The Destinies; or, The Reign of Law.
On one occasion, an aged scholar soliloquized as follows: “Homer was
at the same time beggar and poet: his mouth more often filled with
verses than with bread. Plautus turned a mill that he might live.
Menander, Cratinus and Terrence were drowned; Empedocles lost in the
crater of Mount Etna; Euripides and Heraclitus torn to pieces by dogs;
Hesiod, Archilochus and Ibychus, murdered. Sappho threw herself from
a precipice. Condemned by a tyrant, respectively, Seneca, Lucan, and
Petronius Arbiter, cut their veins and bled to death. Poison terminated
the lives of Socrates, Demosthenes and Lucretius.
“In Plutarch, we read of ‘two eminent persons, whose names were Attis,
the one a Syrian, the other of Arcadia, both were slain by a wild
boar; of two, whose names were Acteon, one was torn to pieces by his
dog, the other by assassins; of two famous Scipios, one overthrew
the Carthagenians in war, the other totally destroyed them; four of
the most warlike commanders of antiquity had but one eye--Philip,
Antigonous, Hannibal and Sertorius.’
“Paul Borghese, a writer of rhythmic verse, died of starvation. Tasso,
himself the most amiable of poets, lived like a pauper, and passed away
in an asylum. Bentivoglio, a creator of classic comedies, in the misery
of his old age, was refused admittance to an hospital he had founded.
Cervantes died of hunger, and Camoens ended his days in an almshouse.
The body of Vaugelas was disposed of to surgeons that his debts might
be paid. Spencer was forsaken and neglected in his old age. Decker,
Cotten, Savage and Lloyd breathed their last in jails.
“Might not these men have said, ‘Who can shut out fate?’ Were they the
sport of circumstances, or could circumstances have been made their
sport? Was each independent of fatality? Was he free from destiny; or,
was he subject to an unalterable course--an invincible necessity?”
The query of this venerable sage has been that of civilized man in
every age. Coming into the world with the dawn of philosophy, it will
remain until the veil of Isis is uplifted. Profoundest wisdom has ever
taught the subordination of man to a higher law, by which his career is
largely determined from the beginning. Investigation will disclose that
such, to-day, is the real opinion of a vast majority of mankind.
The thought was ascendant in the literature and religion of the ancient
Greeks. Their Moira was a personification of law; the Goddess of
Destiny, who assigned to everyone his fate, or “share.” At the birth
of man she spun the thread of his future life, pursued his footsteps,
and directed the consequences of his actions, according to the decrees
of Zeus. By some she was conceived as a fatal divinity, who directed
human affairs in such a manner as to restore the right proportions or
equilibrium, wherever it had been disturbed; who measured out happiness
and unhappiness, and allotted losses and sufferings to him who was
blest with too frequent gifts of Fortune, to the end he might be
humbled into acknowledging the existence of bounds beyond which human
happiness cannot proceed with safety.
To Homer she was not an absolute sovereign of both heaven and earth, to
whom even the gods must bow; but merely apportioned the fate of men, as
counseled by Deity. In the theology of Hesiod there were three: Clotho,
the spinning fate; Lachesis, who assigned to man his fate; and Atropo,
who decreed a fate that could not be avoided. This conception answered
to the Teutonic Norns, or Weird Sisters. What was to the earlier poets
of Greece a person, Æschylus apprehended as a principle; a law for
both gods and men; an over-ruling, ever-present, inevitable necessity,
against which it is vain to contend, and from which it is hopeless to
escape. “His characters are pre-determined parricides, murderers and
adulterers.” For instance, the destiny of the pious Amphiaraus led him
to that death his wisdom foresaw; fate impelled him to the society his
judgment forbade. Good Eteocles, too, lies under the band of fate, but
seeks not to avert the doom. “Stern, uncompromising, he will meet the
man he must slay, by whom he must himself fall.” The inexorable destiny
of Æschylus was to Sophocles and Plato an ordering of the divine will.
Two great schools of philosophy divided the educated opinion of classic
Greece and Rome. The tenets of both were fatalistic in tendency. What
was to the Epicurean a “chance” appealed to the Stoic as “law.” Man,
taught Epicurus, is a mere buffet of a blind fatality. The phenomenon
of life, said Stoicism, is governed with iron sway by an imminent
necessity of reason. “Man should be free from passion,” preached
Zeno, “unmoved by joy or grief, and submit without complaint to the
unavoidable power by which all things are governed.”
Buddhism is the doctrine taught by Gautama, the Hindoo sage, in the
sixth century, B. C.; now the belief of a greater part of central and
eastern Asia and the Indian Islands. In this creed, fatality is a
cardinal principle. Sir Edwin Arnold has designated it “The Light of
Asia.” The great religion of Brahma, also, teaches that everything
is subject to a divinely appointed necessity. It boasts a philosophy
that was the admiration of Bruno, Schelling, Hegel, and Draper. Manes
declared that the moral universe was controlled by two supreme
principles; one the author of all good, the other the author of all
evil. The highest conception of Mohammed is an arbitrary and inexorable
law. In the Koran we read: “No man can anticipate or postpone his end.
Death will overtake us, even in lofty towers. From the beginning, God
hath settled the place in which each man shall die.” The Persian poet
sings: “The destinies ride their horses by night. No man can by flight
escape his fate. Whether asleep in bed or in the storm of battle, the
angel of death will find thee.” “I am convinced,” saith Ali, “that the
affairs of men go by divine decree, and not by our administration.”
In the philosophy of Solomon, as recorded in Ecclesiastes, we read:
“The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is
done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the
sun.... To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose
under the heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to
plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; a time to kill,
and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a
time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and
a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to
refrain from embracing; a time to get, and a time to lose; a time to
keep, and a time to cast away; a time to rend, and a time to sew; a
time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time
to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.”
With Christianity came the dogma of “predestination” and “election.”
This was promulgated, on the very threshold, by Paul, a man of the
sublimest genius; adorable, venerable and heroic. Thus he addressed
the church at Rome: “And we know that all things work together for
good to them that love God,--to them who are the called according to
His purpose. For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be
conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be first born among
many brethren. Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called:
and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them
he also glorified. What shall we say to these things? If God be for us,
who can be against us?”
This idea is necessarily involved in the theology of St. Augustine, who
maintained that “grace is effectual from its nature, absolutely and
morally, not relatively and gradually.” It remained for John Calvin to
erect the assertions of Paul into a cognate and masterly system. He
insisted upon the purpose of God from eternity, respecting all events.
Briefly, of the religion of the world, to-day, ninety per cent are
predestinarian in theory or practice, consciously or unconsciously. Of
Christendom, those who agree with Arminius are in a small minority,
relatively:--a minority whose creed involves not only the limitation of
divine knowledge, but a paralysis of divine power and the moral chaos
of a universe. That religion is necessarily puerile and unphilosophic
which attempts to reconcile the omnipotence of God with the freedom
of man. Either Nature is ordered for the best--so as to produce the
highest good; or else, everything is purposeless and for the worst. In
a word, either optimism or pessimism must wholly prevail: logically,
a middle ground is impossible. We must choose between Leibnitz or
Schopenhauer.
Literature and religion aside, the greatest intellects have promulgated
a “philosophy of necessity.” Everything that exists, wrote Oersted in
substance, depends upon the past, prepares the future, and is related
to the whole. “Everything throughout creation is governed by law:
but over most of the tracts that come within the active experience
of mankind, the governing hand is so secret and remote, that until
very large numerical masses are brought under the eye at once, the
controlling power is not detected.” Jonathan Edwards said: “Nothing
comes to pass without a cause. What is self-existent must be from
eternity, and must be unchangeable; but as to all things that begin to
be, they are not self-existent, and therefore must have some foundation
for their existence without themselves.” Spinoza urged that “In no mind
is there an absolute or free volition; but it is determined to choose
this or that by a cause, which likewise has been fixed by another,
and this again by a third, and so on forever.” Emanuel Kant contended
that “every action or phenomenon, so far as it produces an event, is
itself an event or occurrence, which pre-supposes another state wherein
the cause is to be met with; and thus everything that happens is but
a continuation of the series, and no beginning which occurs of itself
is possible; consequently, all the actions of the natural causes,
in the succession, are themselves again effects.” Our own Emerson
asserted the omnipotence and omnipresence of law: “That the wilful and
the fantastic, the low and the lofty, are encircled by a necessity.”
Whatever limits us, we call fate. If we are brute and barbarous, the
fate takes a brute and dreadful shape. If we rise to spiritual culture,
the antagonism takes a spiritual form.... The limitations refine as the
soul purifies, but the ring of necessity is always perched at the top.
None greater than these may be found in the noble realm of speculative
thought. They are unequalled by few, if any. The whole field of modern
science, also, is in accord with their deductions: Teaching that nature
is an inevitable sequence, and that all phenomena, material and mental,
are linked together by an inevitable connection. In the words of
Herbert Spencer: “Various classes of facts unite to prove that the law
of metamorphosis which holds among the physical forces, holds equally
between them and the mental forces. Those modes of the unknowable
which we call motion, light, heat, chemical affinity, etc., are alike
transferable into each other, and into those modes of the unknowable
which we distinguish as sensation, emotion, and thought; these in their
turns being directly or indirectly re-transferable into the original
shapes.”
Would you dethrone man, I am asked? No; I surrender to the behests of
philosophy as fortified by the deductions of science. Years ago it was
argued by Comte that, in social order, the higher must subordinate
itself to the lower. That the organic finds itself controlled and
limited by the inorganic world, and man has to work out his destiny in
submission to all the necessities, physical, chemical and vital, which
are pre-supposed in his existence. “The higher,” he continued, “can
overcome the lower only by obedience; if it is to conquer, it must at
least ‘stoop to conquer.’” And as was once stated by Doctor Conolly,
“All the superiority of man, all those faculties which elevate and
dignify him, this reasoning power, this moral sense, these capacities
of happiness, these high aspiring hopes, are felt and enjoyed and
manifested by means of the nervous system. Its injury weakens, its
imperfections limit, its destruction ends them.”
But, it may be asked, is not this a denial of “free-will?” Yes, as
popularly understood. A “free-will,” in the metaphysical sense, is
impossible. The conception is unknown to the best modern psychology.
The abstract will, of certain metaphysicians, is a phantasm.
Individual volitions, only, come within our actual experience. They
have been generalized, by mental philosophers, into a self-existent,
self-sustaining, and self-procreating entity. However, an abstraction
is not an essence. Such men but tell us what a “free will” should
be; that it exists has never been demonstrated. Again, the phenomenon
“will” is now known to be transmitted from generation to generation.
Heredity teaches that its energy and its weakness are connected
with certain states of the organism. “We can no longer doubt the
transmission takes place by means of the organs, and, in fact, that
the ‘will’ is physiological.” Moreover, in a philosophical sense, the
idea is “at war” with a uniform law of cause and effect. Chance events
are inconceivable in a universe of causation. Freedom of the will,
therefore, is a delusion. For ages men believed that the sun revolved
around the earth, because it seemed to do so. A similar illusion is at
the base of our ethical system, since we enjoy only the appearance of
liberty. “Our apparent freedom consists in the absence of all physical
restraints, and in our power to do as we please; but what we please to
do depends upon our mental constitution and the circumstances in which
we are placed.” The idea was beautifully expressed by Emerson in his
poem “Fate.”
“Deep in the man sits fast his fate,
To mold his fortune, mean or great:
Unknown to Cromwell as to me
Was Cromwell’s measure or degree;
Unknown to him as to his horse,
If he than his groom be better or worse,
He works, plots, fights in rude affairs,
With Squires, Lords, Kings, his craft compares,
Till late he learned, through doubt and fear,
Broad England harbored not his peer.
Obeying time, the last to own
The genius from its cloudy throne,
_For the prevision is allied_
Unto the thing so signified;
_Or say, the foresight that awaits,
Is the same genius that creates_.”
In human history, as in physical nature, therefore, every event is
linked to its antecedent by an unavoidable connection, and such
precedent is connected with an anterior effect; and thus the whole
would form a necessary chain, in which, indeed, each man may play his
part, but can by no means determine what the part shall be.
The moral actions of men, said Buckle, are the product of their
antecedents. In other words, when an action is performed, it is
performed in consequence of certain motives; those motives are the
results of some antecedents; “therefore, if we were acquainted with
the whole of the antecedents and with all the laws of their movements
we could with certainty foretell the whole of their immediate results.
This great social law is liable to disturbances which trouble its
operation, without affecting its truth.”
Ergo, given any set of circumstances, and nothing could have happened,
save that which did happen; and under exactly the same conditions, the
conduct of men must ever issue in the same results. The past should
be dismissed without regrets. Our position, at any time, should be
judged as it really is, and not for what we vainly suppose it might
have been; “for nothing is more certain than that we could not have
acted differently in any act of our lives, with the state of mind and
circumstances then existing.”
Statistics, likewise, are daily making it evident that the same
fixed calculable laws exist in the departments of life and mind as
in physics. “In individual cases, or in a limited circle, apparent
uncertainty may exist. Within a given number of cases, however, and a
large field, invariable results may be looked for.”
In the 12th annual report of William Farr, Esq., to the Registrar
General of England, we are told “it may be broadly stated that 27 in
1000 men of the population of the age of 20 and under 60, are suffering
from one kind of disease or another; that several are of long duration,
that others are recurrent, and that some are hereditary.” We are
informed in a subsequent report of the Registrar himself, that it seems
to be a “law” one person out of every 45, living at the commencement
of any year, will die within that year. (The entire system of
insurance--life, fire, and marine--is erected on the principle
contended for in this chapter. Not only do a certain relative number of
men die in each class annually, but the law extends to the number of
policies lapsed each year. There seems also to be a periodicity in the
number of fires and marine disasters.)
According to Porter and Buckle, even “marriage is not determined by
the temper and wishes of the individual, but by large general facts
over which individuals can exercise no authority. It is now known
that marriages bear a fixed and definite relation to the price of
corn.” A century’s experience in England demonstrates that marriages
are regulated by the average earnings of the great mass of people.
Cheapness of provision and not love regulates the number of nuptials.
Combe affirms the same striking coincidence in the ratio of births in
Great Britain.
Another singular fact has been deduced from the official reports of
England and France. “Even forgetfulness is under a constant law.”
Buckle is an authority for the statement that “year after year, the
same proportion of letter-writers forget to direct their letters, in
some part; so that for each successive period we can actually foretell
the number of persons whose memory will fail them in regard to this
trifling occurrence.”
By the same witness we prove “the uniform reproduction of crime is
more clearly marked, and more capable of being predicted than are
the physical laws connected with the disease and destruction of our
bodies.” Before this, Combe had observed a similar uniformity, under
similar circumstances, of the recurrence of crimes. He perceived in
human conduct the same striking indications of constancy in results,
as in the prevalence of disease and the endurance of life. Combe said,
in 1854, in writing by way of comment on a certain report to the
House of Commons: “During the five years, ending with the last year
of an execution, there were committed for the crimes enumerated, 7276
persons, of whom 196 were executed. During the five years immediately
following the last execution, there were committed for the same
offense 7120. Does not this show that these crimes arose from causes
in themselves permanent, and which punishment does not remove?” Rawson
also remarked that the greatest variation which had taken place during
three years, in the proportion of any class of criminals, at the same
period of life, had not exceeded a half per cent.
And Dr. Brown states (Vol. 8 of the Assurance Magazine), that “in
twenty years, the number of persons accused of various crimes in
France, and registered under their respective ages, scarcely varies
at any age, from year to year, comparing the proportional per cent
under each age with the totals.” M. Quatelet deduced from the
statistical returns of government in the same country, that for 1826,
1827, 1828, 1829 and 1830, in each year, there was one person accused
out of every 4463 inhabitants, and 61 condemned out of every 100
accused. “In everything which concerns crime,” observed this greatest
of statisticians, “the same numbers re-occur with a constancy which
cannot be mistaken, and that this is the case, even with those crimes
which seem quite independent of human foresight, such, for instance,
as murders, which are generally committed after quarrels arising from
circumstances apparently casual. Nevertheless, we know from experience,
that every year there not only take place the same number of murders,
but even the instruments by which they are committed, are employed in
the same proportion.” Murder, then, “occurs with as much regularity as
the movements of the tides and the rotation of the seasons.”
“Self-murder,” Buckle observes, “seems to be not only capricious and
uncontrollable, but also very obscure in regard to proof.” Yet, in
different countries, for which we have returns, we find, year by year,
the same proportion of persons putting an end to their own existence.
In London, for example, about 240 persons make away with themselves
every year; the annual suicides oscillating, from the pressure of
temporary causes, between 266, the highest, and 213, the lowest. In
1846, which was the great year of excitement--caused by the railroad
panic--the suicides in London were 266; in 1847 began a slight
improvement, and they fell to 256; in 1848 they were 247; in 1849 they
were 213; in 1850 they were 229.
In the “Journey through India,” Heber mentions the vain attempt of
the English government to check the frequent suicides by drowning,
committed at Benares; and August Comte has exposed the folly of
thinking that suicide can be diminished by the enactments of law-givers.
Of this field, Quatelet says, in conclusion: “The possibility of
assigning, beforehand, the number of accused and condemned which should
occur in a country, is calculated to lead to serious reflections, since
it involves the fate of several thousands of human beings, who are
impelled, as it were, by an irresistible necessity, to the bar of the
tribunal, and towards the sentences of condemnation that there await
them. These conclusions flow directly from the principle, already so
often stated in this work, that effects are in proportion to their
causes, and that the effects remain the same, if the causes which
produced them do not vary.”
Another step is needed to complete our argument in this branch. Actions
are the production of motives. Motives are the effects of determinate
antecedents. Whence these antecedents? They are to be found in the
“Law of Heredity.” Reproduction is governed by law, and “like begets
like.” To quote from Voltaire: “The physical, which is ‘father of the
moral,’ transmits the same character from father to son for ages. The
Appii were ever proud and inflexible; the Catos always austere. The
whole line of the Guises were bold, rash, factious, full of the most
insolent pride and most winning politeness. From Francis de Guise down
to that one who put himself at the head of the people of Naples, they
were all in look, courage and character above ordinary men. I have
seen full length portraits of Francis, of Balafre and his son: they
were all six feet high, and they all possess the same features--the
same audacity on the brow, in the eyes, and in the attitude.” M. Taine
sees in Lord Byron a true descendant of the Berserkers. To Ribot,
the French of the 19th century are the Gauls described by Cæsar and
Strabo. Amphere writes of the character of the Greeks, that it has
not changed; “he has now the same qualities, the same defects as of
old.” The physiology and mentality of parents characterize their
offspring. The human mind is not a blank at birth. Its capabilities and
character are inherited. Every possibility of the soul is innate and
constitutional from the moment of gestation. Such is the verdict of
science substantiated by Ribot, Galton, and Fowler.
That the peculiar anatomy and physiognomy of races is persistent and
hereditary, must be admitted. The truth is verified by every-day
experience. We see it in the Englishman, the Frenchman, the Spaniard,
and Scandinavian. The intellectual characteristics of a people are
likewise transmitted from generation to generation. The Indian, for
example, is ever wild, free, cunning and revengeful. Negroes, on
the other hand, are generally timid, garrulous, urbane and polite.
The Hebrews, again, are noteworthy for intellectual calibre, the
acquisitive faculty, and a clannish spirit.
In the family, likewise, likenesses and stature pass from generation
to generation. So, also, of size. Fowler found this exemplified
everywhere. Some of his illustrations were taken from the Websters,
Franklins, and Folgers. Muscular strength is hereditary, as with the
Douglas, Fessenden, and Garrish families. Physical deformities and
excrescences obey this edict of nature; and it includes disease,
insanity, gray hair, premature death, propensities, length of life and
beauty. The truth is overwhelming that mental faculties and qualities
descend from child to child. These sequences in mental phenomena
operate through generations upon caution, self-esteem, firmness,
pride, benevolence, and religious feeling. Talent and ability go by
descent. Even genius, although akin to divine, is transmissible. “Each
generation,” said Galton, “has enormous power over the natural gifts
of those that follow.... The results of an examination into the kindred
of about 400 illustrious men of all periods of history were such, in
my own opinion, as completely to establish the theory that genius was
hereditary.”
Now for my application. Gambling, in some form, is a propensity of the
general mind: an inclination now hereditary in the race. That such must
be the case is clear from Ribot, Maudsley and Da Gama Machado. “The
dead rule over the living,” writes Spencer. “Past generations exercise
power over present generations, by transmitting their nature, bodily
and mental.”
The origin and development of gambling were obvious to the eminent
astronomer, Richard A. Proctor. “Beyond doubt,” he said, “the element
of chance which enters into all lives, has had a most potent influence
in moulding the characters of men. If we consider the multitudinous
fancies and superstitions of men like sailors, farmers, and hunters,
whose lives depend more on chance than those of men in some other
employments, and recognize this as the natural effect of the influence
which chance has on their fortunes, we need not consider it strange if
the influence of chance, in moulding the minds and characters of our
ancestors during countless generations, should have produced a very
marked effect on human nature. An immense number of those from whom
I inherit descent must, in the old savage days, have depended almost
wholly upon chance for the very means of subsistence. When, wild in
wood, the savage ran, he ran on speculation. He might, or he might
not, be lucky enough to earn his living on any day, by a successful
chase, or by finding such fruits of the earth as would supply him
with a satisfactory amount of food. He might have much depending on
chances which he could not avoid risking, as the gambler of to-day has
when he ‘sees red’ and stakes his whole fortune on a throw of the
dice or a turn of the cards. We cannot be doubtful about the effects
of such chance influences even on the individual character. Repeated,
generation after generation, they must have tended to fill men with
a gambling spirit, only to be corrected by innumerable generations
of steady labor; and, unfortunately, even in the steadiest work, the
element of chance enters largely enough to render the corrective
influence of such work on the character of the race much slower than it
might otherwise be. Every man who has to work for his living at all,
every man who has to depend in any way, on business for wealth, has to
trust to chance, in many respects. So that all men, in some degree,
more or less, have their characters modified by this peculiarity of
their environment. The inherited tendency of each one of us towards
gambling, in some one or other of its multitudinous forms, is
undoubtedly strengthened in this way.”
First, we see, it cannot be said that gambling is immoral, sinful, or
irreligious. Second, it is clear the propensity to gamble is as natural
as the temperament or complexion. The law can no more destroy the
natural inclination of the mind, than it can make “one hair white or
black.” If an evil (which in the absolute sense I deny), it is not to
be prevented by legislation. It is no more possible, by direct effort,
to change the gaming proclivity in man than to stem the torrent, or
check the eternal progress of the glacier. The growth of centuries,
down it moves through the years in an irresistible march. Absurd seem
all our demonstrations; how idle, the beating of the air. When one form
passes away another immediately takes its place. Disappearing here, it
appears there. Apparently suppressed in one place it breaks out with
more vigor in another. Continue it will, and continue it must, whether
practiced openly or in secret. If it is not the faro-bank or lottery
it is something worse. If not the gambling-rooms of a Morrissey, a
Daly, a Pendleton or a Hankins, it will be the mammoth palaces (boards
of trade and chambers of commerce, so-called), which now are a feature
of every city in Christendom, and wherein millions upon millions are
wagered annually upon the very bread and meat wherewith our life is
sustained; wherein billions are lost and won, sometimes to the injury
of every department of actual production. There are the open boards of
trade, too, wherein the petty transactions aggregate many millions. I
am told by those who have made it a study for years, that more than
80 per cent of the transactions on the exchange are fictitious: mere
betting on the rise and fall of commodities in price. All authority in
this matter is practically powerless. Inclinations will be satisfied,
and until inclinations change, the demand will be supplied; this,
moreover, in the face of laws however stringent, or police supervision
however effective. Such methods are not only ineffective, but
absolutely injurious to society. No nation or government has succeeded
in restricting, limiting, or curing the gambling spirit and practice.
That this is true, I call upon every candid and fair-minded man of
experience to bear witness. I appeal to lawyers, judges, statesmen,
scientists, philosophers, and the police and municipal authorities
throughout the United States and Europe to corroborate my statement.
The sooner this is generally realized, the better for humanity. What
I have to suggest, instead of the present policy, is reserved for
consideration in another place. I may say here, however, that for the
law to punish what it cannot thereby cure is absurd--absurd as is
every attempt to accomplish the impossible. Systematic education is
the only hope; incessant training the only remedy for appetites and
propensities; either for their correction, restraint, or subversion.
If it had been revealed to man that gambling is a sin, even that
would not vitiate our reasoning in this chapter. God, or absolute
wisdom, should be able to reconcile the existence of an evil with
His own Sovereignty. However, this chapter is not concerned with the
realities of religion, or the true principles of philosophy. As human
conceptions, they have been noted as in accord with the teachings of
science; to show that the human intellect responds intuitively to what
are subsequently known as the laws of nature.
Legislative Exorcism;
or,
The Belief in Word-Magic.
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