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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Growth of Thought, by William Withington
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Growth of Thought
+       As Affecting the Progress of Society
+
+Author: William Withington
+
+Release Date: April 18, 2006 [EBook #18202]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GROWTH OF THOUGHT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jared Fuller
+
+
+
+
+THE GROWTH OF THOUGHT
+AS AFFECTING THE PROGRESS OF SOCIETY.
+
+By William Withington.
+
+1851.
+
+
+
+
+Contents.
+
+
+Part I.
+Introductory.
+
+Life Defined.  Intellectual Culture and Intellectual Life,
+Distinguished.  Human Life, a Problem.  The Evil to be Managed.
+Self-Love Considered under a Three-fold Aspect.  Three Agencies for
+meliorating the Human Condition.  The Growth of Thought, Slow; and oft
+most in unexpected quarter.
+
+Part II.
+
+Welfare as dependent on the Social Institutions.  Limited Aim of the
+Received Political Economy.  An Enlightened Policy but the Effective
+Aim at managing Self-Love, directed towards Present Goods, vulgarly
+understood.  The Political Fault of the Papacy.  Its Substantial
+Correction by the Reformation.  Republicanism carried from Religion
+into Legislation; still without a clear perception of its Principle.
+Its Progress accordingly Slow.
+
+Part III.
+
+Philosophy the Second Agency for promoting General Welfare, as the
+Educator of Self-Love; the Corrector of mistaken apprehensions of
+Temporal Good; the Revealer of the ties which bind the Members of the
+Human Family to One Lot, to suffer or rejoice together.  Progress in
+estimating Life.
+
+Part IV.
+
+Mightier Influences yet needed, to contend with the Powers of Evil.
+Supplied by Man's recognizing the whole of his Being; the extent of his
+Duties; the Duration of his Existence.  Religion, supplying the defects
+of the preceding Agencies; Considered in nine particulars.
+
+Conclusion.
+
+Recapitulation.  Suggestions to Christian Ministers.
+
+
+
+
+Preface.
+
+
+A contemporary thus reveals the state of mind, through which he has
+come to the persuasion of great insight into the realities, which stand
+behind the veil: "What more natural, more spontaneous, more imperative,
+than that the conditions of his future being should press themselves on
+his anxious thought!  Should we not suppose, the 'every third thought
+would be his grave,' together with the momentous realities that lie
+beyond it?  If man is indeed, as Shakespeare describes him, 'a being of
+large discourse, looking before and after,' we could scarcely resist
+the belief, that, when once assured of the possibility of information
+on his head, he would, as it were, _rush_ to the oracle, to have his
+absorbing problems solved, and his restless heart relieved of its load
+of uncertain forebodings."* [Bush's Statement of Reasons, &c.,
+p. 12.]
+
+Not less frequently or intensely, the writer's mind has turned to the
+problem of applying know truth to the present, reconciling self-love
+with justice and benevolence, and vindicating to godliness, the promise
+of the life that now is.  If, meanwhile, he has been "intruding into
+those things which he hath not seen," like affecting an angelic
+religion,--then it were hardly possible but that he should mistake
+fancy for fact.  But if his inquiries have been into what it is
+given to know, then he cannot resist the belief, that some may derive
+profit from the results of many fearfully anxious years, here
+compressed within a few pages.  He might have further compressed, just
+saying: Mainly, political wisdom is the management of self-love;
+civilization is the cultivation of self-love; the excrescenses of
+civilization are the false refinements of self-love; while unselfish
+love is substantial virtue,--the end of the commandments,--the
+fulfilling of the law: Or, he might have enlarged indefinitely; more
+especially might have been written on practically applying the
+principles to the advancement of society.  He may yet produce something
+of the kind.  Of the substance of the following pages he has only to
+say, that, if false, the falsehood has probably become too much a part
+of his nature to be ever separated.  As to such minor considerations,
+as logical arrangement and the niceties of style, he asks only the
+criticism due to one, whose hands have been necessitated to guide the
+plough oftener than the pen, through the best years of life.
+
+
+
+
+The Growth of Thought, As Affecting the Progress of Society.
+
+
+
+
+Part I.
+
+Introductory.
+
+
+The meditation on human life--on the contrast between what _is_, and
+what _might be_, on supposing a general concurrence to make the best of
+things-yields emotions both painful and pleasing;--painful for the
+demonstrations every where presented, of a love of darkness, rather
+than light; pleasing, that the worst evils are seen to be so
+remediable; and so clear the proofs of a gradual, but sure progress
+towards the remedy.
+
+The writer is not very familiar with those authors, who have so much to
+say on the problem of life--the question, What is life?  He supposes
+them to follow a train of thought, something like this: The life of a
+creature is that perfection and flourish of its faculties, of which its
+constitution is capable, and which some of the race are destined to
+reach.  Thus, the life of the lion is realized, when the animal ranges
+undisputed lord of the sunny desert; finds sufficiency of prey for
+himself and offspring, which he raises to inherit dominion; lives the
+number of years he is capable of enjoying existence, and then closes
+it, without excessive pains, lingering regrets, or fearful
+anticipations.
+
+Life differs from happiness.  It is supposable, that the lion, tamed
+and petted, trained to feed somewhat after man's chosen manner, may be
+as happy as if at liberty in his native range.  But such happiness is
+not the animal's life; since this implies the kind of happiness proper
+to the creature's constitution, in distinction from that induced by
+forced habits.
+
+To happiness add knowledge and intellectual culture, and all together
+do not realize the idea of life.  The tame lion may be taught many
+arts, assimilating him to the intelligence of man; but these remove him
+so much further from his appropriate life.  Thus there may be a
+cultivated intelligence, which constitutes no part of the creature's
+life; and this without considering the same as a moral agent.
+
+Macauley remarks, that the Jesuits seem to have solved the problem, how
+far intellectual culture may be carried, without producing intellectual
+emancipation.  I suppose it would be only varying the expression of his
+thought to say, Jesuitical education strikingly exemplifies, how much
+intellectual culture may be superinduced upon the mind, without
+awakening intellectual life--without developing a spontaneous aptness
+to appreciate, seek, find, embrace the truth.  The head is filled with
+the thoughts of others-many ascertained facts and just conclusions.  It
+can reason aright in the circles of thought, where it has been trained
+to move; but elsewhere, no spontaneous activity--no self-directed power
+of thinking justly on new emergencies and questions not yet settled by
+rule--no spring within, from which living waters flow.
+
+The difference between intellectual culture and intellectual life
+appears in the fact, that in regard to those mastering ideas, which to
+after times mark one age as in advance of the preceding, the classical
+scholars, the scientific luminaries, the constitutional expounders of
+the day, are quite as likely to be behind the general sense of the age,
+as to be in advance.
+
+The question, What is human life? arises on a contemplation like this:
+There is no difficulty in determining the life of all the other tenants
+of earth; unless, indeed, those which man has so long and so
+universally subjected to his purposes, that the whereabouts, or indeed
+the existence of the original stock, remains in doubt.  The inferior
+animals, left to themselves in favorable circumstances, manifest one
+development, attain to one flourish, live the same life, from
+generation to generation.  Man may superinduce upon them what he
+calls _improvements_, because they better fit them for _his_ purposes.
+But said improvements are never transmitted from generation to its
+successor; left to itself, the race reverts to proper life, the same it
+has lived from the beginning.
+
+Man here presents a singular exception to the general rule of earth's
+inhabitants.  The favorite pursuits of one age are abandoned in the
+next.  This generation looks back on the earnest occupations of a
+preceding, as the adult looks back on the sports and toys of childhood.
+It is more than supposable, that the planning for the chances of
+office, the competition for making most gain out of the least
+productiveness--these earnest pursuits of the men of this age--in the
+next will be resigned to the children of larger growth; just as are
+now resigned the trappings of military glory.  Where then is the human
+mind ultimately to fix?  Where is man to find so essentially his good,
+as to fix his earnest pursuit in one direction, in which the race is
+still to hold on?  Such seems to be the question, What is life?
+
+The elements of that darkness, which excludes the light of life, may be
+considered as these three: First, the excessive preponderance of
+self-love, as the ruling motive of human conduct.  Secondly, the
+short-sightedness of self-love, in magnifying the present, at the cost
+of the distant future.  And, Thirdly, the grossness of self-love, in
+preferring of present goods the vulgar and the sensible, to the refined
+and more exquisitely satisfactory.  And there are three ways, in which
+we may attempt the abatement of existing evils; or, there are three
+agencies we may call in for this purpose.
+
+In the first place, leaving individuals to the operation of the common
+motives, we may labor at the social institutions, to adjust them to the
+rule, that, each seeking his own, after the common apprehension of
+present interests, may do so consistently with acting the part of a
+good citizen--contributing something to the general welfare; or, at
+least, not greatly detracting therefrom.  Here, the agency employed,
+the Greeks would have called by a name, from which we have derived the
+word _politics_; which word, from abuse, has well nigh lost its
+original sense, _The science of social welfare_.  _Policy_, we might
+say, for want of an exacter word.
+
+The second way, in which we may seek the same result, is, to inculcate
+juster apprehensions of present good--to inform and refine self-love;
+to show, that the purest of present enjoyments, are like the loaves and
+fishes distributed by divine hands, multiplying by division and
+participation--the best of all being such as none can enjoy fully, till
+they become the common property of the race.  For want of a more
+accurately defined term, the agent here introduced may be called
+Philosophy; understanding by the term, the search, what would be the
+conduct and preferences of a truly wise man, dispassionately seeking
+for himself the best enjoyment of this life, uninformed of another to
+follow.
+
+Or, thirdly, we may seek to infuse a nobler principle than self-love,
+however refined--even the charity, whose essence is, to love one's
+neighbor as one's self; while, at the same time, this life being
+earnestly contemplated as but the introductory part of an immense
+whole, additional security is provided for the coincidence of interest
+with duty.  In a word, the third agency to be employed is _Religion_.
+
+The whole subject thus sketched is one of which the writer is not
+aware, that it has been distinctly defined, as a field for thought and
+investigation.  He has little to learn from the successes or the
+failures of predecessors.  Be this his excuse for seeming prosy and
+dull; possibly for mistakes and crudities.  He has the doubly
+difficulty of attempting to turn thought into trains to which it is
+not accustomed; and yet of offering no results so profound as to have
+escaped other observers; or so sublime as to be the due prize of
+genius, venturing where few can soar.  If he offers any thoughts new,
+just, and important, they have rather been overlooked for their
+simplicity and obviousness.  One may dive too deep for that which
+floats on the surface.  Here are to be expected none of the splendid
+results, which dazzle in the popular sciences.  The cultivator of this
+field can hope only to favor, imperceptibly it may be, the growth of
+thoughts and sentiments, tending slowly to work out a better condition
+of the human family.  And he begs to commend that advice of Lacon,
+which himself has found so profitable: "In the pursuit of knowledge,
+follow it, wherever it is to be found; like fern, it is the produce of
+all climates; and like coin, its circulation is not restricted to any
+particular class. * * * * Pride is less ashamed of being ignorant, than
+of being instructed; and she looks too high to find that, which very
+often lies beneath her.  Therefore condescend to men of low estate, and
+be for wisdom, that which Alcibiades was for power."  (Vol. I., p.
+122.)
+
+The difficulty with us Americans, in the way of being instructed, has
+been, that too proud, as if already possessed of the fullness of
+political wisdom, we have withal cherished a self-distrust, forbidding
+us to harmonize our institutions and modes of thinking into conformity
+with our work and altered situation.  We have seen the British nation,
+choosing by the accident of birth a baby for its future sovereign, and
+training it in a way the least possible calculated to favor relations
+of acquaintance and sympathy with varied wants of the many; and our
+first impression, I fear, has been our last: What drivellers!
+Obstinately blind to the clearest lights of common sense!  Whereas
+wiser for us would it be, to derive from the spectacle these general
+conclusion: that hard is it for the human mind to proceed in advance
+of ideas received and fashionable; that the so-called independent and
+original thinkers--leaders of public sentiment-are such as anticipate
+by a little the general progress of thought, as our hill-tops catch
+first by a little the beams of the rising sun, before they fill the
+intervening valleys; that men's superiority in profound thought or
+liberal ideas, in one direction, affords no security for their
+attaining to mediocrity in others; and that one familiar with the
+history of thought, may pronounce, with moral certainty, that such and
+such ideas were never entertained in such or such society, where due
+preparation did not exist.  As we may confidently say, No mountain-top
+can tower high enough, to catch the sunbeams at midnight; with equal
+confidence we may say of many ideas now familiar as school-boy truths:
+no intellect in ancient Greece or Rome soared high enough above the
+mass to grasp them.
+
+
+
+
+Part II.
+
+Welfare as Dependent on Policy.
+
+
+As generally at all points, so the materialism of the age particularly
+appears, in that the political economists take _wealth_, defining their
+science in the vulgar acceptation, rather than in the good old English
+sense, _welfare_, _well-being_.  If they occasionally venture a remark
+of a more liberal bearing on the general subject of public welfare;
+such is the exception to the general rule.  Money, with its equivalents
+and exchangeables, is their usual theme in treating of wealth; thought
+the common use of the word economy might suggest a higher science.  For
+he does not exhaust our idea of a good economist, who manages to have
+at command abundant materials for rendering home happy; while, for lack
+of wisdom to turn such materials to account, that home may be less
+happy than the next-door neighbor's, where want is hardly staved off.
+We exact, for fulfilling that character, wisdom in using the material
+means--provision for physical, intellectual, and moral training of the
+household--the just apportionment between labor and recreation-the
+true contentment, which frets not at present imperfection, while it
+still presses on to that perfection conceived to be attainable.  Our
+writers on political economy would do well, to give the word as liberal
+a latitude of sense, as it legitimately assumes, when used in its
+primitive meaning of _household management_.
+
+But, rather than attempt to raise a scientific term so much above its
+received sense, I use another word, and say, Policy must begin with the
+admission, that self-love is the mightiest mover of human conduct; and
+not a self-love enlightened, deep, calculating, directed to the sources
+of fullest contentment; but following the groveling estimate, that
+riches, power, office, ease, being the object of envy or admiration,
+are the chief goods of life.
+
+Every business man admits, that his security for men's conduct must be
+found in their self-interest.  He admits thus much practically, so for
+as his own business is concerned; the exceptions being so rare, as not
+to justify neglect of the general rule.  Yet, neither business men nor
+politicians grasp the principle clearly, nor consequently apply it
+consistently.  And he who would make a new application of it, is met
+with charges of great uncharitableness.
+
+This backwardness to generalize a rule, found so necessary practically
+to be followed, may be resolved into that flattering conceit of human
+dignity, which is yielded reluctantly, inch by inch, as plain
+demonstration wrests it away.  And further, self-love conceals itself,
+because generally it operates first to pervert the judgment.  The
+consciousness of preferring private interest to worthier
+considerations, is too painful to be endured.  The man therefore
+strives, but too successfully, to misrepresent the case to himself.
+He contrives to make that seem right, which tends to his own advantage.
+But though indirect, the operation of self-love is none the less sure.
+Whether the individual be any the less blamable, because self-love
+assumes this disguise, is not now to be considered.
+
+There are individuals, to whom implicit confidence in their unguarded
+honesty, proves but an added motive to be more tremulously sensitive,
+not to abuse such confidence.  There are, whom respect for their
+calling binds wholly to more carefulness, to prove worthy of such
+respect.  So always if one is thoroughly pervaded with the right
+spirit.  But dealing with bodies of men, as men yet are, these two
+rules should shape political institutions and social relations.
+
+First, so far as men can command confidence and respect, for the sake
+of birth, calling, or office, so far they are relieved from the
+necessity of seeking the same by personal qualifications; and
+accordingly a body of men so protected, will perceptibly fall short
+of the average, in the staple elements of respectability.
+
+Respect for station or calling so ample is here meant, as to satisfy
+the average desire of approbation.  The extent, to which this is
+satisfied by the respect paid by the child, to the parent, for the
+relation's sake, is so moderate, as one of the elements tending to the
+formation of character, that it may be expected to operate generally as
+it universally would, where the right spirit fully reigns.  The remark
+holds good, with moderate abatement, in the relation of teacher and
+pupil.
+
+In the infancy of the Christian church, the relation between pastor and
+flock was closely analogous to that between parents and children.  On
+the one side were men of a disinterested and paternal spirit, so
+earnestly living the new life hid with Christ in God, that hardly the
+possibility could be conceived of a desire to exalt and magnify self,
+over the ignorance and degradation of their spiritual charge.  On the
+other side were men, children in knowledge, incapable of estimating the
+ministry simply after the consciousness of benefits received.  We are
+not then to condemn the arrangement, which clothed the ministry with an
+official dignity, the office being revered independently of the claims
+of the man; nor to wonder, if the arrangement outlived the necessity,
+or passed the bounds of moderation; or if it was not fully calculated,
+the danger, lest men of the primitive spirit yield places to those of
+an inferior stamp; and how truly eternal vigilance is the cost, at
+which all things here must be saved from their tendencies to
+deterioration.  Accordingly the history of the Papacy for centuries
+has been, that its ministers are sure of unbounded respect from the
+populace, independently of their personal claims.  The consequence is,
+that while a few are thus moved to heroic and almost angelic devotion
+to the spiritual good of their flocks, the many would never command
+respect for what they are as men.
+
+Similar remarks may be applied to the infancy of civil society.  The
+prevalence of monarchy and aristocracy has been too universal, to be
+charged wholly upon force or chance.  And yet in the origin, rational
+considerations can hardly be supposed to have been distinctly
+entertained.  Still there may have been a dim consciousness of thoughts
+like these: It is so necessary that civil rulers be at all events
+respected, and so uncertain how to secure due respect to men meriting
+it, that we must invest a class of men with a factitious official
+dignity, and take the risk--rather the certainty--of its proving, in
+most cases, a cover for personal unworthiness, some degrees below the
+ordinary standard of humanity.  If there existed a dim consciousness of
+such reasoning, it might have been well entertained.
+
+The second rule of Policy--the master maxim of political wisdom--is,
+that no class of men must be expected to concur heartily, for
+extirpating the evils, from which its own revenues and importance are
+derived.  Speaking of men acting in a body, there is no room for the
+many exceptions, necessarily admitted to the rule, that with the
+individual self-love is the ruling motive.  The individual sometimes
+yields to nobler considerations, than the calculations of self-interest.
+In the corporation, the _esprit du corps_--the clannish
+spirit--is sure to master it over public spirit.  Devotion to the
+honor, aggrandizement, wealth and power of the order, company, or
+corporation, is more sure to control their acts as individuals.  It is
+less liable to self-rebuke for conscious meanness.  It looks somewhat
+more like the public spirit which ought to be.  It is less liable to
+occasional counteractions from impulses of honor, humanity, or regard
+to reputation.
+
+Accordingly a body of men, so constituted as to find its best flourish
+short of the perfection of the whole social system, will inevitably,
+sooner or later, prove an obstacle to the onward march of improvement.
+
+A corporation is not necessarily a grievance and a sore on the body
+politic.  If it can have its full flourish, without let to the progress
+of society, it may be harmless or beneficent.
+
+"_Sooner or later_;" be this condition marked, in estimating the
+spiritual policy of Rome.  The body of reverends, which mediates
+between God and men, finds its best flourish, in just such degree of
+popular intelligence as suffices for comprehending the specious
+arguments, on which rest the claims of Holy Mother Church; and such
+amount of conscientiousness as galls the offender, till he has
+purchased absolution.  More intelligence generally prevailing, and
+better appreciation of the divine law as a living rule of duty, would
+abate the awe in which the priesthood is held, and diminish the
+revenues accruing from mediating between offending man and his offended
+Maker.  But Christianity found the world sunk below this moderate
+standard of intelligence and morals.  The best flourish of the
+priesthood required in the people cultivation of understanding and
+conscience, up to the point of caring for their account in heaven's
+record.  So the faulty relation between priesthood and people did not
+at once appear in the results; and, accordingly, the weight of the
+qualification, _sooner or later_.
+
+But in the early growth of society, considerations like the above have
+been little attended to, compared with the obvious advantages of the
+division of labor.  As ordinarily each handicraft is best exercised by
+those earliest and steadiest in their devotion to the trade; so it is
+argued, universally, that the several departments of the public service
+will be best attended to, by being left to their respective trades,
+guilds, faculties, orders, or corporations, each strictly guarded from
+unhallowed intrusion.  So religion has been left to its official
+functionaries, prescribing articles of belief and terms of salvation by
+a divine right,--legislation to princes and nobles, equally claiming by
+the same right to give law in temporals; and so of other general
+interests.
+
+Now a movement has been slowly going on, through some centuries, for
+working society into conformity with a rational rule; a rule not
+overlooking the advantages of the division of labor, but taking in too
+such qualifying considerations as the healthful stimulus of free
+competition, watchfulness over public functionaries, and the necessity
+of harmonizing private and corporate interests, with public duty.
+
+The movement has been slow; for the actors have dimly apprehended the
+part they were acting, and the principles by themselves vindicated.
+It has consisted of two principle acts.  The Reformation carried
+republicanism into religion: our own Revolution into legislation.
+The two movements were parts of one whole; and, to get at the
+principles at bottom, either will serve for both, as well as for what
+may remain for finishing the work begun.
+
+The Reformation having been conducted by theologians, it was natural
+that disproportionate importance should have been attached to
+theological niceties.  So far as Luther was right in regarding the
+doctrine of justification by faith only as the great article at issue,
+it must have been, because the opposite doctrine favored the conceit of
+a mysterious mediating power vested in a priesthood--a conceit so
+favorable to the aggrandizement of the order thus distinguished.  But
+considered as a _politic_ movement--as an advance in rightly adjusting
+the social relations--the Reformation aimed principally at that ill
+arrangement, by which the authorized expounders of the law divine found
+their account, in involving that law in a glorious uncertainty, and
+entrapping people in a frequent violation thereof.  Considered as a
+politic institution, Protestantism differs essentially from Popery, in
+that it makes more of prevention than of remedy; gives the ministry its
+best flourish, in the best welfare of the whole body; and pays for
+spiritual health, rather than for spiritual sickness.  If all
+Protestants do not consistently so, the fact accords with the dim
+understanding, on both sides, of the essential points contested.
+
+This dim understanding further appears, in that after all the political
+discussion which has been, the success of republican institutions is
+still appealed to, as vindicating the reign of justice and benevolence
+in the public mind; mankind have within so much of the divine, are so
+self-disposed to do right, that they do not need much control, but may
+pretty safely be left to their own guidance.  Nor is it left to the
+mere demagogue to talk thus.
+
+Doubtful it may be, whether it should be called dimness of
+understanding, or rather perverse ingenuity, that men reason thus, when
+the facts are: So general is the disposition to abuse power, that
+wherever it is accumulated, it will surely be abused; accordingly it
+must be distributed as equally as possible.  If government be made the
+business of one part of the community--one tenth, or one hundredth, or
+one thousandth--that part will inevitably exalt self, at the cost of
+the others.  So strong is self-love, turned towards temporal interests,
+so acute to discern what tends to the one desired end, and so sure to
+bend every thing that way, that men's temporal interests are pretty
+safe in their own hands, and safe no where else.  Now the legitimate
+end of civil government being, to secure the temporal welfare of _all_,
+_all_ must have a share in it, or the excluded portions must find their
+rights neglected.
+
+It may have favored the common mistake, that the leaders in successful
+republican movements have so often shown a heroic self-devotion and
+disinterestedness--men like Luther, and Washington.  But these are the
+exceptions, the rare gems of humanity.  If they were the fair
+specimens, their work would never have been needed.  Then we might
+leave to a class the regulation, whether of our spirituals or
+temporals, with the like advantage, that we leave the making of our
+watches or our shoes to their respective trades.  But the indistinct
+apprehension, why the advantages of the division of labor fail in the
+matter of government, accords well with the observation, that
+republican principles make slow progress in the world, are held in
+gross inconsistencies; and the most zealous assertors thereof in one
+department, are oft found most strenuously opposed in others.
+
+It is thus that we are so slow to conform to one rule, our arrangements
+for spiritual instruction; for preserving health; for preventing crime;
+for cheaply, expeditiously, and satisfactorily settling disputed
+claims; for furnishing the whole people with instruction in their
+rights, interests, and duties; as well as that thorough cultivation of
+the whole man, which the full success of republicanism requires.
+
+
+
+
+Part III.
+
+Welfare as Dependent on Philosophy.
+
+
+But the whole office of Policy, in arranging the social relations,
+supposes the prevalence of an ill-informed and misdirected self-love.
+And, accordingly, the second way of attempting the promotion of general
+welfare is, to convey and impress just estimates of its constituents.
+Such is the office of Philosophy: the study of the truly wise man-wise
+for the present life--still leaving out man's hold on a future, and his
+relations to his Maker.  What would such an one pursue; as life's chief
+ends--covet, as life's best goods?
+
+We still suppose self-love to be as really as ever the main-spring
+to human conduct; but that self-love enlightened, regulated, refine--
+choosing first the goods which satisfy the nobler parts of man's
+nature, and on a liberal estimate of the ties which bind society
+together; in virtue of which, if one member suffer, all the members
+suffer with it.
+
+The items, claiming to constitute life's happiness, may be divided into
+two classes, distinguished by this important difference: one class
+essentially such, that only a limited number of mankind can obtain
+them;--if some succeed in the pursuit, their success involves the
+failure of others: The other class are such, as to involve no
+contradiction in the supposition of their becoming the common property
+of all.  The success of a part, far from obstructing, rather
+facilitates the success of others; they constitute a store of wealth,
+from which each may take his fill; and the more he takes, the more he
+leaves, to satisfy the desires of all who come after.
+
+Now, in view of the case, Philosophy inquiring for life's chief goods,
+cannot make them to be fortune's prizes, scattered to tempt the
+cupidity of all; but which a few only can catch, while their luck
+proves the disappointment and vexation of the many.  The supposition
+were monstrous.  We so instinctively recoil from supposing such to be
+the appointment of nature's Author, and so consciously grasp it for a
+truth clear by its own light--the conviction of a provision fully made
+in nature for all, whenever nature's wants are truly consulted--that we
+may safely reject, by this test, every notion of temporal good, which
+makes it consist preeminently in whatever, by the nature of the case,
+can be the lot of but a limited number.
+
+Eminent above all other conceptions of temporal good, is that which
+makes it to consist emphatically in the possession of money, or the
+ability to command it by its equivalents.  And because the capacities
+of enjoyment have never been measured, nor material wealth rationally
+estimated as a means of meeting those capacities, riches are prized,
+not as a means, but an end; and becoming themselves the end, no amount
+of possession lessens the desire to accumulate.
+
+A just philosophy argues on the case, that all cannot be rich, in the
+common acceptation of the term, whether be considered the limits to
+earth's productiveness, and the possibility of increasing material
+wealth; or whether, _rich_ being more a relative than an absolute term,
+that the supposition of _all rich_ is self-contradictory: therefore,
+in a juster sense, the supposition of all rich must be admissible;--the
+sense, namely, that whenever riches shall be reasonably estimated
+simply as the means of meeting capacities of enjoyment surveyed and
+known, then it will be found that the earth's productiveness, and the
+stock of material wealth, admit each to take to the fullness of his
+wants, leaving enough for all who come after.
+
+It is further the office of Philosophy to show in detail, what is thus
+wrought out as a conclusion from general principles; to show how much
+is consumed by artificial wants, and subjection to the tyranny of
+fashion; to show how the correction of factitious desires would leave
+natural and rational desires for better enjoyment than is now found, so
+that self-love would find not occasion for envy, or repining at a
+brother's prosperity.
+
+The unceasing desire to become richer would be, however, but a
+mitigated evil, if men sought only wealth by production.  The
+aggravation of the case is, that they whom the desire most impels, seek
+the increase of their own store, not by producing, but by contriving to
+turn to their own stock the avails of the industry of others.  Our
+young men, in deplorable numbers, slide into the persuasion, that any
+means of living and thriving are better than productive industry.
+Hence the rush into trade, the professions, into speculations, where
+the hazards are such, that the cool calculations of pure avarice would
+rather incline a man to prefer the prospect of growing rich by digging
+the earth.  So much the preference of contrivance to labor overmaster
+the mastering desire to become rich.
+
+But there is a strange hankering after whatever is of the nature of a
+lottery.  So the prizes are but splendid, no matter, if they are but
+few compared with the blanks.  We are given to presuming each on his
+own good fortune.  "Nothing venture, nothing have," has become a
+proverb.  So agriculture is treated as if it had no rewards, because
+one ventures so little by engaging therein.  And one might almost think
+that the conscious earth resented the indignity.
+
+Aided by Philosophy, we shall argue on this matter thus: All cannot
+live by their wits; the many must produce with the hands; and, the
+greater the part who shuffle off the charge, the more heavily it falls
+on others.  The first law given to man in innocency, was, to keep the
+garden and till it; the first after the loss of innocency, "In the
+sweat of thy face thou shalt eat bread;"--so a dispensation from such
+law, given by Him, who best knows what is good for man, in whatever
+state, is not worthy to stand high among life's blessings.
+
+More particularly we are taught in the same school, that the good thus
+contemplated must cost something at least on the score of that best of
+physical enjoyments--health.  If it were duly appreciated, how high
+this stands among life's goods, and how much its perfection depends on
+freedom to the mind from the anxieties of hazardous speculation, and a
+goodly amount of manly labor, of which the varied occupations of
+agriculture are the most favorable of all; this consideration would
+check the prevalent ambition to make the contrivance of the brain
+supply the place of the labor of the hands.
+
+Health is commended to us, not only as among the first of present
+goods, but as one, the security of which is placed very much in our own
+power; if we will but study and practise the means.  It is remarkable,
+that, while the healing art is proverbial for its sects and
+uncertainties--amid the disputes of homoeopaths and allopaths,
+mineralists and herbalists, stimulators and depletors--there is a pretty
+general agreement of parties on the laws of hygiene, or the art of
+preserving health.  We might find here a law, taught by the
+constitution of nature, that its Author never intended healing to hold
+an important place in the cause of human welfare.  He meant it should
+be well nigh dispensed with, by the obedience men should pay to laws,
+which they may understand.
+
+The full appreciation of these considerations would tend greatly to
+establish friendly relations in society; because, first, the good
+contemplated is such, that the success of one in seeking, facilitates
+the success of all.  Secondly, it would abate the strife for
+luxuries,--amassing without producing, and cultivating artificial
+wants,--most fertile sources of discord.  And, thirdly, it would
+establish between physicians and their employers, relations the most
+agreeable.
+
+Another most unmanageable misconception of life's good, makes one of
+its choicest items to be, the possession of power and superiority.
+To what depths of degradation will man depress his fellows, just to
+contemplate the distance between his might and their weakness!  If this
+ambition seems less general than the desire of accumulating, or of
+substituting contrivance for productiveness, it may be, because the
+necessity of the case more limits the number who can bear rule;
+otherwise, the passion for power might find as ready an entrance to as
+many hearts as are taken by the love of gain, or the dislike to labor.
+We may find in this thought a partial explanation of the fact, that the
+thrift of the non-slaveholding States contrasted with the stagnation at
+the South, is so powerless an argument addressed to the slaveholders
+there; for you have not only to satisfy avarice of the superior
+profitableness of free labor; you have still to contend with the lust
+of dominion--the passion for power and superiority.  To manage this
+passion is the heaviest charge of policy--to provide that the offices
+which must be intrusted to human hands, be filled peaceably and
+worthily.
+
+Philosophy explodes this notion of good (as claiming to be eminently
+such), in that it cannot stand the general test: It is a good, which a
+few must share by detracting so much from the happiness of others.
+
+And further, to the love of power is submitted the consideration, that
+knowledge is power.  It may be feared, this maxim oft suggests scarce
+other sense, that that deeper insight into the tricks of trade or
+politics enables the possessor to outwit competitors for riches or
+honors in the game.  It is still a low understanding, that knowledge of
+nature's laws multiplies the means of physical enjoyment.  Knowledge is
+power in a higher sense, in that it empowers the possessor to call
+forth stores of enjoyment form objects, which seem to vulgar
+apprehension most barren of utility.  But knowledge--taken for the
+round of mental cultivation--is power, in that it is competent to
+yield to all more than the delightful sense of conscious superiority,
+which vulgar ambition may afford to a few of its successful votaries;
+a store, from which each in taking does but multiply the remainder.
+
+But to find it so one must look well, that he apprehend knowledge to be
+a good of itself, independently of the distinction it confers.  For a
+vain ambition often takes this direction; and then it matters little to
+one whether himself advance, or others be kept back--since, in either
+case, the difference between him and them, the distinction chiefly
+enjoyed, is the same.
+
+Now, the love of knowledge is prior in time to the love of distinction;
+it should seem then, that, with proper care, it might maintain the
+mastery over its rival.  The child is delighted with the acquisition of
+new ideas, before it thinks of turning them to a vain-glorious account.
+It deserves to be considered, whether our modes of education, offering
+prizes and honors of scholarship, do not train into the ascendancy that
+love of distinction, which education ought and might keep subordinate;
+which in fact is one of the greatest hinderances to progress;--for when
+one's immediate aim is not truth itself, but the glory which attends
+the acquisition, he meets a thousand sidelong impulses from the
+straightforward search.
+
+That knowledge is a good which grows by being shared, is a truth more
+fully apprehended, as the idea of knowledge is enlarged.  It is
+measurably so, while taken for eminence in common studies and the
+received sciences.  One's advance is facilitated by the advance of
+others.
+
+Much more does this hold, when the distinction between intellectual
+culture and intellectual life is made, and the preference due to the
+latter apprehended.
+
+When the missionary enterprize was a new thing, in favor of the
+missionary's being a married man was argued the advantage of having
+children trained up in a Christian way before the eyes of the heathen.
+But so completely has that expectation been disappointed, that now the
+missionaries send home their children to be educated; alleging the
+danger, lest their children become stumbling blocks, through the
+apparent little difference between them and the heathen children.
+And the difficulty is not, that they cannot there, as well as here, be
+taught Latin, Greek, Mathematics--all the received sciences-the
+branches of what is nominally education.  It is not so much, that they
+cannot there be shielded from evil influences abroad; as that their
+children there want, what our children enjoy--the sight of magnificent
+enterprises; a spirit of inquiry and freedom breathing all around them;
+and the healthful contact and stimulus of multitudes of young minds, in
+the like process of intellectual and moral training.  It is such
+nameless imperceptible influences, that awaken intellectual life, from
+the mind, and determine the future man more than the teaching, which is
+nominally education.  Why else does the acknowledged excellence of the
+teaching in the Prussian schools do so little to quicken intellectual
+life--to form men of progressive thoughts?
+
+We should be repaid the whole cost of the missionary enterprize, were
+it only in the clearness and importance of the lesson thus taught us,
+as otherwise we should hardly have suspected--the doctrine of our
+mutual dependencies and tendencies to a common average--how our
+intellectual life is subject to the law, "Whether one member suffer,
+all the members suffer with it."
+
+We may hence take instruction, first, in the matter of educating our
+children.  We have but half done our duty as parents, when we have
+joined with such of our neighbors as better appreciate, or readier
+furnish the means, of good instruction, to unite our children in a
+select school, furnished with competent masters and ample apparatus.
+The children of one neighborhood educate one another mainly.  They
+receive from one another more of those impressions which form the mind
+and fix the after character, than all they get from their masters.
+The carefully trained will receive a deleterious impression from the
+neglected portion, despite of care to ward off evil influences.  Or,
+however successfully care may be applied, that is but negative success.
+Our children still want the kindly stimulus to mental growth, to be
+realized in a whole community of young minds, all sharing the like wise
+training.
+
+We may hence take occasion, secondly, to mark (what is not so obvious),
+that through life the same law binds us: the law, that our intellectual
+life depends more on the state of society in which we exist, than on
+our direct efforts at self-culture.  Individual effort may give one
+great preeminence before his associates in any of the acknowledged
+sciences, though even in such their success facilitates his; and if he
+prizes the knowledge--the truth--for itself, rather than for the
+attending glory, he will find in another's success, that, "whether one
+member be honored, all the members rejoice with it."  But distinctively
+is it so, in regard to the general progress of universal mind in
+justness of thought and sentiment--those new developed master ideas
+which mark the place of each successive age in the line of progression;
+and in regard to which, the masters in the received sciences are quite
+as often found lagging behind, as going before.
+
+In regard to this, we are all of us individually very like the several
+drops which compose the mighty current of the Mississippi, moving with
+resistless force to its destination.  A few may outstrip by a little
+the general progress of thought, and but a little; just as one drop in
+the current may receive an impulse, carrying it a little in advance;
+or, if we might suppose the drops gifted with intelligence, some by
+self-directed effort and seizing opportunities, might speed themselves
+a little.  So study and determination will enable one to anticipate by
+a little the birth of ideas.
+
+And, on the other hand, the current of thought none can resist.
+Sometimes a man resolves to be so conservative, as to stick fast by the
+old moorings--_he_ is not going to yield to popular impulses.  But it
+fares with him very much as it would with the single drop in the
+Mississippi, which should resolve to stop in its place, and so reluct
+against impulses and take advantage of all impediments. The result from
+day to day would be, not that it had stopped in its place, or any thing
+like it; but that its daily approach to the ocean was a little less
+than that of its fellows.
+
+Thus we are brought round to the same position--that the attempt to
+monopolize Heaven's best gifts to man, must be a very small affair--
+that the individual best consults his own attainments in knowledge,
+after the sublimest sense of the term, by consulting the progress of
+his neighbors and the race; just as the single drop in the Mississippi
+sees its best hope of speedily reaching the ocean, in whatever gives
+onward impulse to the whole current.
+
+The thought receives force from the consideration, that here
+emphatically is that knowledge, which he who increaseth beyond the
+average increase, increaseth sorrow.  A saying of so much currency must
+have some foundation in reality.  And yet is not knowledge commended to
+us as one of the richest sources of enjoyment?
+
+      "Happy the mortal, who has traced effects
+       To their first cause."
+
+Where is the reconciling link between these seeming contradictions?
+
+Now eminence in any of the received sciences, or branches of
+literature, has rich capabilities of affording happiness.  To penetrate
+the depths of mathematics, chemistry, or astronomy--to revel in the
+stores of ancient lore;--all such pursuits generally become more
+delightfully attractive, the further one advances; or, after the
+ancient indefinite use of terms, _knowledge_ might be taken for the
+just proportionate training of all the faculties, in distinction from
+the teaching, which impresses so many items of truth.  And such
+education preeminently fits one to pass time happily.
+
+The maxim in question then applies emphatically to the forethought,
+which anticipates the dawn of ideas.* [Or, more generally, we might
+define, an accurate perception of the difference between _what is_ and
+_what ought to be_--between reality and ideal perfection.  Perhaps we
+might say, _insight into logical futurity_.]  And although, as above
+said, none do greatly anticipate beyond the general sense of the age,
+yet some may too much for their own comfort.
+
+This thought Schiller finely sets forth in his Cassandra.  At the hour
+of her sister's nuptials, while the rest give loose to merriment at the
+festival, the prophetess wanders forth alone, complaining, that her
+insight into futurity debars her from participation in the common joy.
+
+    "To all its arms doth mirth unfold,
+          And every heart foregoes its cares,
+     And hope is busy in the old;
+          The bridal robe my sister wears,
+     And I alone, alone am weeping;
+          The sweet delusion mocks not me;
+     Around these walls destruction sweeping,
+          More near and near I see.
+
+     A torch before my vision glows,
+          But not in Hymen's hand it shines;
+     A flame that to the welkin goes,
+          But not from holy offering shrines:
+     Glad hands the banquet are preparing,
+          And near and near the halls of state,
+     I hear the god that comes unsparing,
+          I hear the steps of fate.
+
+     And men my prophet wail deride!
+          The solemn sorrow dies in scorn;
+     And lonely in the waste I hide
+          The tortured heart that would forewarn.
+     And the happy, unregarded,
+          Mocked by their fearful joy, I trod:
+     Oh! dark to me the lot awarded,
+          Thou evil Pythian god!
+
+     Thine oracle in vain to be,
+          Oh! wherefore am I thus consigned,
+     With eyes that every truth must see,
+          Lone in the city of the blind?
+     Cursed with the anguish of a power
+          To view the fates I may not thrall;
+     The hovering tempest still must lower,
+          The horror must befall.
+
+     Boots it, the veil to lift, and give
+          To sight the frowning fates beneath?
+     For error is the life we live,
+          And, oh, our knowledge is but death!
+     Take back the clear and awful mirror,
+          Shut from mine eyes the blood-red glare;
+     Thy truth is but a gift of terror,
+          When mortal lips declare.
+
+     My blindness give to me once more,
+          The gay, dim senses that rejoice;
+     The past's delighted songs are o'er
+          For lips that speak a prophet's voice.
+
+     To me _the future_ thou has granted;
+            I miss the moment from the chain--
+     The happy present hour enchanted!
+          Take back thy gift again!"* [Bulwer's translation.]
+
+These lines express more than the trite observation, that a knowledge
+of futurity would prove a torment to the possessor.  Beneath that
+obvious is couched the deeper moral, which expresses the sufferings of
+the philosophic prophet--of the man who, too much for his own quiet,
+anticipates reasonings, conclusions, sentiments, forms of social life
+yet to prevail--the man to whom not coming events, but coming ideas,
+cast their shadows before.  If we could suppose one at the time of the
+crusades, educated to associate and sympathize with the choice spirits
+of the age, yet anticipating the sense of their age, in making the
+comparative estimate of chivalrous adventure, and successful
+cultivation of the arts of peace and industry; he must have felt
+somewhat like Cassandra among the less gifted.  If we could look on
+life, as our successors will two hundred years hence, we too might
+complain of being "lone in the city of the blind;" unless large Hope
+and Benevolence enabled us to live on the future.  Thus we find
+additional motive to desiring a united and absolute, rather than an
+individual and relative progress, in the consideration that knowledge
+most worthily so called--whoso increaseth greatly beyond the average
+attainment, doth so to his own sorrow.
+
+To complete the list of false estimates of good, refuted by one test,
+we should allude to the frivolities of gentility and fashion-the
+passion for wearing badges of distinction, however impotent or
+unmeaning such may be.  This is the very poorest form of finding
+delight, in what from the nature of the case can be shared by few.
+For its incommunicableness is its only recommendation.  It is an icy
+repellant, freezing up the kindly flow of sympathy with universal
+humanity; and uncompensated loss of that best ingredient of earthly
+felicity--the interchange of friendly feelings and offices; that store
+of wealth, from which the more that take, and the fuller their share,
+the more they leave to be taken by others.
+
+The foregoing may be treated as a fine and just speculation, but as
+what ever must remain a barren speculation; as if it were after the
+example of all ages, that men should mistake the material of happiness
+for happiness itself.  So it always has been, so it always will be,
+that false notions of good usurp the place of the true, despite the
+demonstrations of moralists and divines to the contrary.
+
+Mind, however, has not stood still in this matter.  It has moved, and
+that in the right direction.  We may note a progress from age to age,
+in coming to a just estimate of life.  Start not at the use of terms,
+rendered suspicious by the extravagancies of which they have been made
+the vehicle.  But we must not reject ideas great, just, or new, because
+of the distortions and caricatures of little minds.  If one idea
+occupies the mind all them more for being great and just, it will be
+likely to overmaster that mind, so as not to be produced in its fair
+proportions, or rightly applied.  So fare they, with whom the one idea
+is, the progress of society--the growth of thought.  The Mississippi in
+its progress throws froth and scum on its surface, more conspicuous
+than the under-running current.  So radical folly and transcendental
+nonsense is obtruded on the sight, from the sympathy of little minds
+with the deeper current of thought.  To gauge the progress of mind from
+those who are most noisy on the matter, would be, like taking the
+direction and rapidity of the Mississippi, from the froth, which the
+wind blows hither and thither over its surface.
+
+"Let us go on to perfection"--"Forgetting the things behind, and
+pressing onward to the things before."  Such language describes
+distinctively the American character, and the spirit of Christianity.
+Only, where is perfection?  What are the things before?  If, as a
+people, we do fully take these expressions in their author's sense, we
+may hope there is one element of agreement, betokening good for the
+future.
+
+It is encouraging, that the two rival systems, most boldly promising to
+lead to perfection, both had their birth under political and mental
+bondage.  So evidently with Romanism, whether under its proper form and
+name, or refined and disguised after the modern fashion.  And the same
+is true of the baptized infidelity imported from Germany.  The German
+mind is cramped and diseased by the bands which confine it.  It is not
+allowed to speculate freely on politics, and the many questions most
+nearly touching present interests.  Therefore, on the records and on
+the doctrines which pertain to eternal interests, it falls with an
+insane avidity for innovation, and runs into licentiousness a liberty
+no where else enjoyed.  Hence the levity, in dealing with things
+sacred, in Germany often found in minds of the first and second orders,
+here is taken up by those to the third and fourth--the copyists and
+imitators; nay, by the buffoons who figure at the farces of mock
+philanthropy.  Now, though every folly must find minds whose caliber it
+fits, we may hope the genuine American mind will not be extensively
+beguiled by either of the misbegotten offspring of Europe's mental
+servitude.
+
+But, to the point--progress made in estimating life.  A few centuries
+ago, a torrent of enthusiasm set in the direction of bearing the cross
+into Asia, to fight for glory, and the propagation of Christianity, on
+the fields of Palestine.  Already the old Roman military character was
+greatly improved on.  Virtue, (_manliness_, a` vir-_man_) was no longer
+supposed to fulfil its highest office in
+
+      Parcere subjectis et debellare superbos.
+
+A delicate sense of honor, of the courtesy due to a foe and the
+gallantry to the other sex, betoken a type of humanity in advance of
+the brute ferocity of the best days of Rome.
+
+But, notwithstanding Mr. Burke's eloquence, and the opinion sometimes
+expressed, that the courtly knight of the middle age, realized the
+perfection of humanity; we have no reason to regret that the age of
+chivalry is gone by, and that the age of speculation, and money-making,
+and industrial enterprize has succeeded.  The materialism of this age,
+with all its faults, is better than the chivalry of an age gone by.
+It tends to keep the world at peace; _that_ tended to perpetual
+turmoil.  The supposition _all rich_, according to modern ideas, is not
+so flat a contradiction as the supposition _all glorious_, in military
+heroism.  As the past age estimated life's supreme good, the enjoyment
+of a few _required_ the exclusion of the many from its benefits: as
+this age estimates the enjoyment of some, _admits_ the exclusion of
+others.  Whether the mercantile spirit thoroughly entered into makes a
+better man than did the spirit of chivalry, may be doubted; not so,
+which best comports with the welfare of society.
+
+Now if one, at the time of the crusades, had so anticipated the spirit
+of the age, as to picture to himself modern Europe and America,
+manufacturing, trading, flocking to California, as if there a holy
+sepulcher was to be rescued from hands profane, glorying chiefly in
+mechanical development and mercantile enterprize; and had ventured to
+suggest, that instead of trooping to Asia to fight for glory, and the
+fancy of promoting religion by arguments of steel, it would be worthier
+of the choice spirits of the age to stay at home, and by industry and
+enterprize aim at multiplying the means of content to quiet life:
+he might have found a harder task than now devolves on him, who urges,
+that the materialism of this age must pass away, as has passed the
+chivalry of the crusades; both for the same reason; the progress of
+thought must outgrow the one, as it has outgrown the other.
+
+A new age with another spirit will be ushered in.  What is to be the
+spirit of that age?  Are we to find the forebodings in the dreamy
+sentimentalism, which boasts so much its flights beyond common material
+ideas?  I trow rather, we may trace the character of the coming age in
+an increasing estimation of health, knowledge, mental cultivation,
+intellectual life, and the flow of the social affections, as the prime
+of earthly felicities--in an approximation towards rationally
+estimating money (with the ability to command it) as the means of
+meeting one's capacities of enjoyment--to be no longer worshipped as
+itself the idol or the end.
+
+When a pestilential disease breaks out in the city, the plainness and
+urgency of the case compel all to see in the sickness of one the danger
+of all.  Wants and discomforts, which charity had been too cold to
+attend to, now considered as sources of contagion, are administered to
+with a ready alacrity.  The law is recognized, according to which, "if
+one member suffers, all the members suffer with it."  And this law will
+be more fully recognized, as self-love is educated--as men better
+understand their own welfare, and choose with reference to the whole of
+their nature, and the duration of their existence.
+
+Self-love is a motive of the indifferent kind--not of itself
+essentially good or bad.  This appears from its being an essential part
+of our nature.  Indeed, we can hardly conceive it as within the
+province of Omnipotence, to create a rational sentient being, who
+should be indifferent to his own happiness.
+
+The advantages accruing from an educated self-love are:
+
+First, additional security, that the good work of charity be done; and
+to all but the individual doer, it may matter little what be the
+prompting motives.
+
+Secondly, the expansion of yet nobler principles.  Each act favors the
+growth of the sentiments, of which it is the expression.  So he who
+does as benevolence bids, though from a motive secondary on the score
+of purity, will be likely again to do the same from yet purer motives.
+So at least if the essential principle be there, though appearing no
+more vividly than as a cold sense of duty.
+
+But, thirdly, self-love is made the rule and standard of charity: "Thou
+shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."  One must then first love himself,
+in order to loving his neighbor.  Keeping this rule, there is no danger
+of loving thyself too well; rather, the more truly thou lovest thyself,
+the more truly thou lovest thy neighbor.
+
+Suppose one to cherish the vulgar notion of life--that it consists in
+the abundance of the things which one possesses, in the ability to live
+without exertion, amid plenty of good cheer.  Suppose him to love his
+neighbor as himself.  His charity must partake of the contraction and
+grossness of his self-love.  Suppose another to prize duly intellectual
+riches.  To him the discovery of a new principle in the physical,
+intellectual, or moral world, brings a joy unsurpassed by the
+merchant's, on the return of his heavily laden ship from a successful
+voyage.  As the best legacy to his children, he would leave them a good
+education; and, knowing the natural influences and dependencies
+existing between young minds, he aims to have all the children in
+the neighborhood well educated, as the best security against failure in
+the attempt to educate his own.  If all is but a refined calculation,
+how best to benefit himself and household; it is far more estimable and
+amiable than the gross selfishness which grovels after vulgar goods,
+and in the success of a brother sees an obstacle to its own success.
+But if he too loves his neighbor as himself, why how far his self-love
+is educated to find its satisfaction in nobler ends, by so much his
+charity is better than the other's.
+
+There is hope for the future in the consideration, that self-interest,
+the first, as well as love of approbation, the second, of the great
+powers which move the world, indeed all the indifferent motives, are
+getting still more into coincidence of action with justice and
+benevolence.
+
+When Jesus enforced a duty by the consideration, "Then shalt thou have
+worship [respect, approval,] in the presence of them that sit at meat
+with thee," he implied two things; first, that regard to the world's
+respectful esteem is not a censurable motive; and, secondly, that the
+same operates to good, rather than to evil.  So it must have been even
+in that corrupt generation, so disposed to call evil good and good
+evil.  It must be much more so now, when public sentiment has so much
+improved.  Notwithstanding the danger of loving the praise of man more
+than the praise of God, and the mischiefs resulting from such
+preference, we should lose, on the whole, by eradicating the love of
+human praise.  Witness the accounts of the atrocious outbreaks of
+depravity at the gold diggings, while society was yet unformed.
+Witness, wherever cease the common restraints of civilization.
+
+Thus agents--so often the authors of discord and confusion, so often
+the fire-brands to set the world in fumes--philanthropy is more and
+more firing as her sure allies.
+
+      "Even so, the torch of hellish flames
+           Becomes a leading light to heaven:
+       And so corruption's self becomes
+           To bread of life the living leaven."
+
+All analogies point to a still increasing vigor in the growth of the
+kingdom of heaven.  If the mustard tree is never seen growing, but only
+to have grown; yet the greater the tree, the greater its power of daily
+making large growth, without its growing being perceived.
+
+All considerations indicate the power of each to do something to
+forward the consummation.  No member of society is so insignificant,
+that his spiritual life does not affect the health of the whole.  The
+obscurest, who cherishes a preference of ideal wealth over material
+riches and sensual delights, does something towards forming a sane
+public sentiment, just as surely as the tenant of the humblest city
+dwelling, who keeps clean his own premises, does something towards
+promoting the general health.
+
+It is well to review the progress made in estimating life--to impress
+our minds with its existence as a reality; because mind and enterprize
+just now tend so strongly to the material and mechanical, that we might
+be tempted to doubt, whether any other improvement were to be thought
+of.  If so, we might well enough stop where we are.  But we shall
+contemplate with most satisfaction our multiplied facilities for
+manufacturing, transportation, fertilizing the earth, and conveying
+intelligence, if we see in the whole a store, from which we may draw
+with good effect for promoting general welfare, whenever the true end
+of these means shall be earnestly studied.  Otherwise the discovery,
+how to make two kernels of corn grow where one grew before, would all
+redound to the tyranny of fashion, and only foreshadow an increase of
+artificial wants, quite up to the increased supply; so that want would
+still be as close treading on our heels as ever.
+
+But if we yet scarce attain to longer life, better health, or more
+content, than fell to the lot of our fathers, with their simpler arts
+and manner, because we are forgetting to discriminate between true and
+false wants--between real and imaginary happiness: the true voice of
+history still is, not that the material means must always thus fall
+short of their legitimate end; but that, though the material and the
+mechanical travel first and fastest, the moral and the spiritual are
+following after.  These in due time will reveal the meaning and the
+value of our stored acquisitions.
+
+Dr. Franklin calculated, that the labor of all for three or four hours
+a day, would furnish all the necessaries and all the conveniences of
+life; supposing men freed from the exactions of an arbitrary fashion.
+If he was near correctness, his time must be abundant in our day, when
+the productiveness of machinery, and skill in the arts, are so much
+improved.  Then it is within existing possibilities, that every mind be
+thoroughly cultivated; and every body taxed for labor, only to the
+extent required by the conditions of its own best vigor and that of the
+inhabiting mind.  So far afield from truth is the common supposition,
+that the many can receive but the elements of learning; while the few
+must sacrifice bodily vigor to excessive intellectual cultivation.
+Connect with this thought that before advanced of the irresistible
+tendencies of our intellectual life to one average; and what a
+boundless vista, in the direction of human progress, opens before us.
+
+As citizens of the republic, we have comparatively little cause to
+exult in the conceit of being freer or happier than other communities;
+much more in the chance, having broken the fetters of superstition and
+tyranny, next to rend those of false habit and fashion--to enthrone
+reason over the authority of one another's eyes and prejudices: to say
+in truth,--
+
+     "Here the free spirit of mankind at length
+            Throws its last fetters off; and who shall place
+      A limit to the giant's untamed strength,
+            Or curb his swiftness in the forward race?
+      Far, like the comet's way through infinite space,
+            Stretches the long untravelled path of light
+      Into the depth of ages; we may trace,
+            Distant the brightening glory of his flight,
+      Till the receding beams are lost to human sight."
+
+                           *Bryant.
+
+
+
+
+Part IV.
+
+Welfare as Dependent on Religion.
+
+
+But in all our attempts to educate self-love into harmony with
+Universal benevolence, we contend with the enemy, somewhat as Hercules
+wrestled with Antaeus:--
+
+      Und erstickst du ihn nicht in den Luften frei,
+      Stets wachst ihm die Kraft anf der Erde neu.*
+      [If thou strangle him not high lifted in air,
+      Fresh strength from the earth he continues to share.]
+
+Thus we come to speak of present welfare, as dependent on the
+cultivation of the whole man--on a recognition of his immortality, his
+allegiance to his Maker, and his capacity for more disinterested
+sentiments, than self-love, however modified.
+
+The influences thus accruing are a confirmation, from higher authority,
+of the conclusions approved by philosophy, ethics, the prudence which
+calculates how man should live with man, considered as but creatures of
+earth--a _re-binding_--a _re-ligation_ to what was _obligation_ before;
+and such precisely is the proper sense of the word _religion_.
+
+That the promise of the life that now is attaches to godliness-the
+vivid recognition of a Father in heaven, with the union of reverence
+and love cherished by a dutiful child--and that naught else secures the
+possession, might be argued,--
+
+1.  First, as anticipated from the nature of the case.  If man is
+formed to own allegiance to his Maker, and to spend this life as
+preparatory and introductory to a coming existence, then, till these
+conditions are fulfilled, he must be expected, not to fill worthily his
+place, as possessor of the present life; but must, in important points,
+compare disadvantageously with the beasts that perish.  If, like the
+inferior races, ours attained to a life which should be the full
+flourish of its demonstrable capacities, while immortality entered not
+into account, then would fail one argument to prove us destined to an
+hereafter.  If the philosopher, from the examination of the chick
+eaglet in the shell, knowing naught else of the animal, could make out
+for it, within its narrow walls, a life answering to the indications of
+its organization; he might fitly question, whether it were destined to
+burst its prison, and soar aloft.  And such embryo eaglet is man,
+considered only as to what this life realizes.
+
+2.  Historically, we are in little danger of being confounded on this
+argument.  The evidence from fact is very plain and positive, that men
+have never become wise for the life that now is, but as they have first
+become wise for the life that is to come; that self-love never becomes
+a just prudence, till informed by the faith, hope, and charity of
+Jesus; in a word, that in Him is life, and only through the light
+derived from him is life realized to men.
+
+Seeking the lowest form of worldly wisdom--political science applied as
+the agent for promoting general welfare--we may look in vain for a
+beginning thus to apply such science, in any nation unblest by
+revelation.
+
+They on whom the light has shone, have generally so imperfectly
+comprehended it, that they have only attained to that vulgar love of
+liberty, which Guizot defines to be removed but a step from the love of
+power.  Rather, we might say, that step is not--the two are but the
+same thing.  Viewed on one side, it is the hatred of being domineered
+over; on the other, it is the love of domineering.
+
+Only where the Christian account of human character has been taken for
+a sober reality, has been taken for a sober reality, has been
+practically understood the rule of dividing power equally, because so
+universal is the tendency to grasp it inordinately.  Only (we may add)
+where, better still, some good deference has been paid to the charge,
+"Call no man master on earth, for one is your Master in heaven."  If
+this is the instruction, after which one becomes a republican, and
+shapes his love liberty; the conclusion is equally obvious and
+inevitable-call no man slave or vassal on earth, for One in heaven
+is the common Master of all.
+
+Mistaking here, France has gone through a series of signal failures.
+Her Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, still prove empty names; while want
+and oppression stare millions in the face, despite the promises of more
+than half a century's experimenting with revolutions.  A vision of
+political blessedness mocks her sight, which, like fabled enchanted
+island, ever and anon seeming just within the grasp, still escapes, and
+flies the faster, the faster it is pursued.  O my country! mercy spare
+thee from thus mistaking Heaven's high decree!
+
+But if we should allow to some of the more enlightened Gentiles of
+antiquity, some degree of political wisdom; we might still look in vain
+for their progress in that estimation of temporal wealth, which reveals
+our community of interests, thus divesting self-love of its
+hatefulness, by training it to its best satisfaction.  Historically, we
+every where find self-love too blind, freakish, springing upon
+immediate results, too envenomed with maliciousness to calculate
+prudently.
+
+3.  Religion affords altogether the readiest, shortest, directest way
+to the conclusion, that interest and duty most coincide.  It brings the
+man of humblest intellectual attainments at once to the conclusion,
+which the prudent calculator may reach, after long research and
+extensive induction of particulars; namely, that he cannot add
+ultimately to his own stock of enjoyment, by detracting from another's
+share.  What might seem prudence at the expense of justice and
+benevolence, may assume a contrary aspect, at the first flush of
+conviction, that another life shall rectify the inequalities of this.
+
+Philosophy, having done its best at showing the interest of each in the
+welfare of all, and how much would redound to the happiness of all if
+all heartily concurred in thus regarding life, still labors at the
+question, as the world goes, how the individual will fare, who takes a
+course so different from the general current, as to devote his best
+zeal to bettering the condition of that world, which will be likely so
+little to appreciate his devotion.  So that, as matter of fact, one is
+little likely to see first (in earnestness) the reign of righteousness,
+as the best security for the necessaries and conveniences of life,
+unless in the faith which apprehends, that "all these things shall be
+added" to those thus devoted to promoting the holy cause of humanity.
+
+4.  Again; to the great majority of mankind, religion is the best spur
+to the understanding, towards the conclusions of a just prudence.  "The
+entrance of the word giveth understanding to the simple," says the
+Psalmist.  How often have we found its so!  How often the first impulse
+to intellectual activity is given by the man's religious interest!  How
+often they, in whom a taste for reading could never be formed
+otherwise, begin to read for satisfying their spiritual wants, and so
+develop mental powers which else had ever lain dormant.
+
+If we mark those extremes of social humanity, the masses of Hindostan
+and the people of New England--the monotonous stagnation there, and the
+progressive enterprize here--we see a difference mainly attributable to
+a religion whose very spirit is, forgetting the things behind, and
+pressing onward to the things before.  And, though this spirit may not
+always go forth in accordance with the teaching of that religion, it is
+none the less true, that such was its source; mind being awake,
+enterprising, on the track of improvement, only where a lively faith in
+Christianity has kindled the flame.  Every where else, policy at best
+presses so hard on the subject individuals, as tolerably to restrain
+the passions from breaking out of one against another.  Only "where the
+spirit of the Lord is," ventured the experiment, of making the pressure
+on each so light, as to become the best security for his keeping in
+place.
+
+5.  Philosophy fails (once more), because it has no adequate malady for
+the moral malady under which our race labors.  When we speak of men
+weighing fairly the present and the future, comparing impartially the
+substantial with the showy, the gross with the refined, and choosing
+after the decision of a fully informed prudence, we suppose what does
+not exist; "The good that I would, I do not; but the evil that I would
+not, that I do."
+
+      "The better seeing and approving,
+       Towards the worse I still am moving:"
+
+Such is the united testimony of Christian and heathen to that "law of
+sin and death," through whose tyranny the united decisions of reason,
+prudence and conscience are powerless, till what the law could not do,
+"in that it was weak through the flesh," the grace of the Gospel
+accomplishes; restoring reason and conscience to the throne, giving
+effect to the conviction, how fully coincident are interest and duty--
+"that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled by us, who walk
+not after the flesh, but after the spirit."
+
+Paul's account of this matter may have accommodated to it, what John
+says of the command to mutual Christian love; that it is an old
+history, and yet not an old but a new one.  _Old_, in the sense, that,
+from what time by one man sin came into the world and death by sin,
+every one in earnest to fulfil the true end of his being, has found the
+dame impotence attached to good resolves; the same supremacy gained by
+the baser impulses, in the hour of trial; the same temptation to find
+an excuse in what seems so like a law unavoidable, as if it were no
+more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me, as if it were not the
+responsible _I_ that did wrong: this _I_ being controlled by sin, which
+is fancied as a foreign agent taking up a residence within, and
+controlling the man in spite of him.  And, escaped from this and the
+like deceits, all have been brought to the stand, "O wretched man that
+I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death!"--that species
+of self-despair, finishing the preparation for that renewing influence,
+which "is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God
+that showeth mercy."  Thus the enemy is raised _in die Luften frei_, no
+more to receive fresh strength from mother Earth, to renew the contest
+successfully.
+
+But this account, so old in one sense, is not so in another--in the
+sense of being obsolete, or out of date.  It still retains the
+freshness of novelty, to answer to the last example of a man's ordering
+life, as, he knows, meets the approval of his Judge, and his own truest
+welfare.
+
+6.  But "the end of the commandment," or the result of the process by
+which the soul is put into condition to contend successfully with the
+powers of evil, "is charity."  So religion preeminently rebinds men to
+the rule of not seeking their own advantage at the cost of others;
+because it implants a principle, which might dispense with the
+certainty of always calculating prudently in doing right.  Charity
+seeketh not her own--not one's own welfare calculated on the largest
+scale, exclusively, or at the cost of the greatest good of the whole.
+Thus it is essentially distinct from a prudence, however refined, and
+calculating its ends through eternity.  It is called "the bond of
+perfectness," or a most perfect bond; because, if men were all devoted
+thus disinterestedly, each to the good of the whole, society would be
+perfectly held together, without other bond.  All forms of civil
+compact and voluntary association might be dispensed with.  Even
+prudence might fail to calculate, how the present sacrifice to general
+good is to be compensated; and charity would rebind the man to love his
+neighbor as himself, and do as he would receive again.
+
+It is further called "the perfect law of liberty;" as by a simple rule
+it perfectly secures to individuals those immunities, which
+constitutional provisions at best secure but imperfectly by complicated
+apparatus, and where philosophy halts at the perversities of human
+selfishness.
+
+7.  Faith alone is the sure foundation, whereto to add virtue
+[courage], and that for the further addition of knowledge.  This
+courage is _du Coeur_--of  the heart, and alone gives that simple love
+of truth, which, for _its_ sake, dares equally to be new and singular,
+or to be vulgar and common-place.  Without that foundation, assuming to
+be courageous enough to leave the beaten track, and reject received
+opinions, one does but attain to the bravery, which, in its efforts to
+dare danger or opposition, is sure to overact its part.  Who holds an
+even balance in weighing evidence, equally guarded against rejecting
+the old, because it is old, or the new, because it is new?  I know not,
+unless such as have apprehended the _urwahr_--the essential truth,
+which throws all temporal considerations into the shade.
+
+There are two difficulties in the way of attempting changes in the
+existing state of things, with good prospect of improvement.  The first
+arises from the force of habit, and a reluctance to try a new, it may
+be, hazardous course.  The other form the little discrimination
+exercised, when men set about in earnest exchanging the old for the
+new--discrimination to avoid treating the old as necessarily
+antiquated, and the presumption of "laying again the foundation" of
+all things.  And these difficulties will hardly be met successfully,
+except by men, in whom the fear of God has cast out other fear.
+
+The intelligent part of the people of southern Europe have been, for
+many years, more thoroughly divested of reverence for the papacy, than
+was Luther in the days of his greatest vehemence.  But they have
+quietly taken things as they are.  They have wanted Luther's substitute
+for superstition--a fervently religious spirit.  They have had only
+worldly and political motives, for wishing to see the old imposition
+done away; and these have been powerless against natural apathy, and
+the fixedness of old establishment.  Infidelity and indifferentism
+prove poor antagonists to superstition.
+
+But when this apathy is one overcome, then the difficulty is, to temper
+with discretion the zeal for innovation.  Throughout, such only as
+heartily prize the true, because it is true, will be likely to shun
+alike, rejecting the old for its antiquity, and the new for its
+novelty.
+
+The first lesson is, to learn how much of human wisdom is but folly:
+the second, that it is not yet all folly, but a good deal of it genuine
+wisdom.  And he will be most likely to unite these in the habit of
+thinking soberly, who first moderates his estimate of human power and
+wisdom, by marking how far their utmost flights had failed to
+anticipate, what has proved the power of God and the wisdom of God to
+the world's renovation.  Such is the best preparation for still
+learning, how much that wears the appearance of wisdom and science
+unsubstantial.  This best teaches so to reason soberly and
+conscientiously, as not to run into licentiousness the liberty of
+thinking.  Religious zeal indeed has hitherto been little enough
+tempered with discretion; but no other zeal has glowed so intensely,
+without still more disastrous consequences, in setting the world on
+fire.
+
+It is yet a consideration in point, that, as in all undertakings hope
+of success best stimulates and sustains exertion; so the hope, that the
+world's disorders will yet be cured, is best furnished by the faith,
+which recognizes a Sovereign ordering and disposing all, bringing light
+out of darkness; making the wrath of man to praise him, and the
+remainder thereof pledged to restrain.  Judging from history and
+appearances, the philanthropist may often doubt, whether the race be
+not destined still to go a ceaseless round; ever exchanging one
+delusion for another, but no real progress.
+
+As it was in character for the prophetess of Apollo, it complain:
+           "My youth was by my tears corroded,
+                   My sole familiar was my pain;
+            Each coming ill my heart foreboded,
+                   And felt at first--in vain."
+So the philosophic prophet may lament, that he anticipates so much more
+clearly, what _ought_ to be, than what _will_ be; that he finds the
+increase of knowledge, beyond the general sense of the age, to be but
+the increase of sorrow.  But the religious insight into futurity saves
+from such anguish, by the hope which gilds and realizes the future:
+hope for the race, armed with a higher assurance than philosophy can
+work out, that and right and peace shall reign triumphant; and personal
+hope, inasmuch as, however dark the prospect for earth's races may be,
+the individual has a future, whose joy is his strength.
+
+9.  And this habitual reference of the government of earth to its
+Supreme Ruler, is not more necessary to the hope, that sustains
+endurance, than to the patience which bides the time, in opposition to
+the indecent, passionate haste, which defeats its own end.  "He that
+believeth shall not make haste."  There is much fruitless haste to
+bring the world to rights, for want of a lively belief in a sovereign
+controlling Power; whose wisdom, whose goodness, whose resources, whose
+interest, to bring the world to order and happiness, infinitely
+transcend ours.  Thus is missed the conclusion, if He can endure to see
+the stream of evil flow on age after age; then discretion would set
+some bounds to our zeal, to see all evil rectified.  And the clearer
+this conclusion is the result of faith, the surer the bounds will be
+just such, as to save from losing all by a headlong precipitancy.
+
+In short, that habit of mind equally ready to accept the right and the
+true, whether it come with a suspicious air of novelty and singularity,
+or whether as old and vulgar it be scouted for being behind the age--
+that habit which neither yields to discouragements, nor favors the
+fool-hardy haste, which calculates neither time nor its own strength;
+which discriminates, when to "contend earnestly," and when to "let them
+alone," the dogged adherents to falsehood and wrong, to the teachings
+of time and circumstances, their conscience and their God, till every
+plant which he hath not planted be rooted up by these mightier
+energies--the habit, realizing all the good of the radical, in proving
+all things, and all the glory of the conservative, in holding fast what
+is good;--this habit, so favorable to human progress, but involving so
+rare a combination of seemingly opposite qualities, as scarcely to be
+accounted for on all apparent influences, has been well described, as a
+"life hid with Christ in God."  And truly has it been remarked, in view
+of the general result of ordinary tendencies and influences in forming
+one-sided characters, that _becoming as a little child_, expresses no
+less fittingly the conditions of entering the kingdom of nature, and
+thinking with the wise, than of entering the kingdom of heaven, and
+worshipping with the holy.
+
+Of the spiritual more grievously than of the intellectual life is it
+true, that, "whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with
+it."  Here emphatically does the individual labor hardly, to digest
+into his life the conclusions of reason and conscience, in advance of
+the average understanding of the age.  Professor Lyell, speaking of the
+Millerite phrenzy, and how some men of pretty sound mind were carried
+away with it, remarks to this effect: "Religious delusion is like a
+famine fever, which attacks first the hungry and emaciated, but in its
+progress cuts down many of the well-fed and robust."
+
+So it is.  So strong are our tendencies to one tone, that the
+Christian, in setting to his worldly desires the bounds which his
+religion exacts, feels to be exercising a self-denial--yielding the
+temporal to the eternal.  He scarce seems to himself to be acting the
+part of true worldly wisdom.  In reading the life of Dr. Payson, it is
+obviously manifest, that his deeply spiritual views were not inwrought
+harmoniously into his life's web, as would have been, if he had carried
+along with him a whole community.
+
+The materialism of this age must pass away, as has passed the quixotism
+of the crusades.  Each has but expressed a stage in the progress of
+thought; and neither measures the mature life of the soul.  It is not
+so certain to sight, what will be next grasped by this reaching onward
+to the things before; whether a better reconcilement of the life that
+now is with that which is to come, or whether a vaporing, misty
+sentimentalism is to be the spirit of the next age.  There are not
+wanting indications, that the materialism of this age is to be followed
+by a dreamy spiritualism, raising men above the observance of vulgar
+duties, but not above the practice of the grossest vices.  It is not
+uncharitable to mark such tendencies, where we see canonized Rousseau,
+the very embodiment of sensuality, egotism, and misanthropy; and
+progress _so_ taught to be the law of _individual_ man, that, whether
+going to commit his crimes at the brothel, or to expiate them on the
+gallows, his tendencies are still and forever upward.
+
+We need better evidence than sight can afford, to say,--
+
+      "O no! a thousand cheerful omens give
+       Hope of yet happier days, whose dawn is nigh:
+       He who has tamed the elements, shall not live
+       The slave of his own passions; he whose eye
+       Unwinds the eternal dances of the sky,
+       And in the abyss of brightness dares to span
+       The sun's broad circle, rising yet more high,
+       In God's magnificent works his will shall scan;
+       And love and peace shall make their paradise with man."
+                     *Bryant
+
+
+
+
+Conclusion.
+
+
+The matter of the preceding thoughts may be thus summed up.
+
+A progressive movement has been going on towards the rule, that,
+self-love directed towards the material, the sensible, the showy, the
+distinguishing, is so the ruling motive of human conduct, as to
+constitute it the first requisite in adjusting the social relations,
+that private interests, and class interests may not flourish best,
+short of the best attainable flourish of the whole.  When this point
+shall be so thoroughly understood, that it shall be taken for no
+reproach of any class of men to regard them practically as subject to
+the common influences which control human conduct; we may expect an
+effective move, for giving to the lawyer and to the physician a
+relation to society, analogous to that sustained by the pastor among
+Protestants; instead of leaving their professions to find their best
+flourish, at about the vigor of intellectual and moral life, which just
+now we live.
+
+But this idea loses its importance as another comes into appreciation,
+--namely, that the conflicts of self-love with self-love, suppose
+mistaken estimates of happiness to be uppermost; and, just in
+proportion as men rightly estimate life, and truly love themselves,
+they appreciate those strong, numberless, delicate, indissoluble ties,
+which bind the members of the social body to suffer, or to rejoice
+together.
+
+And this idea again lessens in importance, as yet a third gains the
+ascendancy--the living conviction, that time is but the portal to
+eternity; the soul meanwhile tasting "the powers of the world to come;"
+and knowing the persuasiveness of that strongest call to mutual
+endearment, "If God so loved us, we ought also to love one another."
+
+And now the consideration of these three points is commended especially
+to the attention of those, who, in the execution of their office and
+ministry, have weekly access to the mind of the people.  We mourn the
+waning influence of the American pulpit.  Where the power thence
+emanating in the stirring days of trial to men's souls,--when its
+ministers stood on that commanding point, where they caught the first
+beams of rising day, and reflected the light in the face of the people?
+At our Revolutionary period, ministers, in their earnestness to preach
+to the times, might have come short in preaching eternity.  So far
+there was a mistake to be rectified; but they did well to preach to the
+times.  It is among the reasons, why religious so tempered political
+zeal; and, accordingly, why, as our Revolution _was_ without a model,
+so it _remains_ without a rival.  It is well that the struggle came,
+before the toad-eaters to capital's feed agents in legislative halls
+occupied the high seats of moral influence.
+
+The true successors to the fathers are not the preachers of party
+politics, but they who aim to supply the lack of all parties, in that
+they fail to make liberty a means, valuable only as affording
+facilities to improvement.
+
+We are exceedingly contracted in our notions of the Christian
+preacher's just province.  If we confine it to administering directly
+to the soul's spiritual wants and everlasting interests, we stray wide
+from the example, which God himself sets, when he writes a revelation
+for man.  The Bible is full of histories, maxims, laws, just as might
+be expected in a book, which ignored any other life, than that which
+now is.  One half of it (within bounds) might remain as it is, on the
+supposition, that men have neither hopes nor duties, but such as
+pertain to them as joint tenants of this earthly life.
+
+If we would keep people superior to the impulses of appetite, and the
+solicitations of sensual pleasure, we must attempt _servitute corporis
+uti_ by _imperio animi_* [In Sallust's well known sentence _servitute_
+may be the object of _utimur_, _imperio_ the ablative of the means; or,
+reversing the construction, the sense may be, by keeping the body in
+subjection, we better maintain the mind's supremacy.  Neither, I
+believe, is the common understanding of the passage.]--by training the
+mind to know its capacities and powers.  If this be neglected, purely
+spiritual influences, supposing them forthcoming, will hardly save the
+body from unduly controlling the man.  Vulgar ambition is to be
+forestalled in the same way.  _Imperium populi_ may be expected to be
+attractive, in proportion as _imperium animi_ is unstudied, unknown;
+and of course the full sense missed, in which knowledge is power.  He
+who knows the greatness of the world within, hears nothing strange in
+the declaration-that "greater is he who ruleth his own spirit, than he
+who taketh a city."  That the recipients of a (so called) liberal
+education so often become the votaries of vulgar ambition, and vulgar
+pleasure too, is to be accounted for on the three-fold consideration:
+first, that what passes for a liberal education is often a very
+illiberal thing, doing very little to unfold the spirit to itself,
+and so impress the greatness of mastering its capabilities; secondly,
+that merely intellectual without moral influences, do not suffice; and
+thirdly, the law is supreme, which binds all to suffer, in their
+intellectual and spiritual life, from the mental and moral degradation
+of a part.
+
+Jesus thought it not beneath the dignity of his office, nor the
+sacredness of the Sabbath, nor the proprieties of the synagogue, to
+discourse to people on politeness and good breeding; nor to enforce
+attention to decorum, by the comparatively low consideration, "Then
+shalt thou have worship in the presence of them that sit at meat with
+thee."  Unworthy alike, both the lesson and the motive, would cry a
+false spirituality, if the example of such preaching were set by any
+lower authority.  A false spirituality it is, for it originates in
+missing the close connection between the temporal and the spiritual,
+the outward and the inward, the life that now is, and that which is to
+come.
+
+In faithfully delivering the whole counsel of God, we may encounter
+something like the wrath of the ruler of the synagogue, whose
+spirituality was offended at the restoration of a withered hand on the
+Sabbath.  We may find, that we have cast pearls before swine.  We may
+be referred to Paul's determination to know nothing among the
+Corinthians, save Jesus Christ and him crucified.  And, if we
+minister to a people who, like the Corinthians, need to be fed with
+milk and not meat; like them carnal, factious, party-spirited, and if
+we would delicately hint to them their character--let us do it
+indirectly, following Paul's example, when he put restraint on the
+fullness of matter within, and discoursed only on the elements of
+Christian doctrine.  But shall the strong man be confined to a
+milk diet, because the careful nurse ventures to supply nothing else to
+the tender infant?  If when for the time our people ought to be
+teachers, they need to be taught again the first principles of the
+oracle of God, we may reserve pearls for a worthier reception.  But, if
+they are well-grounded in the elements, let us lead them on to
+perfection.
+
+      Society's pillars, the temple's three P.s,
+      Philosophy, Policy, Piety--these
+      I commend to your notice.  My labor is done:
+      May we meet in that city where temple is none,
+      Nor sun supervenes on the shadows of night;
+      Jehovah--the Lamb--are its temple and light.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Growth of Thought, by William Withington
+
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