It was remarked previously that Nature is consistent in all her
operations throughout her entire domain; to which may now be added that
the nearer the human approximates his rules and methods to those
exhibited in the departments of Nature below him, the nearer will he
approach to true rules and methods. Arbitrary and dogmatic formulas do
not belong to Nature in her free manifestations, nor can they be
administered in any of her combinations. In all the uses men may make of
the elements of matter, he must comply with the laws of their existence:
he cannot frame a law, and then command that Nature shall obey it.
Certain quantities of certain elements will combine and form a compound;
but no other proportions of the same elements will combine to form the
same compound, and in many cases they will not combine at all, unless
certain fixed quantities are adhered to. Again, an effort may be made to
unite two or more bodies, and they will be found to be incompatibles;
that is, incapable of being united, because each has a stronger
self-affinity than for any property existing in either of the other
bodies with which they are brought in contact; but to these two or more
bodies another principle may be added, which will produce the effect of
uniting the whole. It is this principle in nature by which its elements
combine and form all the various and diversified manifestations that are
visible everywhere. These forms are none of them absolutely independent:
they may, by their inherent power, attract other forms to themselves, or
be by others attracted; the more complex and distinctly individuated
ones being dependent upon those from which they spring for their
existence; thus, as was before stated, the animal world is absolutely
dependent upon the vegetable world for the protoplasm it must make use
of to replace that expended by the animal economy. No animal can take
the elements protoplasm is composed of and manufacture it; that process
is alone the office of the vegetable world. And thus it is that a
complete and infinite system of dependence exists from the lowest form
of organic life to the highest; each is necessary to every other, while
every one fills a special individual position of its own, and this is
because they are all bound together by the same controlling powers or
principles of action.
It is readily seen that the principles referred to are the same that are
expressed by a common humanity, a universal brotherhood: one is a
brotherhood of the elements; the other is a brotherhood of the ultimates
of elements, of which mind is a product. Each kingdom has its beginning
and culmination, and by the observation of their evolution we must draw
the deductions as to what really governs that age of the world, and the
special kingdom we find ourselves living in. The beginning of the
mineral kingdom was when simple elements began to unite to form
compounds; which was when the cooling process had so far progressed as
to allow of combination; this process of the uniting and dispersing of
elements culminated in the production of the simplest vegetable life,
and thus ushered in the vegetable kingdom. In this, again the same
process of uniting and dispersing was gone through with that had
characterized the mineral. It began as it did, and culminated as it did
by producing the next higher, or the animal kingdom, the simplest form
of which is a single unit of nucleated protoplasm. Upon this single unit
the animal kingdom began to be built. The same process of integration
and disintegration continued through countless ages and until a form was
produced, which is the ultimate of form in the animal kingdom. This
ultimate, man, is the perfection of form that protoplasm can produce,
and hence is the grand ultimate of the process of elemental combination
first referred to. No other or higher form is possible to be arranged
from the elements that the earth is composed of. Therefore, all future
advancement to perfection must be in the perfecting process in man, and
therefore it is logical to conclude that the same law that governed the
beginning, the evolution and the ultimation of each of the kingdoms that
produced man, will also govern the beginning, the evolution and the
ultimation of the different stages in the perfecting process in him; and
not only in the perfecting process as a whole, but in each division of
the perfecting process; and this brings us to that part of the process
illustrated by government, and to the principles of government which are
under consideration.
It will be observed that there is a perfect analogy in the process of
evolution that is observed below man, and in that which comes of man.
First, there was the elementary unit, which corresponds to what was the
governmental unit—the family government. Next, and second, there was the
vegetable division, which corresponds to the second order of
government—the consolidation of families into tribes. Third, there was
the animal division of the process, which corresponds to the
amalgamation of tribes into nations. Fourth, there was man, the ultimate
of the whole process, containing in him the elementary principles
represented by all the preceding forms—in none of which were they all
represented as they are represented in him—and he corresponds to the
ultimate of the process of governmental evolution, the complete
consolidation of nations into one grand nation, as man is the complete
consolidation of all animal forms in one grand animal form. His form is
the animal form, containing all animal forms. A universal government
would be a national form, containing the form of all nations gathered
into one grand form. Here it is that the analogy is complete, and Nature
is consistent in all her parts and processes, at all times and in all
forms observing the simple general principles which so unerringly lead
her.
There is, however, one important addition to the processes in which man
takes part, over those where principles apply only in the so-called
material control. Below man there is nature only. After man there is art
added to nature; and it is this power to administer to Nature’s
processes, to assist in them, and to remove and replace obstacles to
activity in higher channels, that distinguishes man from all previous
formations, and which virtually makes him an assistant in the after and
higher evolutions of mind, which have, until very recently, been
generally considered not of material origin, but which science now
demonstrates are purely physical results—are combinations in
consciousness of consecutive manifestations of matter. Here we have the
ultimate production of the ultimate of the animal kingdom, the mental
kingdom, or the kingdom of ideas.
Science also demonstrates that ideas evolve after the same formula which
all preceding processes observed, and that all new discoveries of ideas
are not discoveries of existing facts, but that they are new truths
evolved from preceding forms of truth; or, in other words, that they are
higher forms of truth.
These relations are thus specifically stated, because in them is found
the authority for man to make use of all things which exist, that by
such use, higher purposes may be subserved and better general conditions
obtained. As the gardener destroys all weeds and foreign growths about
the vegetables he would produce, so must the gardener in ideas pull up,
eradicate or destroy, all false or decaying ideas which sap the vitality
from those he would have flourish; and this authority is the same—the
authority of the higher over the lower, to the extent of individual
freedom and within the limits of the general good.
Such is the province of art, and man, in whatever department of nature
he operates, is the artist, adding to her beauties, which she can
produce by her laws, those which the evolution of higher ideas proposes.
Thus art utilizes and beautifies all that nature produces. Nature alone
could never produce a Central Park, nor the perfection in fruits and
flowers that is now presented to please the taste and gladden the eye.
No one will question the right of man to make from nature the most of
beauty it is capable of, nor to make it most conducive to all his
natural desires. And here is found the basis for the authority from
which it is analogically argued, that man has the right to practice as
an artist in ideas. The position this artist in ideas should be assigned
should be as much higher in the scale of importance as ideas are higher
than crude matter.
Government being the most formidable director of ideas and the most
powerful opponent of their diffusion, if they are not in channels it can
operate through, its perfectability according to the highest existing
ideas is a matter of the most fearful importance. It is for this reason
that so great importance attaches to the diffusion among the people of
knowledge of the principles government should be constructed upon that
its administration may be productive of the greatest individual, and the
greatest public good, which it is possible to obtain from the
application of the highest evolved ideas.