Welfare as Dependent on Philosophy.
But the whole office of Policy, in arranging the social relations,
supposes the prevalence of an ill-informed and misdirected self-love.
And, accordingly, the second way of attempting the promotion of general
welfare is, to convey and impress just estimates of its constituents.
Such is the office of Philosophy: the study of the truly wise man-wise
for the present life--still leaving out man's hold on a future, and his
relations to his Maker. What would such an one pursue; as life's chief
ends--covet, as life's best goods?
We still suppose self-love to be as really as ever the main-spring
to human conduct; but that self-love enlightened, regulated, refine--
choosing first the goods which satisfy the nobler parts of man's
nature, and on a liberal estimate of the ties which bind society
together; in virtue of which, if one member suffer, all the members
suffer with it.
The items, claiming to constitute life's happiness, may be divided into
two classes, distinguished by this important difference: one class
essentially such, that only a limited number of mankind can obtain
them;--if some succeed in the pursuit, their success involves the
failure of others: The other class are such, as to involve no
contradiction in the supposition of their becoming the common property
of all. The success of a part, far from obstructing, rather
facilitates the success of others; they constitute a store of wealth,
from which each may take his fill; and the more he takes, the more he
leaves, to satisfy the desires of all who come after.
Now, in view of the case, Philosophy inquiring for life's chief goods,
cannot make them to be fortune's prizes, scattered to tempt the
cupidity of all; but which a few only can catch, while their luck
proves the disappointment and vexation of the many. The supposition
were monstrous. We so instinctively recoil from supposing such to be
the appointment of nature's Author, and so consciously grasp it for a
truth clear by its own light--the conviction of a provision fully made
in nature for all, whenever nature's wants are truly consulted--that we
may safely reject, by this test, every notion of temporal good, which
makes it consist preeminently in whatever, by the nature of the case,
can be the lot of but a limited number.
Eminent above all other conceptions of temporal good, is that which
makes it to consist emphatically in the possession of money, or the
ability to command it by its equivalents. And because the capacities
of enjoyment have never been measured, nor material wealth rationally
estimated as a means of meeting those capacities, riches are prized,
not as a means, but an end; and becoming themselves the end, no amount
of possession lessens the desire to accumulate.
A just philosophy argues on the case, that all cannot be rich, in the
common acceptation of the term, whether be considered the limits to
earth's productiveness, and the possibility of increasing material
wealth; or whether, _rich_ being more a relative than an absolute term,
that the supposition of _all rich_ is self-contradictory: therefore,
in a juster sense, the supposition of all rich must be admissible;--the
sense, namely, that whenever riches shall be reasonably estimated
simply as the means of meeting capacities of enjoyment surveyed and
known, then it will be found that the earth's productiveness, and the
stock of material wealth, admit each to take to the fullness of his
wants, leaving enough for all who come after.
It is further the office of Philosophy to show in detail, what is thus
wrought out as a conclusion from general principles; to show how much
is consumed by artificial wants, and subjection to the tyranny of
fashion; to show how the correction of factitious desires would leave
natural and rational desires for better enjoyment than is now found, so
that self-love would find not occasion for envy, or repining at a
brother's prosperity.
The unceasing desire to become richer would be, however, but a
mitigated evil, if men sought only wealth by production. The
aggravation of the case is, that they whom the desire most impels, seek
the increase of their own store, not by producing, but by contriving to
turn to their own stock the avails of the industry of others. Our
young men, in deplorable numbers, slide into the persuasion, that any
means of living and thriving are better than productive industry.
Hence the rush into trade, the professions, into speculations, where
the hazards are such, that the cool calculations of pure avarice would
rather incline a man to prefer the prospect of growing rich by digging
the earth. So much the preference of contrivance to labor overmaster
the mastering desire to become rich.
But there is a strange hankering after whatever is of the nature of a
lottery. So the prizes are but splendid, no matter, if they are but
few compared with the blanks. We are given to presuming each on his
own good fortune. "Nothing venture, nothing have," has become a
proverb. So agriculture is treated as if it had no rewards, because
one ventures so little by engaging therein. And one might almost think
that the conscious earth resented the indignity.
Aided by Philosophy, we shall argue on this matter thus: All cannot
live by their wits; the many must produce with the hands; and, the
greater the part who shuffle off the charge, the more heavily it falls
on others. The first law given to man in innocency, was, to keep the
garden and till it; the first after the loss of innocency, "In the
sweat of thy face thou shalt eat bread;"--so a dispensation from such
law, given by Him, who best knows what is good for man, in whatever
state, is not worthy to stand high among life's blessings.
More particularly we are taught in the same school, that the good thus
contemplated must cost something at least on the score of that best of
physical enjoyments--health. If it were duly appreciated, how high
this stands among life's goods, and how much its perfection depends on
freedom to the mind from the anxieties of hazardous speculation, and a
goodly amount of manly labor, of which the varied occupations of
agriculture are the most favorable of all; this consideration would
check the prevalent ambition to make the contrivance of the brain
supply the place of the labor of the hands.
Health is commended to us, not only as among the first of present
goods, but as one, the security of which is placed very much in our own
power; if we will but study and practise the means. It is remarkable,
that, while the healing art is proverbial for its sects and
uncertainties--amid the disputes of homoeopaths and allopaths,
mineralists and herbalists, stimulators and depletors--there is a pretty
general agreement of parties on the laws of hygiene, or the art of
preserving health. We might find here a law, taught by the
constitution of nature, that its Author never intended healing to hold
an important place in the cause of human welfare. He meant it should
be well nigh dispensed with, by the obedience men should pay to laws,
which they may understand.
The full appreciation of these considerations would tend greatly to
establish friendly relations in society; because, first, the good
contemplated is such, that the success of one in seeking, facilitates
the success of all. Secondly, it would abate the strife for
luxuries,--amassing without producing, and cultivating artificial
wants,--most fertile sources of discord. And, thirdly, it would
establish between physicians and their employers, relations the most
agreeable.
Another most unmanageable misconception of life's good, makes one of
its choicest items to be, the possession of power and superiority.
To what depths of degradation will man depress his fellows, just to
contemplate the distance between his might and their weakness! If this
ambition seems less general than the desire of accumulating, or of
substituting contrivance for productiveness, it may be, because the
necessity of the case more limits the number who can bear rule;
otherwise, the passion for power might find as ready an entrance to as
many hearts as are taken by the love of gain, or the dislike to labor.
We may find in this thought a partial explanation of the fact, that the
thrift of the non-slaveholding States contrasted with the stagnation at
the South, is so powerless an argument addressed to the slaveholders
there; for you have not only to satisfy avarice of the superior
profitableness of free labor; you have still to contend with the lust
of dominion--the passion for power and superiority. To manage this
passion is the heaviest charge of policy--to provide that the offices
which must be intrusted to human hands, be filled peaceably and
worthily.
Philosophy explodes this notion of good (as claiming to be eminently
such), in that it cannot stand the general test: It is a good, which a
few must share by detracting so much from the happiness of others.
And further, to the love of power is submitted the consideration, that
knowledge is power. It may be feared, this maxim oft suggests scarce
other sense, that that deeper insight into the tricks of trade or
politics enables the possessor to outwit competitors for riches or
honors in the game. It is still a low understanding, that knowledge of
nature's laws multiplies the means of physical enjoyment. Knowledge is
power in a higher sense, in that it empowers the possessor to call
forth stores of enjoyment form objects, which seem to vulgar
apprehension most barren of utility. But knowledge--taken for the
round of mental cultivation--is power, in that it is competent to
yield to all more than the delightful sense of conscious superiority,
which vulgar ambition may afford to a few of its successful votaries;
a store, from which each in taking does but multiply the remainder.
But to find it so one must look well, that he apprehend knowledge to be
a good of itself, independently of the distinction it confers. For a
vain ambition often takes this direction; and then it matters little to
one whether himself advance, or others be kept back--since, in either
case, the difference between him and them, the distinction chiefly
enjoyed, is the same.
Now, the love of knowledge is prior in time to the love of distinction;
it should seem then, that, with proper care, it might maintain the
mastery over its rival. The child is delighted with the acquisition of
new ideas, before it thinks of turning them to a vain-glorious account.
It deserves to be considered, whether our modes of education, offering
prizes and honors of scholarship, do not train into the ascendancy that
love of distinction, which education ought and might keep subordinate;
which in fact is one of the greatest hinderances to progress;--for when
one's immediate aim is not truth itself, but the glory which attends
the acquisition, he meets a thousand sidelong impulses from the
straightforward search.
That knowledge is a good which grows by being shared, is a truth more
fully apprehended, as the idea of knowledge is enlarged. It is
measurably so, while taken for eminence in common studies and the
received sciences. One's advance is facilitated by the advance of
others.
Much more does this hold, when the distinction between intellectual
culture and intellectual life is made, and the preference due to the
latter apprehended.
When the missionary enterprize was a new thing, in favor of the
missionary's being a married man was argued the advantage of having
children trained up in a Christian way before the eyes of the heathen.
But so completely has that expectation been disappointed, that now the
missionaries send home their children to be educated; alleging the
danger, lest their children become stumbling blocks, through the
apparent little difference between them and the heathen children.
And the difficulty is not, that they cannot there, as well as here, be
taught Latin, Greek, Mathematics--all the received sciences-the
branches of what is nominally education. It is not so much, that they
cannot there be shielded from evil influences abroad; as that their
children there want, what our children enjoy--the sight of magnificent
enterprises; a spirit of inquiry and freedom breathing all around them;
and the healthful contact and stimulus of multitudes of young minds, in
the like process of intellectual and moral training. It is such
nameless imperceptible influences, that awaken intellectual life, from
the mind, and determine the future man more than the teaching, which is
nominally education. Why else does the acknowledged excellence of the
teaching in the Prussian schools do so little to quicken intellectual
life--to form men of progressive thoughts?
We should be repaid the whole cost of the missionary enterprize, were
it only in the clearness and importance of the lesson thus taught us,
as otherwise we should hardly have suspected--the doctrine of our
mutual dependencies and tendencies to a common average--how our
intellectual life is subject to the law, "Whether one member suffer,
all the members suffer with it."
We may hence take instruction, first, in the matter of educating our
children. We have but half done our duty as parents, when we have
joined with such of our neighbors as better appreciate, or readier
furnish the means, of good instruction, to unite our children in a
select school, furnished with competent masters and ample apparatus.
The children of one neighborhood educate one another mainly. They
receive from one another more of those impressions which form the mind
and fix the after character, than all they get from their masters.
The carefully trained will receive a deleterious impression from the
neglected portion, despite of care to ward off evil influences. Or,
however successfully care may be applied, that is but negative success.
Our children still want the kindly stimulus to mental growth, to be
realized in a whole community of young minds, all sharing the like wise
training.
We may hence take occasion, secondly, to mark (what is not so obvious),
that through life the same law binds us: the law, that our intellectual
life depends more on the state of society in which we exist, than on
our direct efforts at self-culture. Individual effort may give one
great preeminence before his associates in any of the acknowledged
sciences, though even in such their success facilitates his; and if he
prizes the knowledge--the truth--for itself, rather than for the
attending glory, he will find in another's success, that, "whether one
member be honored, all the members rejoice with it." But distinctively
is it so, in regard to the general progress of universal mind in
justness of thought and sentiment--those new developed master ideas
which mark the place of each successive age in the line of progression;
and in regard to which, the masters in the received sciences are quite
as often found lagging behind, as going before.
In regard to this, we are all of us individually very like the several
drops which compose the mighty current of the Mississippi, moving with
resistless force to its destination. A few may outstrip by a little
the general progress of thought, and but a little; just as one drop in
the current may receive an impulse, carrying it a little in advance;
or, if we might suppose the drops gifted with intelligence, some by
self-directed effort and seizing opportunities, might speed themselves
a little. So study and determination will enable one to anticipate by
a little the birth of ideas.
And, on the other hand, the current of thought none can resist.
Sometimes a man resolves to be so conservative, as to stick fast by the
old moorings--_he_ is not going to yield to popular impulses. But it
fares with him very much as it would with the single drop in the
Mississippi, which should resolve to stop in its place, and so reluct
against impulses and take advantage of all impediments. The result from
day to day would be, not that it had stopped in its place, or any thing
like it; but that its daily approach to the ocean was a little less
than that of its fellows.
Thus we are brought round to the same position--that the attempt to
monopolize Heaven's best gifts to man, must be a very small affair--
that the individual best consults his own attainments in knowledge,
after the sublimest sense of the term, by consulting the progress of
his neighbors and the race; just as the single drop in the Mississippi
sees its best hope of speedily reaching the ocean, in whatever gives
onward impulse to the whole current.
The thought receives force from the consideration, that here
emphatically is that knowledge, which he who increaseth beyond the
average increase, increaseth sorrow. A saying of so much currency must
have some foundation in reality. And yet is not knowledge commended to
us as one of the richest sources of enjoyment?
"Happy the mortal, who has traced effects
To their first cause."
Where is the reconciling link between these seeming contradictions?
Now eminence in any of the received sciences, or branches of
literature, has rich capabilities of affording happiness. To penetrate
the depths of mathematics, chemistry, or astronomy--to revel in the
stores of ancient lore;--all such pursuits generally become more
delightfully attractive, the further one advances; or, after the
ancient indefinite use of terms, _knowledge_ might be taken for the
just proportionate training of all the faculties, in distinction from
the teaching, which impresses so many items of truth. And such
education preeminently fits one to pass time happily.
The maxim in question then applies emphatically to the forethought,
which anticipates the dawn of ideas.* [Or, more generally, we might
define, an accurate perception of the difference between _what is_ and
_what ought to be_--between reality and ideal perfection. Perhaps we
might say, _insight into logical futurity_.] And although, as above
said, none do greatly anticipate beyond the general sense of the age,
yet some may too much for their own comfort.
This thought Schiller finely sets forth in his Cassandra. At the hour
of her sister's nuptials, while the rest give loose to merriment at the
festival, the prophetess wanders forth alone, complaining, that her
insight into futurity debars her from participation in the common joy.
"To all its arms doth mirth unfold,
And every heart foregoes its cares,
And hope is busy in the old;
The bridal robe my sister wears,
And I alone, alone am weeping;
The sweet delusion mocks not me;
Around these walls destruction sweeping,
More near and near I see.
A torch before my vision glows,
But not in Hymen's hand it shines;
A flame that to the welkin goes,
But not from holy offering shrines:
Glad hands the banquet are preparing,
And near and near the halls of state,
I hear the god that comes unsparing,
I hear the steps of fate.
And men my prophet wail deride!
The solemn sorrow dies in scorn;
And lonely in the waste I hide
The tortured heart that would forewarn.
And the happy, unregarded,
Mocked by their fearful joy, I trod:
Oh! dark to me the lot awarded,
Thou evil Pythian god!
Thine oracle in vain to be,
Oh! wherefore am I thus consigned,
With eyes that every truth must see,
Lone in the city of the blind?
Cursed with the anguish of a power
To view the fates I may not thrall;
The hovering tempest still must lower,
The horror must befall.
Boots it, the veil to lift, and give
To sight the frowning fates beneath?
For error is the life we live,
And, oh, our knowledge is but death!
Take back the clear and awful mirror,
Shut from mine eyes the blood-red glare;
Thy truth is but a gift of terror,
When mortal lips declare.
My blindness give to me once more,
The gay, dim senses that rejoice;
The past's delighted songs are o'er
For lips that speak a prophet's voice.
To me _the future_ thou has granted;
I miss the moment from the chain--
The happy present hour enchanted!
Take back thy gift again!"* [Bulwer's translation.]
These lines express more than the trite observation, that a knowledge
of futurity would prove a torment to the possessor. Beneath that
obvious is couched the deeper moral, which expresses the sufferings of
the philosophic prophet--of the man who, too much for his own quiet,
anticipates reasonings, conclusions, sentiments, forms of social life
yet to prevail--the man to whom not coming events, but coming ideas,
cast their shadows before. If we could suppose one at the time of the
crusades, educated to associate and sympathize with the choice spirits
of the age, yet anticipating the sense of their age, in making the
comparative estimate of chivalrous adventure, and successful
cultivation of the arts of peace and industry; he must have felt
somewhat like Cassandra among the less gifted. If we could look on
life, as our successors will two hundred years hence, we too might
complain of being "lone in the city of the blind;" unless large Hope
and Benevolence enabled us to live on the future. Thus we find
additional motive to desiring a united and absolute, rather than an
individual and relative progress, in the consideration that knowledge
most worthily so called--whoso increaseth greatly beyond the average
attainment, doth so to his own sorrow.
To complete the list of false estimates of good, refuted by one test,
we should allude to the frivolities of gentility and fashion-the
passion for wearing badges of distinction, however impotent or
unmeaning such may be. This is the very poorest form of finding
delight, in what from the nature of the case can be shared by few.
For its incommunicableness is its only recommendation. It is an icy
repellant, freezing up the kindly flow of sympathy with universal
humanity; and uncompensated loss of that best ingredient of earthly
felicity--the interchange of friendly feelings and offices; that store
of wealth, from which the more that take, and the fuller their share,
the more they leave to be taken by others.
The foregoing may be treated as a fine and just speculation, but as
what ever must remain a barren speculation; as if it were after the
example of all ages, that men should mistake the material of happiness
for happiness itself. So it always has been, so it always will be,
that false notions of good usurp the place of the true, despite the
demonstrations of moralists and divines to the contrary.
Mind, however, has not stood still in this matter. It has moved, and
that in the right direction. We may note a progress from age to age,
in coming to a just estimate of life. Start not at the use of terms,
rendered suspicious by the extravagancies of which they have been made
the vehicle. But we must not reject ideas great, just, or new, because
of the distortions and caricatures of little minds. If one idea
occupies the mind all them more for being great and just, it will be
likely to overmaster that mind, so as not to be produced in its fair
proportions, or rightly applied. So fare they, with whom the one idea
is, the progress of society--the growth of thought. The Mississippi in
its progress throws froth and scum on its surface, more conspicuous
than the under-running current. So radical folly and transcendental
nonsense is obtruded on the sight, from the sympathy of little minds
with the deeper current of thought. To gauge the progress of mind from
those who are most noisy on the matter, would be, like taking the
direction and rapidity of the Mississippi, from the froth, which the
wind blows hither and thither over its surface.
"Let us go on to perfection"--"Forgetting the things behind, and
pressing onward to the things before." Such language describes
distinctively the American character, and the spirit of Christianity.
Only, where is perfection? What are the things before? If, as a
people, we do fully take these expressions in their author's sense, we
may hope there is one element of agreement, betokening good for the
future.
It is encouraging, that the two rival systems, most boldly promising to
lead to perfection, both had their birth under political and mental
bondage. So evidently with Romanism, whether under its proper form and
name, or refined and disguised after the modern fashion. And the same
is true of the baptized infidelity imported from Germany. The German
mind is cramped and diseased by the bands which confine it. It is not
allowed to speculate freely on politics, and the many questions most
nearly touching present interests. Therefore, on the records and on
the doctrines which pertain to eternal interests, it falls with an
insane avidity for innovation, and runs into licentiousness a liberty
no where else enjoyed. Hence the levity, in dealing with things
sacred, in Germany often found in minds of the first and second orders,
here is taken up by those to the third and fourth--the copyists and
imitators; nay, by the buffoons who figure at the farces of mock
philanthropy. Now, though every folly must find minds whose caliber it
fits, we may hope the genuine American mind will not be extensively
beguiled by either of the misbegotten offspring of Europe's mental
servitude.
But, to the point--progress made in estimating life. A few centuries
ago, a torrent of enthusiasm set in the direction of bearing the cross
into Asia, to fight for glory, and the propagation of Christianity, on
the fields of Palestine. Already the old Roman military character was
greatly improved on. Virtue, (_manliness_, a` vir-_man_) was no longer
supposed to fulfil its highest office in
Parcere subjectis et debellare superbos.
A delicate sense of honor, of the courtesy due to a foe and the
gallantry to the other sex, betoken a type of humanity in advance of
the brute ferocity of the best days of Rome.
But, notwithstanding Mr. Burke's eloquence, and the opinion sometimes
expressed, that the courtly knight of the middle age, realized the
perfection of humanity; we have no reason to regret that the age of
chivalry is gone by, and that the age of speculation, and money-making,
and industrial enterprize has succeeded. The materialism of this age,
with all its faults, is better than the chivalry of an age gone by.
It tends to keep the world at peace; _that_ tended to perpetual
turmoil. The supposition _all rich_, according to modern ideas, is not
so flat a contradiction as the supposition _all glorious_, in military
heroism. As the past age estimated life's supreme good, the enjoyment
of a few _required_ the exclusion of the many from its benefits: as
this age estimates the enjoyment of some, _admits_ the exclusion of
others. Whether the mercantile spirit thoroughly entered into makes a
better man than did the spirit of chivalry, may be doubted; not so,
which best comports with the welfare of society.
Now if one, at the time of the crusades, had so anticipated the spirit
of the age, as to picture to himself modern Europe and America,
manufacturing, trading, flocking to California, as if there a holy
sepulcher was to be rescued from hands profane, glorying chiefly in
mechanical development and mercantile enterprize; and had ventured to
suggest, that instead of trooping to Asia to fight for glory, and the
fancy of promoting religion by arguments of steel, it would be worthier
of the choice spirits of the age to stay at home, and by industry and
enterprize aim at multiplying the means of content to quiet life:
he might have found a harder task than now devolves on him, who urges,
that the materialism of this age must pass away, as has passed the
chivalry of the crusades; both for the same reason; the progress of
thought must outgrow the one, as it has outgrown the other.
A new age with another spirit will be ushered in. What is to be the
spirit of that age? Are we to find the forebodings in the dreamy
sentimentalism, which boasts so much its flights beyond common material
ideas? I trow rather, we may trace the character of the coming age in
an increasing estimation of health, knowledge, mental cultivation,
intellectual life, and the flow of the social affections, as the prime
of earthly felicities--in an approximation towards rationally
estimating money (with the ability to command it) as the means of
meeting one's capacities of enjoyment--to be no longer worshipped as
itself the idol or the end.
When a pestilential disease breaks out in the city, the plainness and
urgency of the case compel all to see in the sickness of one the danger
of all. Wants and discomforts, which charity had been too cold to
attend to, now considered as sources of contagion, are administered to
with a ready alacrity. The law is recognized, according to which, "if
one member suffers, all the members suffer with it." And this law will
be more fully recognized, as self-love is educated--as men better
understand their own welfare, and choose with reference to the whole of
their nature, and the duration of their existence.
Self-love is a motive of the indifferent kind--not of itself
essentially good or bad. This appears from its being an essential part
of our nature. Indeed, we can hardly conceive it as within the
province of Omnipotence, to create a rational sentient being, who
should be indifferent to his own happiness.
The advantages accruing from an educated self-love are:
First, additional security, that the good work of charity be done; and
to all but the individual doer, it may matter little what be the
prompting motives.
Secondly, the expansion of yet nobler principles. Each act favors the
growth of the sentiments, of which it is the expression. So he who
does as benevolence bids, though from a motive secondary on the score
of purity, will be likely again to do the same from yet purer motives.
So at least if the essential principle be there, though appearing no
more vividly than as a cold sense of duty.
But, thirdly, self-love is made the rule and standard of charity: "Thou
shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." One must then first love himself,
in order to loving his neighbor. Keeping this rule, there is no danger
of loving thyself too well; rather, the more truly thou lovest thyself,
the more truly thou lovest thy neighbor.
Suppose one to cherish the vulgar notion of life--that it consists in
the abundance of the things which one possesses, in the ability to live
without exertion, amid plenty of good cheer. Suppose him to love his
neighbor as himself. His charity must partake of the contraction and
grossness of his self-love. Suppose another to prize duly intellectual
riches. To him the discovery of a new principle in the physical,
intellectual, or moral world, brings a joy unsurpassed by the
merchant's, on the return of his heavily laden ship from a successful
voyage. As the best legacy to his children, he would leave them a good
education; and, knowing the natural influences and dependencies
existing between young minds, he aims to have all the children in
the neighborhood well educated, as the best security against failure in
the attempt to educate his own. If all is but a refined calculation,
how best to benefit himself and household; it is far more estimable and
amiable than the gross selfishness which grovels after vulgar goods,
and in the success of a brother sees an obstacle to its own success.
But if he too loves his neighbor as himself, why how far his self-love
is educated to find its satisfaction in nobler ends, by so much his
charity is better than the other's.
There is hope for the future in the consideration, that self-interest,
the first, as well as love of approbation, the second, of the great
powers which move the world, indeed all the indifferent motives, are
getting still more into coincidence of action with justice and
benevolence.
When Jesus enforced a duty by the consideration, "Then shalt thou have
worship [respect, approval,] in the presence of them that sit at meat
with thee," he implied two things; first, that regard to the world's
respectful esteem is not a censurable motive; and, secondly, that the
same operates to good, rather than to evil. So it must have been even
in that corrupt generation, so disposed to call evil good and good
evil. It must be much more so now, when public sentiment has so much
improved. Notwithstanding the danger of loving the praise of man more
than the praise of God, and the mischiefs resulting from such
preference, we should lose, on the whole, by eradicating the love of
human praise. Witness the accounts of the atrocious outbreaks of
depravity at the gold diggings, while society was yet unformed.
Witness, wherever cease the common restraints of civilization.
Thus agents--so often the authors of discord and confusion, so often
the fire-brands to set the world in fumes--philanthropy is more and
more firing as her sure allies.
"Even so, the torch of hellish flames
Becomes a leading light to heaven:
And so corruption's self becomes
To bread of life the living leaven."
All analogies point to a still increasing vigor in the growth of the
kingdom of heaven. If the mustard tree is never seen growing, but only
to have grown; yet the greater the tree, the greater its power of daily
making large growth, without its growing being perceived.
All considerations indicate the power of each to do something to
forward the consummation. No member of society is so insignificant,
that his spiritual life does not affect the health of the whole. The
obscurest, who cherishes a preference of ideal wealth over material
riches and sensual delights, does something towards forming a sane
public sentiment, just as surely as the tenant of the humblest city
dwelling, who keeps clean his own premises, does something towards
promoting the general health.
It is well to review the progress made in estimating life--to impress
our minds with its existence as a reality; because mind and enterprize
just now tend so strongly to the material and mechanical, that we might
be tempted to doubt, whether any other improvement were to be thought
of. If so, we might well enough stop where we are. But we shall
contemplate with most satisfaction our multiplied facilities for
manufacturing, transportation, fertilizing the earth, and conveying
intelligence, if we see in the whole a store, from which we may draw
with good effect for promoting general welfare, whenever the true end
of these means shall be earnestly studied. Otherwise the discovery,
how to make two kernels of corn grow where one grew before, would all
redound to the tyranny of fashion, and only foreshadow an increase of
artificial wants, quite up to the increased supply; so that want would
still be as close treading on our heels as ever.
But if we yet scarce attain to longer life, better health, or more
content, than fell to the lot of our fathers, with their simpler arts
and manner, because we are forgetting to discriminate between true and
false wants--between real and imaginary happiness: the true voice of
history still is, not that the material means must always thus fall
short of their legitimate end; but that, though the material and the
mechanical travel first and fastest, the moral and the spiritual are
following after. These in due time will reveal the meaning and the
value of our stored acquisitions.
Dr. Franklin calculated, that the labor of all for three or four hours
a day, would furnish all the necessaries and all the conveniences of
life; supposing men freed from the exactions of an arbitrary fashion.
If he was near correctness, his time must be abundant in our day, when
the productiveness of machinery, and skill in the arts, are so much
improved. Then it is within existing possibilities, that every mind be
thoroughly cultivated; and every body taxed for labor, only to the
extent required by the conditions of its own best vigor and that of the
inhabiting mind. So far afield from truth is the common supposition,
that the many can receive but the elements of learning; while the few
must sacrifice bodily vigor to excessive intellectual cultivation.
Connect with this thought that before advanced of the irresistible
tendencies of our intellectual life to one average; and what a
boundless vista, in the direction of human progress, opens before us.
As citizens of the republic, we have comparatively little cause to
exult in the conceit of being freer or happier than other communities;
much more in the chance, having broken the fetters of superstition and
tyranny, next to rend those of false habit and fashion--to enthrone
reason over the authority of one another's eyes and prejudices: to say
in truth,--
"Here the free spirit of mankind at length
Throws its last fetters off; and who shall place
A limit to the giant's untamed strength,
Or curb his swiftness in the forward race?
Far, like the comet's way through infinite space,
Stretches the long untravelled path of light
Into the depth of ages; we may trace,
Distant the brightening glory of his flight,
Till the receding beams are lost to human sight."
*Bryant.