pupils, like all boys in the full tide of health and spirits, do not
always see the folly of an appeal to the _ultimo ratio regum_ in so
strong a light as that in which it _sometimes_ appears to older eyes;
and resort is now and then had to trial by combat, in preference to
trial by jury. The candid and experienced teacher, who knows the
difficulty and the danger of too rigorously suppressing natural
impulses, will not censure us for endeavouring to regulate this
custom, than to destroy it altogether. In the hope of lessening the
number of those _fracas_ (never very large), a law was proposed, which
the committee adopted, to render it penal for any person, except the
Magistrate and the Constables, to be present at a battle. Six hours'
notice must be given by both parties, and a tax paid in advance.
During the interval, it is the duty of the Magistrate to attempt a
reconciliation. These regulations were intended to give opportunity
for the passions to cool, and to check the inclination for display
which is often the sole cause of the disturbance.
We consider the effect on the minds of the spectators as the worst
part of the transaction. There is something dreadfully brutalising in
the shouts of incitement and triumph which generally accompany a feat
of pugilism. Neither boys nor men ought ever to witness pain without
sympathy. It is almost needless to say, that, with us, fighting is
anything rather than a source of festivity and amusement.
To return to our story.--A day-scholar, whose father's grounds adjoin
ours, was discovered by the Magistrate to have witnessed a battle from
a tree which he had climbed for that purpose. The Magistrate fined
him. He appealed, and the question of his liability was argued at some
length before the Committee.
The ground which the appellant took was, that no day-scholar could be
amenable to the laws of the school, except during the hours of
business, or while on the premises of the school, and that the alleged
offence was committed out of school hours, and on his father's land.
Public opinion ran in his favour. The plea that he was on his father's
land seemed to have great weight with his schoolfellows. To fine a boy
under such circumstances appeared to them like an attempt to invade
the paternal sanctuary, and the motion for quashing conviction of the
Magistrate, at first received the support of several members of the
Committee.
The attending Teacher saw that it would be necessary to call the
attention of the Committee to general principles, and proposed as an
amendment to the general motion, the following resolution, 'That it is
desirable that the laws should be obeyed at all times, and in all
places.' In support of this amendment he argued, that as the laws had
the happiness of the school in view, a breach of those laws must
certainly be in some degree destructive of the general good. That to
allow this in certain individuals would be injurious to the great
body, but still more so to the individuals themselves; and that what
was wrong in the schoolroom or on the playground at eleven in the
morning, could not be right in the fields at six in the afternoon. In
conclusion he said, 'Whether or not we have the power to fine a person
for a breach of our laws when he is at a distance from the schools,
is a question which it is not our present business to determine; but I
firmly believe that our laws are calculated to promote in the highest
degree our welfare, and I wish the advantages to be derived from
obeying them to be as widely diffused as possible.'
The amendment was carried unanimously.
Having determined 'that it was desirable that the laws should be
obeyed at all times and in all places,' it was necessary in the next
place to ascertain whether it was not a part of our law that such
should be the case.
With this view an amendment was proposed which declared, that such was
the intention of the law, and in support of it cases were cited in
which day-boys had been punished for offences committed at a distance
from the school. It was also insisted, that in no single instance had
the laws made an exception in favour of the day-boys. They universally
begin by saying, that, if 'any one,' or 'any pupil,' or 'any boy,'
shall commit such and such an offence, etc., and not 'any boarder,' or
'any day-boy then at school.'
The second amendment was also carried without opposition.
The question was now confined within very narrow limits. The Committee
had declared that it was 'desirable that the laws should be obeyed at
all times and in all places;' and also, that by law no exception was
made in favour of day-scholars. It only remained therefore for the
Committee to consider, whether the police of the school had the power
to enforce the laws.
It was argued that in this case they had been enforced, for that the
fine had actually been paid, and that unless the Committee interfered
to prevent it, they would continue to operate as they had done, for
the welfare of the school at large, and for the ultimate advantage
even of the individuals who might at first appear to be injured.
The amended motion was now put, and the conviction was unanimously
confirmed.
This detail will furnish the reader with a more correct conception
than we could otherwise give him, of the opportunities with which the
sittings of our little Committees furnish the members for making some
important acquirements.
In the first place, they study the art of reasoning, and that too
under very favourable circumstances; being fully acquainted with the
facts on which they are called to exercise their judgments, and seeing
them in all their bearings. We believe that intimate acquaintance with
the facts of which we speak to be the first and most important element
in practical logic. Reasoning, strictly speaking, being no more than
the art of tracing analogies and differences. The _reality_ of the
business in which the students are engaged is very valuable, inasmuch
as it furnishes them with strong motives to exert all their powers in
the investigation. The matter at issue 'comes home to their business
and bosoms;' it may deeply affect their interests, and will not pass
unnoticed by their constituents; among whom the question will be again
discussed, and the Committee-men will in conversation have to defend
the opinions they have officially expressed. Thus every argument is
well canvassed in their minds, and the ideas remain under
consideration for a sufficient time to become permanently fixed in
their remembrance. The power of public speaking is also in some degree
acquired, and, we hope, without the countervailing evils which have
been so justly deprecated. The great defects of all artificial methods
of learning the art of debating is, that it is seldom of any real
importance to either speaker or hearer, on which side the question
under discussion is determined; consequently, the speaker is more
anxious to display his own talents, than to convince the audience;
which, on its part, wishes rather for amusement than instruction, or
seeks the latter only by watching the conduct of this mental
fencing-match, in order to learn the most skilful manner of handling
the foils. Every one who addresses the company assembled, feels that
he shall be more applauded for agreeably wandering, than for pointing
out and following the best and straightest road. In short, discussion,
instead of being a means employed to gain an object, is the end
itself.
The orator, if such a name is to be so degraded, rises not to gain the
votes of his hearers, but to make them laugh and clap their hands;
and, this is most easily done by advancing smart sophisms, and
uttering well-delivered absurdities with mock solemnity, we may
readily conceive how little the powers of investigation can be
exercised and improved by such practice as that of spouting clubs and
debating societies. No doubt there are many exceptions to these
remarks, but the vice we complain of is, we fear, inherent in some
degree in the nature of the institutions, although by care in the
choice of members, and the selection of an audience, it may, in a
great measure, be counteracted.
We must not forget to state the advantages enjoyed by the Teacher's
attendance on the sittings of our Committees. He becomes most
intimately acquainted with the minds of his pupils. He sees their
difficulties and their errors in a strong light, and is placed in a
situation for addressing himself more completely to the state of their
wants than he could be, unless they were thus induced, and almost
compelled, to disclose all the workings of the mental machine. In
general, nearly every person who knows a boy at all, has an
opportunity of becoming better acquainted with him than his
instructor. No wonder, considering the many painful sensations which
the latter, in his various offices of accuser, witness, judge and
executioner, is compelled to exite. We are happily relieved from these
difficulties, but we still seize with avidity every means by which our
pupils may be induced to develop their minds to our view, feeling that
our acquaintance with their springs of thought and action can never be
too accurate and complete. The votes at the conclusion of the debate
show us the measure of our success. Every influence except that of
mind, is, we trust, out of the question: we do not always carry a
majority with us; and this fact gives us hope, that when we do, a
sincere effect has been wrought on the convictions of the boys.
To conclude, we must in candour acknowledge, that we search more
industriously for arguments and illustrations to support our opinions,
than we should or _could_ do, under other circumstances. The effect on
the mind of the Master is not a bad test of any method of education.
ABSTRACT OF SWEDENBORGIANISM:
BY IMMANUEL KANT.
(_May, 1824._)
----But now to my hero. If many a forgotten writer, or writer destined
to be forgotten, is on that account the more deserving of applause for
having spared no cost of toil and intellectual exertion upon his
works, certainly Swedenborg of all such writers is deserving of the
most. Without doubt his flask in the moon is full; and not at all less
than any of those which Ariosto saw in that planet filled with the
lost wits of men, so thoroughly is his great work emptied of every
drop of common sense. Nevertheless there prevails in every part so
wonderful an agreement with all that the most refined and consistent
sense under the same fantastic delusions could produce on the same
subject, that the reader will pardon me if I here detect the same
curiosities in the caprices of fancy which many other virtuosi have
detected in the caprices of nature; for instance, in variegated
marble, where some have discovered a holy family; or in stalactites
and petrifactions, where others have discovered monks, baptismal
fonts, and organs; or even in frozen window-panes, where our
countryman Liscow, the humourist, discovered the number of the beast
and the triple crown; things which he only is apt to descry, whose
head is preoccupied with thoughts about them.
The main work of this writer is composed of eight quarto volumes full
of nonsense, which he presented to the world as a new revelation under
the title of _Arcana Coelestia_. In this work his visions are
chiefly directed to the discovery of the secret sense in the two first
books of Moses, and to a similar way of interpreting the whole of the
Scripture. All these fantastic interpretations are nothing to my
present purpose: those who have any curiosity may find some account of
them in the _Bibliotheca Theologica_ of Dr. Ernesti. All that I design
to extract are his _audita et visa_, from the supplements to his
chapters--that which he saw with his own eyes, and heard with his own
ears: for these parts of his dreams it is which are to be considered
as the foundation of all the rest. Swedenborg's style is dull and
mean. His narrations and their whole contexture appear in fact to have
originated in a disorder of his sensitive faculty, and suggest no
reason for suspecting that the speculative delusions of a depraved
intellect have moved him to invent them. Viewed in this light, they
are really of some importance--and deserve to be exhibited in a short
abstract; much more indeed than many a brainless product of fantastic
philosophers who swell our journals with false subtilties; for a
coherent delusion of the senses is always a more remarkable phenomenon
than a delusion of the intellect; inasmuch as the grounds of this
latter delusion are well known, and the delusion itself corrigible
enough by self-exertion and by putting more check upon the rash
precipitation of the judgment; whereas a delusion of the senses
touches the original foundation of all judgment, and where it exists
is radically incapable of all cure from logic. I distinguish therefore
in our author his craziness of sense from his crazy wits; and I pass
over his absurd and distorted reasonings in those parts where he
abandons his visions, for the same reason that in reading a
philosopher we are often obliged to separate his observations from his
arguments: and generally, delusive experiences are more instructive
than delusive grounds of experience in the reason. Whilst I thus rob
the reader of some few moments, which otherwise perhaps he would have
spent with no greater profit in reading works of abstract philosophy
that are often of not less trivial import,--I have at the same time
provided for the delicacy of his taste by the omission of many
chimæras, and by concentrating the essence of the book into a few
drops; and for this I anticipate no less gratitude from him than
(according to the old story) a patient expressed towards his
physicians--who had contented themselves with ordering him to eat the
bark of the quinquina, when it was clearly in their power to have
insisted on his eating up the whole tree.
Mr. Swedenborg divides his visions into three kinds, of which the
first consists in being liberated from the body--an intermediate state
between waking and sleeping, in which he saw--heard--and felt spirits.
This kind he has experienced three or four times. The second consists
in being carried away by spirits, whilst he continues to walk the
streets (suppose) without losing his way; meantime in spirit he is in
quite other regions, and sees distinctly houses, men, forests, &c.;
and all this for some hours long, until he suddenly finds himself
again in his true place. This has happened to him two or three times.
The third or ordinary kind of visions is that which he has daily when
wide awake; and from this class his narrations are chiefly taken. All
men, according to Swedenborg, stand in an intimate connection with the
spiritual world; only they are not aware of it; and the difference
between himself and others consists simply in this--that his innermost
nature is laid open, of which gift he always speaks with the most
devout spirit of gratitude (Datum mihi est ex divinâ Domini
misericordiâ). From the context it is apparent that this gift consists
in the consciousness of those obscure representations which the soul
receives through its continual connection with the spiritual world.
Accordingly he distinguishes in men between the external and the
internal memory. The former he enjoys as a person who belongs to the
visible world, but the latter in virtue of his intercourse with the
spiritual world. Upon this distinction is grounded also the
distinction between the outer and inner man; and Swedenborg's
prerogative consists in this--that he stands already in this life in
the society of spirits, and is recognised by them as possessing such a
prerogative. In the inner memory is retained whatsoever has vanished
from the outer; and of all which is presented to the consciousness of
man nothing is ever lost. After death the remembrance of all which
ever entered his soul, and even all that had perished to himself,
constitutes the entire book of his life. The presence of spirits, it
is true, strikes only upon his inner sense. Nevertheless this is able
to excite an apparition of these spirits external to himself, and even
to invest them with a human figure. The language of spirits is an
_immediate_ and unsymbolic communication of ideas; notwithstanding
which it is always clothed in the semblance of that language which
Swedenborg himself speaks, and is represented as external to him. One
spirit reads in the memory of another spirit all the representations,
whether images or ideas, which it contains. Thus the spirits see in
Swedenborg all the representations which he has of this world; and
with so clear an intuition that they often deceive themselves and
fancy that they see the objects themselves immediately--which however
is impossible, since no pure spirit has the slightest perception of
the material universe: nay they cannot gain any idea of it through
intercourse with the souls of other living men, because their inner
nature is not opened--_i. e._ their inner sense contains none but
obscure representations. Hence it arises that Mr. Swedenborg is the
true oracle of spirits, which are not at all less curious to read in
him the present condition of the world, than he is to view in their
memory, as in a mirror, the marvels of the spiritual world. Although
these spirits stand in like manner closely connected with all other
souls of living men, by a reciprocal commerce of action and passion,
yet they are as little aware of this as men are aware of it. Spirits
therefore ascribe to themselves as the product of their own minds what
in fact results from the action of human souls upon them; just as men
during their lives imagine that all their thoughts, and the motions of
the will which take place within them, arise from themselves,
although in fact they oftentimes take their origin in the spiritual
world. Meantime every human soul, even in this life, has its place and
station in this spiritual world, and belongs to a certain society
which is always adapted to its inner condition of truth and
goodness,--that is, to the condition of the understanding and the
will. But the places of souls in relation to each other have nothing
in common with the material world; and therefore the soul of a man in
India is often in respect to spiritual situation next neighbour to the
soul of another man in Europe; as on the contrary very often those,
who dwell corporeally under the same roof, are with respect to their
spiritual relations far enough asunder. If a man dies, his soul does
not on that account change its place; but simply feels itself in that
place which in regard to other spirits it already held in this life.
For the rest, although the relation of spirits to each other is no
true relation of space, yet has it to them the appearance of space;
and their affinities or attractions for each other assume the
semblance of proximities, as their repulsions do of distances; just as
spirits themselves are not actually extended, but yet present the
appearance to each other of a human figure. In this imaginary space
there is an undisturbed intercourse of spiritual natures. Mr.
Swedenborg converses with departed souls whenever he chooses, and
reads in their memory (he means to say in their representative
faculty) that very condition in which they contemplate themselves; and
this he sees as clearly as with his bodily eyes. Moreover the enormous
distance of the rational inhabitants of the world is to be accounted
as nothing in relation to the spiritual universe; and to talk with an
inhabitant of Saturn is just as easy to him as to speak with a
departed human soul. All depends upon the relation of their inner
condition in reference to their agreement in truth and goodness: but
those spirits, which have weak affinities for each other, can readily
come into intercourse through the inter-agency of others. On this
account it is not necessary that a man should actually have dwelt on
all the other heavenly bodies in order to know them together with all
their wonders.
One presiding doctrine in Swedenborg's ravings is this: corporeal
beings have no subsistence of their own, but exist merely by and
through the spiritual world; although each body not by means of one
spirit alone, but of all taken together. Hence the knowledge of
material things has two meanings; an external meaning referring to the
inter-dependencies of the matter upon itself, and an internal meaning
in so far as they denote the powers of the spiritual world which are
their causes. Thus the body of man has a system of parts related to
each other agreeably to material laws: but, in so far as it is
supported by the spirit which lives, its limbs and their functions
have a symbolic value as expressions of those faculties in the soul
from which they derive their form, mode of activity, and power of
enduring. The same law holds with regard to all other things in the
visible universe: they have (as has been said) one meaning as
things--which is trivial, and another as signs--which is far
weightier. Hence by the way arises the source of those new
interpretations of Scripture which Swedenborg has introduced. For the
inner sense,--that is, the symbolic relation of all things there
recorded to the spiritual world,--is, as he conceits, the kernel of
its value; all the rest being only its shell. All spirits represent
themselves to one another under the appearance of extended forms; and
the influences of all these spiritual beings amongst one another raise
to them at the same time appearances of other extended beings, and as
it were of a material world. Swedenborg therefore speaks of
gardens--spacious regions--mansions--galleries--and arcades of
spirits--as of things seen by himself in the clearest light; and he
assures us--that, having many times conversed with all his friends
after their death, he had almost always found in those who had but
lately died--that they could scarcely convince themselves that they
had died, because they saw round about them a world similar to the one
they had quitted. He found also that spiritual societies, which had
the same inner condition, had the same apparition of space and of all
things in space; and that the change of their internal state was
always accompanied by the appearance of a change of place.
I have already noticed that, according to our author, the various
powers and properties of the soul stand in sympathy with the organs of
the body entrusted to its government. The outer man therefore
corresponds to the whole inner man; and hence, whenever any remarkable
spiritual influence from the invisible world reaches one of these
faculties of the soul, he is sensible also harmonically of the
apparent presence of it in the corresponding members of his outer man.
To this head now he refers a vast variety of sensations in his body
which are uniformly connected with spiritual intuition; but the
absurdity of them is so enormous that I shall not attempt to adduce
even a single instance.----By all this a preparation is made for the
strangest and most fantastic of his notions in which all his ravings
are blended. As different powers and faculties constitute that unity
which is the soul or inner man, so also different spirits (whose
leading characteristics bear the same relation to each other as the
various faculties of a spirit) constitute one society which exhibits
the appearance of one great man; and in this shadowy image every
spirit is seen in that place and in those visible members which are
agreeable to its proper function in such a spiritual body. And all
spiritual societies taken together, and the entire universe of all
these invisible beings, appears again in the form of a hugest and
ultra-enormous man mountain: a monstrous and gigantic fancy, which
perhaps has grown out of the school mode of representing a whole
quarter of the world under the image of a virgin sitting. In this
immeasurable man is an entire and inner commerce of each spirit with
all, and of all with each; and, let the position of men in reference
to each other be what it may, they take quite another position in this
enormous man--a position which they never change, and which is only in
appearance a local position in an immeasurable space, but in fact a
determinate kind of relation and influence.