come at the reality. Words should be measurably forgotten, while we
search diligently for the things expressed by them. _Signs_ should
always conduct to the things _signified_. The weary traveller, hungry
and faint, would hardly satisfy himself with an examination of the
_sign_ before the inn, marking its form, the picture upon it, the nice
shades of coloring in the painting. He would go in, and search for the
thing signified.
It has been the fault in teaching language, that learners have been
limited to the mere _forms_ of words, while the important duty of
teaching them to look at the thing signified, has been entirely
disregarded. Hence they have only obtained book knowledge. They know
what the grammars say; but how to _apply_ what they say, or what is in
reality meant by it, they have yet to learn. This explains the reason
why almost every man who has studied grammar will tell you that "he
_used_ to understand it, but it has all gone from him, for he has not
looked into a _book_ these many years." Has he lost a knowledge of
language? Oh, no, he learned that before he saw a grammar, and will
preserve it to the day of his death. What good did his two or three
years study of grammar do him? None at all; he has forgotten all that he
ever knew of it, and that is not much, for he only learned what some
author said, and a few arbitrary rules and technical expressions which
he could never understand nor apply in practice, except in special
cases. But I wander. I throw in this remark to show you the necessity of
bringing your minds to a close observance of things as they do in truth
exist; and from them you can draw the principles of speech, and be able
to use language correctly. For we still insist on our former opinion,
that all language depends on the permanent laws of nature, as exerted in
the regulation of matter and mind.
* * *
To return. I have said that all action denotes _power_, _cause_,
_means_, _agency_, and _effects_.
* * *
_Power_ depends on _physical energy_, or _mental skill_. I have hinted
at this fact before. Things act according to the power or energy they
possess. Animals walk, birds fly, fishes swim, minerals sink, poisons
kill. Or, according to the adopted theories of naturalists:
Minerals _grow_.
Vegetables _grow_ and _live_.
Animals _grow_, and _live_, and _feel_.
Every thing acts according to the ability it possesses. Man, possessed
of reason, devises means and produces ends. Beasts change locations,
devour vegetables, and sometimes other beasts. The lowest grade of
animals never change location, but yet eat and live. Vegetables live and
grow, but do not change location. They have the power to reproduce their
species, and some of them to kill off surrounding objects. "The
_carraguata_ of the West Indies, clings round," says Goldsmith,
"whatever tree it happens to approach; there it quickly gains the
ascendant, and, loading the tree with a verdure not its own, keeps away
that nourishment designed to feed the trunk, and at last entirely
destroys its supporter." In our country, many gardens and fields present
convincing proof of the ability of weeds to kill out the vegetables
designed to grow therein. You all have heard of the _Upas_, which has a
power sufficient to destroy the lives of animals and vegetables for a
large distance around. Its very exhalations are death to whatever
approaches it. It serves in metaphor to illustrate the noxious effects
of all vice, of slander and deceit, the effects of which are to the
moral constitution, what the tree itself is to natural objects, blight
and mildew upon whatever comes within its reach.
Minerals are possessed of _power_ no less astonishing, which may be
observed whenever an opportunity is offered to call it forth. Active
poisons, able to slay the most powerful men and beasts, lie hid within
their bosoms. They have strong attractive and repelling powers. From the
iron is made the strong cable which _holds_ the vessel fast in her
moorings, _enabling_ it to outride the collected force of the winds and
waves which _threaten_ its destruction. From it also are manufactured
the manacles which bind the strong man, or fasten the lion in his cage.
Gold _possesses_ a power which _charms_ nearly all men to sacrifice
their ease, and too many their moral principles, to pay their blind
devotions at its shrine.
Who will contend that the power of action is confined to the animal
creation alone, and that inanimate matter can not act? That there is a
superior power possessed by man, endowed with an immaterial spirit in a
corporeal body, none will deny. By the agency of the mind he can
accomplish wonders, which mere physical power without the aid of such
mental skill, could never perform. But with all his boasted superiority,
he is often made the slave of inanimate things. His lofty powers of body
and soul bend beneath the weight of accumulated sorrows, produced by the
secret _operations_ of contagious disease, which _slays_ his wife,
children, and friends, who fall like the ripened harvest before the
gatherers scythe. Nay, he often submits to the controlling power of the
vine, alcohol, or tobacco, which _gain_ a secret influence over his
nobler powers, and _fix_ on him the stamp of disgrace, and _throw_
around him fetters from which he finds it no easy matter to extricate
himself. By the illusions of error and vice he is often betrayed, and
long endures darkness and suffering, till he _regains_ his native
energies, and finds deliverance in the enjoyment of truth and virtue.
What is that secret power which lies concealed beyond the reach of
human ken, and is transported from land to land unknown, till exposed in
conditions suited to its operation, will show its active and resistless
force in the destruction of life, and the devastation of whole cities or
nations? You may call it plague, or cholera, or small pox, miasma,
contagion, particles of matter floating in the air surcharged with
disease, or any thing else. It matters not what you call it. It is
sufficient to our present purpose to know that it has the ability to put
forth a prodigious power in the production of consequences, which the
highest skill of man is yet unable to prevent.
I might pursue this point to an indefinite length, and trace the secret
powers possessed by all created things, as exhibited in the influence
they exert in various ways, both as regards themselves and surrounding
objects. But you will at once perceive my object, and the truth of the
positions I assume. A common power pervades all creation, operating by
pure and perfect laws, regulated by the Great First Cause, the Moving
Principle, which guides, governs, and controls the whole.[11]
Degrading indeed must be those sentiments which limit all action to the
animal frame as an organized body, moved by a living principle. Ours is
a sublimer duty; to trace the operations of the Divine Wisdom which acts
thro out all creation, in the minutest particle of dust which _keeps_
its _position_ secure, till moved by some superior power; or in the
_needle_ which points with unerring skill to its fixed point, and
_guides_ the vessel, freighted with a hundred lives, safe thro the
midnight storm, to its destined haven; tho rocked by the waves and
driven by the winds, it remains uninfluenced, and tremblingly alive to
the important duties entrusted to its charge, continues its faithful
service, and is watched with the most implicit confidence by all on
board, as the only guide to safety. The same Wisdom is displayed thro
out all creation; in the beauty, order, and harmony of the universe; in
the planets which float in the azure vault of heaven; in the glow worm
that glitters in the dust; in the fish which cuts the liquid element; in
the pearl which sparkles in the bottom of the ocean; in every thing
that lives, moves, or has a being; but more distinctly in man, created
in the moral image of his Maker, possessed of a heart to feel, and a
mind to understand--the third in the rank of intelligent beings.
I cannot refuse to favor you with a quotation from that inimitable poem,
Pope's Essay on Man. It is rife with sentiment of the purest and most
exalted character. It is direct to our purpose. You may have heard it a
thousand times; but I am confident you will be pleased to hear it again.
Ask for what end the heavenly bodies shine,
Earth for whose use? Pride answers, "'Tis for mine:
"For me kind nature wakes her genial pow'r,
"Suckles each herb, and spreads out every flow'r;
"Annual for me, the grape, the rose renew
"The juice nectareous, and the balmy dew;
"For me, the mine a thousand treasures brings;
"For me health gushes from a thousand springs;
"Seas roll to waft me, suns to light me rise;
"My footstool earth, my canopy the skies."
But errs not nature from this gracious end,
From burning suns when livid deaths descend,
When earthquakes swallow, or when tempests sweep
Towns to one grave, whole nations to the deep?
"_No_," ('tis replied,) "_the first Almighty Cause
Acts not by partial, but by general laws;
Th' exceptions few; some change since all began:
And what created perfect?_" Why then man?
If the great end be human happiness,
Then nature deviates--and can man do less?
As much that end a constant course requires
Of show'rs and sunshine, as of man's desires;
As much eternal springs and cloudless skies,
As man forever temp'rate, calm, and wise.
If plagues or earthquakes break not heaven's design.
Why then a Borgia, or a Cataline?
Who knows but He whose hand the lightning forms,
Who heaves old ocean, and who wings the storms;
Pours fierce ambition in a Cæsar's mind;
Or turns young Ammon loose to scourge mankind?
From pride, from pride our very reas'ning springs;
Account for moral as for nat'ral things:
Why charge we heaven in those, in these acquit?
In both, to reason right, is to submit.
Better for us, perhaps, it might appear,
Were there all harmony, all virtue here;
That never air or ocean felt the wind;
That never passion discomposed the mind.
But =all= subsists by elemental strife;
And passions are the elements of life.
The general =order=, since the whole began,
Is kept in nature, and is kept in man.
* * * * *
Look round our world, behold the chain of love.
Combining all below and all above;
See plastic nature working to this end,
The single atoms each to other tend;
Attract, attracted to, the next in place
Formed and impelled its neighbor to embrace,
See matter next, with various life endued,
Press to one center still the gen'ral good.
See dying vegetables life sustain,
See life dissolving, vegetate again;
All forms that perish, other forms supply,
(By turns we catch the vital breath, and die)
Like bubbles on the sea of matter borne,
They rise, they break, and to that sea return,
Nothing is foreign--parts relate to whole;
One all-extending, all-preserving soul
Connects each being greatest with the least;
Made beast in aid of man, and man of beast;
All served, all serving; nothing stands alone;
The chain holds on, and where it ends, unknown.
But _power_ alone is not sufficient to produce action. There must be a
=cause= to call it forth, to set in operation and exhibit its latent
energies. It will remain hid in its secret chambers till efficient
causes have set in operation the _means_ by which its existence is to be
discovered in the production of change, effects, or results. There is,
it is said, in every created thing a power sufficient to produce its own
destruction, as well as to preserve its being. In the human body, for
instance, there is a constant tendency to decay, to waste; which a
counteracting power resists, and, with proper assistance, keeps alive.
The same may be said of vegetables which are constantly throwing off, or
exhaling the waste, offensive, or useless matter, and yet a restoring
power, assisted by heat, moisture, and the nourishment of the earth,
resists the tendency to decay and preserves it alive and growing. The
air, the earth, nay, the ocean itself, philosophers assure us, contain
powers sufficient to self-destruction. But I will not enlarge here. Let
the necessary _cause_ be exerted which will give vent to this hidden
power and actions the most astonishing and destructive would be the
effect. These are often witnessed in the tremendous earthquakes which
devastate whole cities, states, and empires; in the tornados which pass,
like the genius of evil, over the land, levelling whatever is found in
its course; or in the waterspouts and maelstroms which prove the grave
of all that comes within their grasp.
In the attempted destruction of the royal family and parliament of
England, by what is usually called the "gunpowder plot," the
arrangements were all made; two hogsheads and thirty-six barrels of
powder, sufficient to blow up the house of lords and the surrounding
buildings, were secreted in a vault beneath it, strown over with
faggots. Guy Fawkes, a spanish officer, employed for the purpose, lay at
the door, on the 5th of November, 1605, with the matches, or _means_, in
his pocket, which should set in operation the prodigious dormant
_power_, which would hurl to destruction James I., the royal family, and
the protestant parliament, give the ascendancy to the Catholics, and
change the whole political condition of the nation. The _project_ was
discovered, the _means_ were removed, the _cause_ taken away, and the
threatened _effects_ were prevented.
The =cause= of action is the immediate subject which precedes or tends
to produce the action, without which it would not take place. It may
result from volition, inherent tendency, or communicated impulse; and is
known to exist from the effects produced by it, in the altered or new
condition of the thing on which it operates; which change would not have
been effected without it.
Causes are to be sought for by tracing back thro the effects which are
produced by them. The factory is put in operation, and the cloth is
manufactured. The careless observer would enter the building and see the
spindles, looms, and wheels operated by the hands, and go away satisfied
that he has seen enough, seen all. But the more careful will look
farther. He will trace each band and wheel, each cog and shaft, down by
the balance power, to the water race and floom; or thro the complicated
machinery of the steam engine to the piston, condenser, water, wood, and
fire; marking a new, more secret, and yet more efficient cause at each
advancing step. But all this curiously wrought machinery is not the
product of chance, operated without care. A superior cause must be
sought in human skill, in the deep and active ingenuity of man. Every
contrivance presupposes a contriver. Hence there must have been a power
and means sufficient to combine and regulate the power of the water, or
generate and direct the steam. That power is vested in man; and hence,
man stands as the cause, in relation to the whole process operated by
wheels, bands, spindles, and looms. Yet we may say, with propriety, that
the water, or the steam; the water-wheel, or the piston; the shafts,
bands, cogs, pullies, spindles, springs, treddles, harnesses, reeds,
shuttles, an almost endless concatenation of instruments, are alike the
_causes_, which tend to produce the final result; for let one of these
intermediate causes be removed, and the whole power will be diverted,
and all will go wrong--the effect will not be produced.
There must be a =first cause= to set in operation all inferior ones in
the production of action; and to that _first_ cause all action, nay, the
existence of all other causes, may be traced, directly, or more distant.
The intervening causes, in the consecutive order of things, may be as
diversified as the links in the chain of variant beings. Yet all these
causes are moved by the all-sufficient and ever present agency of the
Almighty Father, the =Uncaused Cause= of all things and beings; who
spoke into existence the universe with all its various and complicated
parts and orders; who set the sun, moon, and stars in the firmament,
gave the earth a place, and fixed the sea a bed; throwing around them
barriers over which they can never pass. From the height of his eternal
throne, his eye pervades all his works; from the tall archangel, that
"adores and burns," down to the very hairs of our heads, which are all
numbered, his wise, benevolent, and powerful supervision may be traced
in legible lines, which may be seen and read of all men. And from
effects, the most diminutive in character, may be traced back, from
cause to cause, upward in the ascending scale of being, to the same
unrivalled Source of all power, splendor, and perfection, the presence
of Him, who spake, and it was done; who commanded, and it _stood still_;
or, as the poet has it:
"Look thro nature up to nature's God."
The _means_ of action are those aids which are displayed as the medium
thro which existing causes are to exhibit their hidden powers in
producing changes or effects. The matches in the pocket of Guy Fawkes
were the direct means by which he intended to set in operation a train
of causes which should terminate in the destruction of the house of
lords and all its inmates. Those matches, set on fire, would convey a
spark to the faggots, and thence to the powder, and means after means,
and cause after cause, in the rapid succession of events, would ensue,
tending to a final, inevitable, and melancholy result.
A ball shot from a cannon, receives its first impulse from the powder;
but it is borne thro the air by the aid of a principle inherent in
itself, which power is finally overcome by the density of the atmosphere
which impedes its progress, and the law of gravitation finally attracts
it to the earth. These contending principles may be known by observing
the curved line in which the ball moves from the cannon's mouth to the
spot where it rests. But if there is no power in the ball, why does not
the ball of cork discharged from the same gun with the same momentum,
travel to the same distance, at the same rate? The action commences in
both cases with the same projectile force, the same exterior _means_ are
employed, but the results are widely different. The cause of this
difference must be sought for in the comparative power of each substance
to _continue its own movements_.
Every boy who has played at ball has observed these principles. He
throws his ball, which, if not _counteracted_, will continue in a
straight line, _ad infinitum_--without end. But the air impedes its
progress, and gravitation brings it to the ground. When he throws it
against a hard substance, its velocity is not only overcome, but it is
sent back with great force. But if he takes a ball of wax, of snow, or
any strong adhesive substance, it will not bound. How shall we account
to him for this difference? He did the same with both balls. The impetus
given the one was as great as the other, and the resistance of the
intervening substance was as great in one case as the other; and yet,
one bounds and rebounds, while the other sticks fast as a friend, to the
first object it meets. The cause of this difference is to be sought for
in the different capabilities of the respective balls. One possesses a
strong elastic and repelling power; in the other, the attraction of
cohesion is predominant.
Take another example. Let two substances of equal size and form, the one
made of lead, the other of cork, be put upon the surface of a cistern of
water. The external circumstances are the same, but the effects are
widely different--one sinks, the other floats. We must look for the
cause of this difference, not in the opposite qualities of surrounding
matter, but in the things themselves. If you add to the cork another
quality possessed by the lead, and give it the same form, size, and
_weight_, it will as readily sink to the bottom. But this last property
is possessed in different degrees by the two bodies, and hence, while
the one floats upon the water, the other displaces its particles and
sinks to the bottom. You may take another substance; say the mountain
ebony, which is heavier than water, but lighter than lead, and immerse
it in the water; it will not sink with the rapidity of lead, because its
inherent _power_ is not so strong.
Take still another case. Let two balls, suspended on strings, be
equally, or, to use the technical term, _positively_ electrified. Bring
them within a certain distance, and they will repel each other. Let the
electric fluid be extracted from one, and the other will attract it.
Before, they were as enemies; now they embrace as friends. The magnet
furnishes the most striking proof in favor of the theory we are laboring
to establish. Let one of sufficient power be let down within the proper
distance, it will overcome the power of gravitation, and _attract_ the
heavy steel to itself. What is the cause of this wonderful fact? Who can
account for it? Who can trace out the hidden cause; the "_primum
mobile_" of the Ptolmaic philosophy--the secret spring of motion? But
who will dare deny that such effects do exist, and that they are
produced by an efficient cause? Or who will descend into the still more
dark and perplexing mazes of neuter verb grammars, and deny that matter
has such a power to act?
These instances will suffice to show you what we mean when we say,
_every thing acts according to the ability God has given it to act_. I
might go into a more minute examination of the properties of matter,
affinity, hardness, weight, size, color, form, mobility, &c., which even
old grammars will allow it to _possess_; but I shall leave that work
for you to perform at your leisure.
Whoever has any doubts remaining in reference to the abilities of all
things to _produce_, _continue_, or _prevent_ motion, will do well to
consult the prince of philosophers, Sir Isaac Newton, who, after
Gallileo, has treated largely upon the laws of motion. He asserts as a
fact, full in illustration of the principles I am laboring to establish,
that in ascending a hill, the trace rope pulls the horse back as much as
he draws that forward, only the horse overcomes the resistance of the
load, and moves it up the hill. On the old systems, no power would be
requisite to move the load, for it could oppose no resistance to the
horse; and the small child could move it with as much ease as the strong
team.
Who has not an acquaintance sufficiently extensive to know these things?
I can not believe there is a person present, who does not fully
comprehend my meaning, and discover the correctness of the ground I have
assumed. And it should be borne in mind, that no collection or
arrangement of words can be composed into a sentence, which do not
obtain their meaning from a connection of things as they exist and
operate in the material and intellectual world, and that it is not in
the power of man to frame a sentence, to think or speak, but in
conformity with these general and exceptionless laws.