticism, separate from acceptance and submission, it repudiates. Not one of its teachers ever perpetrated so gross a blunder in logic as to concede the competency of ignorance, error and unbelief, to judge the claims of inspiration. The Book never argues the existence of God, or the possibility and consistency of supernatural communications from him. If it did it must begin by admit- ting its own revelations unnecessary. The man that already knows what can and what cannot be, does not need to be told what is. If he already knows what is true and what is false, the proposed revelation is merely impertinent. If any one answers that, " Imposture may take the same ground," he deserves to be answered that, no imposture is quite so stupid as to talk of measuring a new and higher truth by a known one that is worn out of form or fitness for the use which the revelation offers to supply. That absurdity is the peculiar distinction of skeptical rationalism. But Christianity is consistent throughout on this point. It treats its disciples just as it does its enemies. Jesus spoke in parables to the people because it was not given to them to understand the mysteries of the Kingdom ; but he also told the twelve, in his last discourse, " I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now." Paul tells the disciples in Corinth, " I have fed you with THE BIBLE QUESTION. 373 milk, and not with meat ; for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able." Thus, it is not the policy of the gospel even to propose its doctrines to incapable subjects, much less, submit them to an incompetent criticism, and invite its decision. It is very clear that communication depends upon recep- tivity ; that a pint bottle will not receive a quart of liquor ; and that men are judges of truth and beauty, in art, nature, morals and religion, only in the proportion that they have the correspondent ideas and feelings in themselves, or, accord- ing to the maxim of Christ, " to him that hath shall be given," for he only can receive ; and " from him that hath not shall be taken away, even that which he hath," because he does not availably hold it. When a controversialist, therefore, says this or that decla- ration of principles — this or that revelation of mysteries, is contrary to the nature and attributes of God, it still remains to be ascertained whether he knows God ; and that is to be settled by his own resemblance or approach, to the Divine. Some men reject the book, because the supernatural, with which it abounds, is impossible ; that is, improbable to them. They reveal themselves only ; and that does not affect either the truth or the fact of its revelation. The standard of truth, in anything, is the judgment of the highest endowed in that thing ; whether it be poetry, music, morals, or reason. Negation by the defective is nothing. He is not the wisest man who believes least, for, believing least, he knows least that is positive and sure. No man is so empty as the. skep- tic, for he, of all men, knows least of anything that is certain and reliable, even by his own showing ; and he cannot dis- prove anything of all the store that belongs to the man of faith. When a man says, " I have eyes, and I do not see 374 THE BIBLE QUESTION. that beauty which you adore," he has only proved that he does not see the beauty. If I see it, my testimony is evidence, because it affirms my belief and knowledge. His is not evidence, because it only asserts his ignorance negatively. The man that believes all which his faculties require and can discover, has a full soul, and a completed existence. His opposite, with all his sharpness, is only a beggared man, whose great boast is, that he doubts everything, and then doubts his own doubts, and, upon the whole, is always too hard for himself. But the authenticity of the Sacred Scriptures, and the authority of all their recorded examples, and the obligation of all the precepts which they impose, is a mixed question, and usually not a little confused in ordinary discussion. The book throughout may be as true as it claims to be ; yet, every fact and every word therein written may not be sacred and authoritative to any man now living ; nay, a great deal may be, and is, by its own terms, or by just construction, the very contrary. Job is rebuked for his complaint against the jus- tice of the providence which had afflicted him, and confesses that he had uttered that which he understood not ; things too wonderful for him, which he knew not. " Wherefore," says he, "I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes." David says, " I acknowledge my transgressions ; and my sin is ever before me." Are the Scriptures and the religion they teach, therefore, responsible for every word uttered by the one, or every deed done by the other, even though it is said, in general terms, of the former, that he had spoken of the Lord that which is right ; and of the latter, that his heart was perfect with the Lord ? The book, however, does not leave us without a perfect example of life, as well as an absolute standard of doctrine and belief. Jesus said to his adversaries, " Which of you THE BIBLE QUESTION. 3^5 couvlnceth me of sin ? " And his own witnesses say that he was " holy, harmless, undented, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens ; " that he was "the bright- ness of the Father's glory, and the express image of his person." His teachings and example are given us without reservations. St. Paul frankly says, " Xot as though I had already attained, either were already perfect ; but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which I am appre- hended of Christ Jesus ; " and elsewhere, " as we said before, so say I now again, if any man preacheth any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed ; " and, still more emphatically, " though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you, let him be accursed.' 7 The demand of the gospel is, " Take up your cross, and fol- low Christ." He is " the way, the truth, and the life ; " and " there is no other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved." And " He is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness,^ and sanctification, and redemp- tion," by so conforming our lives to his, that we may be said to pat off the old man, which is corrupt, and to "put on Christ." Discussions about the inspiration of the book are not coun- tenanced, neither are investigations of its historical, scientific, or political accuracy, encouraged. They are nothing to the purpose. Its religion ^proposes to reform the life, and through that j to enlighten the understanding in the things which really concern our highest interests. If any man appeals to it for justification of his opinions or his deeds, he is to be answered that "the Gospel is hidden to them that are lost ;" that it is not a directory for the business and ambition of the world- ling ; that the unstable and unlearned only wrest the Scrip- tures to their own destruction, when they employ them merely as they would the provisions of the civil law, or those of a 3T6 THE BIBLE QUESTION. code of morals, for the casual endorsement of specific acts, while the life is utterly estranged from their spirit and government. If Abraham and David sinned in their private lives, or abused their official powers, in any instance, it is to be understood that the shortcomings of saints are no justifi- cation for the transgressions of sinners. And, on the other hand, if anyone impugns the system which did not quite save its best disciples from error, he is drawing the unwar- rantable conclusion, that there can be no truth where there is any mistake or misadventure. Moreover, the Scriptures do not ask the belief of the head, but of the heart ; and that is given only by becoming in act and fact what they enjoin. Men must be transformed by the renewing of their minds, to receive the religion of Jesus ; and all mere speculation about it is purely irrelevant, if not worse. The apostle, very likely, had these fruitless wrang- lings in his thought, when he told Timothy to keep that which was committed to his trust, avoiding profane and vain bab- blings, and oppositions of science, falsely so called. The pro- mise of Christ, and the teachings of a sound mental philosophy, agree that he, and he alone, who doeth the will of the Father, shall know the doctrine whether it be of God. There is no reason, either of justice or mercy, why any one else should know the truth ; for its only use is to be obeyed, and the disobedient are as well without light, as without goodness. There is a fixed necessity that truth and good, and error and evil, shall go together, here and hereafter. Correct opinions and a bad life are so sorry an absurdity, that no one need have any solicitude for such soundness of belief, nor fear any sort of evil from the lack of it, The inspiration of prophets, apostles, and even that of heroes and poets — of the great and good of every faith and sphere of God's service — stands on the same ground. Who- ECCLESIASTES. 377 ever doubts it, could not understand or receive it to any good purpose, no matter how it might be proved. They must grow up into the light ; it will never come down to them. There is light to the seeing, none to the blind. So we settle the Bible question for ourselves. Others, also, will settle it according to the life that is in them. ECCLESIASTES. The freedom of the tongue and the liberty of the press are getting a demonstration just now, in the matter of popu- lar lectures and their newspaper reports, to such an extent that it must have decided consequences some day soon. I think it concerns the pulpit not a little. Not long since, the clergy held the office of oral instructors of the people, almost exclusively. They limit their prelections to religious doc- trines and worship, which the volunteer corps of lay teachers usually avoid, but both parties meet congregations consist- ing of nearly the same individuals, and the points of corres- pondence are numerous enough to induce comparison and criticism, notwithstanding the preserved differences of topics and treatment. This is the case with Protestant preaching especially. As our religious exercises are usually conducted, there is very little of worship proper in them. The prayer is by the clergyman, the music chiefly by the choir, the dis- course occupying two-thirds of the time, and the people are m effect the audience, almost as much as at a scientific or lite- rary lecture. They go to hear, and the duty of the place is pretty well performed if they listen decorously to the sermon. Now, whatever else there might be, or ought to be, in what we term divine service, it results in a pretty close resent- 378 ECCLESIASTES. - blance to the better style of those popular meetings for merely intellectual entertainment, which are coming into vogue so extensively. The professional clergy and church- going must be affected by it. The practice of muting public teaching with public wor- ship, may have authority in its use and propriety, but I believe it has no example in the practice of Christ, or of his immediate apostles and evangelists. There is no instance, and there is no notice, in the New Testament, of a religious service or exercise in which worship and text-preaching, or any form of didactic discourse, were combined. This is worthy of notice. The Catholic and English Episcopal churches seem to have recognized the difference, and pro- vided for their severance ; both of them make a large part of the sanctuary service consist of prayer, penitence and adoration, and both are able by their forms to dispense with pulpit discourses in their principal solemnities. But the dissenting churches have a very different drift and policy, and the older establishments usually conform to the later fashion, perhaps from a necessity which arises out of the great controversy which has brought their respective creeds into debate. From one cause or another, the pulpit has become among us a sort of popular forum ; enough like that of ancient Rome to bring it within the jurisdiction of public opinion, and subject it to comparison and criticism, in common with the ordinary forms of lay teaching. Am I right in the belief that we remember less of the thousand sermons which we hear, than of anything else to which we give our attention in a similar way ? Am I right in the opinion that preaching is regarded with less earnest- ness and interest than any other kind of public discourses ? What did Dr. Beecher mean by saying that the Devil ECCLESIASTES. 379 appears to hold a mortgage upon the educated mind of the country? The pulpit, I suppose, must suffer or improve greatly under the influence of the new method, which is now growing into a system. In either case, it must experience such modification as deserves the attention of all concerned. The lecturers have advantages of the clergy in this rivalry, which must be looked to. The lecturer has all the leisure of the year for the preparation of half a dozen addresses ; he has, besides, the chance and choice of his best points, and may be always strong and fresh. An itinerant ministry has these advantages in a good degree, also ; but the pastors of all our churches in the thickly settled communities are sta- tionary ; and two sermons a week, with a multitude of calls for addresses upon the benevolent, missionary, and literary movements of the times, amount to a heavier draft upon them than they can creditably answer. Devotional feeling and sacred associations afford them some protection ; but they will be compared, nevertheless, in pitch, power and interest, with the best of their rivals, wherever the new usage obtains. They have taught us to look for the matter and manner of eloquent performances. And they must fall under the judgments of the rule. There is the whole of Sunday, one day of the week, allot- ted to them, and they must either bring us back to unmixed worship in our churches, in which they have no rivalry of office, or they must fill up the time with such occupation as it may be the fashion to demand, or, they must fall behind the requirements of the times. The magnificence of church buildings, the parade of dress, and the relief of idleness, will come in time to contrast badly with pure devotion on the one hand, and elegant literary entertainment on the other. The Catholic method seems best adjusted to the exigency, and 380 ECO' ESIASTES. its recent successes are in this matter very instructive. There is nothing in the spirit of the age, nothing in modern insti- tutions, in its favor ; but Protestantism is losing its fitness to the progress which it belongs to and depends upon. The essence of Catholicism is authority ; the spirit which it demands is reverence. Protestantism is but another name for liberty ; .and, by its own terms, it must earn all the respect it gets. There is no divine right in it ; it is only a candidate for popular favor. It does not rely upon an ancient title, but claims, by improvement-right, and is always arguing its claims — it must therefore argue them well, or lose the verdict. The abuses of Mother Church did well during the insurrectionary stage of reformation ; but for the fixed stage of positive organization, the new church must be adapted. The time has come that established republicanism wants a religion, and that of the age of rebel- lion will no longer answer the requirement. Let our clergy look to it. Popular revolution now runs back into arbitrary authority with portentous facility. The separation of Church and State does not work well for Government, where at the same time religion is divorced from politics. In Southern Europe (below the 50th degree of north lati- tude), the mischief has its power in the character of the peo- ple, perhaps ; but even Anglo-Saxondom, on neither side of the Atlantic, will bear a religion which rests upon opin- ion, and at the same time falls below the advanced ideas of that opinion. Our pulpits ought not to stand by quietly, much less consentingly, while the obligations of the " Higher Law " are derided by men in authority. Their function is reformation, not conservatism ; and if they miss their use they must lose their place. The Protestant religion was not made for submission to authorities, but for the ministry of freedom The Catholic Church may well hold by the old ECCLESIASTES. 381 martyrs while slie is making new ones ; but the priesthood of private judgment and progressive freedom must not resist the very spirit of its calling. The Church of the Cruci- fixion stands upon its memories ; but the Church of the Resurrection must address itself to our hopes, or it has no appropriate function. Protestantism, from the first, opened its pulpit for the propagation of liberal opinions in government, learning and morals ; when it loses this drift, it is beginning to die. When it allows political legislation to decide all questions of social duty, it sinks from a worthy priesthood into a ser- vile police. Aspiration looks ever upward and forward ; and if the Church crouches to the State, the uprising masses must look, not to the Church, but away from her to God. I write these words under a painful conviction that we cannot hope for efficient interposition, by the clergy of this country, for the restraint of injustice in our foreign and domestic government, just now becoming more critical than ever before; we could not get their help for such vindication as became us of the laws of nations, when Europe was in her struggle for popular liberty, and we cannot count upon their resistance, when we shall take the attitude of aggressors ourselves. Anglo-Saxondom will struggle long and bravely before it will consent to the formal reunion of Church and State ; but the Germanic blood is religious as well as metaphysical, and will not consent to banish God entirely out of the civil Gov- ernment. The best of our battles for liberty were fought while religion was part of the civil constitution of England and of these colonies. It happened just then that the church had the idea of the age, and served it well. Since then we have been killing Indians, extending black slavery, and con- 382 KCCLESIASTES. quering our neighbor's territory, until it has become our manifest destiny to spread and corrupt until we split. Our clergy must take this matter to heart; they must recollect that they are not the successors of the Apostles, but the ministers of the people ; and that when a mere hierarchy is wanted, the old one has the better right, and the better chance too, as all current changes seem to indi- cate. Preaching against Catholicism will not any longer serve the purpose; they have been losing by that game ever since the controversy between Hughes and Brackenridge. The revival of Romanism began in this country at that time. They must do something which the age requires, in all questions of national and economical conduct; that is, they must answer the uses of the times; they must make us better; they must begin to suffer again. A Christian ministry without persecution for righteousness' sake, without martyrdom in some form, is an absurdity; they must take up^ their cross, they must oppose the evil in the world, and carry the marks of the conflict.- They must not be calling other people infidels, but they must expose them- selves to all manner of evil speaking for Christ's sake, or they are none of his, and of no use to us. If the world were converted, and the Millenium had already come, they might be at once popular and worthy; but until then, those that the world loves are its own. The nation is in imminent peril of wars of ambition and oppression, with all their crimes, suf- ferings, and horrors. The religion of peace and the system of righteousness ought to have something to say to that; or, one way or another, the blood so shed will be required at the hands of those watchmen who give not the alarm. The uppermost thought in my mind is the present peril and prospective ruin of the church of the country, the church twin-born with civil liberty. I think of it despair- ingly ; would it were otherwise. THE FAITH OF C -E S A R ' S HOUSEHOLD 383 THE FAITH OF CESAR'S HOUSEHOLD. " A Christian statesman is the glory of Ms age," says Mr. Tenable in a speech lately delivered in the House of Repre- sentatives. Some years ago, Mr. Clay offered a resolution in the Senate, calling upon the President to appoint a day of fasting, humiliation, and prayer, to avert, or mitigate, or sanctify, the impending visitation of the Asiatic cholera; he said, among other things, "I am not a Christian; I hope I shall be before I die." (He was about sixty years of age at the time.) He said, in the same speech, "it is natural to turn to God, when there is no help from man." Xow, what is a Christian statesman ? and how is he the glory of his age? Is he a Christian statesman, who, when his statesmanship is finished and his life just closing, says, H I trust in the atonement of the Saviour of men, as the ground of my acceptance and my hope of salvation;" adding, "my faith is feeble, but I hope in His mercy and trust in His promises ?" Is it the age or the religion of the age that is glorified by the dying submission of a great man! Surely it is not the statesman, but the man, that dies; and if his own notion of " salvation" is that it is something future, something after death — that a man is not saved from his sins in this life, from their guilt, power, and practice, but from their proper consequences in the next life — how is his Christianity the glory of his age ? Is it not in fact, as well as in his own opinion, only his own escape, his own refuge, from the retributions of divine justice? Religion may boast the honor of a disciple distinguished in the world's opinion, if it needs an honorable endorsement ! and such endorsement may help to make a similar profession easy to those who seek the honor which cometh from man; but how else a 384 THE FAITH OF C£SAR ? S HOUSEHOLD. feeble faith, which in its nature is no more than a sentiment, excited too late to be a practice in any of the rectitudes demanded by Christianity — rather for their social uses than for their religious truth — how else a reform at three score and ten can be a glory, or boast, or benefit, is not all apparent. Mr. Underwood, too, says: " The lessons of His Providence remind us that we have higher duties to fulfil and graver responsibilities to encounter, than those that meet us here, when we lay our hands upon His holy word, and invoke His holy name, promising to be faithful to that Constitution which He gave us in His mercy, and will withdraw only in the hour of our own blindness and disobedience, and of His own wrath." Is this true? Is religion indeed thus separated from our duty to our neighbor ? Are its obligations toward man justly ranked so far below the homage which it exacts toward God ? Are the submissions of exhaustion, and the solicitude of a dying man for his own salvation, an acceptable substitute for righteousness of life, or an atonement for prac- tical delinquency? The Christianity of the age is bound in duty and honor to repudiate such report of its requirements; it is concerned to insist upon its place and action in the every-day duties of life, especially in those which relate to the largest and most permanent interests of society. Religion must not permit itself to be changed from a directory for business into a policy of insurance, and so to be transferred from the concerns of time to the speculations of eternity. The Greatest Teacher employed every conceivable method to impress the eminently practical character of the religion which He established. Look at His Sermon on the Mount, which is a compendium of all His teachings What warranty does it afford for exalting worship and faith toward God above love and service to man ? See, THE FAITH OF C M S A R ; S HOUSEHOLD. 385 too, how every parable of His corroborates the morality rather than the doctrines of His system; and especially when He lifts the curtain of the spirit world, and displays the principles and process of the final judgment; is there a word there that coun- tenances the neglect or violation of duty to man, as a less matter than a sentimental faith in the atonement? It is true, or it is not true, that we shall be judged, every man according to his deeds done in the body; that we shall reap that which we have sown ; and, that the cry of "Lord, Lord l n will not answer when the question is, what improvement we have actually made of our talents? Do the Scriptures authorize the magnifying of the Divine mercy at the expense of human duty, or allow that, flattering the Most High is just as good as honoring Him, or, that sacrifice is an acceptable service in lieu of obedience ? Verily, it is an evil day for this world, when its religion is separated from its work, and an unsanctified morality is left to save men from their sufferings, and to mend their manner of life ; and the whole of piety is reduced to the matter of worship and the saving of men's souls after they are dead. X o wonder that the higher law is formally excluded from the halls of Legislation, and that conscience is held subordinate to expediency and compromise, when all the good there is in religion is supposed to be just as available to the sinner as to the saint ! " What is truth ? " said Pilate; and turned away from the presence of its embodiment ; for he meant not an inquiry but a denial of its existence in any system of opinions, and, of all certainty concerning it. Had he waited for the answer that concerned him in his office of Governor, he would not have baptized his hands to wash away the blood he was about, in the indifference of his skepticism, to shed. That man is the type of those who ask, scornfully or doubtfully, what is 386 THE FAITH OF CESAR'S HOUSEHOLD. truth ? or, what is its authority over us ? And it is not too much to say that his despair and suicide are a better and more wholesome commentary upon his base and cowardly abuse of political power to gratify the public, than a late repentance, compelled either by fear or hope, or any other selfish motive, would have been. It is perhaps too much to expect tombstones to tell truth ; yet there is nothing so sacred in sorrow as in the law by which we live for the highest ends of our being ; and when politicians in high places preach, they must be held answer- able to the canons of a just criticism. We are not interfering here with men's opinions in specu- lative doctrine ; we are defending, in our legitimate sphere, the good of men's lives. We are concerned every way to insist that men's responsibilities, particularly those of men in places of political trust, both here and hereafter, are highest and gravest in respect to the duties which they owe to maa, to the world, to the future of this world. We think it our business to rebuke the prevalent practice of judging the future condition of distinguished dead men. Our proper judgment is of their past work. That touches us who are alive, and all who are to live after us ; and what have we to do with the final state of any soul, more than we should feel for the soul of every other man ? If a distinguished life has blessed the world, God and man will in good time repay the benefit with " Well done good and faithful servant." But there is no room for favoritism here ; justice is due to the living, and it were much better that any man die for the world than that the world suffer for him. Dust and ashes have no intrinsic merits. Truth to the living is of even higher moment than eloquence in eulogies and epitaphs. The Lord buried Moses in the mountain, and gave him no monument ana no honors other than those of his works ; He took up HERO WORSHIP. 387 Elijah in a chariot of fire ; nothing remained, either of the politician, or of the prophet, of Israel, but their words and their deeds, ^ay, more : the Evangelists wrote no eulogies upon their deceased Master. The appointed memorial of His earthly life is in the symbols of His blood shed, and His body broken, for the benefit of men. That is His epitaph ; and its voice to every man is, " Take up your cross also and follow me," not in profession and faith, but in facts and works ; throughout your lives. In all this we are not objecting to any honors, public or private, which reverence and grief suggest for the dead, but to the pernicious doctrines which get some sanctity from sor- row, and too much allowance from fashion. "We have no respect for lower law piety, even on funeral parade, and, for that reason, enter our protest. HERO WORSHIP. It seems inevitable, and justified, therefore, by the instinct which prompts it. Moses forbade the paying of Divine honors and adoration to anything below the Supreme Deity, but the precept failed with the children of Israel. The Jew- ish Chronicles are crowded with their idolatries ; and the prophet Ezekiel, summing up the evidence, declares that in this sin they had corrupted their way more than all the nations of the. Gentiles. That excellence which is the hope and trust of the human heart can be realized only in its incarnate form. Unmixed spiritualism is absolutely impossible to our mixed constitution. The Highest can only be apprehended as the model humanity. 388 HERO WORSHIP. Men lelievi that they are made in His image. When He is defined by the negatives of all that we are and know, the idea is lost out of our words, and we fall back again upon our own highest conceptions of wisdom, power, and goodness. The Pagan theologies, Egyptian, Greek and Oriental, all alike rested in such manifestations of the Divine as human faculties are capable of ; they stopped short of the ultimate and absolute Divinity ; and our own religion never spread throughout the world until the Immanuel, or " God with us," brought the central idea within the grasp of human faculties. We personify Infinite perfection, indeed, as we do wisdom, love, power ; but our communion is only with such limitation and manifestation of it as we can identify and realize. The Divme messenger must come to us in human form, or we cannot receive him. The doctrine which denies the incarnation of the Supreme Divinity is false to the human constitution, out of harmony with its necessities, and, by refusing such veritable embodi- ment of the Godhead as the mind and heart can recognize, merely installs a set of principles in His place — substituting Law for Being. Hero-worship, saint-worship, angel-worship, in the degree of their worthiness or worthshijp, and within the limits of their functions, is nothing else than the natural action of the same inherent tendency. Faith and hope look upward. " Every good gift and every perfect gift cometh down from above," and we instinc- tively refer the greatest of them to the supernatural powers. History deals with the facts of sense only ; but history finds society in conditions which must be accounted for ; and, out of the dim traditions which precede it, never fails to construct a heroic age. The great men who discovered the sciences, revealed the religion and laws, and founded the HERO WORSHIP. 389 cities and empires, whose origin is to be explained, are all Divine agents — they are heroes and demi-gods ; they have human mothers, but they must have Divine fathers. From the deluge of Deucalion to the introduction of the Olympiads into chronology, the benefactors of men, whose works lived after them in the gratitude and admiration of their country- men, all received this sort of deification. Hercules, Perseus, Theseus, Castor, Pollox, Esculapius, and a hundred others, were sons of Jupiter, Neptune, and Apollo. These were honored after their death by annual commemorations at their tombs, and by offerings and libations presented to them, much as we celebrate the anniversaries of our own mighty dead with festivals, speeches, and toasts drank standing. Sometimes the respect paid exceeded these limits, and they were exalted to the rank and honors of gods. Even in this we are perhaps not utterly at variance with them, for it is a received doctrine of Christianity, that the Church is built ''on the foundation of the prophets and apostles, Jesus Christ being the chief corner-stone." To us, as to them, the heroes of faith and the chief reformers of the world, were fully inspired, and we obey them as the representatives and ambassadors of the Most High. Moreover, " the mighty men which were of old — men of renown," are spoken of in the book of Genesis, as the off- spring of intermarriages between "the sons of God and the daughters of men." These were the giants, the Titans, of the Hebrews. The birth of Isaac, of Jacob and Esau, and of the Patriarchs, the heads of the twelve tribes, are all ascribed to supernatural interposition by the same authority. The same thing is affirmed, also, of Samuel and Samson and other heroes of the early Jewish history, and it is even repeated in the story of John the Baptist. Thus Nature is ever refreshed by the supernatural, and 390 HERO WORSHIP. Providence is not a mere bundle of general, permanent, uniform laws. There is an oracle in the human nature, and poetry is its authorized interpreter. In an age of material- ism, men may pay their devotions to mechanics, the work of their own hands, after the meanest form of idolatry ; never- theless, to as many as receive the Incarnate Divinity, the power is given to become the sons of God ; their bread shall be flesh, and their wine the blood of eternal life. But this faith looks forward as well as backward. As it fades in history it revives in prophecy. If it dies as a super- stition, it is born again a religion that inherits all its goods. In the Hebrew oracles it promises that " the seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head/' and, more definitely, " a virgin shall bear a son," who shall restore all things. St. Paul records the fulfilment in these significant words : 11 There is one God, and one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus ; n whom he elsewhere declares to be " the image of the invisible God, the first-born of every crea- ture," " His only begotten Son." The language of Jesus covers this whole doctrine : " I came dozen from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of my Father that sent me ;" and, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life; no man cometh unto the Father, but by me." Thus the universal truth is affirmed by our highest authority, and the instincts of human nature are justified while they are rectified. But, what says the natural religion of the pagan world to this doctrine of incarnation ? According to the Brahmins, their Vishnu has already had ten Avatars or appearances upon the earth. Their sacred books say that he interposes in human form, whenever any great calamity threatens the world, and that he is always born of the Divine Spirit and a maid. Boodhism, which is professed by nearly half the inha- bitants of the earth, teaches that there have been already HERO WORSHIP. 391 four incarnations of Boodh in this world, and one is yet to come ; or rather, each Boodh is a new existence, but all appear on earth through the medium of human parentage. According to Lamaism, the supreme divinity is in constant process of metempsychosis, and is always present on the earth in a human form. Fo, the god of Japan, was born of a nymph ; the god of Siam is the offspring of a virgin and the sun ; Juggernaut is the son of a virgin, and the Casta Diva of the Druids was expected to bring forth a world redeemer ; and, to show the universality of the idea, it needs only to be added that the Paraguay Indians held, that, long ago a virgin bore a son who worked miracles, and finally rose in the air and became the sun. This necessity of the human constitution has its' force in a lower application with those who refuse it as a religion. They, too, have a "better time coming," though they do not quite " look for a new heaven and a new earth ;" and the agency and leadership of eminently endowed men is also essential to their hope. The redemption, with them, must have its champions, just as the religionist relies upon the great atonement, with its apostles and martyrs, for the con- summation of his trust. Both alike understand that the redemption must be effected through the mediation of the same nature which sins and suffers. Ail through the ages of evil, prophets and "heroes fix the faith of all men ; the honors accorded to them vary according to the measure of man's apprehensions, but the feeling is still the same, whe- ther it stints itself to the admiration of the sentiments, or stretches up to the stature of a religious worship. Man-worship, as it is oppf obriously phrased, results from the fact that we apprehend nothing clearly which is wholly unlike humanity ; and in spite of our most refined spirituality, we ever anthropomorphise the deity, however pure the wor- 892 ANTHROPOMORPHISM. ship of our human hearts, and however high the conceptions of our human intellect. The defence of the hero-worshipper is not difficult or dis- creditable. Nothing prevents but incapacity of heart or head, or, self-worship. It is a bullying style of dignity which refuses due homage to greatness, and it is always expressed with a swagger, except when the pretence is too limber with its conscious falsehood to take a sturdy attitude. It takes but little fancy to imagine the manifold elocution of the an- swer, " Is not this the carpenter's son ?" which the gaping crowd offered against the claims of the great Teacher, who stood in his simple majesty among them. Next to the prophet himself is the man who discerns and receives him ; it is for fools and snobs to congratulate them- selves that they do not feel the difference between themselves and the pivot men of their time. Infidelity toward God is not so common nor so injurious as unbelief in man. It is well that there is not so much of either as would destroy the hopes of this world or of the next. ANTHROPOMORPHISM. The Jewish religion, notwithstanding the almost miracu- lous tenacity with which the Israelitish nation has clung to it through eighteen centuries of dispersion and suffering, never had any proper power of self-propagation. Since the days of Moses, not a tribe or nation of the Gentile world, down to the present day, has accepted it. The reason of such general and persistent rejection of a system, containing so many excellences, both of civil polity and moral principles, must be in its intrinsic repugnance to the governing senti- ments of^mankind in matters of theological faith. Its civil ANTHROPOMORPHISM. 393 code and social order were, during all the period of Asiatic and European barbarism, quite superior to any other system ; and its criminal code was not specially exceptionable to the nations around it, but its doctrine of the divine nature, and the religious system thence derived, was, and still continues to be, wholly unacceptable. Christianity, though admit- ting the Jewish revelation as a fact, no more accepts its peculiarity than do the heathen religions prevailing over the rest of the earth. Indeed, the difficulties of the Jewish theological doctrine, which have ever prevented its spread among the nations, were so impracticable to the Jews them- selves, that their own sacred books prove them to have been as thorough polytheists and idolaters in practice as any other people. While their lawgiver was yet with them they com- pelled Aaron, the high priest of the new religion, to make a golden calf for their worship; and, a thousand years after- wards, Ezekiel charges them with having " corrupted their way" by the worship of false gods more than all the Gen- tiles. The history of their Judges and Kings through the whole interval, is crowded with the proofs of their obstinate idolatry, and even Solomon, who built their temple, "went after other gods," and built "high places" for the service of the idols of the Moabites, Ammonites and the other gods of his thousand wives. Manasseh, after him, "built altars for all the host of heaven in the two courts of the house of the Lord," and other kings of Judah put "the horses of the sun" at the portals of the sacred edifice! So that the simple and absolute spiritualism of Moses, which commanded, "Thou shalt have no other Gods before me; thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them," failed as utterly of If* 394 ANTHROPOMORPHISM. securing obedience among the Jews, as it did among the heathen Greeks, whose divinities reached the round number of thirty thousand in the days of Herodotus. But a very small portion of professing Christians and a very few philosophers, have ever fairly accepted the doctrine of the simple unity of the Divine nature, rejecting at the same time, the notion of a celestial hierarchy, by which the mass of mankind in all ages has supposed the government of the universe to be administered. Perhaps it is not too much to affirm that no considerable sect or party of religionists, has ever yet embraced the simple spirituality of the Deity whom they worship. It is certain, at least, that the religion of the Bible never spread over the earth until it presented an incarnate God to the apprehension and faith of men. It is the Immanuel or God with us, the God-man, manifested in the flesh, that achieved the victory over the heathen systems, and it is through his name that we approach unto the Father. He is the way through which the faith that we call Christian- ity is received by the church at this day. An abstract Divin- ity is possible to the imagination of metaphysical thinkers, but human affections, human hope and worship, cannot get a firm hold of attributes and modes of existence wholly unlike its own. St. Paul meets this point fairly when he contrasts the religion of Jesus with that proclaimed by Moses. He says, ".We have not a high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin." "For, verily, he took not on him the nature of angels, but he took on him the seed of Abraham." And the Evangelist, John, says, "the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father." In nothing, indeed, is the great apostle of the Gentile world more emphatic than that there is one God, and ANTHROPOMORPHISM. 395 one Mediator between God and man, the Man Christ Jesus," "who being the brightness of his (Father's) glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had, by himself purged our sins, sat clown on the right hand of the Majesty on high." The necessity of the human heart, here so fully met and answered, has led men all over the world, and in all ages, to invent for themselves Gods in human form, born of women, but with divine fathers ; and Christianity owes its first ele- ment of success to the indulgence of this idea, while it derives its chief power to command human acceptance from the pathos of the Redeemer's story and the beneficence and beauty of his doctrines. TTe think that for these reasons the triumph of our religion is not a miracle, but far better than a miracle, in its perfect adjustment to the qualities and conditions of our humanity, and in its truth, which such adjustment demonstrates. Judaism defines God by negatives; it declares only what he is not, and what he is not like; it reduces him to an abstract power or principle, and so is nearly impossible of apprehension; but Christianity presents all that we can pos- sibly receive of Him as an actual individualized being in the person and character of Christ, and he thereby becomes to us capable of distinct and positive realization. This idea must not be misunderstood. "We talk of love, jus tice, power, holiness, goodness and truth, intelligibly enough, but they are only principles in our apprehension; we know them only by what we possess of them ; we can admire them as qualities of beings ; but, only when they are imperso- nated in a familiar and knowable form of existence, in absolute perfection, can we love, worship, and trust in them, for all that we desire, need, and depend upon. A perfect or divine man only can be a veritable, tangible God to human beings, and, 396 ANTHROPOMORPHISM. whatsoever is beyond this, or different from it, we can have no knowledge of and no vital faith in. — If we had no revealed incarnation of the Deity, we would, like our heathen brethren, of necessity embody our ideas of his character in some appreci- able form, and, perhaps, most men do this, everywhere, after the fashion of their own conceptions, notwithstanding the for- mal faith which they profess. The conclusion of natural reason, therefore, corresponds essentially to the declaration of Jesus: — "I am the way, and the truth, and the life, and no man cometh unto the Father but by me." The character of the God is but the ideal of the worship- per; this is so, because it cannot be otherwise. The Deity of a harsh, cruel, implacable man is a very different being from that of a gentle, loving, merciful spirit. " Ye imagine me altogether such an one as yourselves," is the rebuke of Old Testament inspiration uttered against the profane fancies of a base and corrupt people, attesting the general fact which we allege, at the same time that the grossness of the false conception is censured. The necessity of a divine representa- tion in an appreciable form is, nevertheless, (aught by John, who declares that "No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him." — Jesus, to the same effect, says, "The Father himself which hath sent me, hath borne witness of me. Ye have neither heard his volbe at any time, nor seen his shape." Again, answering a question by the Apostle Thomas, he says, "If ye had known me, ye should have known the Father also;" and when Philip replied, "Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth us," Jesus saith unto him, "have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Phillip ? he that hath seen me, hath seen the Father." ANTHROPOMORPHISM. 391 But the same idea pervades all religions. The executive Deity of the Greeks and Romans rested in a divinized humanity. They pretended to no apprehension of the abso- lute and infinite Godhead. Their creator of the universe was also an eternal son. For him, and by him, all things were made; he, according to their system, "was before all things, and by him all things consist," as St. Paul says of the Christ. In the mythological story the King of the Gods took the dominion from his father; Jesus says, "all power is given unto me both in heaven and in earth." Nearer than such vicegerency in a divinized humanity, mor- tal comprehension cannot approach the Supreme, higher than this, mortal worship cannot reach toward an individualized Deity. Polytheism differs from the doctrine of Unity in the supernal power, only in the fundamental point that it divides the infinite perfections into many personalities, and destroys the harmony of their essential oneness in quality and action, just as if the several faculties of the human nature were dis- tributed among as many individuals, making each a monster and a monomaniac by the divorcement. They divinized the virtues and demonized the vices of our complex constitution, and embodied them in a mob of celestial and infernal gods. Hence a perpetual war in their heaven corresponding to the strife of the unbalanced' impulses in man. The true religion finds all perfection in One Supreme, and that supreme is the human nature carried* up in idea to infinite perfection, but still in the form and fashion of manhood. 398 MYTHOLOGY. MYTHOLOGY. It is not at all probable that the highly civilized and polished nations of antiquity meant to idolize and worship the vices which they ascribed to their gods. Their error in theory began in the separation of the various virtues w.hich they recognized as existing in the pattern or Divine nature. The justice, wisdom, purity, and love of the highest style of being, they separated from each other, and ascribed to a plu- rality of divinities, providing an embodiment for each sepa- rate faculty in the analysis. Of these they had as many as they imagined were the faculties, intellectual and moral, in their ideal of- supreme perfection. Such divorce of the qua- lities and powers which constitute the Infinite, works at once all the resulting mischief, making as it were, so many mono- maniacs out of one integral existence. No faculty of human nature, however excellent, but becomes a crime and a mad- ness so soon as it works unchecked and unbalanced by the harmonies of the whole nature. Justice runs into cruelty, mercy into misgovernment, and love to licentiousness, unless restrained and directed by all the feelings and ideas which meet the general relations of the life, and take care of all the interests and bearings of the case. Their Venus is a profli- gate, and Diana only a prude, but combined in one being they would have afforded a divine love nature, rich, beautiful and holy ; and so of a hundred other cases. Especially is the system liable to misapprehension and injurious construction in the offices and agents to which they distributed the creation and current government, or general and special providence, of the world. Jupiter's amours seem monstrous, and the invention of the fables a wantonness, beyond expression and endurance, unless they are regarded "HEAVEN — A KINGDOM OF USES." 399 merely as a mode of illustrating the generating and procre- ating ; or life-giving power, manifest in the animal and vege- table kingdoms, and referred by our religion, as well as theirs, to the Supreme Being, in words, instead of unseemly symbols and allusions. Put all the instances together, and they will represent collectively the " Author of life 77 to all forms of sentient existence. This being possible and proba- ble, we but do injustice to human nature by putting a grosser and more literal construction upon the allegory. The luxuries of the senses were, indeed, coarsely authorized, but the abuse rested in the fact of independence of the lower enjoyments upon the higher principles and feelings ; for, in themselves, they are allowable under such regulation as will harmonize them with the whole nature of man. So balanced, they are no mean part of the good of oiir existence. Their worship of the dead heroes of the earth was but the homage due to greatness, exaggerated by a lively faith in the power of departed spirits in affairs of the present life, or another form of angel ministrations. And thus the whole system, with all its abuses, can be reconciled to an idea deeper and purer than at first strikes the mind. HEAVEN— A KINGDOM OF USES. The Egyptians held the immortality of the soul, and of the body also. Immediately after death, according to their the- ology, the soul appeared before forty-two judges or assessors (In their philosophy there were forty-two crimes or sins that a man might commit). If acquitted by all these, he was 400 "HEAVEN — A KINGDOM OF USES." carried before Osiris, their chief divinity. In his presence the heart and brains of the person on trial were put into one end of a balance, and a feather from the wing of the angel of Truth, into the other. If he balanced the feather on this trial, he was admitted into the Elysium. But now his orduals commenced ; and the character of the discipline and tests bears some general resemblance to the ceremonial of Free Masonry. At the door of the Hall of Judgment, for instance, he was challenged successively by the door-sill, the right jamb, the left jamb, the door, the janitor, and by every tile in the floor, and every article of furniture. Each demand- ed of him its proper name, and the meaning thereof, and his advance depended upon the accuracy of the response. This is an expressive form of the Sphinx riddle of the Greeks. " Tell me my riddle, or I will destroy you," says everything which the spirit meets in its onward progress. •" Pronounce my name, i. e. describe my nature — show that you know me, before you can pass me to higher experiences and achievements." This is the law of our being, and the condition of our progress. To know and to enjoy, are words that mean the same thing in our Scriptures ; they mean the same thing in fact and in truth. Could there be a finer allegory, by which to illustrate the law of endless advance- ment and its requirements, than this one of the Egyptian Mythology. After the soul is> pronounced " not guilty" by the forty- two judges, of any crime or sin, and after the judgment of Osiris decides that the heart and brain are true, then the ordeals begin — the trial, the discipline, of the ever opening future. How much more sensible this than the notion of a final trial, and a flat, insipid eternity of idleness thereafter ! "jS^ot guilty" will do to begin with ; but the probation in the greatest affairs of existence only begins there, and the "ROMANIZING TENDENCY/' 401 soul must work its way up to its destiny, or be ordered back. By the way, the Egyptians believed that when the spirit did not pass- muster, it was sent back in the form of a pig, driven by monkeys, to begin its earthly pilgrimage over again. That second turn is not so certain ; but the pig and the monkeys are capital notions, if it were so. Pig bodies with monkey drivers ! There could not be a more wholesome horror than that. "ROMANIZING TENDENCY." The Synod of the Reformed Dutch Church, at its late session in Philadelphia, resolved to suspend its correspondence with the German Reformed Church,, inasmuch " as the con- tinuance of the same may be regarded as lending the sanction of this Synod to sentiments and doctrines which are favorable to the corrupt views of the Church of Rome, which are advocated by many persons of distinguished character in the German Reformed Church, and have not been reprimanded by the authorities of the said Church." The Catholic papers have published a list of the names of distinguished conversions to the Romish Church, which have occurred in this country within the last ten years, stating by the way, that it is not nearly complete. Nineteen Episco- palian Ministers are named among these converts, viz : Revs. J. R. Bayley, Dr. Forbes, Thomas S. Preston, Dr. Huntington, Donald McLeod, Ferdinand E. White, Mr. Richards, Mr. Loutrel, Mr. Burchard, William Everett, Mr. Pollard, and Mr. Stoughton, all of New York ! Rev. Dr. L..S. Ives, Bishop of North Carolina ; Mr. Shaw, of Alaba- 402 "ROMANIZING TENDENCY." ma; Mr. Baker, of Baltimore ; Mr. Hewitt, of Connecticut; Mr. Hoyt, of Vermont ; Mr. Major, of Philadelphia; and Mr. Wadham, of Albany. Protestant Ministers of other denominations — Dr. O. A. Brownson and George Leach of Boston ; Prof. Oertel and Porter Thomas, of New York ; and Rev. William J. Bake well, of Pittsburgh, who was the immediate successor of the celebrated Mathew Henry, the great commentator upon the Bible, as pastor of his congre- gation at Chester, England, if we recollect rightly, afterwards pastor of the Unitarian congregation at Pittsburgh, after that, again, an Episcopalian clergyman, and now a member of the Mother Church. His son, Robert A. Bakewell, editor of the Shepherd of the Valley, is another convert who bids fair by his zeal and talents to rank with the most distinguished of these conquests from Protestantism. Thirteen officers of the army and six of the navy, are added to the list of the captures taken in the ten years' holy war. The names of the " honorable women^not a few/ 7 are with- held from a feeling of propriety ; but it is intimated that they are very numerous, and we doubt not that such is the fact. The Virgin Mary, " Mother of God and Queen of Hea- ven " inserted into the Catholic Trinity, for obvious reasons, is a very efficient supernumerary force in its divinity ; and the ample provision for enthusiasm, made by the Church, is an opening for the devotees of faith and charity, which gives it immense advantages over the more simple and common- place institutions of Protestantism. These things work according to the laws of human nature, and it requires but little philosophy to perceive the larger and more natural adjustment of the ancient Church to the diverse wants of the wide world than the reformation allows. If there was nothing but the feminine element in the divinity, supplied by the Catholic creed, which the Protestant lacks, the difference REFORMERS. 403 must tell decisively ; but many another want is met, and urgent necessity of the heart provided for, which must go far to counterbalance the faults of the one side, and the peculiar excellences of the other. Auricular confession ; intercession of the saints ; pomp and ceremonial impressiveness of public worship ; mystic sacredness of the priesthood ; efficiency of prayer and sacrifice for the benefit of the dead ; antiquity and universality of the church — all have their effect, which suf- fers but little abatement from the historical offences which she has committed against the rights and liberties of man- kind, in a country like this, where her powers for evil are not felt and but little feared. That Catholicism is on the increase among us at a great rate, is obvious enough. A similar process is going on in England. It requires to be looked into. Providence, we think, intends to call the attention of Protestantism to its own condition by this means. The wisest use and the best that the reformed churches can make of it, will be to occupy ' themselves less with the faults of the old enemy, and look more sharply to the amendment of their own. Their own goodness will be the best argument they can offer against her abuses. REFORMERS. Religion is a necessity of our nature, and worship is the instinct of our noblest faculties, but establishments must answer our uses, or they must perish. In this lies the error of over-strained conservatism: it allows no change of forms, qo variation of agencies, and no extension of principles to new requirements, or the correction of old abuses. It dams 404 REFORMERS. up the tide of progress in the vain hope of turning it back upon its source. It admits no reformation, and thereby invites revolution. The turbulent waters that cannot be restrained, and should not have been checked, may overpass their proper boundaries and waste something that deserved to live, but the blame rests with the barrier that lifted the waves above their natural level and compelled them into vio- lence. The reformer has ever a fearful mission to fulfil. As des- troyer of the old and builder of the new, he is responsible at once for the good that he finds and the evil he occasions. His reverence for the past and his fears for the future, are alike torturing. He cannot turn his back upon the unburied dead without pain, nor look forward upon the experiment to which he subjects the unborn without misgiving. His sur- passing love is returned in hatred, and his devotion is rewarded with death, yet, not his will but the will of heaven must be done. He accepts the shame and suffering of a rejected redeemer, and, for the hope set before him, does his appointed work, though, for the present, it overturns the temple and destroys the State. It is the mystery of iniquity that the men of every age have killed the prophets and stoned all those that were sent unto them. When worship has been changed into a trade, the priesthood into oppressors, and the temple become a den of thieves; men answer a righteous remonstrance that, "it was forty and six years a-building, and they have Abraham for their father I" and, therefore, stone the preacher of truth for blasphemy ! The Church now, should learn from the fate of those which it has replaced, that God is not bound by a covenant which on its part has been broken, and that men will not continue to reverence an institution which its own corruption has dis- REFORMERS. 405 honored. The cry of heretic, Sabbath-breaker, blasphemer, infidel, pestilent fellow, now, as in the olden time, means nothing if untrue, and has no force if it is not fact. The true religion must be vindicated, the world's highest welfare secured, and whatsoever opposes itself will be destroyed. We are not of those who would trample down the wheat in weeding out the tares, but we cannot call that the vineyard of the Lord which yields only wild grapes where we look for- good ones. — We think that a religion which looks only towards the next world, but does no good and much harm to the present one, is not only a meagre sham but an oppres- sive evil, and thinking so, we say so ; for by its fruits we may judge it. We are authorized to say that men are not of the Lord who do not love their brethren. The charity of almsgiving and the observance of days, do not satisfy us, but the establishment of justice and the reform of evil. God is not mocked, and men are not long deceived. When profession contributes to social respect and pecu- niary profit, it is natural for crime to fly to the altar for sanctuary. It is the popularity of religion that endangers its purity and perverts its influence. Wherever the Church is strong enough in popular respect to denounce heresy with effect, and stamp the man with infamy whom it calls infidel, it is too much of this world to be faithful to it or to the other. Jesus and his apostles denounced the priesthood of their day, but they instructed and persuaded the Sadducees -and unbelievers. It was the rich and the great, the hypo- crite and the oppressor, not the misguided fanatic or the reckless profligate, that they denounced. And they never appealed to the prejudices of piety, or the fears »f conserva- tism, to silence their opponents. Especially did they not lend their countenance and sanction to the social injustice and individual oppression of the times. They were reform- 406 REFORMERS. ers, not Pharisees, arid that is the reason why their names were east out as evil, and themselves crucified, for religion's sake. Our reformers may not modestly claim too close a resem- blance to their character ; but their fate is enough like to suggest it, and the position and conduct of bigoted conser- vatism in our time, may see its own image in the hierarchy of theirs. In zeal for forms and ceremonies, sanctity and severity of ritual worship, missionary spirit, reverence for the word and the temple, scrupulous observance of formal prayer, abhorrence of reformers and unbelievers, almsgiving to the poor, austerity of manners and sectarian controver- sies, the priests and elders of the Jews were not to be excelled. The Christian Church was not instituted to rival or surpass them in these things. It is the weightier mat- ters of the law — -justice, mercy and truth, neglected by them, that are enjoined upon us as our distinguishing duty. And our priesthood must at least lend " so much as one of their fingers " to lift the burdens from the shoulders of the poor and oppressed, if they would justify and maintain their position. Heaven will not tolerate a;nd humanity will not long endure such sad perversion of their functions. Temple and altar have no more sacredness in themselves than tower and fortress. Providential reformations make no account of rituals, sacrifices, and fanes, from which the Divine pre- sence has departed ; and the ordinances that are perverted, and the institutions which have lost their beneficence, are swept away as rubbish by the roused retribution of heaven and earth. H THE END q q 7 F 7 J : ' ■ Deacidified using the Bookkeeper pn Neutralizing Agent: Magnesium Oxid Treatment Date: DEC 1 IBBKKEEPI O V PRESERVATION TECHNOLOGIES 1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive Cranberry Township, PA 16066 (724)779-2111 % \ * % *i(i%%:* *> & s * _ # ^fSBs. rz^s 73 ^^■^ N. MANCHESTER. L ^^^ INDIANA , •** r >