A LESSON IN PHILANTHROPY.
Full of my new resolution, I immediately set myself at work to carry it
into effect. The safest and most expeditious way of doing it, I thought,
would be to place myself at once in communication with some prominent
and well-instructed philanthropist. Accordingly, I started forthwith for
Philadelphia, to consult the beautiful and fascinating young lady, who,
in my previous visit, had so warmly and energetically defended the
eating of the forbidden fruit at the suggestion of that first of
philanthropists, as a brave, heroic, and disinterested act. She, of all
my acquaintances and friends, was unquestionably the one best fitted to
complete my initiation into the mysteries of philanthropy, and to
inspire and direct me in my efforts at world-reform.
This lady, whom, out of respect to the great Montanus, who claimed to be
the Paraclete or Comforter, and professed to have the power of working
miracles very much of the character of those wrought by our modern
mesmerizers and spiritualists, I must be permitted to call Priscilla,
had some years before touched my fancy, and if the truth must be
confessed, had made more than an ordinary impression on my heart. She
had often visited me in my waking dreams, as a lovely, though flitting
vision. She was at my last visit at least twenty-five years old, but as
fresh and as blooming as at seventeen, when first I had the pleasure of
meeting her. She was a sweet lady, with a lovely and graceful figure,
exquisitely moulded, regular and expressive features, and as learned, as
brilliant, as fascinating, and as enthusiastic as the celebrated Hypatia
of Alexandria, who stirred up the zeal of the good monks of Nitria, gave
so much trouble to Saint Cyrill, and spread such a halo around expiring
paganism. She had been sent by the Abolition Society as a delegate to
the great Anti-Slavery World’s Convention at London, and being denied a
seat in that illustrious body, because a woman, she had turned her
attention to the question of woman’s rights, and, after travelling a few
months on the continent, had returned home well instructed in Godwin’s
Political Justice, and a devout believer in Mary Wolstonecroft. She was
liberal in her views, and very far from being a “one-idea” woman. Her
mind was large and comprehensive, and her heart was capacious and loving
enough to embrace and warm all classes of reformers, white, red, black,
religious, moral, political, social, and domestic.
The morning after my arrival in the City of Brotherly Love, I called on
Priscilla at her residence in Arch Street, as I supposed with her
mother. I found her surrounded by some ten or a dozen reformers,
variously dressed; some in petticoats, some in pantaloons: some with and
some without beards; the majority appearing to be of what grammarians
call the epicene gender. She greeted me kindly, and requested me to be
seated; she would be disengaged in a few moments. I took a seat, and
amused myself as well as I could in studying the interesting group
before me, and considering the sort of materials that go to the making
up of a world-reformer, and the charming associates I was likely to have
in my new career. Having listened to their several reports, heard their
suggestions, and given them her directions, Priscilla soon dismissed
them with a sweet smile, and a graceful salute with her hand, that would
have done credit to the grace and dignity of an empress. She then seated
herself near me, and welcomed me most cordially and affectionately to
Philadelphia. My visit was an unexpected pleasure, but all the more
welcome. “But,” she exclaimed, looking me more closely in the face, and
struck with my changed and careworn expression, “what in the world, my
friend, has happened to you?”
I was about to reply, when I observed that we were not alone. An
exceedingly meek and submissive-looking man, if man he could be called,
had just entered the room, and seemed to be hesitating whether to
advance or retreat. I looked inquiringly at Priscilla.
“O, it is only my husband,” she replied. Then turning, with her sweet
face to him, with an indefinable charm in her soft musical tones, said,
“You may leave us, dear James. This gentleman and I would be alone.”
He quietly retreated through the door he had entered, gently closed it,
and went away without speaking a word, or betraying the least sign of
discontent.
“But, my dear madam,” said I, “this takes me by surprise. I was not
aware that you had a husband.”
“Possibly not; yet I have been married these five years.”
“What! you were married when I was in the city last year and had the
pleasure of meeting you, and having that most pleasant and instructive
conversation with you?”
“Most assuredly.”
“This alters my plan. I had made up my mind,—”
“Not to marry me yourself?”
“Pardon me, my dear madam, but I own that I had dreamed of something of
the sort.”
“You might have done worse. I could have made you a good wife, but you
would never have made me a good husband.”
“Why not? I am not precisely a man to be slightly rejected.”
“That may be; and had you proposed in season, I might not have rejected
you. I am glad, however, that you did not, for I might have loved you,
and you alone, and then I should never have become a philanthropist, and
devoted all my sympathies and energies to the emancipation of my sex,
and to the development and progress of my race. You would have engrossed
all my thoughts and affections, and have been my tyrant.”
“But if I had loved you in return, and laid my own heart at your feet?”
“That would have made the matter worse. In loving me you would only have
loved yourself, and sought only your own pleasure. Men usually love only
to sacrifice her they love to themselves; while woman, when she loves,
is ready to sacrifice herself to her beloved. Man’s love is selfish;
woman’s is disinterested.”
“Women are disinterested creatures, and never exact any return for their
love!”
“They are more disinterested than you believe. There is nothing that a
true woman will not do for him she loves. She will abandon herself
without reserve to his wishes, go through fire and water, nay, hell
itself, for him, and take delight in damning her own soul, to please
him.”
“That is because her love is an instinct, a blind passion, a sort of
madness or frenzy, not a sober, rational affection.”
“Perhaps so; but it is rather because her love is love. Unhappily, woman
feels, she does not reason, or if she reasons, it is only in the
interest of her feeling. Reason is cold, calculating; love is warm and
self-sacrificing. It is heedless of consequences.”
“And therefore is the better for having reason or prudence for a
companion.”
“It is clear that you have never loved.”
“Perhaps not; but at any rate I think I could have loved you very much
in your own fashion.”
“That is not improbable, at least, as far as it is in your calculating
nature; for I have been thought to have my attractions, and it would not
be difficult to make any man my slave—unless I loved him. Yet you would
always have loved me as a master, and have always held me in subjection.
There are natures born to command. You would never have loved me as my
dear James loves me, and never have been the meek, submissive, quiet,
dear good man that he is. His love is not tyrannical, and it imposes no
burden on me. He interferes with none of my plans, restrains none of my
movements, and is satisfied with feeling that he is my husband and
belongs to me, without once presuming to think of me as his wife and as
belonging to him.”
“That is charming, and must, no doubt, entirely satisfy your heart.”
“That is my own affair. But I will tell you that it does not, and that
it does.”
“But that is a riddle; pray rede it.”
“It does not satisfy the deep want of the heart to love, for no woman
can love, with all her heart, a man she can make her slave, or who does
not maintain himself as her master. But as I would not become any one’s
slave, as I would not that any man should engross all my affections, and
compel me to live all my life in love’s delirium, it satisfies, and more
than satisfies me. It leaves me free to be a philanthropist, and does
not compel me to give up to one what was meant for mankind. If my
husband engrossed all my affections I should be happy and contented at
home, and should never seek relief in going abroad.”
“And should it not be so?”
“Consult the parsons and old-fashioned moralists, and they will tell you
that it should. But I am a philanthropist. My James loves me sincerely,
warmly, disinterestedly, consults my wishes, does whatever I require of
him, has full confidence in me, is proud of me, and never doubts that
whatever I do is perfect. That is enough.”
“But do you return his love with a disinterestedness and generosity
equal to his own?”
“Why should I? It is enough for him that I permit him to love me, and to
call himself my husband. For myself, I remain free to be a
philanthropist. I cannot give my heart to any individual. I reserve its
deepest and holiest affections for mankind.”
“But mankind, without individuals, is an abstraction, a nullity; and to
love the race, without loving individuals, is worse than loving a statue
or a shadow.”
“Ah! my dear friend, I see that you have not studied the profound
philosophy of Plato, and are still a Nominalist, and therefore an
egotist. You are still a psychologist, stuck fast in the slough of
individualism.”
“It may be so, my dear Priscilla, but I am willing and even anxious to
be liberated and set right. I have resolved, let come what will, to be a
philanthropist, and to become a world-reformer; and it is to solicit
your instructions and assistance to this end that I have visited your
city, and sought my interview with you this morning.”
She shook her head and looked doubtingly.
“Do not doubt it,” I said, “I am serious, never more serious in my life.
I am on the verge of important discoveries, and perhaps well-nigh within
reach of a more than human power. But it is necessary that I at first
become a philanthropist, unite myself with the movement party of the
age, and take a decided and an active part in the great philanthropic
reforms now so widely agitated, and live henceforth for mankind, and not
for myself alone.”
“Is this true?”
“Most assuredly; as true as that I am here present.”
Slowly conviction seemed to fasten on her mind as she saw my serious and
earnest manner, and indeed my agitation, as I rose from my chair and
stood before her. A brilliant joy suddenly sparkled from her large,
liquid, deep blue eye, and radiated over her whole face. Springing from
her seat, and seizing me by both my hands, “This is too much,” she
exclaimed. “This I had wished, had prayed for, but had not dared hope.”
Her eyes filled with sweet tears, and, as if overcome with her emotions,
she sunk into my arms, and rested her head upon my shoulder. I pressed
her to my breast. But she instantly recovered herself, and we both
resumed our seats. After a few moments’ silence, Priscilla, with an
animated and contented look, exclaimed:—
“Now, my dear, dearest friend, I have hope. The good work will now go
bravely on. Pure, noble, and strong-minded women to coöperate with me, I
have found, but a man, a full-grown man, with a clear head, and a
well-balanced mind, heretofore found I not. The men who have been ready
to embark with me, are dwarfs, pigmies, simpletons, needy adventurers,
cheats, knaves, or crack-brained enthusiasts, with but one idea in their
heads, and that only half an idea. Drill them as I may, I can make
nothing of them.”
“But,” said I, maliciously, “is not your dear James a philanthropist and
reformer?”
“My dear James is my husband,” she said, with dignity and spirit. “But
you are slow to comprehend these things. The great and glorious work of
regenerating man and society, cannot be carried on either by man alone
or by woman alone. The two must be united and coöperate, or there can be
no spiritual, as there can be no natural, offspring. But in
regeneration, in the palingenesia, it is not at all necessary that they
be husband and wife after the flesh. Married and made one in spirit they
must be, but not married and made one flesh. Man and woman are each
other’s half, and they must be brought together to make a complete,
active, and productive whole. But the relation of husband and wife is a
purely domestic relation, and looks solely to a domestic end. If each
finds the complementary half in the other, both are satisfied,
contented, and neither has any wish or motive to look beyond the circle
of the purely domestic affections.”
“That is, they who find their bliss at home have no need and no
temptation to go a-roaming.”
“Precisely.”
“Then it is unhappiness, discontent, uneasiness, want, at home, that
makes men and women turn philanthropists, and take to world-reform?”
“Yes; and herein you learn the deep philosophy of life, and the
significance of that Religion of Sorrow, of which Carlyle speaks so
touchingly, and which the world has professed for two thousand years,
but which it has never understood. Hear my favorite poet:—
‘The Fiend that man harries
Is love of the Best;
Yawns the pit of the Dragon
Lit by rays from the Blest;
The Lethe of nature
Can’t trance him again,
Whose soul sees the Perfect,
Which his eyes seek in vain.
‘Profounder, profounder
Man’s spirit must dive;
To his aye-rolling orbit
No goal will arrive;
The heavens that now draw him,
With sweetness untold,
Once found,—for new heavens
He spurneth the old.
‘Pride ruined the angels,
Their shame then restores;
And the joy that is sweetest
Lurks in the stings of remorse.
Have I a lover
Who is noble and free?
I would he were nobler
Than to love me.
‘Eterne alternation,
Now follows, now flies,
Under pain, pleasure,
Under pleasure, pain lies.
Love works at the centre,
Heart-heaving alway,
Forth speed the strong pulses
To the borders of day.’
“The ‘love of the Best’ is our innate and deathless desire of happiness,
our being’s end and aim. Happiness is ever the coy maiden, that still
woos us onward, and flies ever as pursued,
‘Man never is, but always to be blest.’
In this deep ever-recurring want of the soul for happiness, the source
of all our pain and sorrow, is the spring and motive of all our
activity, and in activity is all our life and joy. Hence, ‘under pain
pleasure, under pleasure pain lies.’ All our life and joy have their
root in pain and sorrow, in this eternal craving of the soul to be what
we are not, and to have what we have not. The pain and sorrow spur us
on, and lead us to acquire and possess. But no possession satisfies us.
The most coveted is no sooner obtained than it is loathed and cast away.
‘The heavens that now draw him,
With sweetness untold,
Once found,—for new heavens
He spurneth the old.’
“Love dies in the wooing. The acquiring is more than the possessing. All
possessing leaves the heart empty,—an aching void within, which nothing
fills or can fill. This aching void will not let us rest, will not leave
us in repose, which is only another name for inaction, death, but
compels us to exert ourselves, to struggle with all our strength and
energy to make new acquisitions. In this struggle, in these efforts,
humanity is developed, and the progress of the race carried on.”
“Carried on, my dear Priscilla, towards what? Sings not your poet,
‘Profounder, profounder
Man’s spirit must dive,
To his aye-rolling orbit
No goal will arrive?’”
“That is the glorious secret, my dear friend. The end of man is not the
possession, but the pursuit, of happiness, or rather eternal progress
and growth. By the fact that the pain, the want, the aching void,
remains eternally, there is and must be eternal activity, therefore
eternal development and progress of humanity.”
“But as that development and progress leave us as far as ever from
happiness, or fixed and durable good, I see not in what consists their
value.”
“Their value is obvious. Good is relative to the end of a being, and
consists in going to the end for which it exists. Progress being our
end, of course our good must consist in making progress. This progress
is the progress of the race, and is effected by the activity of
individuals, and to it all the activity of individuals, whether what is
called vicious or virtuous, alike contributes.”
“If all our activity, our vices, and crimes, as well as our virtues,
contribute to this progress, or to the realization of our destiny, I do
not see any great call for us to be world reformers. Moreover, our
destiny seems to be any thing but a cheering one. Your poet-philosophy
is apparently very sad. If we are destined to chase forever a happiness
that flies us, a good that recedes as we advance, all exertion seems to
me as idle, as useless as that of the child striving to grasp the
rainbow.”
“So it may seem to you, for you are, as yet, not a philanthropist. You
are still affected by your egotism, and unable to appreciate any
activity that does not bring something solid and durable to the
individual. Here is the rock on which all old-fashioned morality splits.
Individuals are nothing in themselves; they are real, substantial, only
in humanity. The race is every thing. Individuals die, the race
survives. Men and women have no substantiality of their own. They are
merely the bubbles that rise on the surface of the broad ocean of
humanity, burst, disappear, and become as if they had not been. Foolish
bubbles, ye forget your own nothingness, and would arrogate to
yourselves all the rights and prerogatives, glory and happiness of
humanity. The race is not for individuals; individuals are for the race.
They are simply the sensations, sentiments, and cognitions of the race,
in which it manifests its own inherent virtuality, and through which it
is developed and carried forward in its endless career through the
ages,—through which it grows and realizes its own eternal and glorious
destiny. The progress you are to seek is not the progress of
individuals, for individuals have, properly speaking, no progress; but
the progress of the race, which is and can be effected only by the
activity of individual men and women.”
“Still, I do not comprehend the work there is for world-reformers.”
“Why, you are stupid, Doctor. All activity, whether called vicious or
criminal, is good, for it aids progress. But nothing is vicious,
criminal, or sinful, except that which represses the free activity of
individuals, and thus hinders the development and growth of the race. It
was, therefore, not a friend, but an enemy, that imposed upon our first
parents the prohibition to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of
good and evil. It was a friend, not an enemy, that inspired Eve with the
thought and the courage to disregard that prohibition, to reach forth
her hand and pluck the fruit, and having eaten thereof, to give it also
unto her husband. The fable was invented by priests and governors as a
means of imposing their system of restraints, of establishing their
restrictive policy, to which they have adhered, as old fogie politicians
adhere to protection. They have always had a horror of free trade, as
incompatible with their monopoly, and have made it their study to
repress our native activity, to keep us cabined, cribbed, and confined,
within the narrow enclosure of their hidebound systems, of their
immoral, contracted, galling, and senseless conventionalism. They will
not allow nature, humanity, fair play. They brand, as from the enemy of
souls, all free activity. The heart must move according to their rules,
and love or hate as they bid; the mind must run only in the grooves
which they have hollowed out, and never dare search beneath their solemn
shams, or send sharp and piercing glances into the artificial world they
have built up around us. We must repress our purest and noblest
instincts, and crucify our sweetest and holiest affections. Everywhere
restraint, repression, tyranny. The church tyrannizes over the state;
the state tyrannizes over man and society; man and society tyrannize
over woman, making her a puppet, a toy, or a drudge. Here, my dear, dear
friend, behold your work, and that of your fellow-reformers. Go forth
and break down this vast system of tyranny. Emancipate the state from
the church, man and society from the state, and woman from man and
society.”
“But some government, some restraint is necessary to keep our appetites,
passions, and lusts within bounds, and to maintain peace and order in
the community.”
“Alas! my friend, how hard it is for you to cease to be an egotist, and
to learn to be a philanthropist. Know, that philanthropy seeks no
individual, no exclusive good, and does not consist in loving and
seeking the welfare of our fellow men and women. It is the love of man,
not men, and seeks the welfare of the race, not of individuals. The
welfare of the race consists in progress, which is effected only by free
activity. All free activity is good, virtuous, right. Virtue is in
action, not in non-action, which is death, the wages of sin. The only
good is free activity, and every conceivable good is included in that
one word, LIBERTY.”
“But liberty, if not sustained and regulated by authority, may
degenerate into license.”
“Still, _mon pauvre ami_, in bondage to the law, and ignorant of the
glorious liberty of the children of God. Away with your legal cant. By
the deeds of the law no flesh ever was or ever will be justified. Long
had the world groaned in this ignoble bondage, but know you not that it
was to set them free that the Liberator came? O, liberty! sweet, sacred
liberty! how I love thee! My heart and soul pant for thee as the thirsty
hind pants for brooks of water. My flesh cries out for thee. Thou art my
God, and to thee I consecrate my life, my love, and on thy altar I offer
myself a living holocaust.”
“Is there really no difference between liberty and license?”
“Be not the dupe of words. You seek to be a philanthropist.
Philanthropy, I tell you again and again, is the love of man, mankind,
humanity. Who that loves humanity would repress any thing human? If man
is the supreme object of your love, how can you distrust any human
tendency, or fear any human activity?”
“Suppose, my dear Priscilla, who speak to me as one inspired, I should
forget myself so far as not to remember James, and proceed to make love
to his wife?”
“She would say you have a very short memory, and no very great sagacity.
She would most likely know how to oppose her activity to yours.”
“And thus surrender her doctrine; for in such case her activity would
overcome mine, or mine would overcome and restrain hers.”
“Not necessarily. There would be a struggle of opposing forces, a free
activity on both sides, and whatever the result, a development and
progress of humanity. But all this is folly. There can be no love
passages between us. We understand each other on such matters. United,
married, if you will, in spirit, we are, or if not, must be, but we have
no leisure or inclination for dalliance, which would be foreign to our
mission. Our thoughts, I trust, yours as well as mine, rise higher, and
move in a serener atmosphere. But be not disheartened. Our relation is,
and must be, purely spiritual.”
“I did but ask the question, my dear Priscilla, in order to see if you
were prepared to carry out your doctrine to its legitimate conclusion.”
“That was foolish. No true woman ever stops half way in her principles,
or shrinks from carrying them out, by a cold and cowardly calculation of
consequences. She leaves that to masculine virtue. When once women adopt
a principle, they are prepared to follow it to its last results, without
counting the sacrifice. You men cannot do this. You are always
hesitating, deliberating, craving the end, but afraid to grasp it,
compromising with your reason and your conscience. Recollect Macbeth,
and Lady Macbeth, as painted by Shakspeare, who knew man’s heart and
woman’s too. Here is the reason why you always stop half way in your
reforms, or never do more than patch a piece of new cloth on to an old
garment, which only makes the rent worse. Hence your need of woman’s
straightforward logic, her disinterestedness, her singleness of heart,
her constancy of purpose, and her invincible courage.”
“But perhaps, my dear lady, women are not seldom rash, and what you
commend in them is the effect of narrowness of view, and not of that
clear and enlarged comprehensiveness, that “many sidedness,” to use a
Germanism, which is desirable in a true and trustworthy reformer.
Perhaps she lacks prudence, and may not use sufficient caution in
adopting her principles, and thus may adopt false principles, and find
ruin where she imagines she is to find only safety.”
“It is safer to trust her instincts than man’s reason. Yet I deny not
the danger to which you allude, and therefore it is that it is never
safe to trust her to act alone. Hence the necessity, in all our
movements for reform, of the strict union of man and woman. She needs
him as a drag on her too great rapidity of motion, and to temper her
zeal with his prudence, and he needs her to inspire him with courage,
energy, and love. Either is only a half without the other, and both must
be united, as I have already told you, to form a complete and productive
whole.”
“I think I now understand what is meant by philanthropy. I have the
idea, but as a pure idea it amounts to nothing. We must realize it, or
reduce it to practice. Our great work is to remodel the world according
to this idea. But how is this to be done?”
“That is undoubtedly the most difficult question, although our
difficulties will not end even there. When we have ascertained what we
are to do, and how it is to be done, we have still the difficult task to
do it. But courage, _mon ami_. Once started, reforms are carried forward
by their own momentum, and, like popular rumor, grow as they go onward.
For myself, I am not exclusive, and have no special plan of my own. I
listen to all sorts of plans, and countenance all sorts of reforms. None
of them commend themselves in all respects to my understanding any more
than to my taste. But all seem to me to be inspired by the same spirit,
and in different ways to work to one and the same end. There is a
diversity of gifts. All see not truth under the same aspect; none,
perhaps, see it under all aspects at once, and each sees it under some
special aspect. We must tolerate them all; for to attempt to bring them
all into order, and to compel them all to think alike, and to work after
one and the same manner, or in one and the same method, is absurd, and
if successful, would only establish in another, and perhaps in an
aggravated form, the very system of tyranny and repression we are
laboring to demolish. You know something already of our reformers, and
the most prominent are now in the city, holding conventions. We have
representatives from all the Northern and Middle States, and several
English and Continental philanthropists. Some of them, I cannot say how
many, will meet at my house this evening, and you must meet with them.
You will find their conversation interesting and instructive, and
perhaps you will become acquainted with some who will give you valuable
hints, although, to confess the truth, I have no very high opinion of
any of them, taken individually. Be sure and not fail me; come early, at
seven o’clock.”
So saying, she rose, gave me her hand, _au revoir_, and I departed to my
lodgings, charmed with the sweetness and fascinated by the manner of
Priscilla, rather than enlightened by her philosophy or convinced by her
reasons.