world whose organization is such that they unavoidably, even in a
civilized country, become malefactors. Does God, it may be asked, make
criminals? Does he fashion certain beings with a predestination to evil?
He does not do so; and yet the criminal type of brain, as it is called,
comes into existence in accordance with laws which the Deity has
established. It is not, however, as the result of the first or general
intention of those laws, but as an exception from their ordinary and
proper action. The production of those evilly disposed beings is in this
manner. The moral character of the progeny depends in a general way, (as
does the physical character also,) upon conditions of the parents,—both
general conditions, and conditions at the particular time of the
commencement of the existence of the new being, and likewise external
conditions affecting the fœtus through the mother. Now the amount of
these conditions is indefinite. The faculties of the parents, as far as
these are concerned, may have oscillated for the time towards the extreme
of tensibility in one direction. The influences upon the fœtus may have
also been of an extreme and unusual kind. Let us suppose that the
conditions upon the whole have been favourable for the development, not
of the higher, but of the lower sentiments, and of the propensities of
the new being, the result will necessarily be a mean type of brain.
Here, it will be observed, God no more decreed an immoral being, than he
decreed an immoral paroxysm of the sentiments. Our perplexity is in
considering the ill-disposed being by himself. He is only a part of a
series of phenomena, traceable to a principle good in the main, but which
admits of evil as an exception. We have seen that it is for wise ends
that God leaves our moral faculties to an indefinite range of action; the
general good results of this arrangement are obvious; but exceptions of
evil are inseparable from such a system, and this is one of them. To
come to particular illustration—when a people are oppressed, or kept in a
state of slavery, they invariably contract habits of lying, for the
purpose of deceiving and outwitting their superiors, falsehood being a
refuge of the weak under difficulties. What is a habit in parents
becomes an inherent quality in children. We are not, therefore, to be
surprised when a traveller tells us that black children in the West
Indies appear to lie by instinct, and never answer a white person truly
even in the simplest matter. Here we have secretiveness roused in a
people to a state of constant and exalted exercise; an over tendency of
the nervous energy in that direction is the consequence, and a new
organic condition is established. This tells upon the progeny, which
comes into the world with secretiveness excessive in volume and activity.
All other evil characteristics may be readily conceived as being
implanted in a new generation in the same way. And sometimes not one,
but several generations, may be concerned in bringing up the result to a
pitch which produces crime. It is, however, to be observed, that the
general tendency of things is to a limitation, not the extension of such
abnormally constituted beings. The criminal brain finds itself in a
social scene where all is against it. It may struggle on for a time, but
the medium and superior natures are never long at a loss in getting the
better of it. The disposal of such beings will always depend much on the
moral state of a community, the degree in which just views prevail with
regard to human nature, and the feelings which accident may have caused
to predominate at a particular time. Where the mass was little
enlightened or refined, and terrors for life or property were highly
excited, malefactors have ever been treated severely. But when order is
generally triumphant, and reason allowed sway, men begin to see the true
case of criminals—namely, that while one large department are victims of
erroneous social conditions, another are brought to error by tendencies
which they are only unfortunate in having inherited from nature.
Criminal jurisprudence then addresses itself less to the direct
punishment than to the reformation and care-taking of those liable to its
attention. And such a treatment of criminals, it may be farther
remarked, so that it stop short of affording any encouragement to crime,
(a point which experience will determine,) is evidently no more than
justice, seeing how accidentally all forms of the moral constitution are
distributed, and how thoroughly mutual obligation shines throughout the
whole frame of society—the strong to help the weak, the good to redeem
and restrain the bad.
The sum of all we have seen of the psychical constitution of man is, that
its Almighty Author has destined it, like everything else, to be
developed from inherent qualities, and to have a mode of action depending
solely on its own organization. Thus the whole is complete on one
principle. The masses of space are formed by law; law makes them in due
time theatres of existence for plants and animals; sensation,
disposition, intellect, are all in like manner developed and sustained in
action by law. It is most interesting to observe into how small a field
the whole of the mysteries of nature thus ultimately resolve themselves.
The inorganic has one final comprehensive law, GRAVITATION. The organic,
the other great department of mundane things, rests in like manner on one
law, and that is,—DEVELOPMENT. Nor may even these be after all twain,
but only branches of one still more comprehensive law, the expression of
that unity which man’s wit can scarcely separate from Deity itself.
PURPOSE AND GENERAL CONDITION OF THE ANIMATED CREATION.
WE have now to inquire how this view of the constitution and origin of
nature bears upon the condition of man upon the earth, and his relation
to supra-mundane things.
That enjoyment is the proper attendant of animal existence is pressed
upon us by all that we see and all we experience. Everywhere we perceive
in the lower creatures, in their ordinary condition, symptoms of
enjoyment. Their whole being is a system of needs, the supplying of
which is gratification, and of faculties, the exercise of which is
pleasurable. When we consult our own sensations, we find that, even in a
sense of a healthy performance of all the functions of the animal
economy, God has furnished us with an innocent and very high enjoyment.
The mere quiet consciousness of a healthy play of the mental functions—a
mind at ease with itself and all around it—is in like manner extremely
agreeable. This negative class of enjoyments, it may be remarked, is
likely to be even more extensively experienced by the lower animals than
by man, at least in the proportion of their absolute endowments, as their
mental and bodily functions are much less liable to derangement than
ours. To find the world constituted on this principle is only what in
reason we would expect. We cannot conceive that so vast a system could
have been created for a contrary purpose. No averagely constituted human
being would, in his own limited sphere of action, think of producing a
similar system upon an opposite principle. But to form so vast a range
of being, and to make being everywhere a source of gratification, is
conformable to our ideas of a Creator in whom we are constantly
discovering traits of a nature, of which our own is but a faint and
far-cast shadow at the best.
It appears at first difficult to reconcile with this idea the many
miseries which we see all sentient beings, ourselves included,
occasionally enduring. How, the sage has asked in every age, should a
Being so transcendently kind, have allowed of so large an admixture of
evil in the condition of his creatures? Do we not at length find an
answer to a certain extent satisfactory, in the view which has now been
given of the constitution of nature? We there see the Deity operating in
the most august of his works by fixed laws, an arrangement which, it is
clear, only admits of the main and primary results being good, but
disregards exceptions. Now the mechanical laws are so definite in their
purposes, that no exceptions ever take place in that department; if there
is a certain quantity of nebulous matter to be agglomerated and divided
and set in motion as a planetary system, it will be so with
hair’s-breadth accuracy, and cannot be otherwise. But the laws presiding
over meteorology, life, and mind, are necessarily less definite, as they
have to produce a great variety of mutually related results. Left to act
independently of each other, each according to its separate commission,
and each with a wide range of potentiality to be modified by associated
conditions, they can only have effects generally beneficial: often there
must be an interference of one law with another, often a law will chance
to operate in excess, or upon a wrong object, and thus evil will be
produced. Thus, winds are generally useful in many ways, and the sea is
useful as a means of communication between one country and another; but
the natural laws which produce winds are of indefinite range of action,
and sometimes are unusually concentrated in space or in time, so as to
produce storms and hurricanes, by which much damage is done; the sea may
be by these causes violently agitated, so that many barks and many lives
perish. Here, it is evident, the evil is only exceptive. Suppose,
again, that a boy, in the course of the lively sports proper to his age,
suffers a fall which injures his spine, and renders him a cripple for
life. Two things have been concerned in the case: first, the love of
violent exercise, and second, the law of gravitation. Both of these
things are good in the main. In the rash enterprises and rough sports in
which boys engage, they prepare their bodies and minds for the hard tasks
of life. By gravitation, all moveable things, our own bodies included,
are kept stable on the surface of the earth. But when it chances that
the playful boy loses his hold (we shall say) of the branch of a tree,
and has no solid support immediately below, the law of gravitation
unrelentingly pulls him to the ground, and thus he is hurt. Now it was
not a primary object of gravitation to injure boys; but gravitation could
not but operate in the circumstances, its nature being to be universal
and invariable. The evil is, therefore, only a casual exception from
something in the main good.
The same explanation applies to even the most conspicuous of the evils
which afflict society. War, it may be said, and said truly, is a
tremendous example of evil, in the misery, hardship, waste of human life,
and mis-spending of human energies, which it occasions. But what is it
that produces war? Certain tendencies of human nature, as keen assertion
of a supposed right, resentment of supposed injury, acquisitiveness,
desire of admiration, combativeness, or mere love of excitement. All of
these are tendencies which are every day, in a legitimate extent of
action, producing great and indispensable benefits to us. Man would be a
tame, indolent, unserviceable being without them, and his fate would be
starvation. War, then, huge evil though it be, is, after all, but the
exceptive case, a casual misdirection of properties and powers
essentially good. God has given us the tendencies for a benevolent
purpose. He has only not laid down any absolute obstruction to our
misuse of them. That were an arrangement of a kind which he has nowhere
made. But he has established many laws in our nature which tend to
lessen the frequency and destructiveness of these abuses. Our reason
comes to see that war is purely an evil, even to the conqueror.
Benevolence interposes to make its ravages less mischievous to human
comfort, and less destructive to human life. Men begin to find that
their more active powers can be exercised with equal gratification on
legitimate objects; for example, in overcoming the natural difficulties
of their path through life, or in a generous spirit of emulation in a
line of duty beneficial to themselves and their fellow-creatures. Thus,
war at length shrinks into a comparatively narrow compass, though there
certainly is no reason to suppose that it will be at any early period, if
ever, altogether dispensed with, while man’s constitution remains as it
is. In considering an evil of this kind, we must not limit our view to
our own or any past time. Placed upon the earth with faculties prepared
to act, but inexperienced, and with the more active propensities
necessarily in great force to suit the condition of the globe, man was
apt to misuse his powers much in this way at first, compared with what he
is likely to do when he advances into a condition of civilization. In
the scheme of providence, thousands of years of frequent warfare, all the
so-called glories which fill history, may be only an exception to the
general rule.
The sex passion in like manner leads to great evils; but the evils are
only an exception from the vast mass of good connected with this
affection. Providence has seen it necessary to make very ample provision
for the preservation and utmost possible extension of all species. The
aim seems to be to diffuse existence as widely as possible, to fill up
every vacant piece of space with some sentient being to be a vehicle of
enjoyment. Hence this passion is conferred in great force. But the
relation between the number of beings, and the means of supporting them,
is only on the footing of general law. There may be occasional
discrepancies between the laws operating for the multiplication of
individuals, and the laws operating to supply them with the means of
subsistence, and evils will be endured in consequence, even in our own
highly favoured species. But against all these evils, and against those
numberless vexations which have arisen in all ages from the attachment of
the sexes, place the vast amount of happiness which is derived from this
source—the basis of the whole circle of the domestic affections, the
sweetening principle of life, the prompter of all our most generous
feelings, and even of our most virtuous resolves—and every ill that can
be traced to it is but as dust in the balance. And here, also, we must
be on our guard against judging from what we see in the world at a
particular era. As reason and the higher sentiments of man’s nature
increase in force, this passion is put under better regulation, so as to
lessen many of the evils connected with it. The civilized man is more
able to give it due control; his attachments are less the result of
impulse; he studies more the weal of his partner and offspring. There
are even some of the resentful feelings connected in early society with
love, such as hatred of successful rivalry, and jealousy, which almost
disappear in an advanced stage of civilization. The evils springing, in
our own species at least, from this passion, may therefore be an
exception mainly peculiar to a particular term of the world’s progress,
and which may be expected to decrease greatly in amount.
With respect, again, to disease, so prolific a cause of suffering to man,
the human constitution is merely a complicated but regular process in
electro-chemistry, which goes on well, and is a source of continual
gratification, so long as nothing occurs to interfere with it
injuriously, but which is liable every moment to be deranged by various
external agencies, when it becomes a source of pain, and, if the injury
be severe, ceases to be capable of retaining life. It may be readily
admitted that the evils experienced in this way are very great; but,
after all, such experiences are no more than occasional, and not
necessarily frequent—exceptions from a general rule of which the direct
action is to confer happiness. The human constitution might have been
made of a more hardy character; but we always see hardiness and
insensibility go together, and it may be of course presumed that we only
could have purchased this immunity from suffering at the expense of a
large portion of that delicacy in which lie some of our most agreeable
sensations. Or man’s faculties might have been restricted to
definiteness of action, as is greatly the case with those of the lower
animals, and thus we should have been equally safe from the aberrations
which lead to disease; but in that event we should have been incapable of
acting to so many different purposes as we are, and of the many high
enjoyments which the varied action of our faculties places in our power:
we should not, in short, have been human beings, but merely on a level
with the inferior animals. Thus, it appears, that the very fineness of
man’s constitution, that which places him in such a high relation to the
mundane economy, and makes him the vehicle of so many exquisitely
delightful sensations—it is this which makes him liable to the sufferings
of disease. It might be said, on the other hand, that the noxiousness of
the agencies producing disease might have been diminished or
extinguished; but the probability is, that this could not have been done
without such a derangement of the whole economy of nature as would have
been attended with more serious evils. For example—a large class of
diseases are the result of effluvia from decaying organic matter. This
kind of matter is known to be extremely useful, when mixed with earth, in
favouring the process of vegetation. Supposing the noxiousness to the
human constitution done away with, might we not also lose that important
quality which tends so largely to increase the food raised from the
ground? Perhaps (as has been suggested) the noxiousness is even a matter
of special design, to induce us to put away decaying organic substances
into the earth, where they are calculated to be so useful. Now man has
reason to enable him to see that such substances are beneficial under one
arrangement, and noxious in the other. He is, as it were, commanded to
take the right method in dealing with it. In point of fact, men do not
always take this method, but allow accumulations of noxious matter to
gather close about their dwellings, where they generate fevers and agues.
But their doing so may be regarded as only a temporary exception from the
operation of mental laws, the general tendency of which is to make men
adopt the proper measures. And these measures will probably be in time
universally adopted, so that one extensive class of diseases will be
altogether or nearly abolished.
Another large class of diseases spring from mismanagement of our personal
economy. Eating to excess, eating and drinking what is noxious,
disregard to that cleanliness which is necessary for the right action of
the functions of the skin, want of fresh air for the supply of the lungs,
undue, excessive, and irregular indulgence of the mental affections, are
all of them recognised modes of creating that derangement of the system
in which disease consists. Here also it may be said that a limitation of
the mental faculties to definite manifestations (_vulgo_, instincts)
might have enabled us to avoid many of these errors; but here again we
are met by the consideration that, if we had been so endowed, we should
have been only as the lower animals are, wanting that transcendently
higher character of sensation and power, by which our enjoyments are made
so much greater. In making the desire of food, for example, with us an
indefinite mental manifestation, instead of the definite one, which it is
amongst the lower animals, the Creator has given us a means of deriving
far greater gratifications from food (consistently with health) than the
lower animals appear to be capable of. He has also given us reason to
act as a guiding and controlling power over this and other propensities,
so that they may be prevented from becoming causes of malady. We can see
that excess is injurious, and are thus prompted to moderation. We can
see that all the things which we feel inclined to take are not healthful,
and are thus exhorted to avoid what are pernicious. We can also see that
a cleanly skin and a constant supply of pure air are necessary to the
proper performance of some of the most important of the organic
functions, and thus are stimulated to frequent ablution, and to a right
ventilation of our parlours and sleeping apartments. And so on with the
other causes of disease. Reason may not operate very powerfully to these
purposes in an early state of society, and prodigious evils may therefore
have been endured from disease in past ages; but these are not
necessarily to be endured always. As civilization advances, reason
acquires a greater ascendancy; the causes of the evils are seen and
avoided; and disease shrinks into a comparatively narrow compass. The
experience of our own country places this in a striking light. In the
middle ages, when large towns had no police regulations, society was
every now and then scourged by pestilence. The third of the people of
Europe are said to have been carried off by one epidemic. Even in London
the annual mortality has greatly sunk within a century. The improvement
in human life, which has taken place since the construction of the
Northampton tables by Dr. Price, is equally remarkable. Modern tables
still shew a prodigious mortality among the young in all civilized
countries—evidently a result of some prevalent error in the usual modes
of rearing them. But to remedy this evil there is the sagacity of the
human mind, and the sense to adopt any reformed plans which may be shewn
to be necessary. By a change in the management of an orphan institution
in London, during the last fifty years, an immense reduction in the
mortality took place. We may of course hope to see measures devised and
adopted for producing a similar improvement of infant life throughout the
world at large.
In this part of our subject, the most difficult point certainly lies in
those occurrences of disease where the afflicted individual has been in
no degree concerned in bringing the visitation upon himself. Daily
experience shews us infectious disease arising in a place where the
natural laws in respect of cleanliness are neglected, and then spreading
into regions where there is no blame of this kind. We then see the
innocent suffering equally with those who may be called the guilty. Nay,
the benevolent physician who comes to succour the miserable beings whose
error may have caused the mischief, is sometimes seen to fall a victim to
it, while many of his patients recover. We are also only too familiar
with the transmission of diseases from erring parents to innocent
children, who, accordingly suffer, and perhaps die prematurely, as it
were for the sins of others. After all, however painful such cases may
be in contemplation, they cannot be regarded in any other light than as
exceptions from arrangements, the general working of which is beneficial.