Monticello, April 13, 1820.
Dear Sir,
Your favor of March the 27th is received, and, as you request, a copy of
the syllabus is now enclosed. It was originally written to Dr. Rush. On
his death, fearing that the inquisition of the public might get hold of
it, I asked the return of it from the family, which they kindly complied
with. At the request of another friend, I had given him a copy. He lent
it to his friend to read, who copied it, and in a few months it appeared
in the Theological Magazine of London. Happily that repository is
scarcely known in this country; and the syllabus, therefore, is still a
secret, and in your hands I am sure it will continue so.
But while this syllabus is meant to place the character of Jesus in its
true and high light, as no impostor himself, but a great reformer of the
Hebrew code of religion, it is not to be understood that I am with
him in all his doctrines. I am a Materialist; he takes the side of
Spiritualism: he preaches the efficacy of repentance towards forgiveness
of sin; I require a counterpoise of good works to redeem it, &c. &c. It
is the innocence of his character, the purity and sublimity of his moral
precepts, the eloquence of his inculcations, the beauty of the apologues
in which he conveys them, that I so much admire; sometimes, indeed,
needing indulgence to eastern hyperbolism. My eulogies, too, may be
founded on a postulate which all may not be ready to grant. Among the
sayings and discourses imputed to him by his biographers, I find many
passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely
benevolence; and others again, of so much ignorance, so much absurdity,
so much untruth, charlatanism, and imposture, as to pronounce it
impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same
being. I separate, therefore, the gold from the dross; restore to him
the former, and leave the latter to the stupidity of some, and roguery
of others of his disciples. Of this band of dupes and impostors, Paul
was the great Coryphæus, and first corrupter of the doctrines of Jesus.
These palpable interpolations and falsifications of his doctrines led me
to try to sift them apart. I found the work obvious and easy, and that
his part composed the most beautiful morsel of morality which has been
given to us by man. The syllabus is therefore of his doctrine, not
all of mine: I read them as I do those of other ancient and modern
moralists, with a mixture of approbation and dissent.
I rejoice, with you, to see an encouraging spirit of internal
improvement prevailing in the States. The opinion I have ever expressed
of the advantages of a western communication through the James River, I
still entertain; and that the Cayuga is the most promising of the links
of communication.
The history of our University you know so far. Seven of the ten
pavilions destined for the Professors, and about thirty dormitories,
will be completed this year, and three others, with six hotels for
boarding, and seventy other dormitories, will be completed the next
year, and the whole be in readiness then to receive those who are to
occupy them. But means to bring these into place, and to set the machine
into motion, must come from the legislature. An opposition, in the mean
time, has been got up. That of our alma mater, William and Mary, is not
of much weight. She must descend into the secondary rank of academies of
preparation for the University. The serious enemies are the priests of
the different religious sects, to whose spells on the human mind
its improvement is ominous. Their pulpits are now resounding with
denunciations against the appointment of Doctor Cooper, whom they charge
as a monotheist in opposition to their tritheism. Hostile as these sects
are, in every other point, to one another, they unite in maintaining
their mystical theogony against those who believe there is one God only.
The Presbyterian clergy are loudest; the most intolerant of all sects,
the most tyrannical and ambitious; ready at the word of the lawgiver, if
such a word could be now obtained, to put the torch to the pile, and
to rekindle in this virgin hemisphere the flames in which their oracle
Calvin consumed the poor Servetus, because, he could not find in his
Euclid the proposition which has demonstrated that three are one, and
one is three, nor subscribe to that of Calvin, that magistrates have
a right to exterminate all heretics to Calvinistic creed. They pant to
re-establish, by law, that holy inquisition, which they can now only
infuse into public opinion. We have most unwisely committed to the
hierophants of our particular superstition the direction of public
opinion, that lord of the universe. We have given them stated and
privileged days to collect and catechize us, opportunities of delivering
their oracles to the people in mass, and of moulding their minds as
wax in the hollow of their hands. But in despite of their fulminations
against endeavors to enlighten the general mind, to improve the reason
of the people, and encourage them in the use of it, the liberality of
this State will support this institution, and give fair play to the
cultivation of reason. Can you ever find a more eligible occasion of
visiting once more your native country, than that of accompanying Mr.
Correa, and of seeing with him this beautiful and hopeful institution
_in ovo_.
Although I had laid down as a law to myself, never to write, talk, or
even think of politics, to know nothing of public affairs, and therefore
had ceased to read newspapers, yet the Missouri question aroused
and filled me with alarm. The old schism of federal and republican
threatened nothing, because it existed in every State, and united them
together by the fraternism of party. But the coincidence of a marked
principle, moral and political, with a geographical line, once
conceived, I feared would never more be obliterated from the mind; that
it would be recurring on every occasion, and renewing irritations, until
it would kindle such mutual and mortal hatred, as to render separation
preferable to eternal discord. I have been among the most sanguine in
believing that our Union would be of long duration. I now doubt it much,
and see the event at no great distance, and the direct consequence of
this question: not by the line which has been so confidently counted on;
the laws of nature control this; but by the Potomac, Ohio, and Missouri,
or more probably, the Mississippi upwards to our northern boundary. My
only comfort and confidence is, that I shall not live to see this; and I
envy not the present generation the glory of throwing away the fruits of
their fathers’ sacrifices of life and fortune, and of rendering desperate
the experiment which was to decide ultimately whether man is capable of
self-government. This treason against human hope will signalize their
epoch in future history, as the counterpart of the medal of their
predecessors.
You kindly inquire after my health. There is nothing in it immediately
threatening, but swelled legs, which are kept down mechanically, by
bandages from the toe to the knee. These I have worn for six months. But
the tendency to turgidity may proceed from debility alone. I can walk
the round of my garden; not more. But I ride six or eight miles a day
without fatigue. I shall set out for Poplar Forest within three or four
days; a journey from which my physician augurs much good.
I salute you with constant and affectionate friendship and respect.
Th: Jefferson.
LETTER CLII.--TO JOHN HOLMES, April 22, 1820
TO JOHN HOLMES.
Monticello, April 22, 1820.
I thank you, dear Sir, for the copy you have been so kind as to send
me of the letter to your constituents on the Missouri question. It is
a perfect justification to them. I had for a long time ceased to read
newspapers, or pay any attention to public affairs, confident they were
in good hands, and content to be a passenger in our bark to the shore
from which I am not distant. But this momentous question, like a
fire-bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered
it at once as the knell of the Union. It is hushed, indeed, for
the moment. But this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence. A
geographical line, coinciding with a marked principle, moral and
political, once conceived and held up to the angry passions of men, will
never be obliterated; and every new irritation will mark it deeper and
deeper. I can say, with conscious truth, that there is not a man on
earth who would sacrifice more than I would to relieve us from this
heavy reproach, in any practicable way. The cession of that kind of
property (for so it is misnamed) is a bagatelle which would not cost
me a second thought, if, in that way, a general emancipation and
expatriation could be effected: and, gradually, and with due sacrifices,
I think it might be. But as it is, we have the wolf by the ears, and we
can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale,
and self-preservation in the other. Of one thing I am certain, that as
the passage of slaves from one State to another, would not make a
slave of a single human being who would not be so without it, so their
diffusion over a greater surface would make them individually happier,
and proportionally facilitate the accomplishment of their emancipation,
by dividing the burthen on a greater number of coadjutors. An
abstinence, too, from this act of power, would remove the jealousy
excited by the undertaking of Congress to regulate the condition of the
different descriptions of men composing a State. This certainly is the
exclusive right of every State, which nothing in the constitution has
taken from them, and given to the General Government. Could Congress,
for example, say, that the non-freemen of Connecticut shall be freemen,
or that they shall not emigrate into any other State?
I regret that I am now to die in the belief, that the useless sacrifice
of themselves by the generation of 1776, to acquire self-government
and happiness to their country, is to be thrown away by the unwise and
unworthy passions of their sons, and that my only consolation is to be,
that I live not to weep over it. If they would but dispassionately weigh
the blessings they will throw away, against an abstract principle more
likely to be effected by union than by scission, they would pause before
they would perpetrate this act of suicide on themselves, and of treason
against the hopes of the world. To yourself, as the faithful advocate of
the Union, I tender the offering of my high esteem and respect.
Th: Jefferson.
LETTER CLIII.--TO WILLIAM SHORT, August 4, 1820
TO WILLIAM SHORT.
Monticello, August 4, 1820.
Dear Sir,
I owe you a letter for your favor of June the 29th, which was received
in due time; and there being no subject of the day, of particular
interest, I will make this a supplement to mine of April the 13th. My
aim in that was, to justify the character of Jesus against the fictions
of his pseudo-followers, which have exposed him to the inference of
being an impostor. For if we could believe that he really countenanced
the follies, the falsehoods, and the charlatanisms which his biographers
father on him, and admit the misconstructions, interpolations, and
theorizations of the fathers of the early, and fanatics of the latter
ages, the conclusion would be irresistible by every sound mind, that he
was an impostor. I give no credit to their falsifications of his actions
and doctrines, and to rescue his character, the postulate in my letter
asked only what is granted in reading every other historian. When
Livy and Siculus, for example, tell us things which coincide with our
experience of the order of nature, we credit them on their word, and
place their narrations among the records of credible history. But when
they tell us of calves speaking, of statues sweating blood, and other
things against the course of nature, we reject these as fables not
belonging to history. In like manner, when an historian, speaking of a
character well known and established on satisfactory testimony, imputes
to it things incompatible with that character, we reject them without
hesitation, and assent to that only of which we have better evidence.
Had Plutarch informed us that Cæsar and Cicero passed their whole lives
in religious exercises, and abstinence from the affairs of the world,
we should reject what was so inconsistent with their established
characters, still crediting what he relates in conformity with our ideas
of them. So again, the superlative wisdom of Socrates is testified
by all antiquity, and placed on ground not to be questioned. When,
therefore, Plato puts into his mouth such paralogisms, such quibbles on
words, and sophisms, as a school-boy would be ashamed of, we conclude
they were the whimsies of Plato’s own foggy brain, and acquit Socrates
of puerilities so unlike his character. (Speaking of Plato, I will add,
that no writer, ancient or modern, has bewildered the world with more
_ignes fatui_, than this renowned philosopher, in Ethics, in Politics,
and Physics. In the latter, to specify a single example, compare his
views of the animal economy, in his Timasus, with those of Mrs. Bryan in
her Conversations on Chemistry, and weigh the science of the canonized
philosopher against the good sense of the unassuming lady. But Plato’s
visions have furnished a basis for endless systems of mystical theology,
and he is therefore all but adopted as a Christian saint. It is surely
time for men to think for themselves, and to throw off the authority of
names so artificially magnified. But to return from this parenthesis.) I
say, that this free exercise of reason is all I ask for the vindication
of the character of Jesus. We find in the writings of his biographers
matter of two distinct descriptions. First, a ground-work of vulgar
ignorance, of things impossible, of superstitions, fanaticisms, and
fabrications. Intermixed with these, again, are sublime ideas of the
Supreme Being, aphorisms, and precepts of the purest morality and
benevolence, sanctioned by a life of humility, innocence, and simplicity
of manners, neglect of riches, absence of worldly ambition and honors,
with an eloquence and persuasiveness which have not been surpassed.
These could not be inventions of the grovelling authors who relate them.
They are far beyond the powers of their feeble minds. They show that
there was a character, the subject of their history, whose splendid
conceptions were above all suspicion of being interpolations from their
hands. Can we be at a loss in separating such materials, and ascribing
each to its genuine author? The difference is obvious to the eye and
to the understanding, and we may read as we run to each his part; and I
will venture to affirm, that he who, as I have done, will undertake to
winnow this grain from its chaff, will find it not to require a moment’s
consideration. The parts fall asunder of themselves, as would those of
an image of metal and clay.
There are, I acknowledge, passages not free from objection, which we
may, with probability, ascribe to Jesus himself; but claiming indulgence
from the circumstances under which he acted. His object was the
reformation of some articles in the religion of the Jews, as taught by
Moses. That sect had presented for the object of their worship, a being
of terrific character, cruel, vindictive, capricious, and unjust. Jesus,
taking for his type the best qualities of the human head and heart,
wisdom, justice, goodness, and adding to them power, ascribed all of
these, but in infinite perfection, to the Supreme Being, and formed him
really worthy of their adoration. Moses had either not believed in
a future state of existence, or had not thought it essential to be
explicitly taught to his people. Jesus inculcated that doctrine
with emphasis and precision. Moses had bound the Jews to many idle
ceremonies, mummeries, and observances, of no effect towards producing
the social utilities which constitute the essence of virtue; Jesus
exposed their futility and insignificance. The one instilled into his
people the most anti-social spirit towards other nations; the other
preached philanthropy and universal charity and benevolence. The office
of reformer of the superstitions of a nation, is ever dangerous. Jesus
had to walk on the perilous confines of reason and religion: and a step
to right or left might place him within the gripe of the priests of
the superstition, a blood-thirsty race, as cruel and remorseless as the
being whom they represented as the family God of Abraham, of Isaac,
and of Jacob, and the local God of Israel. They were constantly laying
snares, too, to entangle him in the web of the law. He was
justifiable, therefore, in avoiding these by evasions, by sophisms, by
misconstructions, and misapplications of scraps of the prophets, and
in defending himself with these their own weapons, as sufficient, _ad
homines_, at least. That Jesus did not mean to impose himself on mankind
as the Son of God, physically speaking, I have been convinced by the
writings of men more learned than myself in that lore. But that he might
conscientiously believe himself inspired from above, is very possible.
The whole religion of the Jews, inculcated on him from his infancy,
was founded in the belief of divine inspiration. The fumes of the
most disordered imaginations were recorded in their religious code,
as special communications of the Deity; and as it could not but happen
that, in the course of ages events would now and then turn up to which
some of these vague rhapsodies might be accommodated by the aid of
allegories, figures, types, and other tricks upon words, they have not
only preserved their credit with the Jews of all subsequent times,
but are the foundation of much of the religions of those who have
schismatized from them. Elevated by the enthusiasm of a warm and pure
heart, conscious of the high strains of an eloquence which had not been
taught him, he might readily mistake the coruscations of his own fine
genius for inspirations of an higher order. This belief, carried,
therefore, no more personal imputation, than the belief of Socrates,
that himself was under the care and admonitions of a guardian Daemon.
And how many of our wisest men still believe in the reality of these
inspirations, while perfectly sane on all other subjects. Excusing,
therefore, on these considerations, those passages in the gospels which
seem to bear marks of weakness in Jesus, ascribing to him what alone is
consistent with the great and pure character of which the same writings
furnish proofs, and to their proper authors their own trivialities
and imbecilities, I think myself authorized to conclude the purity and
distinction of his character, in opposition to the impostures which
those authors would fix upon him; and that the postulate of my former
letter is no more than is granted in all other historical works.
Mr. Correa is here, on his farewell visit to us. He has been much
pleased with the plan and progress of our University, and has given some
valuable hints to its botanical branch. He goes to do, I hope, much good
in his new country; the public instruction there, as I understand,
being within the department destined for him. He is not without
dissatisfaction, and reasonable dissatisfaction, too, with the piracies
of Baltimore; but his justice and friendly dispositions will, I am sure,
distinguish between the iniquities of a few plunderers, and the sound
principles of our country at large, and of our government especially.
From many conversations with him, I hope he sees, and will promote, in
his new situation, the advantages of a cordial fraternization among
all the American nations, and the importance of their coalescing in an
American system of policy, totally independent of, and unconnected with
that of Europe. The day is not distant, when we may formally require
a meridian of partition through the ocean which separates the two
hemispheres, on the hither side of which no European gun shall ever be
heard, nor an American on the other; and when, during the rage of the
eternal wars of Europe, the lion and the lamb, within our regions, shall
lie down together in peace. The excess of population in Europe, and
want of room, render war, in their opinion, necessary to keep down that
excess of numbers. Here, room is abundant, population scanty, and peace
the necessary means for producing men, to whom the redundant soil is
offering the means of life and happiness. The principles of society
there and here, then, are radically different, and I hope no American
patriot will ever lose sight of the essential policy of interdicting in
the seas and territories of both Americas, the ferocious and sanguinary
contests of Europe. I wish to see this coalition begun. I am earnest for
an agreement with the maritime powers of Europe, assigning them the task
of keeping down the piracies of their seas and the cannibalisms of
the African coasts, and, to us, the suppression of the same enormities
within our seas: and for this purpose, I should rejoice to see the
fleets of Brazil and the United States riding together as brethren of
the same family, and pursuing the same object. And indeed it would be
of happy augury to begin at once this concert of action here, on the
invitation of either to the other government, while the way might be
preparing for withdrawing our cruisers from Europe, and preventing naval
collisions there which daily endanger our peace.
*****
Accept assurances of the sincerity of my friendship and respect for you.
Th: Jefferson.
LETTER CLIV.--TO JOHN ADAMS, August 15, 1820
TO JOHN ADAMS.
Monticello, August 15, 1820.
I am a great defaulter, my Dear Sir, in our correspondence, but
prostrate health rarely permits me to write; and when it does, matters
of business imperiously press their claims. I am getting better however,
slowly, swelled legs being now the only serious symptom, and these, I
believe, proceed from extreme debility. I can walk but little; but I
ride six or eight miles a day without fatigue; and within a few days,
I shall endeavor to visit my other home, after a twelvemonth’s absence
from it. Our University, four miles distant, gives me frequent exercise,
and the oftener, as I direct its architecture. Its plan is unique, and
it is becoming an object of curiosity for the traveller. I have lately
had an opportunity of reading a critique on this institution in your
North American Review of January last, having been not without anxiety
to see what that able work would say of us: and I was relieved on
finding in it much coincidence of opinion, and even where criticisms
where indulged, I found they would have been obviated had the
developements of our plan been fuller. But these were restrained by the
character of the paper reviewed, being merely a report of outlines,
not a detailed treatise, and addressed to a legislative body, not to
a learned academy. For example, as an inducement to introduce the
Anglo-Saxon into our plan, it was said that it would reward amply
the few weeks of attention which alone would be requisite for its
attainment; leaving both term and degree under an indefinite expression,
because I know that not much time is necessary to attain it to an useful
degree, sufficient to give such instruction in the etymologies of our
language as may satisfy ordinary students, while more time would be
requisite for those who should propose to attain a critical knowledge
of it. In a letter which I had occasion to write to Mr. Crofts who sent
you, I believe, as well as myself, a copy of his treatise on the English
and German languages, as preliminary to an etymological dictionary he
meditated, I went into explanations with him of an easy process for
simplifying the study of the Anglo-Saxon, and lessening the terrors and
difficulties presented by it’s rude alphabet, and unformed orthography.
But this is a subject beyond the bounds of a letter, as it was beyond
the bounds of a report to the legislature. Mr. Crofts died, I believe,
before any progress was made in the work he had projected.