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 UCSB LIBRARY 
 
 LETTER 
 
 HON. HORACE MAIN, 
 
 CHARLES ASTOR BRISTED, 
 
 LATB FOUNDATION SCHOLAR OP TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, AND 
 ON3 OF THE TRUSTEES OP THE ASTOR LIBRARY. 
 
 NEW-YORK: 
 H. KERNOT, 633 BROADWAY. 
 
 1850.
 
 J. P. WBIOHT, Printer, 
 74 Fulton Bt.,N.Y.
 
 LETTER, 
 To the Honorable Horace Mann : 
 
 SIR, 
 
 Since even under the aristocratic govern- 
 ments of the Old World, a cat is proverbially per- 
 mitted to look at a king, much more, in this land 
 of democracy, may a private individual address 
 without previous introduction a Member of Con- 
 gress. Undeniable is it, that our private individ- 
 uals have not been slow to use and abuse this pri- 
 vilege, and numbers of them make it their busi- 
 ness to bother public men on all occasions, in or 
 out of season. Nor should I have been willing to 
 follow so many bad examples, had you not, in 
 some sense, yourself given the provocation. 
 
 Some two months ago I happened to see in the 
 Literary World, a brief and complimentary notice 
 of your " Thoughts for a Young Man," which 
 mentioned your holding up Stephen Girard as an 
 example, and John Jacob Astor as a warning. 
 The latter gentleman was my maternal grandfa-
 
 ther, and having been accustomed to look upon 
 him during his life, and to regard his memory 
 since his death, with a considerable amount of re- 
 spect, I naturally felt a little curious to see what he 
 had done to be held up as a warning, particularly 
 what legal or moral crime he had committed to 
 make you put him in the same category with the 
 ferocious despot Nicholas, or that prince of swind- 
 lers, the ex-railroad king, George Hudson as 
 the same journal informed me you did. True, in 
 the course of twelve years or more, during which 
 time I had sufficient opportunities of becoming ac- 
 quainted with his life and character, I had never 
 seen or heard anything to induce the suspicion of 
 such a probability ; nevertheless, as it is notorious 
 that we often learn a great deal about ourselves 
 and our private affairs from strangers, it seemed 
 not impossible that some such information might 
 be obtained in the present instance. 
 
 Of Stephen Girard, I knew only that he had 
 been the richest man. or one of the richest men, in 
 the country ; that he was a Frenchman by birth, 
 but had lived most of his life a very solitary 
 one, without near relations or friends in Phila- 
 delphia ; that he left the greater part of his for- 
 tune to establish a college for orphans, into which 
 no minister of any religious denomination was 
 ever to set foot, under any pretext or circumstance
 
 whatsoever which always struck me as a very 
 ingenious diabolical contrivance for the increase 
 of knowledge without virtue ; and that the college 
 had been but lately opened, after a delay of some 
 fifteen years. Nor did I gain any further details 
 from your " Thoughts." But I did learn the gra- 
 vamen of Mr. Astor's offence in your eyes, viz. 
 that he did not leave more than one-sixteenth of 
 his fortune for any public purpose ; conduct, 
 which you profess yourself unable to palliate or 
 account for except on the supposition of absolute 
 insanity, (p. 65, note.) 
 
 Now, calling a man " insane," like calling him 
 scoundrel, rascal or vagabond, is a very convenient 
 way to dispose of people whom we do not like, 
 while we are unable to substantiate anything spe- 
 cific against them ; but it is a weapon which cuts 
 more ways than one, and the hasty or indiscreet 
 resort to which it is somewhat dangerous to en- 
 courage. Different men have different ideas as to 
 what constitutes this sort of insanity. For instance, 
 when you make an abolition speech in Congress, 
 the Southern and Southwestern representatives 
 would doubtless be much delighted to shave your 
 head and enclose you between the four walls of an 
 asylum, and would be prepared with a wilderness 
 of arguments, enough to convince themselves at 
 least, if no one else, that you fully deserved such 
 
 A*
 
 treatment. Or when, six or seven years ago, you 
 took occasion in a public discourse to speak very 
 disrespectfully of the ballot and universal suffrage, 
 I will engage there was no want of persons who 
 said you must be crazy to blaspheme institutions 
 which to them were like an appendix to the Ten 
 Commandments. A great many very sensible, 
 though perhaps common-place people, agree in 
 thinking that the Massachusetts transcendent :>!- 
 ists have been made mad whether by too 
 much learning or not, they are less unanimous. 
 I have no doubt we could find many devout men, 
 who would say that, to found an institution for ed- 
 ucation from which all minister^ of the gospel 
 were systematically excluded, was little short of 
 the act of a madman. In fine, there is a popular 
 tendency to confound, by a loose use of language, 
 madness with unreasonableness or folly ; and in 
 some cases to aggravate, in others to excuse ac- 
 tions, by assigning to them as a motive, insanity, 
 when at most they can only come under the 
 charge of irrationality, and very often are refer- 
 able only to eccentricity or peculiarity. Yet the 
 distinction is not so very subtle or metaphysical 
 either one would think it simple enough. You 
 may say that a drunken man is mad for the time ; 
 that a very angry man is so too. Possibly, but 
 you would surely never say in any serious con-
 
 versation or writing, that a nrran was insane ac- 
 cording to any legal or medical sense of the term, 
 because you had once seen him in a violent pas- 
 sion, nor yet because you had once seen him in- 
 toxicated. Every man who commits a crime, 
 nay, every man who wittingly and deliberately 
 commits sin, or acts occasionally contrary to the dic- 
 tates of reason, such a man's mind is not, therefore, 
 permanently disordered, otherwise, what a great 
 madhouse the whole world would make ! But the 
 mention of crime leads me to the real cause of this 
 abuse of words. The morbid sympathy shown by 
 a certain class of philanthropists for criminals, 
 and especially for the more atrocious criminals, 
 such as murderers, has, among ways of screening 
 such wretches from condign punishment, suggested 
 the plea of insanity. In this our sentimentalists 
 are greatly aided by the craniologists, many of 
 whose speculations go directly to refer all great 
 crimes to defective mental organization. The 
 public mind thus becomes accustomed to associate 
 with ideas of permanent insanity, individual acts 
 of great wickedness or irrationality. A clever 
 legal friend of mine seriously professes a theory 
 that every person is a monomaniac, or mad upon 
 some one point, by which he probably means to say 
 that every person has a weak point on which he 
 has a tendency or susceptibility to be led astray 
 and at times act irrationally.
 
 8 
 
 I suppose then, your saying that Mr. A.'s only 
 excuse for leaving his fortune to his relations in- 
 stead of to the public, is to be found in the suppo- 
 sition of his insanity, is only a characteristically 
 exaggerated way of expressing that you think he 
 made a foolish and unreasonable disposition of it. 
 Mr. Girard, on the contrary, is lauded with equal 
 extravagance for the establishment of his college 
 to promote irreligious education among orphans, 
 as opening a fountain of blessedness so copious 
 and exhaustless that it will flow on undiminished 
 to the end of time (p. 64.) To judge .of the 
 value and justice of this condemnation and this 
 laudation, it will be necessary to look at the lives 
 and circumstances of the two men, very briefly, 
 but rather more in detail than you have dons. 
 
 I have taken the trouble to make myself some- 
 what acquainted with the history of Mr. Girard, 
 and more particularly with the history of his col- 
 lege since his death. The difficulty of procuring 
 the necessary documents has delayed for many 
 weeks the appearance of this little epistle, which 
 would otherwise have been laid before you a few 
 days after your book fell into my hands. 
 
 Stephen Girard was a native of France, but a 
 citizen, and for many years a resident of Phila- 
 delphia. He was a bachelor, and had no near 
 relatives except a brother, with whom he was not
 
 on the best terms. He lived unsocially, and was 
 as frugal of the ordinary courtesies of life as of 
 his gold. As a merchant and banker, he accu- 
 mulated "a large fortune, variously estimated, but 
 certainly not less than seven or eight millions of 
 dollars. It does not appear that he ever enter- 
 tained the idea of distinguishing himself in any 
 other walk of life. Dying without intimate friends, 
 he left his whole property, with the exception of a 
 few trifling legacies, to establish a college for 
 orphans, within the premises appropriated to which no 
 ecclesiastic, missionary, or minister of any sect whatso- 
 ever, is ever to be admitted for any purpose-* The 
 plan, material, and dimensions of the collegiate 
 buildings were most particularly specified, but insu- 
 perable architectural difficulties prevented these 
 directions from being carried out to the letter. 
 To support the roof of the main building, it was 
 necessary to erect a portico of Corinthian co- 
 lumns a lucky necessity, as it enabled the archi- 
 tect to convert a very plain into a very splendid 
 exterior. For fifteen years the college was in 
 embryo, owing partly to these architectural diffi- 
 culties, and partly to others, some of which I cannot 
 find prominent allusion to in any of the reports or 
 documents emanating from the institution. There 
 
 * See the ninth subdivision of the twenty-first clause of 
 his will. -"
 
 10 
 
 have been rumors of obstinate and protracted 
 litigations, but since about these xXe'og- o/ov axouo/xsv, 
 I know nothing about them except from hearsay, 
 we may pass them briefly over. One might sus- 
 pect without being very superstitious, that these 
 delays were the first judgment of the Almighty on 
 an institution established in defiance of him. At 
 any rate, let one thing be borne in mind, the col- 
 lege has only been in operation two years. All 
 your fine talk therefore about " opening a fountain 
 of blessedness," &c. is quite gratuitous, being 
 founded, not on any actual experience or obser- 
 vation of the workings of this particular instance, 
 but on the general assumption, that the acquisi- 
 tion of knowledge or mental improvement must 
 necessarily in all cases be a blessing, which is 
 notoriously a disputed point. If we come to 
 d priori reasoning on the matter, it might be urged 
 with quite as much plausibility, that an educational 
 institution based on such a principle as the syste- 
 matic exclusion of all definite Christianity, could 
 not, from its very nature, prosper. Indeed, this 
 clause has been a great stumbling block to the 
 various eulogists of Mr. Girard, and it is painfully 
 amusing to see the various attempts they make to 
 gloss it over. They lay great stress on the fact, 
 that he does not express any hostility to Chris- 
 tianity, but only a fear of the " clashing doctrines"
 
 11 
 
 and "controversy" of " such a multitude of sects." 
 Now, as Christianity is made up of the various de- 
 nominations of Christians, this is something like 
 cutting off a man's limbs piecemeal while profess- 
 ing not to hurt the man himself. The children 
 are to be brought up " sober, truthful, indus- 
 trious," "according to the purest principles of 
 morality ;"* there is nothing said about their 
 being brought up Christians, and certainly they 
 are not to be brought up according to the tenets 
 of any denomination or denominations of Chris- 
 tians, all such teaching being stringently excluded 
 from the college. And as all Christians belong 
 to some denomination, if Mr. Girard intended that 
 his scholars should be Christians, either he must 
 have looked forward to their constituting a sect of 
 their own, or he must have had some idea of a 
 general Christian, without any distinctive rites or 
 theological opinions, like the general man of Plato, 
 and those who, after him, believed in the inde- 
 pendent existence of general ideas apart from 
 their individual attributes which is a very inge- 
 nious metaphysical notion (though even as that, it is 
 now pretty much exploded,) but not to be carried 
 out, or conceived of as able to be carried out, in 
 real practical life. It is possible that one of these 
 
 * See the same clause of the will.
 
 12 
 
 alternatives may have been in Stephen Girard's 
 mind ; it is more probable that, not being really a 
 Christian, he did not see the use of Christianity, 
 while, as a keen practical man, he had a sharp 
 eye for the abuses of sectarian polemics. In- 
 dustry, temperance, veracity, all the business vir- 
 tues, he adored, but had not sufficiently enlight- 
 ened views to perceive the intimate dependence of 
 "the purest principles of morality" on the Chris- 
 tian religion. Hence his scheme of turning all 
 clergymen bodily out of the college, because 
 different sects have a tendency to wrangle, which 
 seems to me about on a par with the conduct of a 
 man who should found an asylum, and because 
 there are Allopaths, and Homoeopaths, and Hydro- 
 paths, and various other paths and ways of kill- 
 ing and curing, the followers of which are accus- 
 tomed to abuse one another respectively, should 
 prohibit every M. D. whatsoever from entering 
 the premises of the said asylum. 
 
 One effect of this restriction, I think, must be 
 obvious to any one who considers the matter 
 seriously. It has a perilous tendency to give the 
 scholars a prejudice against all clergymen. 
 These orphans are fed, clothed, and taught gratui- 
 tously, they naturally are grateful to their bene- 
 factor, and learn to respect his memory and value 
 his opinions. They find out that no ministers of
 
 13 
 
 the Gospel are allowed to enter the college. If 
 they inquire into the reason of this prohibition, it 
 will reach their minds in some such form as this 
 that it was because ministers of different sects are 
 apt to quarrel. I do not see how the prestige can 
 be otherwise than unfavorable. As Mr. G. 
 intended that the children should be left to "adopt 
 such religious tenets as their maturer reason 
 might enable them to prefer," he probably was 
 afraid of their acquiring a prejudice in favor of 
 some denomination while at college, which would 
 be most effectively prevented by giving them an 
 impartial prejudice against the ministers of all 
 denominations. 
 
 One word more before taking leave of Stephen 
 Girard. The desire of immortality embraces 
 this world as well as the next. Man longs to 
 perpetuate his name upon earth. Most of us 
 01 tfoXXof seek to do it in the way alluded to by 
 Plato. Great spirits do it by splendid achieve- 
 ments of genius. Girard was not in a position to 
 continue his name and memory by either of these 
 methods. He had no family ; he was not a dis- 
 tinguished man in politics, science, or literature. 
 All his greatness consisted in his fortune. This, 
 and his name in connection with it, he could pre- 
 serve only by leaving it for some public object ; 
 and the disposition which he did make of it, for
 
 14 
 
 the instruction of men's minds to the neglect of 
 their souls, was not exactly the best conceivable, 
 nor the most likely to " open a fountain of bless-* 
 edness to the end of time." 
 
 John Jacob Astor, like Stephen Girard, was a 
 foreigner, who settled in this country and made a 
 large fortune by mercantile pursuits. Unlike 
 him, he had a family ; unlike him, too, he as- 
 pired to be something more than a mere man of 
 business. Though not a liberally educated man, 
 he enjoyed the society of literary men ; though 
 possessing no extraordinary means of political in- 
 formation or training, he saw further into the 
 interests, capacities, and destiny of the country of 
 his adoption, than those who were at the head of 
 the government. He had visions of founding a 
 great colony, and these visions were only pre- 
 vented becoming realities by the short-sightedness 
 of our rulers. It would be superfluous for me to 
 dilate upon the circumstances of his Pacific expe- 
 dition and settlement : they have already been 
 celebrated by the one man in America most capa- 
 ble of doing them justice. Mr. Astor asked of the 
 government but one sloop of war and a lieutenant's 
 commission for 'himself; with these he promised to 
 defend the territory since so famous as the Oregon, 
 and he could have done it, for the aborigines there 
 were then our friends. Our government did not
 
 see the importance of the region, and suffered it 
 to be captured by the British, and afterwards, 
 under the treaty of joint occupation, to fall virtually 
 into the hands of the Hudson's Bay Company, who 
 acquired the confidence of and control over the 
 natives. The consequences of this oversight were, 
 first, that during a period of nearly thirty years 
 enormous profits, which would otherwise have 
 accrued to American citizens, flowed into the 
 pockets of British subjects ; and, secondly, that 
 at the end of that time the question of dis- 
 puted territory tore open old wounds, revived the 
 worst animosities which had been rapidly dying 
 away, and nearly involved the two countries in a 
 terrible war. The clear head which would have 
 prevented these losses and mischiefs distinctly 
 foresaw them. After the treaty of Ghent was 
 concluded, Mr. Astor said to his friend, Albert 
 Gallatin, " I am very much pleased with all that 
 you, gentlemen, [the Commissioners,] have done, 
 but there are some things which you ought not to 
 have left undone. You should have settled more 
 definitely the question of the Columbia territo- 
 ry." Mr. Gallatin was a most able and long- 
 headed "man, but even he did not appreciate the 
 correctness of his friend's views, and attributed to 
 personal feelings the importance which Mr. A. at- 
 tached to the subject. He answered with a smile,
 
 16 
 
 " Never mind, Mr. Astor, it will be time enough 
 for our great-grandchildren to talk about that in 
 two hundred years." " If we live," replied the 
 -other, " we shall see trouble about it in less than 
 forty years." He lived to see his prediction veri- 
 fied within the given time. And this is the man 
 whom you represent as a mere skinflint, who had 
 no idea beyond his money-bags. 
 
 When Mr. Astor found that his efforts for the 
 public benefit were not understood, he did what it 
 would be well if more people did now-a-days he 
 confined himself to his own business, and by it a- 
 massed a fortune, stated by his executors to be a 
 little less, but generally presumed to be a little 
 more than eight millions of dollars. Of this he 
 bequeathed the great bulk to his eldest son, a res- 
 pectable competence to his daughter and grand- 
 children, fifty thousand dollars to the poor of his 
 native village in Germany, and four hundred 
 thousand for the establishment of a public library 
 in this city. 
 
 It is not generally considered that Mr. Astor's 
 will was in all respects an equitable one, and I 
 certainly should be the last to maintain that it was. 
 I do believe, however, that he intended to* provide 
 handsomely for all his near relatives, but that, du- 
 ring the latter years of his life, when his bodily 
 infirmities prevented him from taking note of mat.
 
 17 
 
 ters that did not fall immediately under his daily 
 observation at home, he was imposed upon by 
 lawyers and other designing men. Be this as it 
 may, it has nothing to do with the question 
 between us, for you do not blame John Jacob 
 Astor because he left too little to some of his 
 relatives, but because he left anything to any of 
 them. 
 
 To return, then, to the Astor Library. It is 
 very easy to sneer at a bequest of " only half a 
 million, or less than half a million of dollars;" 
 words cost nothing, and any man can afford to be 
 liberal of another's property. But I maintain 
 that the endowment is not a despicable one, 
 whether considered positively in itself or com- 
 paratively with reference to Mr. Astor's fortune. 
 It is not an every-day occurrence for a man to 
 leave even one-sixteenth of his property to the 
 public, and the sum left is sufficient to establish a 
 library much superior to any now existing in the 
 country. And I assert, that the disposition of this 
 money was a particularly good and wise one, and 
 that the institution is eminently calculated to be a 
 benefit and an honor to this city. It is less grand 
 and imposing than the Girard College ; there is 
 less of it ; but it is also less open to objection, and 
 in some points more calculated to command 
 
 B*
 
 respect. How, for instance, would the two insti- 
 tut : ons strike an intelligent foreigner 1 An 
 Englishman comes here, or is sent here by 
 authority, to observe the state of education and 
 knowledge among us. According to the natural 
 order of things he is a clergyman, education in 
 England being placed almost entirely in the hands 
 of that class. In the one case, he finds a library 
 open to all decent people and well provided with 
 valuable works of all sorts ; he is politely received 
 by the accomplished and learned superintendent, 
 and, after seeing all that is to be seen, is informed 
 that the trustees will be much obliged to him if 
 he can, from his special professional knowledge 
 or otherwise, suggest any books which the library 
 ought to, but does not possess. In the other, he 
 has a very fine view of the outside of a grand 
 edifice, which he is not permitted to enter for fear 
 of causing disputes and controversy ! 
 
 It is not, however, rny present intention to ela- 
 borate a panegyric upon my grandfather, nor was 
 the vindication of his memory from your attack 
 my only or principal motive for addressing you 
 this letter. That attack was but an individual 
 instance of misrepresentation ; there are general 
 opinions broadly announced in your lecture which 
 provoke animadversion opinions which are often 
 promulgated in disreputable quarters, but which
 
 I never before detected coming from' a respectable 
 source. 
 
 On your 61st page I find these words: '' Vast 
 fortunes are a misfortune to the state. They con- 
 fer irresponsible power; and human nature, 
 except in the rarest instances, has proved inca- 
 pable of wielding irresponsible power without 
 abuse. The feudalism of capital is not a whit 
 less formidable than the feudalism of force. The 
 millionaire is as dangerous to the welfare of the 
 community in our day, as was the baronial lord 
 of the Middle Ages." 
 
 Such language coming from a man in your po- 
 sition should be characterized as it deserves, with- 
 out any ^iphemism or affectation of delicacy. It 
 is perilous nonsense : it is a groundless and wicked 
 absurdity. How is the millionaire dangerous to 
 the communily ? What special privileges has he ? 
 What exemption from the law ? What attribute 
 of feudalism or aristocracy ? In what possible 
 sense is he irresponsible ? What power does his 
 money give him to infringe on the rights of others, 
 or to force their consciences ? What can he do to 
 divert the course of justice, or to modify the expres- 
 sion of the popular voice ? Is there a millionaire 
 in New- York or Boston who could change the vote 
 of his own coachman ? To talk of the political in- 
 fluence of a rich man in this country, is like
 
 20 
 
 talking of a Highlander's trousers, or an anti- 
 renter's honesty, or Northern aggressions on the 
 South, or anything which is notoriously nothing 
 at all. It is a subject proper only for meta- 
 physical treatises like Plato's Sophist, which 
 discuss the existence of non-existences. Or is the 
 rich man able to pervert justice and warp the 
 integrity of our tribunals? Desire of popularity, 
 and fear of opposing the tide of public opinion, 
 have, it must be owned with shame, sometimes 
 exercised an undue influence on judges and jurors 
 and counsel, but I think it would not be possible 
 to produce, from the annals of our jurisprudence, a 
 single case in which a suitor has obtained more 
 than his due, or a criminal escaped the punish- 
 ment due him, by the mere power of his wealth. 
 Having had some opportunities of observing what 
 power and influence wealth really does confer 
 among us, I have found it to amount usually to 
 this, that if a man is rich and known to be liberal 
 in the way of entertaining, he will find some half- 
 dozen people to toady him for the sake of his 
 dinners. 
 
 In fact, so far from a rich man's having any 
 unfair advantage in the community, he labors 
 under many positive disadvantages ; so far from 
 his being to treat others unfairly, he is continually 
 liable to be unfairly treated himself. The popu-
 
 lar prejudice is always against him, whether he 
 is a party in a law-suit, or a mover in any public 
 matter, or whether he merely expresses an opin- 
 ion. Let me relate an anecdote which I do not 
 merely " believe," but know to be authentic. Two 
 American gentlemen meet abroad, one a youth 
 just emerging into manhood, with some literary 
 taste and intellectual promise, the other a middle- 
 aged man of the world, with much political and 
 social experience. Says the junior, in the course 
 of a long talk about things at home, " When I 
 return, I mean to write a serie(us of pamphlets on 
 such and such subjects," (naming certain leading 
 questions of the day.) " You had better save 
 yourself the trouble," replies his older and more 
 experienced friend, " for the very fact of your 
 being a rich man will destroy any weight that 
 your suggestions might otherwise have." Indeed, 
 not only the actual possession, but the bare repu- 
 tation or suspicion of wealth, will often annihilate 
 a man's public influence, and make him distrusted. 
 A person with wealthy connections and refined 
 habits will readily incur the penalty of being de- 
 nounced as a millionaire and an aristocrat con- 
 vertible terms of opprobrium with many scribblers 
 here.* 
 
 * I do not mean to say that there is no aristocracy in 
 the country that is to say, no set or sets of men who use
 
 If we look for the cause of this treatment, we 
 shall not he very far wrong in attributing it to 
 the spirit of envy, which modern democracy pro- 
 duces and fosters. There has been a great deal 
 said about the peculiar dangers of democracy, 
 and the various abuses to which our political and 
 social forms are prone ; but it really does 
 seem to me, that this, which has never to my 
 knowledge been specially dwelt upon by any 
 writer on the subject, is the very worst evil 
 chargeable on democracy. As soon as a man 
 does anything, or has anything done to him, to 
 put him above others in any way, he violates the 
 first article of the democratic creed, " Every 
 man's as good as another."* Instead of a legiti- 
 mate source of pride, as he would be in most 
 
 their own, so as to abuse their neighbors, who infringe 
 upon other people's rights, and exercise a tyranny over 
 other people's amusements and occupations. There is a 
 sufficiency of suck aristocracy among us ; so far as my 
 observation has extended, it is composed chiefly of the 
 following classes : 1st, Omnibus drivers 2d, Hotel- 
 keepers 3d, Newspaper editors 1th, Blackguards and 
 rowdies generally, such as the people who stormed the 
 Opera House, and drove Macready out of New- York. 
 
 * It is hardly necessary to observe, that I do not use 
 the words democracy and democrats in their technical party 
 sense. I am quite aware that you are called a whig, and 
 sometimes vote with the whigs in Congress.
 
 countries, he becomes an object of suspicion and 
 hatred. We see the greatest and worst develop, 
 ment of this feeling in the universally admitted 
 fact, that to be a great statesman, and generally 
 acknowledged as such, is precisely the way not 
 to become President of the United States, and the 
 little germs of it are traceable in the petty local 
 dislikes felt for, and annoyances aimed at, any 
 man who happens to have a finer house, larger 
 library, or better appointed equipage, than his 
 neighbors. True, as the spirit of admiration 
 for superiority is natural to man, and not to be 
 altogether eradicated by any adverse influences, 
 there are some kinds of excellence which still 
 command honor among us. In the South and 
 South- West, military glory is at a premium, and 
 the successful general meets with a full apprecia- 
 tion of his merits. In the North and East, litera- 
 ture, up to a certain point, is very popular; indeed, 
 it finds great sympathy as a very excellent demo- 
 cratic pursuit, almost every third man or woman 
 being, in some sense or nonsense of the term, an 
 author. And a literary man stands more chance 
 of being spoiled by flattery, than soured by de- 
 traction unless he should dare to oppose the cur- 
 rent of any popular opinion ; in that case, all his 
 talent cannot save him. With these exceptions, 
 it may be safely affirmed, that as soon as a man
 
 24 
 
 becomes conspicuous for anything, so soon is he 
 slandered and hated ; and of no class of persons 
 is this truer than those whom you stigmatize as 
 " equally dangerous to the community with the 
 baronial lards of the Middle Ages." 
 
 Take an obvious example. Our newspapers, 
 which are generally conducted by average speci- 
 mens of the people at large, which, collectively, 
 exercise an immense influence on public opinion, 
 and in return, pretend with tolerable truth to be a 
 reflex of that opinion, have, with a few honorable 
 exceptions, a special penchant for abusing rich 
 men, and inventing or circulating things to their 
 prejudice. If a rich man is in business, of course 
 he is making his money by dishonest practices. 
 If not in business, he must necessarily be idle, 
 and therefore vicious, it being a matter of course 
 that a man cannot be occupied, unless he is visi- 
 ble so many hours a day in a store or office, and 
 equally so, that he must be a votary of dissipa- 
 tion, unless he goes through a certain routine of 
 work every morning. If he gives money for any 
 public object, he is not praised for his liberality, 
 but abused for not giving more. If he spends his 
 wealth in fostering art or literature, he ought to 
 have built hospitals or free-schools with it. If he 
 is in any trouble or affliction, a great shout of joy 
 is set up, and the affair is placarded as much as
 
 possible. Now, these gentlemen of the press 
 know pretty well their own pecuniary interests, 
 whatever may be their ignorance on other impor- 
 tant points ; and with all their horror of rich men, 
 have a knack of filling their own pockets comfor- 
 tably ; and they would not be so ready to abuse 
 the wealthy, unless it paid to do it. 
 
 And now, sir, you, by incorrect and mischievous 
 assertions, made deliberately, and in a most public 
 manner, are doing your best to aid and abet, and 
 increase this prejudice and tyranny of an unjust 
 public opinion. 
 
 What can have been your motive or reason, or 
 excuse, for so doing ? It is just possible that hav- 
 ing, among other hobbies, ridden that of abolition 
 pretty hard, and having become thoroughly im- 
 bued with a detestation of the injustice involved 
 in the idea of a slaveholding millionaire, you have 
 come, by that confusion of similar ideas, which is 
 the commonest of American fallacies, to associate 
 wealth with oppression, so that you deem the fac- 
 tory operative the slave of the factory owner, the 
 servant of the master, and generally the employed 
 of the employer. To this suspicion, a color is 
 lent by the sentence on your next page, " The 
 power of money is as imperial as the power of the 
 sword, and I may as well depend upon another 
 man for my head as for my bread." Now, I will 
 c
 
 not stop to expose the inapplicability of such a 
 supposition to our country, that has been done al- 
 ready often enough. I will only say, if you really 
 believe this, then you are the most inconsistent of 
 men in keeping up an agitation in and out of Con- 
 gress, against Southern slavery you are a most 
 gratuitous and unwarrantable meddler in pouring 
 out the vials of your wrath on the inhabitants of 
 one part of the country, for practising exactly 
 what exists, by your own statement, under a dif- 
 ferent form in your own part of the country. And 
 the representatives from Carolina and Georgia, 
 who tell you to go home and mind your own bu- 
 siness, for your laboring classes are as badly off 
 as your slaves, will be perfectly in the right. I 
 had always supposed, that when the fierce strife of 
 words arose in our national halls of legislation 
 between Northerner and Southerner, that it was 
 because the white laborer here was not to be com- 
 pared to the black slave there, because it was a 
 foul wrong and a vile slander, to make the com- 
 parison, because the good people of Ohio had sent 
 " Tom Corwin the waggoner's boy" to the Feder- 
 al Senate, and the wood-sawyer's son sat next 
 to the ex-President's in the schools of Boston, that 
 the Representatives of Northern labor Horace 
 Mann among them were so eager to repel the 
 taunt and invective of the slaveholder, and to roll
 
 27 
 
 back upon him his arrogant assertion. To be 
 sure, I have not read Congressional speeches very 
 attentively, nor am I curious in discovering how 
 far the meridian under which a man is speaking 
 influences his assertions and arguments. But no ! 
 it cannot be. A man like you must know better 
 than this. I am forced to conclude that you were 
 tempted by the euphonious jingle of " bread" and 
 " head," and the desire, like Mr. Pecksniff, of 
 turning an elegant period, without being particu- 
 larly solicitous that it should mean anything. 
 
 Even at the South, it would not be correct to 
 say that wealth exercises a dangerous or inju- 
 rious influence. The evil is, not that one man 
 holds three slaves, and another three thousand, 
 but that any man holds slaves at all. There is a 
 ruling class and a subject class ; the one race 
 oppresses the other ; but there is no social or poli- 
 tical oppression exercised by particular members 
 of the ruling class over the rest of their body. 
 Among the whites there is as much, or nearly as 
 much equality as at the North. The Virginians, 
 for instance, are known to be all on a level, every 
 man we meet from the state belonging to " one of 
 the first families" in it. But this, by the way. 
 
 I was trying to find your reason for a very un- 
 reasonable proposition which you had laid down. 
 The first attempt being unsuccessful, we must try
 
 28 
 
 again. A few lines lower, on the same page, (the 
 62d,) I find this sentence : 
 
 " Weighed in the balances of the sanctuary, or 
 even in the clumsy scales of human justice, there 
 is no equity in the allotments which assign to one 
 man but a dollar a day with working, while ano- 
 ther has an income of a dollar a minute without 
 working." 
 
 The clumsy scales of human justice have al- 
 ways allowed one man to be richer than another. 
 The balance of the sanctuary allows one man to 
 be stronger, handsomer, healthier, wiser, than 
 another. Is inequality in all things injustice? 
 Very possibly you hope to annihilate all these in- 
 equalities, by observance of the physical laws, 
 and to make men all equal in health, strength, 
 beauty and intelligence, as well as in property. 
 If your allusion to the Divine government of the 
 world is intended to mean anything, you must 
 have some such vision. As to the human part of 
 the proposition, if, I say again, your assertion 
 means anything, it is mere absolute Socialism. 
 This man lives in a fine house without having to 
 work. I have to work, and am poor. This is un- 
 just to me. I have as good a right to the money 
 as he has, and if ever I grow strong enough, am 
 justified in seizing it. La propriety c'est le vol. 
 
 It is an old story to expose such fallacies, but
 
 29 
 
 when they are repeated and endorsed by a man of 
 your position and character, it seems necessary to 
 take some notice of them, even at the risk of say- 
 ing over again what has been better said a thou- 
 sand times before. What is work ? Is there no 
 work but carrying a hoe or wielding a spade ? Is 
 all work equally valuable ; or is the value of 
 work to the community to be measured by the 
 physical labor expended, or the time occupied in 
 it ? Supposing one man, by his mechanical inge- 
 nuity and study, and enterprize, produces an in- 
 vention which adds millions every year to the 
 wealth of his country ; is it unjust that he should 
 get some droppings of the golden shower, and en- 
 joy a large fortune for the rest of his life ? Is it 
 not bare justice and honesty on the part of the 
 nation, acting as between man and man, to allow 
 him this advantage ? Nay, more ; as he may, in 
 many instances, not have achieved his task till 
 arrived at a time of life when it is too late for him 
 to get the full enjoyment of his worldly wealth, is 
 it unjust that he should be allowed to bequeath it 
 to his nearest and dearest relatives ? Such a 
 state of things is a direct analogy with the moral 
 government of the world, under which, as you 
 yourself have taken pains to show, (p. 19,) the 
 bodily and mental defects and excellencies of the 
 parents are very frequently inherited by the chil-
 
 dren. Suppose a man has written a book that 
 will last as long as the language in which it is 
 written, and give pleasure and profit to millions of 
 readers for successive ages. If he happens to get 
 more than a usual share of the good things of the 
 world, ought we to cry out against this as an in- 
 justice ? Ought we not rather to pray that it 
 might happen oftener ? Suppose he practises a 
 literary leisure in the intervals of composition, and 
 cannot positively be said to do anything for some 
 months in the year, is he entitled to no more in- 
 dulgence than the hod-carrier at a dollar a day, 
 whose influence upon society is confined to the 
 number of houses he helps to build, unless he 
 chances to break his neighbor's head, and figure 
 in the police reports of the day ? The " injustice" 
 will hardly hold good then, I think, any more 
 than the " Feudality." But perhaps rich people 
 are dangerous to the community, from the mis- 
 chief they do in a negative way, by their idleness. 
 You are terribly severe upon idleness as " the 
 most absurd of absurdities, and the most shameful 
 of shames." But here, again, it is necessary to 
 examine into the signification of our words. By 
 idleness, you evidently mean independence the 
 absence of a fixed, imperative daily occupation, 
 and the freedom to choose and vary one's occupa- 
 tion from day to day. This is clear by your il-
 
 31 
 
 lustration of " wealth that breeds idleness," the 
 English peerage. This example struck me the 
 more, because at the very time of reading your 
 pamphlet, I happened to be in daily communica- 
 tion with a member of that peerage, a very young 
 man, heir apparent to one of the most distinguish- 
 ed titles in his country, and a harder working man 
 of his age, or one in a more complete state of 
 training, physical and mental, I have never met 
 with. He is not obliged to labor for his bread at 
 any fixed occupation, and therefore you would 
 call him a " bivalve" and other hard names, but 
 he does the work of two men every day of his life, 
 and his services to the community of which he is 
 a member, are worth those of a great many day- 
 laborers or clerks put together. I have known 
 or met a number of young men of the same class, 
 not all equally learned or intelligent, but all of 
 them decidedly men, who had, by study or exer- 
 cise, made the most of what natural gifts they 
 possessed, and were very respectably qualified to 
 take part in the government of their country ; and 
 would be the first to turn out and fight for it, if it 
 were threatened from abroad. 
 
 With regard to the " specimens which are be- 
 ginning to abound here/' I fear it must be conceded 
 that their time is not always so diligently or pro- 
 fitably employed. But they have the excuse that,
 
 crwing to the popular prejudice already alluded to, 
 the most natural as well as most honorable path 
 of duty is virtually closed against them. 
 
 But let us go a little farther into first principles. 
 I positively deny that the absence of occupation is 
 necessarily in itself a disgraceful absurdity, and 
 I still more positively deny that work is neces- 
 sarily in itself honorable and profitable. A great 
 deal of idleness is from its very nature innocuous. 
 A great deal of occupation is directly mischievous. 
 One of two brothers lives quietly and lazily in the 
 house of his fathers ; the other works all day to pull 
 it down, having no means to provide a new one. He 
 is occupied intensely but would it not be better 
 for himself and the family, that he should emulate 
 his brother's idleness ? A demagogue lecturer, 
 member of Congress, or otherwise exerts him- 
 self to foster social or sectional prejudices, to set 
 one class, or one interest, or one division of a coun- 
 try, against another ; he is very busily employed ; 
 but is he not more mischievous in his influence on 
 society than the club-room lounger, who plays 
 billiards half the morning? There are many 
 hard-working people whom it would be a mercy 
 to mankind to keep quiet, and not a few idle 
 people whom I, for one, should be very sorry to 
 see attempting any business. Add to this, that 
 a great deal of what popularly passes for idleness
 
 33 
 
 is in its results very effective performance,* and 
 you have somewhat of a case made out for the 
 man of no fixed daily occupation. 
 
 The purport of the preceding paragraphs 
 (somewhat desultory, I confess, but not altogether 
 undesignedly so, from a desire to view the subject 
 in several lights,) is that the capitalists of this 
 country are, neither as a class nor as individuals, 
 possessed of any unjust power in the state, or in any 
 way dangerous to the community which indeed 
 one would think must be a truism to any man of 
 ordinary intelligence, information and honesty. 
 
 Discussing the powers of a class naturally 
 brings us to the discussion of their responsibilities, 
 since responsibility is directly proportioned to 
 power. And since in this case you exaggerate 
 the power, it is to be expected that you should 
 .exaggerate the responsibility also. Since you 
 compare the power of wealthy republicans to that 
 of feudal barons, we may well suppose that you 
 will expect them to exert as much influence on the 
 state of society. But your notion of responsibility 
 
 * " Imagine an active bustling little praetor under 
 Augustus, how he probably pointed out Horace to his 
 sons, as a moony kind of man, whose ways were much to 
 be avoided, and told them it was a weakness in Augustus 
 to like such idle men about him, instead of men of 
 business.'' Helps' Friends in Council.
 
 34 
 
 is the queerest ever heard of, for it consists in 
 holding the man responsible for precisely that 
 which he does not do and cannot prevent.* Be- 
 cause some shameless woman lives by prostitution, 
 it is wrong for Mr. A. to go to the Opera. Because 
 some vagabond gets drunk and beats his wife, Mr. 
 B. " incurs enormous guilt" in buying a Turner 
 or sitting to Gray for his portrait. Because some 
 Irishman, under the baneful direction of his priest, 
 will not let his children go to school, Mr. C. is a 
 monster of iniquity for "walling himself in" with 
 a large library. We are just about as much 
 responsible for these things as you are for the 
 existence of slavery in the state of Georgia, and 
 by the sacrifice of all " our superfluous wealth and 
 time" could do about as much to prevent them as 
 you could to put down slavery by devoting all 
 your spare Congressional pay to buying up the 
 slaves of Mr. Toombs, or by going yourself into 
 the great but barbarous nation of South Carolina, 
 
 and getting yourself torn to pieces by the savage 
 
 u u-. 
 
 inhabitants. 
 
 Certainly there is one case in which men of 
 fortune and leisure in a large city are responsible 
 for the vice and misery in it when, by their bad 
 example, they tend to increase both. If they fre- 
 
 * Pp. (JO and 82.
 
 95 
 
 quent gambling tails and other haunts of dissipa- 
 tion, if they patronize the black-leg and the bawd, 
 if they waste in dishonor what their fathers hon- 
 orably acquired then they, in common with the 
 members of other classes who participate in these 
 practices, lie under the awful responsibility of 
 having produced misery by encouraging vice. 
 But unless it can be shown that such melancholy 
 examples are more common in the wealthiest class 
 than in any other, it is unfair and absurd to throw 
 upon it the whole responsibility. And I make 
 bold to say, that whether in point of obedience to 
 the laws of the land or to the requisitions of 
 morality, this much abused class will compare 
 favorably with the rest of society. Those mem- 
 bers of it who are still making money, are too 
 much engrossed with their business to do mischief 
 to any one ; and if the younger portion has some 
 follies, such as dancing ten hours a day in New. 
 York, or training fast horses in Philadelphia, or 
 making bad copies of good pictures in Boston, 
 these frivolities are injurious only to themselves, 
 and very far from exercising a feudal tyranny 
 over the rest of the community. It would be 
 as reasonable to say that the butterfly was a 
 dangerous member of the animal kingdom, or to 
 hold it responsible for the misdeeds of the lion 
 and the hyena-
 
 I wonder it never occurred to you, that by ex- 
 aggerating the po\ver of money, you were fur- 
 nishing a fearful stimulus to the pursuit of wealth 
 for improper motives. True, you may say, " I 
 have furnished the antidote along with the bane ;" 
 but the bane affects the very persons who will not 
 be affected by the antidote. You inflame a young 
 man's imagination, by suggesting to him the ac- 
 quisition of an extra-legal, irresponsible power, 
 giving as a reason for his not wishing to seek 
 wealth, the very thing that will make him desire 
 it ; nor does the Hibernian after-thought of ex- 
 aggerating the responsibility of the irresponsible 
 power mend the matter at all. It is like the play 
 of Jack Sheppard, where the final execution of 
 the robber-hero does not present a moral sufficient 
 to counterbalance the previous fascinating exhi- 
 bition of his free and easy life. 
 . But there is one power which the rich man 
 has, not only not dangerous, but in the highest 
 degree beneficial to the community. It is the 
 power of encouraging Art and Literature. And 
 since the taste which energizes this power is more 
 usually developed in the second generation than 
 in the first, it is rather to be desired than depreca- 
 ted, that we had more men educated to spend 
 money. I wish most heartily that there were 
 more men among us able to incur the enormous
 
 guilt of having large libraries, and beautiful pic- 
 ture galleries. For as to saying that these things 
 should be the work of the State, which is the 
 dream of some people, it would be as reasonable 
 to suppose, that virtuous laws and institutions 
 could prevail in a nation individually profligate, 
 as that a people can encourage art and literature, 
 if the individuals composing it are semi-literate, 
 (if I may be allowed to coin a word for the occa- 
 sion,) and unaesthetic. 
 
 Here, however, we come to a direct issue. So 
 far from thinking the encouragement of literature 
 and the arts desirable for and glorious to a 
 nation, you view them as comparatively useless, 
 if not altogether pernicious. 
 
 This is, after all, our great cause of quarrel. 
 Had it not been for these disparaging remarks of 
 yours, I should probably have remained silent. 
 But, a. delighted worshipper of art, and, it would 
 be absurd to say a literary man, but I may say, a 
 constant and devoted student of literature one 
 who believes these to be two mighty influences 
 toward, and tests of, civilization, is disposed to re- 
 sent most promptly, from motives of duty as well 
 as feeling, all assaults made upon them by either 
 the Puritan or the Utilitarian. Your remarks, cer- 
 tainly more honest and undisguised than any I 
 D
 
 38 
 
 have met with in writers of the same school, go 
 very far to confirm the opinion authorised by 
 many able men, that the present spirit of radical- 
 ism, and self-styled " progress," is progress the 
 wrong way, destructive of civilization and culti- 
 vation, and altogether barbarizing in its tendency. 
 On the subject of the Fine Arts, I shall not say 
 much. A certain amountof sympathy with them, 
 and appreciation of them, (which may exist with- 
 out any practical ability of performance in them,) 
 seems necessary to any person before he can be 
 put on common ground with their advocates. 
 They are like the Spanish mariner in the ballad 
 
 " Yo no digo esta cancion sino a quien comigo va." 
 
 " Wouldst thou learn my galley's secret ? 
 With my galley thou must go." 
 
 ' A man may be ignorant of music in a scienti- 
 fic point of view ; he may be unable to explain 
 critically its beneficial influence on himself and 
 others ; but if he cannot feel, and does not 
 acknowledge any such influence, it seems to me 
 there must be something radically wrong about 
 him. A poet who is usually allowed to be a great 
 master of human nature, though he did live before 
 the spiritual laws were discovered by the cranio- 
 logists, has said
 
 39 
 
 " The man who hath no music in his soul, 
 * * * * 
 
 !{. ' t i$t Y.l'JV 
 Let no suck man be trusted. " 
 
 I very much fear that Horace Mann has no 
 music in his soul, and is not to be trusted for an 
 opinion on the virtue and value of music. About 
 painting you have said more. Here you lay 
 great stress on an antagonism which has no exis- 
 tence. You extol the beauties of nature, and 
 commend them to our contemplation, instead of 
 those of art.* Now, not only is there no natural 
 antipathy or incompatibility between the two 
 pursuits, but they naturally go together, and reci- 
 procally encourage and help each other. Who is 
 a more ardent admirer and diligent student of 
 nature than the landscape-painter? He could 
 not be a landscape-painter if he were not. This 
 eye for nature is the first requisite in his art. And 
 what makes one more anxious to see a striking 
 or beautiful place, than the sight of a truthful 
 and competent representation of it ? People who 
 have learned to appreciate the beauties of art, 
 have acquired, pari passu, a deep appreciation of 
 natural beauty. People who systematically de- 
 spise and ignore art, are ready to practise any 
 barbarity upon nature. I have seen men who, 
 
 * Pp. 49, 50.
 
 40 
 
 standing before Raphael's Transfiguration, audibly 
 wished they had half the money it cost ; and I 
 have seen the same men reading newspapers, when 
 they had only to lift their eyes to behold the most 
 gorgeous autumnal sunset. The utilitarian who 
 sneers at the expenditure of five thousand dollars 
 for a picture, would be the first man to build a 
 rag mill over a cascade, or drain a lake for an 
 acre of pasture ground. A Mr. Jervis, engineer 
 of a railroad company, recommended a route 
 which defaces the whole east bank of the Hudson, 
 as far as the road extends, and one of his avowed 
 reasons was, that the appearance of the shore 
 would be improved by cutting away its sharp 
 curves, and filling up its bays ! There is a fair 
 specimen of the veneration for nature, that you 
 may expect from an unartistic and unsesthetic 
 man. 
 
 But your observations on literature merit a 
 more careful examination and discussion, for the 
 extraordinary fallacies which they involve, and 
 that too on a subject which one cannot suppose 
 you ignorant of, or incompetent to appreciate. 
 The First Secretary of the Massachusetts Board 
 of Education must be, I should think, to some ex- 
 tent, a literary man. Yet we find you under- 
 valuing literature, because it is not something 
 different from itself, because it is not intimately
 
 connected with something, with, w,hich it cannot 
 possibly be intimately connected. You begin 
 with a very ad captandum antithesis. " Litera- 
 ture is mainly conversant with the works of man, 
 while science deals with the works of God ; and 
 the difference in the subject matter of the two, 
 indicates the difference in their relative value, 
 and in the power and happiness they can respec- 
 tively bestow" (p. 51.) The statement is very 
 effective, but it is obtained only by leaving out a 
 considerable portion of the truth on both sides. 
 In the first place, literature is conversant, not 
 only with the works of man, but with the mind of 
 man, the greatest of all God's works in this 
 world. Here the literary men had the start of 
 the metaphysicians by hundreds and thousands of 
 years. But, further, when the poet celebrates in 
 song the beauties of nature, is he not dealing with 
 the works of God ? When the scientific man 
 writes or lectures about pumps, and pulleys, and 
 screws, and levers, and all sorts of mechanism, is 
 he not conversant with the works of man ? No 
 doubt, he does frequently deal with the works of 
 God. Mr. Jervis was dealing with the works of 
 God, when he defaced the most beautiful river in 
 the world ; and very foul dealing it is sometimes, 
 and a great bore to the said works, and not at all 
 calculated to improve the mind. Suppose I were
 
 42 
 
 to begin an argument with such a sentence as this, 
 " Literature is conversant with mind, while 
 science deals with matter, and the difference in 
 the subject of the two indicates the difference in 
 their respective value." You would cry out 
 against the unfairness of the assumption, but it 
 would be just as fair as yours, which asserts of 
 the whole field of science what is true only of one 
 subordinate department of it criticism. 
 
 " A vast proportion of our literature consists of 
 what had been written, or is a reproduction of 
 what had been written before the truths of modern 
 science were discovered." 
 
 And what if it was ? So far as this has any 
 bearing on its value, it would be as much to the 
 purpose to say, that it had been written before 
 M. Soyer invented the omelette a la Beelzebub, or 
 Horace Greely set up the New- York Tribune. 
 Do men go to the historian, the dramatist, or the 
 poet, to learn natural science, or technical meta- 
 physics? Does it enter into their vocation to 
 teach such things ? Did any man who knew the 
 meaning of words ever ask it of them ? And if 
 not, how are they, in their literary capacity, con- 
 cerned by the progress of science ? To insist on 
 condemning literature, because it has been devel- 
 oped faster than science, is a most extraordinary 
 instance of inability to discriminate between two
 
 43 
 
 tilings essentially different. For not only does 
 literature not depend upon science for any of its 
 essentials, but any attempt to transfer the language 
 of the one to the other, is, ipso facto, an inconve- 
 nience, an absurdity, or a burlesque. In mathe- 
 matical science, for instance, the excellence of a 
 proposition is, that it be expressed in the fewest 
 words, consistent with intelligibility ; indeed, sym- 
 bols are used as much as possible to the exclusion 
 of words. Any ornament is not merely super- 
 fluous, but injurious. The science of law, though 
 not exactly similar in respect of brevity, is 
 equally sedulous to avoid the ornaments and 
 graces of language. And, generally, the unpoeti- 
 cal suggestions and tendencies of science are all 
 but proverbial. When, therefore, you say, that 
 "All science may be invested with the charms of 
 literature," (p. 52,) and that " there is no reason 
 why literature should not hereafter be founded on 
 science," (p. 54,) your conceit is not merely impos- 
 sible, but farcical. Every word in it is a joke, 
 to which the Loves of the Triangles, and Punch's 
 Lays of the Acids and Alkalies, are sober serious- 
 ness. 
 
 That the progress of natural science should 
 have influence on Theology, was natural enough ; 
 and at one or two epochs there has seemed dan- 
 ger of their interfering. Happily the danger was
 
 44 
 
 only seeming. The wisest men have agreed that 
 Genesis and Geology are reconcilable, and that 
 Joshua's commanding the sun to stand still does 
 not altogether disprove the authenticity of the Old 
 Testament. It is generally admitted that the 
 Scriptures were not written to leach men natural 
 science. 
 
 Yet there was at least a speciousness in the 
 claim that our religious standard should conform 
 1o the progress of modern scientific discovery ; but 
 to insist on such a conformity in our literary stand- 
 ard, or to condemn them for not possessing it, has 
 no such excuse ; because, first, the things are 
 totally different in themselves, and secondly, the 
 facts of the case abundantly refute you, it being, 
 for instance, well known that while the ancient 
 Greeks were very badly off for physical science, 
 their literary works take rank with any since pro- 
 duced. If I were to urge against the value of 
 some recent discovery in Medicine, Astronomy, or 
 Mechanics, that it was made in an age which 
 could boast of few great literary men, you would 
 laugh at the irrelevancy of my objection ; yet 
 this would be the very counterpart of your charge 
 against the " vast proportion of our literature," 
 that it was written before the truths of modern 
 science were discovered. 
 
 Again I find, about a page farther on, that the
 
 same " vast proportion of the existing literature 
 has as little relation to metaphysical truth as the 
 speculations of the schoolmen before the time of 
 Bacon had to physical laws. It is not true that 
 Aristotle and his followers invented laws for na- 
 ture which she never owned, and explained her 
 phenomena on principles that never existed, than 
 it is that most of those works which we call works 
 of the imagination assume the existence of spirit- 
 ual laws, such as the spirit of man never knew, 
 and therefore produce results of action and char- 
 acter, such as all experience repudiates. Hence 
 it is, that I would commend science more than lit- 
 erature, as an improver of the mind." 
 
 Hence it is. Voila parceque votre fille est 
 muette. The milk in the cocoa-nut is now satis- 
 factorily accounted for. But let us examine the 
 premises of this luminous inference with a little 
 care. " Metaphysical truth." Does this refer to 
 mere technical and formal metaphysics, or to 
 those practical metaphysics which constitute what 
 is called a knowledge of character and human na- 
 ture, and enable the writer to portray human na- 
 ture accurately. If to the latter, it is positively 
 incorrect and contrary to the facts of the case. 
 Have the great poets, dramatists and novelists, 
 from Homer and Sophocles to Shakespeare and 
 Scott, displayed an ignorance of human nature,
 
 46 
 
 t 
 
 and misrepresented it ? Are there any evidences 
 that the writers of the present or coming genera- 
 tion will surpass them in this respect? If it re- 
 fers to the former, it is altogether irrelevant, and 
 but a repetition of your former fallacy of confu- 
 sion. But even if it were not, are you certain 
 that all existing science has a correct relation to 
 metaphysical truth. Do mathematics and meta- 
 physics, for example, always walk hand in hand ? 
 I have seen mathematical text- books of reputation, 
 in which fundamental mechanical propositions, 
 such as the Parallelogram of Forces, were proved 
 by arguing in a circle. When it comes to the 
 Doctrine of Chances, which involves metaphysical 
 as well as mathematical elements, your mere ma- 
 thematicians make the wildest work, as any one 
 who has the good fortune to be a good mathemati- 
 cian and metaphysician both will tell you. 
 And in one of the best and best known metaphys- 
 ical works of the day, Mills' System of Logic, some 
 of the most prominent examples of fallacies are 
 taken from received principles among physical phi- 
 losophers, such as the Principle of the Sufficient 
 Reason. 
 
 But now comes the overwhelming paradox and 
 anticlimax of all. 
 
 " Gall, Spurzheim and Combe have done for 
 metaphysics, or the science of mind, as great a
 
 work as Bacon did for physics, or the laws of 
 matter." 
 
 This sentence, I must own, not only staggered, 
 but absolutely upset me, and it took me some 
 time to recover from it. Well, thought I, many 
 hard things have been said against the sciences, 
 but it was left for Mr. Mann to give them the 
 unkindest cut of all, and that under the treacher- 
 ous disguise of friendship. He has thrown down 
 literature and the arts under their feet for them to 
 trample on, and it is only to degrade them the 
 more by setting up over their heads in the first 
 seat the very equivocal science of Craniology, or, 
 as it boastfully styles itself, Phrenology. Verily, 
 if the great scientific lights of the world, the 
 great chemists, natural historians and astronomers 
 of Europe, were to hear this, methinks they would 
 cry out most lustily to be delivered from such 
 friends. They would agree that it was a decided 
 case of non tali auxilio. 
 
 One good, however, such as it was, accrued to 
 me from perusing this wonderful sentence. It 
 threw a little light, dim to be sure, but still a little, 
 on a portion of your 51st page, which at first, not 
 pretending to understand the language in which 
 it was written, I had passed over as a mere blank, 
 the words conveying no definite idea to me. 
 
 " By far the larger part of all histories, a great
 
 48 
 
 portion of epic" poetry, and almost all martial 
 poetry, are addressed to the brutish propensities 
 of combativeness and destructiveness. But phy- 
 sical science addresses itself to the noble faculty 
 of causality, and the kindred members of its 
 group, including the mathematical powers ; and 
 ethical science addresses itself both to causality 
 and to conscientiousness, and seeks also the sacred 
 sanction of veneration for whatever it teaches." 
 
 This, it now appears, is the comparison of lite- 
 rature and science according to the craniological 
 standard ; and it reminds me of a craniologist I 
 once heard lecture, who argued that Newton and 
 Pitt and Brougham were not by any means 
 great men, because they were deficient in certain 
 " organs." Still, however, it is not perfectly 
 satisfactory, and leaves room for question and 
 comment. For instance, are " combativeness and 
 destructiveness" necessarily and invariably per- 
 nicious attributes, and if so, why is your model 
 young man, some twenty pages farther on, to 
 " combat hand to hand with some of those terrific 
 monsters that infest society" 1 Or is the larger 
 part of all history to be disregarded and thrown 
 aside by the young man desirous of improving 
 his mind, on account of its appealing to these 
 brutish propensities ? Or is the new regime to 
 eliminate all the combative and destructive part
 
 49 
 
 out of history 1 I do not pretend to answer. 
 Duvus sum non (Edipus. If the votaries cannot 
 explain themselves, we, the outsiders, are not 
 called on to interpret them. But it seems pro- 
 bable that the last supposition may be the correct 
 one, from what follows, where you say that 
 "ethical philosophy and education, as well as 
 several other things, can never be properly under- 
 stood but in the light of their (Spurzheim and 
 Gall's) philosophy." Now, as this philosophy was 
 only invented in the year 1809, it follows that 
 before that time there was no proper understand- 
 ing of education or ethical science, a supposition 
 very flattering to the vanity of the disciples of 
 progress, but not exactly confirmed by the record 
 of history or the experience of the student's re- 
 searches. 
 
 Once more, 
 
 " As the science of zoology has hunted krakens, 
 phoenixes, unicorns and vampires [?] from the 
 animal kingdom ; as the science of astronomy has 
 swept pestilential and war-portending comets, 
 and all the terrors and the follies of astrology, 
 from the sky ; as a knowledge of chemistry has 
 made the notion of charms and philters and uni- 
 versal remedies, and the philosopher's stone, 
 ridiculous and contemptible ; as an improved 
 knowledge of the operations of nature around us
 
 has banished fairies, and gnomes, and ghosts and 
 witches, and a belief in dreams and signs, from all 
 respectable society ; [how comes it then that so 
 many craniologists believe in the Rochester 
 knockings ?] so will an analytical knowledge of 
 the faculties of the human mind, of their special 
 functions and ends, and of their related objects in 
 the world of matter and in the world of spirit, 
 sweep into forgetfulness four-fifths of what is 
 called literature." (Pp. 53-4.) 
 
 Now that four-fifths, and even a greater pro- 
 portion of the books composing the current 
 literature of the day, are destined to oblivion, 
 there can be no doubt. But this is not true of 
 works on literature alone, it is equally so of 
 works on the sciences. They have the same ele- 
 ments of decay, their multiplication beyond the 
 power of perusal, and the varying nature of their 
 subject-matter the latter indeed to a greater 1 
 extent than any merely literary productions. The 
 discoveries continually made in the physical sci- 
 ences must render a number of the books on 
 them obsolete ; so must the discoveries and 
 fashions (for there is a great deal of fashion 
 among mathematicians, though they are not gene- 
 rally suspected of it,) in pure mathematics. No 
 schools of literature have succeeded and dethroned 
 one another so fast as the schools of modern meta-
 
 51 
 
 physics. Astronomers tell us that some fixed 
 stars may never be visible on this earth until after 
 they have ceased to exist ; and in like manner, a 
 German writer on mental philosophy is frequently 
 exploded and his theory upset by his countrymen, 
 just as England, France, and America are be- 
 ginning to take an interest in him. Nor do the 
 writings of the craniologists in any way influence 
 or accelerate the destruction of our present lite- 
 rature, except by their own numercial addition 
 to the perishing portion of it. As to your sug- 
 gestion of craniologizing all future literature, it is 
 the essence of farce. One hardly knows how to 
 attempt treating such a proposition seriously. To 
 be sure, there are " reforms" equally absurd to 
 keep it in countenance. Not very long ago I 
 chanced to see the writings of some people who 
 called themselves (if I recollect rightly) Phonetics, 
 modestly claimedj to have invented a perfect 
 alphabet, and seriously proposed to alter the 
 spelling of the whole language, and oblige every 
 existing book to be rewritten and reprinted. 
 
 Here, then, we arrive at the great conclusions of 
 your advice to young men, which I have found it 
 convenient to consider in a nearly inverse order 
 a dogma, that craniology is at the head of all de- 
 sirable human knowledge another dogma, that 
 rich men are dangerous to the community, a de- 

 
 52 
 
 duction that it is wrong to encourage literature 
 and the arts, and a practical inference that the 
 best use a man can make of his money is to found 
 a systematically irreligious college with it. 
 
 " Amphora coepit 
 Institui ; currente rota cur urceus exit 7" 
 
 For really, if we deduct the dietetic maxims, very 
 proper in themselves, though expressed with un- 
 necessary extravagance and violence of language; 
 and the description of the beauties of the natural 
 world, gorgeous and glowing enough to command 
 admiration as a mere piece of writing, but of no 
 particular value in their connection ; these four 
 points are the principal original proposition in your 
 lecture. 
 
 Yet I must own that, to myself, the perusal of your 
 " Thoughts" caused no disappointment. 1 enjoy- 
 ed the blessing promised by Dean Swift to those 
 who expect nothing. I never do expect anything 
 from modern radicalism. For the magnificence 
 of its general promises is the inverse measure of 
 its particular performance. Its professions and 
 practices form a contrast that would be amusing, 
 were it not so lamentable. Proclaiming fraternity 
 and kindred intercourse among all nations, it be- 
 gins by destroying the citizen's affection for his 
 own country. Preaching brotherly love and sym-
 
 53 
 
 pathy among all classes of the community, it stim- 
 ulates one class against another by unfounded in- 
 vectives. Denying the claims and value of an- 
 cient lore, it confers the once honored title of pro- 
 fessor on every itinerant cobler. Parading a 
 great show of reverence for the physical and me- 
 taphysical sciences, it sets up over their heads the 
 pseudo-sciences of craniology and mesmerism. 
 Barely deigning to believe in God, it has no hesi- 
 tation to believe in the absurdest ghosts. Osten- 
 tatious at times in its patronage of Christianity, it 
 carefully drops out all the vitality of the system, 
 and virtually turns the Saviour of mankind out of 
 his own religion. In short, it is, in all general 
 phraseology, sublime and comprehensive, in all 
 minutiae of ^detail, narrow-minded and unwise, 
 reminding one perpetually of the astrologer in the 
 fable, who was so occupied in watching the stars, 
 that he never saw the pit under his nose until he 
 tumbled into it. 
 
 Hoping that your future political and social 
 career may be saved from some of these inconsis- 
 tencies, that your philanthropic zeal may be tem- 
 pered by a discriminating judgment, and the char- 
 ity you feel for some classes may be extended to 
 all ; that you may learn to consider a man of pro- 
 perty as not necessarily an enemy to society, and 
 the claims of religion, as well as those of benevo-
 
 UCSB LIBRARY 
 
 54 
 
 4ence, as alike compatible with a love of literature 
 and a corresponding advancement in the arts and 
 sciences, 
 
 I remain 
 
 Your obedient servant, 
 
 CHARLES ASTOR BRISTED. 
 New York, May 15, 1850.
 
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