ifc -ii
1 **
»& -A
•^ ^-L 'to;
4^. —*; -^il^.
^W OF PRWCf^
'^fitOGICAL StW^!^
|
BX 8915 .D:5 1890 v . J5 |
|
|
Dabnev, Robert Lewis, |
1820- |
|
1898\ |
|
|
Discussions |
DISCUSSIONS
UOKERT L DaBNEY, D.D., LL.D.,
PROFESSOR OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNI\'ERSITY OF TEXAS,
AND FOR MANY YEARS PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY IN UNION
THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY IN VIRGINIA.
EDITED BY
C. R. VAUGHAN, D. D.,
Pastor of the PbesbTlTerian Church of New Providence, Va,
VOL III. PHILOSOPHICAL.
RICHMOND VA.:
Pkesbyteeian CoMjnxTEE OF Publication. 1892.
COPTBIGHT BY
James K. Hazen, Secretary of Publication. 189 2.
Pbinted by
Whittet & Shepperson.
Richmond, Va.
CONTE?(TS.
Morality of the Legax Profession,
Positivism in Engl.\nd,
Liberty and Sla^'eey,
Popish Literature and Education,
Simplicity of Pulpit Style,
Geology and the Bible, .
A Caution Against Anti-Christian Science,
The Philosophy of Dr. Bledsoe,
The Philosophy of Volition,
The Emotions, ......
Ci\TL Ethics, ......
The Philosophy Regulating Private Corporations, Inductive Logic Discussed, Nature of Physical Causes, Applications of Induction and Analogy. Spurious Religious Excitements, Final C.\use, ....
Anti-Biblical Theories of Rights, Monism, .....
The Faculty Discourse, . The Standard of Ordination, The Immortality of the Soul, .
1 22 61
70 80 91 116 182 211 271 302 329 349 376 412 456 476 497 523 536 551 569
MORALITY OF THE LEGAL PROFESSION.
TIHE promiueut influence wliicli lawyers exert in tlie commii- . nitj makes it a question of vital interest wliat are the ethi- cal principles upon which the profession habitually regulate the performance of their professional duties. Their social standing is usually that of leaders in every society. As a class, they are almost uniformly men of education, and their studies of the science of the law, which is a great moral science, with their converse with all conditions of men, and all sorts of secular transactions, give them an intelligence and knowledge of the jiuman heart which cannot but make them leaders of opinion. It is from this class that the most of our legislators and rulers, and all our judicial officers, must be taken. They are the agents by whose hands are managed nearly all the complicated transac- tions which involve secular rights, and interest the thoughts and moral judgments of men most warmly. But more ; they are the stated and official expounders of those rights, and not the mere protectors of the possessions or material values about which our rights are concerned. In every district, town or county of our land, wo may say with virtual accuracy, monthly, or yet more frequent, schools are held in which the ethical doctrines govern- ing man's conduct to his fellow man are publicly and orally taught to the whole body of the citizens, with accessory circum- stances, giving the liveliest possible interest, vividness and pun- gency to the exposition. Of these schools the lawyers are the teachers. Their lessons are presented, not in the abstract, like so many heard from the pulpit, but in the concrete, exemplified in cases which arouse the whole community to a living interest. Their lessons are endlessly varied, touching every human right and duty summed up in the second table of the law. They are usually intensely practical, and thus admit of an immediate and easy application. They are always deHvered with animation, and often with an impressive eloquence. It is, therefore, obvious
Vgl. III.— 1. 1
"A MORALITY OF THE LEGAL PROFESSION.
that this profession must have fearful influence in forming the moral opinions of the community. The concern which the coun- try has in their professional integrity, and in their righteous and truthful exercise of these vast powers, is analogous to that which the church has in the oiihodoxy of her ministers. Kor are these influences of the legal profession limited to things secular ; for the domains of morals and religion so intermingle that the moral condition of a people, as to the duties of righteousness between man and man, greatly influences their state towards God. It may well be doubted whether an acute and unprincipled bar does not do more to corrupt and ruin many communities than the pulpit does to sanctify and save them. These things at once justify the introduction of the topic into these discussions, and challenge the attention of Christian lawyers and readers to its great importance.
In describing what is believed to be the prevalent, though not universal, theory and usage of the bar, we would by no means compose our description out of those base arts which are de- spised and repudiated as much by honorable lawyers as by all other honest men. There is no need to debate the morahty or immorality of the various tricks ; the subornation of witnesses ; the bribing of jurymen ; the falsification of evidence in its recital ; the misquotation or garbling of authorities ; the bullying of truth- ful and modest persons placed in the witness' stand by no choice of their own ; the shaving of the claims of clients in advance of a verdict by their own counsel, by which some lawyers disgrace their fraternity. This class are beyond the reach of moral con- siderations ; and, concerning their vile iniquity, all honest men are already agreed. Nor, on the other hand, can we take the principles of that honorable but small minority as a fair exam- pier of the theory of the profession, who defend in the bar no act or doctrine which their consciences would not justify in the sight of God, and who say and do nothing officially which they would not maintain as private gentlemen. This class, we fear, are regarded by their own fi'aternity rather as the puritans of the profession. It is believed that the theory of the great mass of reputable lawyers is about this: "that the advocate, in rep- resenting his client's interest, acts officially, and not personally, and, therefore, has no business to entertain, even as an advocate,.
MORALITY OF THE LEGAL PROFESSION. 3
anj opinion of the true merits of the case, for this is the func- tion of the judge and jury ; that the advocate's office, to perform which faithfully he is even sworn, is to present his client's cause in the most favorable light which his skill and knowledge of law will enable him to throw around it ; and that if this should be more favorable than truth and justice approve, this is no concern of his, but of the advocate of the opposite party, who has equal obligation and opportunity to correct the picture ; that not the advocate himself, but the judge and jury who sit as umpires, are responsible for the righteousness of the final verdict ; that, ac- cording to the conception of the EngHsh law, a court is but a debating society, in which the advocates of plaintiflfs and defen- dants are but the counterpoises, whose only function is the al- most mechanical, or, at least, the merely intellectual one of pressing down each one his own scale, while an impartial judge holds the balance ; that this artificial scheme is found by a sound experience to be — not, indeed, perfect — but, on the whole, the most accurate way to secure just verdicts in the main, and that this fact is the sufficient moral defence of the system."
Now, it is not our intention, in impugning the morality of this theory, to charge the profession with immorality and dis- honor, as compared with other professions. ^Vhile the bar ex- hibits, like all other classes, evidences of man's sinful nature, it deserves, and should receive, the credit of ranking among the foremost of secular classes in honorable and generous traits. Lawyers may urge with much justice^ that other professions habitually practice means of emolument strictly analogous to their official advocacy of a bad cause. The merchant, for in- stance, says all that he can say, truthfully, in commendation of his wares, and is silent concerning i]ie jper-contras of their defects. " To find out these," he says, "is the buyer's business." The farmer praises all the good points of the horse or the bullock he sells, and leaves the piu'chaser to detect the defects, if he can. It is not intended, then, to assert, that the practice of this the- ory of the advocate's duty is more immoral than other things commonly supposed reputable in other callings. The question to be gravely considered is : whether the greater importance of the advocate^s profession, as affecting not only pecuniary and personal rights, but the moral sentiments and virtues of the
4: MORALITY OF THE LEGAL PKOFESSIOX.
common wealth, does not give a graver aspect to the errors of their theory of action. It is not that the bar is more immoral than commerce or agriculture ; but that, if the bar acts on an immoral theory, it is so much more mischievous. Xor, again, is it asserted that the individual advocate is necessarily a vicious man, because the professional idea into which he is betrayed is a vicious one. It is Lot doubted that many men of social honor act out the idea of theu' office above described, who, if they were convinced of its error, would repudiate it conscientiously. It is not questioned that the professional intercourse of lawyers with each other is usually courteous, generous and fraternal, above most of the secular professions ; that many magnanimous cases exist where peaceful counsels are given by them to augrj litigants, so as to prevent controversies which would be ex- tremely profitable to the advocates, if prosecuted ; that there is no class of worldly men who usually respond more nobly to the claims of beneficence than lawyers ; and that they deserve usually their social position in the front rank of the respectable classes. But, to recur to the truth already suggested, it should be remem- bered that their profession is not merely commercial or pecuni- ary in its concernments ; it is intellectual and moral ; it affects not only the interests but the virtues oi the people : lawj'ers are their leaders and moral teachers. Therefore, they act under higher responsibilities than the mere man of dollars, and should be satisfied only by a higher and better standard. The merchant may, perhaps, law^fully determine his place of residence by re- gard to his profits : the preacher of the gospel may not ; and should he do so, he would be held as recreant to his obligations. ^TLj this difference ? In like manner we may argue that should the lawyer act on a moral standard no higher than that of the mere reputable man of traffic, he would violate the obligations of his more responsible profession. But if this were not so, the obvious remark remains, that, if aU other secular professions act unscrupulously, this is no standard, and no justification for the bar: to "measiu'e oui'selves by ourselves, and compare our- selves among ourselves is not wise." The only question with the answer to which time integrity will satisfy itself, is this: ichether the ahi/i^e theory of an advocates functions is rnm^ally right.
MORALITY OP THE LEGAL PROFESSION. 5
We shall begin a diffident and respectful attempt to prove that it is not, by questioning the accuracy of the plea of bene- ficial policy, in which it is asserted, that the administration of justice is, on the whole, better secured hj this artificial structure of courts, than by any other means. We point to the present state of the administration of justice in our country;' to the *' glorious uncertainties of the law ; " to the endless diversities and contradictions, not only of hired advocates of parties, but of dignified judges ; to the impotence of penal law, and espe- cially to the shameful and fearful license allowed among us to crimes of bloodshed ; and ask, can this be a wholesome, a po- litic system, which bears such fruits? Is this the best judicial administration for which civilized, Christian, free nations may hope ? Then, alas, for our future prospects ! But it is notorious among enlightened men, that there are States, as for instance Denmark, Wurtemburg, Belgium, and even France, where the general purposes of order, security and equal rights — not, in- deed, as towards the sovereign, but between citizen and citizen — - are far better obtained in practice than they are among us, and that, in some cases, without our boasted trial by jury. Our sys- tem, judged by its fruits, is not even politic : it is a practical nuisance to the State. It may be well doubted whether, in spite of all our boasted equal rights, the practical protection this day given to life, limb and estate, by the unmitigated military des- potism of the G Dvernor-General of Cuba, not to say by the ty- rannical government of Louis Napoleon, is not, on the whole, more secure and prompt and equitable, than that now enjoyed in many of the United States. And the worst feature is, that as the legal profession has increased with the growth of the coun- try, and gotten more and more control over legal transactions, these defects of judicial administration have increased. It is urged in favor of this system of professional advocacy, that great practical injustice would frequently result from the inequality of knowledge, tact, fluency and talent in parties, if they did not enjoy the opportunity of employing counsel trained to the law and exercising their office in the spirit we have described. lb would often happen, it is said, that a rich, educated, skilful man, might contend with a poor, ignorant and foolish one ; but, by resorting to counsel, all these differences are equalized. It may
6 MORALITY OF THE LEGAL PROFESSION.
be justly asked, whether there are not inequalities in the skill and diligence of advocates, and whether the wealth which would give to the rich suitor so unjust an advantage over his poor adversary, if they pleaded their causes in person, does not, in fact, give an equally unjust advantage, in the numbers and. abil- ity of the counsel it enables him to secure, when those coun- sel are permitted to urge his cause beyond their own private convictions of its merits. We do not, of course, dream of any state of things in which professional advocates can be dispensed with Avholly ; minors, females, persons of feeble intellects, must have them in some form. But it is verj- doubtful whether as equitable resiilts would not be reached in the main, were all other suitors, except the classes we have mentioned, obliged to appear per se, extreme as such a usage would be, as those reached under our present system. Cases are continually occiniing, in which verdicts are obtained contrary to right, in virtue of ine- qualities in the members, reputation, talents, or zeal of opposing counsel, or of the untoward prejudices under which one party has to struggle. Especially is this assertion true of a multitude of cases in which the commonwealth is a party ; for when this unscrupulous theory of an advocate's functions is adopted, it is universally found that the personal client on the one side is served with a different kind of zeal and perseverance from that exerted on the other side in behalf of that distant, imaginary, and vague personality, the State. This theory, therefore, proba- bly does as much to create unfair inequalities as to correct them. And it usually happens that the advocate derives his warmth, his strongest arguments, and most telling points, from his conversations with the eager client, whom self-interest has impelled to view the controversy with all the force of a thor- oughly aroused mind ; that, in a word, the client does more to make the speech effective than his counsel.
But we are disposed to attach comparatively little importance to these considerations. Policy is not the test of right, on which side soever the advantage may lie ; and we have too much faith in the immutable laws of rectitude, and in the providence of a holv God over human affairs, to believe that a true expediency is ever to be found in that which is immoral. In the final issue, that which is right wih always be found most expedient. If,
MORALITY OF THE LEGAL TROFESSIOX. 7
"therefore, the theory we oppose can be shown to be immoral, there will be no need to reply to the assertion of its expediency. We remark, then, in the second place, that it is a presumptive reason against this theory of the lawyer's functions, that so con- stant a tendency is exhibited by individuals of the profession to descend to a still lower grade of expedients and usages in the pursuit of success. While the honorable men of the profession stop at the species of advocacy we have defined, there is another part, a minority we would fain hope, who show a constant pres- sure towards practices less defensible. To that pressure some are ever yielding, by gradations almost insensible, until the worst men of the body reach those vile and shameless arts which are the ojyjyrobrium of the bar. It is greatly to be feared that this tendency downwards is manifesting itself more and more forci- bly in our country as the numbers of the profession increase, and competition for subsistence becomes keener. Now, our argument is not so much in the fact that the profession is found to have dishonest members ; for then the existence of quacks and patent medicines might prove the art of the physicians to be immoral ; but in the fact that the honorable part of the bar are utterly unable to draw any distinct and decisive line, compatibly Avith their principles, to separate themselves from the dishonor- able. The fact to which we point is, then, that men who prac- tice in their clients' behalf almost every conceivable grade of art and argument unsustained by their own secret conscience, short of actual lying and bribery, consider themselves as acting legitimately under the theory of the profession ; and their more scrupulous brethren, who hold the same theory, cannot consis- tently deny their claim. If the advocate may go farther in the support of his client's case than his own honest judgment of its merits would bear him out ; we ask, at what grade of sophistry must he stop ? Where shall the line be drawn ? If he may with propriety blink one principle of equity or law, in his behalf, may he not for a similar reason blink two ? If he may adroitly and tacitly, but most effectively, insinuate a sophistry in his favor, might he not just as well speak it boldly out? The suj)- pressio veri not seldom amounts to a suggedlo falsi. And if the duty to the client, with the constitution of the court, justify the insinuation or assertion of a sophistry, by what reason can it be
8 MORALITY OF THE LEGAL PROFESSION.
sliown that they will not justify the insinuation of a falsehood? A sophistry is a logical falsehood ; and if he who offers it com- prehends its unsoundness, we cannot see how he is less truly guilty of falsehood than he who tells a lie. To speak falsehood is knowingly to frame and utter a proposition which is not true. He who knowingly urges a sophistical argument does in sub- stance the same thing; he propagates, if he does not utter, a false proposition, namely, the conclusion of his false argument. But we may fairly press this reasoning yet further. No one will deny that when the advocate, as an advocate, suppresses truth, or insinuates a claim more than just to his cHent, or less than just to his adversary, any such act would be insincere, and therefore immoral, if it were done as an individual and private act. The circumstances which are supposed to justify it are, that he is not acting for himself, but for another, not individually, but officially ; that there is an antagonist whose professional business it is to see that he gets no undue advantage for his client, and that the lawyer is not bound to form any private opinion whatever about the question, whether the advantages he is procuring for his client are righteous or not, that being the business of the judge and jury. These circumstances, it is claimed, make that profes- sionally innocent which would otherwise be a positive sin. Wliy, then, may they not justify the commission of any other sin which would be profitable to the client ; and what limit would there be to the iniquities which professional fidelity might de- mand, provided only the client's case were bad enough to need them ? If it is right, for his sake, " to make the worst appear the better cause," why not also falsify testimony, or garble authori- ties, or bribe jurors, or suborn perjurers, if necessary to victory? It would be hard to affix a consistent limit, for the greater ur- gency of the client's case would justify the greater sin. It is no answer to this to say that the latter expedients would be wrong, because the opposite party is entitled to expect that the contro- versy will be conducted with professional fairness, and that no advantage will be sought, which professional skill and knowledge may not be supposed able to detect and rebut if the party seek- ing it is not fairly entitled to it. For, according to the theory under discussion, this professional fairness is itself a conven- tional thing, and not the same with absolute righteousness ; and
MORALITY OF THE LEGAL PROFESSION 9
any conduct which was conventionally recognized for the time being would come up to the definition. So that the party se- cretly contemplating the employment of some of these vile ex- pedients, would only have to notify his antagonist in general terms, to be on the lookout for any imaginable trick, in order to render his particular trick professionally justifiable. And it is wholly delusive to urge that the advantage sought by one i^aiiy is legitimate, because it is only such a one as the opposing party may be expected to detect and counteract by his skill, if com- petent for his professional duties as he professes ; for the reason why the given artifice called legitimate is used in any case is just this, that it is supposed the opposing paiiy viill not have skill enough to detect and counteract it. Its concealment from him is the sole ground for the hope of success in using it ; and it is a mere evasion to say that it is such a legal artifice as the opponent's legal skill may reasoaably be supposed competent to meet ; when, in that particular case, it is used for the very rea- son that it is believed his skill will not be competent to meet it. It is used because it is hoped that it will remain as much un- detected and unanswered as would the illegitimate tricks of falsification and bribery. We believe, therefore, that if the ad- vocate may transgress the line of absolute truth and righteous- ness at all in his client's behalf, there is no consistent stopping place. No limit can be consistently drawn, and the constant tendencies of a part of the profession "uith the various grades of license which different advocates, called reputable, allow them- selves, indicate the justice of this objection.
We may properly add just here that, even if the theory we oppose were in itself moral, it might yet be a grave question whether it is moral to subject one's self to a temptation so subtle and urgent as that which allures the advocate to trans- gress the legitimate Hmit. The limit is confessedly a conven- tional one at any rate, and not absolutely coincident with what would be strict righteousness, if the person were acting indi- vidually and privately; it is separated from immoral artifices by no broad, permanent, consistent line; the gradation which leads down from the practices called reputable, to those alltnvedly base, is one composed of steps so slight as to be almost invisible ; and the desire to conquer, so vehemently
10 MORALITY OF THE LEGAL PROFESSION.
stimulated by the forensic competition, will almost surely seduce exen the scrupulous conscience to transgress. Xo sinner has a right to subject his infirm and imperfect virtue to so deadly a trial.
In the third place, we respectfully object to the lawfulness of the attitudes in which this theory of the profession places the advocate. It claims that the court is but the debating society, in which the function of the two parties of lawyers is, not to decide the justice of the cause, that being the function of judge and jury, but to urge, each side, all that can be professionally urged in favor of its own client; and that out of this exj>urte struggle, impartialh" presided over by the listening umpire, there will usually proceed the most intelligent and equitable decision. But the fatal objection is: that even if the latter claim were true, we might "not do evil that good might come." And truth and right are sacred things, which cany an imme- diate, universal, inexorable obligation to every soul in every circumstance, if he deals with them at all, to deal with them according to their reality. Man is morally responsible for every act he performs which has moral character or consequences ; and no circumstance or subterfuge authorizes him to evade this bond. His maker vnll allow him to interpose no conven- tionality, no artificial plea of ofticial position between him and his duty. Every act which has moral character man performs personally, and under an immediate personal responsibility. The mere statement of this moral truth is sufficient to evince its justness ; the conscience sees it by its own light ; and it is obvious that unless God maintained his moral government over individuals in this immediate, personal way, he could not main- tain it practically at all. Some form of organization might be devised to place men in a conventional, official position, in which evervthing mi^fht be done which a sinful desire mic;ht crave, and thus every law of God might be evaded. In a word, whatever else a man ma}" delegate by an artificial convention of law, he cannot delegate his responsibility ; that is as inalienable as his identity. And it is equally impossible for man volun- tarily and intelligently to assume the doing of a vicarious act, and leave the whole guilt of that act cleaving to his principal. His deed, in consenting to act vicariously, is his personal, iudi-
MORALITY OF THE LEGAL PROFESSION. 11
vidual deed, lying immediately between liim and liis God ; and if the deed lias moral quality at all, it is liis own personal mo- rality or immorality.
Now, truth and right are concerned in every legal controversy. But these are things to which moral character essentially be- longs. If a man speaks, he ought to speak truth ; if he handles a right, he ought to handle it righteously. Lawyers seem to feel as though this conventional theory of the courts of law had no more moral quality attaching to it than the apparatus by which the centre of gravity of a ship is restored to the middle, as she leans to one side or the other. The honest sailor seizes the lever by which he moves his ponderous chest of cannon balls or chain cable, and when the sliding of some heavy part of the cargo in the hold, or the impulse of wind or wave causes the ship to lurch to the larboard, he shoves his counterpoise to the starboard side. He teUs you that his object is, not to throw the ship on her beam ends, but to maintain a fair equilibrium, by going as much too far on the one side as the disturbing force had gone on the other. And this is all right enough. The forces which he moves or counterbalances are dead, senseless, souUess, without responsibility. But it is altogether otherwise when we come to handle truth and right. For they are sacred things. They can in no sense be touched without immediate moral obli- gation ; and to pervert a truth or right on the one hand, in or- der that a similar perversion on the other hand may be counter- balanced, is sin, always and necessarily sin ; it is the sin of meeting one wicked act by another wicked act, or, at best, of "doing evil that good may come." An attemj^t may be made at this point to evade this clear principle of morals by means of the confusion of thought produced by an appeal to a false anal- ogy. Perhaps some such illustration as this may be presented : the soldier obeys his officer ; he honestly, fairly and mercifully performs the tasks assigned him in his lawful profession, and yet sometimes takes life in battle. Now, supj)ose the war to which his commander leads him is an unrighteous war? AU must admit that every death perpetrated by the unrighteous ag- gressor, in that war, is a murder in God's sight. But we justly conclude that this dreadful guilt all belongs to the wicked sov- ereign and legislature who declare the war, and not to the pas-
12 MOKALITY OP THE LEGAL rROFESSION.
sive soldier -svlio merely does his duty in obeying his commander. Hence, it is asserted, " the principle appears false ; and there may be cases in which it is lawful for a man to do vicariously, or officially, what it would be wrong to do individually."
We reply that the general i:)roposition thus deduced is one essentially different from the one which our principle denies. To say that a man may lawfully do some things vicariously or officially, which he may not do privately and individually, is a totally different thing from saying that if an act would be imme- diately and necessarily wrong in itself, whenever and however done, the agent who does that act for another may still be inno- cent in doing it, because he acts for another. But the latter is the proposition which must bo proved, in order to rebut our principles. "We remark further upon the illustration above stated, that there are several fundamental differences between the case of the soldier and that of the advocate who profession- ally defends his client's wrong-doing. One is, that the soldier, in the case supposed, has not volunteered of his own free choice to fight in this particular war Avhicli is unrighteous. If he has, then we can by no means exculpate him from a share in the guilt of all the murders which the wicked sovereign perpetrates in battle l)y his hand. It is only when the soldier is draughted into this service without his option, and compelled by the laws of his country, that we can exculpate him. But the advocate has chosen his own profession freely in the first instance, and he chooses each particular case which he advocates, with what- ever justice it may involve. For, whatever fidelity he may sup- pose his professional oath, perhaps thoughtlessly taken, com- pels him to exercise in behalf of his unrighteous client, after he has made him his client, certainly he is not compelled to under- take his case at all unless he chooses.
Another minor difference of the two cases is, that the soldier, not being a civilian by profession and habit, is competent ta have very few thoughts or judgments about the abstract righteous- ness of the war to which his sovereign has sent him ; whereas, it is the very trade and profession of the lawyer to investigate the righteousness or wrongfulness of transactions ; so that if, indeed, he is aiding his client to perpetrate an iujiistice, he is the very man of all others who should be most distinctly aware
MORALITY OF THE LEGAL PKOFESSION. 13
of the "WTOiig about to be done. But the chief and all-auUicieut diii'ereuce of the two cases is, that all killing is not murder ; but all utterance of that which is known to bo not true is lying. The work of slaying may or may not be rightful ; the case where the lawful soldier, obeying his commander in slaying in battle, commits murder, is the exceptional case, not indeed in fre- quency of occurrence perhaps, but in reference to the professed theory of legitimate government. But to the rule of truth and right there is no exception ; all known assertion of untruth is sin. How comes it that the profession of slaying as an agent for the temporal sovereign, as a soldier or sheriff, for instance, is in any case a righteous one ? Only because there are cases in "which the sovereign may himself righteously slay. And in those cases, it may be that this right to slay, which the sovereign him- self possesses, may be held properly by another person by dele- gation. But no man can delegate what he does not possess. The client cannot therefore delegate, in any case, to his lawyer, the function of making his wrong-doing appear right, because it would be in everj' case wrong for him to do it himself. And here we are brought to a point where we may see the utter al)- siu'dity of all the class of illustrations we are combating. For law3'ers will themselves admit that if they acted individually and privately when they present pleas which they are avv^are are "an- just, it would he sin. Their defence is that the}^ do it oflicLall3^ Well, then, if the client did it for himself, it would be sin ; how can the lawyer, his agent, derive from him the right to do what he has himself no right to do ? Or, will it be said that the of- ficial right of the advocate to act f(jr a given client is not dele- gated to him from that client, but from the State which licensed him as an advocate ? We think this is a doctrine which clients would be rather slow to admit. And again, the State is as ut- terly devoid as the client of all right to misrepresent truth and right. God has given to the civil magistrate the right to slay murderers and invaders, but he has given to no person nor com- monwealth under heaven the right to depart from the inexorable lines of truth and right.
This great truth brings us back to the doctrine of each man's direct and unavoida1)le responsibihty to God, for all his acts pos- sessing moral character or moral consequences. Now, in jier-
14 MORALITY OF THE LEGAL PROFESSION.
forming our cliity, God requires us always to employ the best lights of reason and conscience he has given us, to find out for ourselves what is right. It is man's bounden duty to have an opinion of his own concerning the lawfulness of every act he performs, w^hich possesses any moral quality, God does not permit us to employ any man or body of men on earth as our conscience-keejDers. How futile, then, is the evasion presented at this point by the advocates of the erroneous theory, " that the lawyer is not to be supposed to know the unrighteousness of his client's cause ; that it is not his business to have any opinion about it, but, on the contrary, the peculiar biisiness of the jvidge and jury ; nav , that he is not entitled to have any opinion about it, and would be wrong if he had, for the law presumes every man innocent till after he is proved wicked ; and when the ad- vocate performs his functions, no verdict has jet been pro- nounced by the only party authorized to pronounce one." The fatal weakness of this feeblo sophistry is in this, that these as- sertions concerning the exclusive right of the judge and jury to decide the merits of the case are only true as to one particular relation of the client. The judge and jury are the only party- authorized to pronounce the cUent wrong or guilty, as concerns the privations of his life, liberty or property. It would, indeed, be most illegal and unjust for lawyer or private citizen to con- clude his guilt in advance of judicial investigation, in the sense of proceeding thereupon to inflict that punishment which the magistrate alone is avithorized to inflict. But this is all. If any private, personal right or duty of the private citizen, or of any one, is found to be dependent on the innocence or wickedness of that party before the court, it is a right and duty to proceed to form an opinion of his character, as correct as may be, by the light of our own consciences, in advance of judicial opinion, or even in opposition to it. Yea, we cannot help doing so, if we try.
Now, the question which tho advocate has to ask himself as to an unrighteous client is : " shall I professionally defend his un- righteousness, or shall I not ?" And that question involves an unavoidable duty, and constitutes a matter personal, private and immediate, between him and his God. In deciding that he will not lend his professional assistance to that man's unrighteous-
MORALITY OF THE LEGAL PROFESSION. 15
ness, lie decides a personal duty ; lie does not toucli the bad man's franchises, nor anticipate his judicial sentence. Let us illustrate. Many years ago, an advocate, distinguished for his eloquence and high social character, successfully defended a vile assassin, and, by his tact, boldness and pathos, secured a verdict of acquittal. When the accused v/ as released, he descended into the crowd of the court house, to receive the congratulations of his degraded companions, and, almost wild with elation, advanced to his advocate, offering his hand, with profuse expressions of ad- miration and gratitude. The dignified lawyer sternly joined his. own hands behind his back and turned away, saying : " I touch no man's hand that is foul with murder.'' But in what light did this advocate learn that this criminal was too base to be recos- nized as a fellow man ? The court had pronounced him inno- cent! It was only by the light of his private judgment — a pri- vate judgment formed not only in advance of, but in the teeth of, the authorized verdict. Where, now, were all the quibbles by which this honorable gentleman had persuaded himself to lend his professional skill to protect from a righteous doom a wretch too vile to toucli his hand? as that "the lawyer is not the judge; that he is not authorized to decide the merits of the case?" Doubtless, this lawyer's understanding spoke now, clear enough, in some such terms as these : " my hand is my own ; it is purely a personal question to myself whether I shall give it to this mur- derer ; and, in deciding that personal question, I have a right to be guided by my own personal opinion of him. In claiming this, I infringe no legal right to life, liberty or possessions, which the constituted authorities have restored to him." But was not his tongue his ovm, in the same sense with his hand? Was not the question, whether he could answer it to his God for having used his tongue to prevent the punishment of crime, as much a pri- vate, personal, individual matter, to be decided by his own pri- vate judgment, as the question whether he should shake hands with a felon ? Let us suppose another case : a prominent advo- cate defends a man of doubtful character from the charge of fraud, and rescues him, by his skill, from his well-deserved pun- ishment. But now this scurvy fellow comes forward and claims familiar access to the society of the honorable lawyer's house, and aspires to the hand of his daughter in marriage. He imme-
16 MOEALITT OF THE LEGAL PROFESSION.
diately receives a significant hint that lie is not considered -^ortlij of either honor. But he replies: "Ton, Mr. Counsellor, told your conscience that it was altogether legitimate to defend my questionable transactions professional!}-, because the law did not constitute you the judge of the merits of the case, because the law says every man is to be presumed to be innocent till con- victed of guilt by the constituted tribunal, and because you were not to be supposed to have any opinion about my guilt or inno- cence. Xow the constituted authorities have honorably acquitted me — at your advice ! I claim, therefore, that you shall act out your own theory, and practically treat me as an honorable man." We opine the honorable counsellor wotdd soon see through his own sophistry, and reply that those principles only applied to his civic treatment of him as a citizen ; that his house and his daugh- ter were his own ; and that he was entitled, yea, solemnly bound, in disposing of them, to exercise the best lights of his private judgment. So say we, and nothing can be so intimately per- sonal and private, so exclusively between a man and his God, as his concern in the morality of his own acts. Since God holds every man immediately responsible for the way in which he deals with truth and right, whenever and in whatever capacity he deals with them, there can be no concern in which he is so much en- titled and bound to decide for himself in the light of his o"\^^l honest conscience. The advocate is bound, therefore, to form his ovm independent opinion, in God's fear, whether in assisting each applicant he will be assisting wrong, or asserting falsehood. This preliminary question he ought to consider, not profession- ally, but personally and ethically. Let every man rest assured that God's claims over his moral creatures are absolutely inevi- table. He will not be cheated of satisfaction to his oiitraged law by the plea that the wrong was done professionally ; and when the lawyer is suffering the righteous doom of his professional misdeeds, how will it fare with the inan f
Our fourth consideration is but an extension and application of the great principle of personal responsibility which we have attempted to illustrate above. We would grouj) together the practical wrongs which evolve in the operation of this artificial and immoral theory ; we would invite our readers to look at their enormity, and to ask themselves whether it can be that
MORALITY OF THE LEGAL PEOFESSION. XI
these tilings are innocently done. Let tlie conscience speak; for its "Rami and immediate intuitions have a logic of their own, less likely to be misled bj glaring sophistry than the specula- tions of the head. And here we would paint not so much the judicial wrongs directly inflicted by suitors unrighteously suc- cessful ; for here the lawyer might seem not so directly responsi- ble. AA"e might, indeed, point to the case in which plausible fraud succeeds in stripping the deserving, the widow, the or- phan, of their substance, inflicting thus the ills of penury ; or to that in which slander or violence is enabled to stab the peace of innocent hearts, undeterred by fear of righteous retribution; and ask the honest, unsophisticated mind, can he be innocent who, though not advising, nor perpetrating such WTongs in his individual capacity, has yet prostituted skill, experience, and perhaps eloquence, to aid the perpetrator? Can it be right? But we would speak rather of those evils which proceed directly from the advocate himself in his own professional doings. Here is a client who has insidiously won subtle advantages over his neighbor in business, until he has gorged himself with ill-gotten gain. He applies to the reputable lawyer to protect him against the righteous demand of restitution. The lawyer undei-takes his case, and thenceforth he thinks it his dutj', not indeed to falsify evidence, or misquote law, or positively to assert the innocence of injustice, but to put the best face on questionable transactions which they will wear — to become the apologist of that which every honorable man repudiates. Kow, we speak not of the wrongs of the despoiled neighbor ; of these it may be said the client is the immediate agent. But there stands a crowd of eager, avaricious, grasping listeners, each one hungry for gain, and each one learning from this professional expounder of law how to look a little more leniently on indirection and fraud; how to listen a little more complacently to the tempta- tions before which his own feeble rectitude was tottering already ; how to practice on his own conscience the deceit which " divides a hair between north and northwest side;" until the business morality of the country is widely corrupted. Can this be right? Can he be innocent who produces such results, for the selfish motive of a fee? But worse still; a multitude of crimes of vio- lence are committed, and when their bloody perpetrators are
Vol. III.— 2.
18 MORALITY OF THE LEGAL PEOFESSION.
brought before their country's bar, professional counsel flj to the rescue, and try their most potent arts. See them rise up before ignorant and bewildered juries, making appeals to weak compassion, till the high sentiment of retributive justice is almost ignored by one-half of the community. Hear them advocate before eager crowds of heady young men, already far too prone to rash revenge, the attractive but devilish theory of "the code of honor;" or assert, in the teeth of God's law and man's, that the bitterness of the provocation may almost justif}' deliberate assassination; or paint, in graphic touches, which make the cheek of the young man tingle with the hot blood, the foul scorn and despite of an unavenged insult, until the mind of the youth in this laud has forgotten that voice pronounced by law both human and divine, "vengeance is mine, I will repay," and is infected with a dreadful code of retaliation and murder ; until the course of justice has come to be regarded as so impo- tently uncertain, that the instincts of natural indignation against crime disdain to wait longer on its interposition, and introduce the terrific regime of private vengeance, or mob-law ; and until the land is polluted with blood which cries to heaven from the earth. Can it be right that any set of men, in any function or attitude, should knowingly contribute to produce such a fatal disorganization of public sentiment ; and that, too, for the sake of a fee, or of rescuing a guilty wretch from a righteous doom which he had plucked down on his own head ? Can it be right? And now, will any man argue that God hath no principle of re- sx?onsibility by which he can bring all the agents of such mis- chiefs as these into judgment? That such things as these can be wrought in the land, and yet the class of men who have in part produced them can, by a set of professional conventionali- ties, juggle themselves out of their responsibility for the dire result? Nay, verily, there is jei a God that judgeth in the earth. But if such a theory as the one we have discussed were right, while bearing such fruits, his government would be practi- cally abdicated.
The fifth and last consideration is drawn fi-om man's duty to himself. The highest duty which man owes to himself is to preserve and improve his own virtue. Our race is fallen, and the reason and conscience which are appointed for our inward.
MORALITY OF THE LEGAL PROFESSION. 19
guides are weakened and dimmed. But yet God places in our power a process of moral education by wliicli tliey may be im- proA'ed. The habit of acting rightly confirms their uncertain de- cisions, and a thorough rectitude of intention and candor act as the " euphrasy and rue " which clarify our mental vision. How clear, then, the obhgation to employ those high faculties in such a way that they shall not be perverted and sophisti- cated ? There is no lesson of experience clearer than this, that the habit of advocating what is not thoroughly believed to be right, perverts the judgment and obfuscates the conscience, until they become unreliable. No prudent instructor would approve of the advocacy of what was supposed to be error by the pupils in a debating society. Such au association was formed bv a circle of pious young men in tho countrj- ; and once upon a time it was determined to debate the morality of the manufac- ture of ardent spirits. But it was found that all were of one mind in condemning it. So, to create some show of interest, one respectable young man consented to assume the defence of the calling, "for argument's sake." The result was, that he unset- tled his own convictions, and ultimately spent his life as a distiller, in spite of the grief and urgent expostulations of his fi'iends, the censures of his church, and the uneasiness of a rest- less conscience. Nothing is better known by sensible men than the fact that experienced lawyers, while they may be acute and plausible arguers, are unsafe judges concerning the practical affairs of life. They are listened to with interest, but without confidence. Their ingenious orations pass for almost nothing, while the stammering and brief remarks of some unsophisticated farmer carry all the votes. The very plea by which advocates usually justify their zeal in behalf of clients seemingly unworthy of it, confesses the justice of these remarks. They say that they are not insincere in their advocacy, that they speak as they be- lieve ; because it almost alwaj'S occurs that after becoming in- terested in a case, they become thoroughly convinced of the righteousness of their own client's cause. Indeed, not a few have said that no man is a good advocate who does not acquire the power of tlius convincing himself. But there are two par- ties to each case. Are the counsel on both sides thus convinced of the justice of their own causes, when of course, at least, one
20 MORALITY OF THE LEGAL PEOFESSIOX.
must be wrong ? Fatal power : to bring the imperial principles of reason and conscience so under the dominion of self-interest and a fictitious zeal, that in one-half the instances they go astray, and are unconscious of their error ! It has been re- marked of some men famous as politicians, who had spent their earlier years as advocates, that they were as capable of speaking well on the wrong side as on the right of i3ub- lic questions, and as likely to be found on the wrong side as ou the right.
Now, it is a fearful thing to tamper thus with the faculties which are to regulate our moral existence, and decide our im- mortal state. It may not be done with impunity. Truth has her sanctities ; and if she sees them dishonored, she will hide her vital beams from the eyes which dehghted to see error dressed in her holy attributes, until the reproliate mind is given over to delusions, to believe lies. Were there no force in any thing which has preceded, duty to one's self would constitute a sufficient reason against the common theory of the advocate's office.
We conclude, therefore, that the only moral theory of the le- gal profession is that which makes conscience preside over every official word and act in precisely the same mode as over the pri- vate, individual life. It does not appear how the virtuous man can consistently go one inch farther, in the advocacy of a client's cause, than his own honest private judgment decides the judge and jury ought to go ; or justify in the bar anything which he would not candidly jiistify in his ovm. private circle ; or seek for any client anything more than he in his soul believes righteous- ness demands. ""Whatsoever is more than these, cometh of evil." It may be very true, that if all lawyers practiced this higher theory, the numliers and Inisiness of the profession would be vastly abridged. If the fraudulent exactor could find no one to become the professional tool of unjust designs ; if the guilty man, seeking to evade justice, were told by his advocate that his defence of him should consist of nothing but a watchful care that he had no more than justice meted out to him ; it is j^ossible cHents would be few, and litigation rare. But is it certain that any good man would regret such a result ? It might follow, also, that he who undertook to practice the law on this Christian
MORALITY OF THE LEGAL PROFESSION. 21
theory would find that he had a narrow and arduous road along which to walk. We, at least, should not lament, should Christian young men conclude so. Then, perhaps, the holy claims of the gospel ministry might command the hearts of some who are now seduced by the attractions of this attractive but dangerous profession.
rOSITIVISMO ENGLAND.
" "POSITIYISM," s:iys M. Guizc^t, in liis Meditatioiis, "is a JL word, in langiiugc, a l)ail)iirisni ; in philosopliy, a pre- sumption." Its genius is sntHcicntly indicated ])y its chosen name, in Avliich it qualifies itself, not like other sciences, by its object, but by a boast. Tho votaries of physics have often dis- closed a tendency to a materialism which depreciates moral and spiritual truths. The one-sidedness and egotism of the liiiman understanding ever incline it to an exaggerated and exclusive range. Man's sensuous nature concurs with the fascination of tlio empiiical metliod applied to sensible ol)jects, to make him overlook tlie s])iritual. Physicists become so inflated Mith their ])rilliant success in det(;cting and ex])laining the laws of second causes that they forget tlie implication of a first cause, which constantly presents itself to the reason in all the former ; and they thus lapse into the hallucination that they can construct a system of nature from second causes alone. This tendency to naturalism, which is but an infirmity and vice of the fallen mind of man, no one has avowed so defiantly in our age as M. Au- gust(! f'omt(!, tho pretended founder of the J^nsifire Ph'domplnj, and his followers. His attempt is nothing less than to estabhsh naturalism in its most absolute sense, to accept all its tremen- dous r(!sults, and to re[)udiate as a iu>nentity all human be- lief which ho cannot bring within the rigor of exact physical science.
Although it is not just to confound the man and the opinions, we always feel a natural curiosity touching the character of one
This urticle appeared iu ths Southern PrcHbyterian Review, for April, 18G9, re- viewing: I. Cdurs de Philoniyphic Positive. Par M. Angnste Comte. 6 vols. 8vo. Palis. 183()-'12. II. Ilistory of Civilization in Enfjlnnd. By Houry Thomas Buckle. Lomlou : John W. Parker & Sous. 1858. III. A Sz/nton of Logic, Rdtiocinative and Inductive. By Johu Stuart Mill. New York. 1846. IV. An Historical and Critical Vieio of the Specuhdive PJtilosop}iy of Europe in Vie Nine- teenth Century. liy J. D. Morell. A. M. New York. 1848.
22
POSITIVISM IN ENGLAND. 23
who claims our confidence. Guizot says of liim, when he ap- peared before that statesman with the modest demand that he should found for him a professorship of the lUstory of Physical and MaUieiiiatiCdl Schnce, in the College of France: "He ex- plained to me drearily and confusedly his views upon man, society, civilization, religion, philosophy, history. He was a man single-minded, honest, of profound convictions, devoted to his own ideas, in appearance modest, although at heart prodi- giously vain ; he sincerely believed that it was his calling to open a new era for the mind of man and for human society. Whilst listening to him, I could hardly refrain from expressing m}'' aston- ishment, that a mind so vigorous should, at the same time, be so narrow as not even to perceive the nature and bearing of the facts with which he was dealing, and the questions which he was authoritatively deciding ; that a character so disinterested should not be warned by his own proper sentiments — which were moral in spite of his system — of its falsity and its negation of morality. I did not even make any attempt at discussion with M. Comte ; his sincerity, his enthusiasm, and the delusion that blinded him, inspired me with that sad esteem that takes refuge in silence. Had I even jutlged it fitting to create the chair which he de- manded, I should not for a moment have dreamed of assigning it to him.
" I should have been as silent, and still more sad, if I had then known the trials through which M. Auguste Comte had already passed. He had been, in 1823j a prey to a violent attack of mental alienation, and in 1S28, during a paroxysm of gloomy melancholy, he had thrown himself from the Pont des Arts into the Seine, but had been rescued by one of the king's guard. More than once, in the course of his subsequent life, this mental trouble seemed on the point of recurring."
The reader, allowing for the courteous euphemism of Guizot, will have no difficulty in realizing from the above what manner of man Comte was. His admiring votary and biographer, M. Littre, reveals in his master an arrogance and tyranny which claimed every literary man who expressed interest in his specu- lations as an intellectual serf, and which resented every subse- quent appearance of mental independence as a species of rel)el- lion and treachery, to be visited with the most vindictive anger.
24 POSITIVISM IN ENGLAND.
That liis mental conceit was beyond the "intoxication" -which M. Guizot terms it-, a positive insanity, is manifest from his own language. On hearing of the adhesion of a Parisian editor to his creed, he writes to his wife : " To speak j)laiidy and in gen- eral terms, I believe that, at the point at which I have now ar- rived, I have no occasion to do more than to continue to exist; the kind of preponderance wliicii I covet cannot henceforth fail to devolve upon me." .... "Marrest no longer feels any re- pugnance in admitting the indispensable fact of my intellectual superiority." And to John Stuart Mill, at one time his sup- porter, he wrote of " a common movement of philosophical re- generation everywhere, when once Positivism shall have planted its standard — that is, its lighthouse I should term it — in the midst of the disorder and the confusion that reigns ; and I hope that this will be the natural result of the publication of my work in its complete state." (This work is his Course of Positive PJi'dosojjhy, finished in 1842.)
Positivism takes its pretext from the seeming certainty of the exact sciences, and the diversity of view and uncertainty which have ever appeared to attend metaphysics. It points to the brilliant results of the former, and to the asserted vagueness and barrenness of the latter. It reminds us that none of the efforts of philosophy have compelled men to agree, touching absolute truth and reli- gion ; but that the mathematical and physical sciences carry per- fect assurance, and complete agreement, to all minds which in- form themselves of them sufficiently to understand their proofs. In these, then, we have a satisfying and fruitful quality. Positiv- ism ; in those, only delusion and disappointment. Now, adds the Positivist, when we see the human mind thus mocked by futile efforts of the reason, we must conclude, either that it has adopted a wrong organon of logic for its search, or that it directs that search towards objects which are, in fact, inaccessible, and prac- tically non-existent to it. Both these suppositions are true of the previous philosophy and theology of men. Those questions usually treated by philosophy and theology which admit any so- lution— which are only the questions of sociology — must receive it from Positivism. The rest are illusory. History, also, as they claim, shows that this new philosophy is the only true teacher. For when the course of human opinion is reviewed, it is always
POSITIVISM IN ENGLAND. ' 25
found to move through these stages. In its first stage, the hu- man mind tends to assign a theoh)gical sokition for every natu- ral problem which exercises it ; it resolves everything into an effect of supernatural power. In its second stage, having out- grown this simple view, it becomes metaphysical, searches in philosophy for primary truths, and attempts to account for all natiiral effects by a j^^'iori ideas. But in its third, or adult stage, it learns that the only road to truth is the empirical method of exact science, and comes to rely exclusively upon that. Thus, argue they, the history of human opinion points to Positivism as the only teacher of man.
But Comte, while he denies the possibility of any science of psychology, save as a result of his Positivism, none the less begins with a psychology of his own. And this is the psj'chology of the sensationalist. He virtually adopts as an d priori truth (he who declares that science knows no a priori truths) the maxim of Locke, NiJdl in intelhctu quod von jprius in sensu, and holds that the human mind has, and can have, no ideas save those given it by sensitive perceptions, and those formed from percep- tions by reflexive processes of thought. Science accordingly knows, and can know, nothing save the phenomena of sensible objects, and their laws. It can recognize no cause or power whatever, but such as metaphysicians call second causes. It has no species of evidence except sensation and experimental proof. "Positive philosophy is the whole body of human knowledge. Human knowledge is the result of the study of the forces belonging to matter, and of the conditions or laws gov- erning those forces."
" The fundamental character of the positive philosophy is that it regards oW. phenomena as subjected to invariable natural laws, and considers as absolutely inaccessible to us, and as having no sense for us, every inquiry into what are termed either primary or final causes."
" The scientific path in which I have, ever since I began to think, continued to walk, the labors that I obstinately pursue to elevate social theories to the rank of physical science, are evi- dently, radically and absolutely opposed to everything that has a religious or metaphysical tendency." " My positive philosophy is incompatible with every theological or metaphysical philoso-
26 POSITIVISM IN ENGLAND.
pliY." "Religiosity is not only a weakness, but an avowal of want of power." " The 'positive state ' is tliat state of the mind in which it conceives that 'phenomena are governed by constant laws, from which prayer and adoration can demand nothing."
Such are some of the declarations of his chief principles, made by Comte himself. They are perspicuous and candid enough to remove all doubt as to his meaning.
He also distributes human science under the following classes. It begins with mathematics, the science of all that which has number for its object ; for here the objects are most exact, and the laws most rigorous and general. From mathematics, the mind naturally passes to physics, which is the science of ma- terial forces, or dynamics. In tliis second class, the first sub- division, and nearest to mathematics in the generality and ex- actness of its laws, is astronomy, or the Tiiecaniipie celeste. Next comes mechanics, then statics, and last chemistry, or the science of molecular dynamics. This brings us to the verge of the third grand division, the science of organisms ; for the wonders of chemistry approach near to the results of vitality. This science of organism, then, is biology, the science of life, whether vegeta- ble, insect, animal, or human. The fourth and last sphere of scientific knowledge is sociology, or the science of man's rela- tions to his fellows in society, including history, politics, and whatever of ethics may exist for the Positivist. Above sociology there can be nothing, because, beyond this, sensation and ex- perimental proof do not go, and where they are not, is no real cof^nition. Comte considers that the fields of mathematics and physics have been pretty thoroughly occupied by Positivism; and hence the solid and brilUant results which these departments have yielded imder the hands of modern science. Biology has also been partially brought under this method, with some strik- ing results. But sociology remains very much in chaos, and un- fruitful of certain conclusions, because Positivism has not yet digested it. All the princij^les of society founded on psychology and theology are, according to him, worthless ; and nothing can be established, to any purpose, until sociology is studied solely as a science of physical facts and regular physical laws. "s\ithout concerning ourselves with' the vain dreams of laws of mind, free agencv, and divine providence.
POSITIVISM IN ENGLAND. 27
Such, in outline, are the principles of Positivism. Let us con- sider a few of its corollaries. One of these, which thej do not deign to conceal, is a stark materialism. Their philosophy knows no such substance as spirit, and no such laws as the laws of mind. For, say they, man can know nothing but perceptions of the senses, and the reflexive ideas formed from them. " Posi- tive philosophy," which includes all human knowledge, is " the science of material forces and their regular laws." Since spirit and the actings of spirit can never be 'plienomena, properly so called, events cognizable to our senses, it is impossible that science can recognize them. This demonstration is, of course, as complete against the admission of an infinite spirit as any other; and the more so, as Positivism repudiates all absolute ideas. Nor does this system care to avail itself of the plea, that there may possibly be a God who is corporeal. Its necessarily atheistic character is disclosed in the declaration that true science cannot admit any supernatural agency or existence, or even the possibility of the mind's becoming cognizant thereof. Since our only possible knowledge is that of sensible j9^(?nf>wicwa, and their natural laws, material nature must, of course, bound our knowledge. Her sphere is the all. If there could be a su- pernatural event — to suppose an impossibility — the evidence of it would destroy our intelhgence, instead of informing it. For it would subvert the uniformity of the natural, which is the only basis of our general ideas, the norm of our beliefs. Positivism is, therefore, perfectly consistent in absolutely denjdng every supernatural fact. Hence the criticism of its votaries, when, like Strauss and Eenan, they attempt to discuss the facts of the Christian religion, and the life of Jesus Christ. Their own lit- erary acquirements, and the force of Christian opinion, deter them from the coarse and reckless expedient of the school of Tom Paine, who rid themselves of every difficult fact in the Christian history by a flat and ignorant denial, in the face of all historical evidence. These recent unbelievers admit the estab- lished facts ; but ha\ang approached them with the foregone conclusion that there can be no supernatural cause, they are reduced, for a pretended explanation, to a set of unproved hy- potheses and fantastic guesses, which they offer us for verities, in most ludicrous contradiction of the very spirit of their " posi- tive philosophy."
28 POSITIYISM IX EXGLAXD.
What can be more distiuctly miracnloiTS tlian a creation ? Tliat ^vhicli brings nature out of nUul must of course be super- natural. Positivism must therefore deny creation as a fact of Avhich the human intelligence cannot possibly have evidence. As the universe did not begin, it must, of course, be fi'om eter- nity, and therefore self-existent. But, being self-existent, it "^ill of course never end. Thus matter is clothed "^ith the attributes of God.
The perspicacious reader has doubtless perceived that these deductions, "s^-heu stripjDed of their high-sounding language, are identical with the stupid and vulgar logic which one hears oc- casionally from atheistic shoemakers and tailors : " How do you know there is a God ? Did you ever see him ? Did you ever handle him ? Did you ever hear him directly making a noise ?" Those who have heard the philosophy of tap-rooms, redolent of the fumes of bad whiskey and tobacco, recognize these as pre- cisely the arguments, uttered in tones either maudlin or profane. Is not the logic of Positivism, when stated in the language of common sense, precisely the same ?
Once more, Positivism is manifestly a system of rigid fatal- ism ; and this also its advocates scarcely trouble themselves to veil. Human knowledge contains nothing but pJieiiomena and their natural laws, according to them. " The positive state is that state of mind in which it conceives that j^^'-^'^omena are governed by constant laws, from which prayer and adoration can demand. nothing." "The fundamental character of positive philosophy is, that it regards all phenomena as subject to inva- riable laws." Such are Comte's dicta. The only causation, he knows is that of physical second causes. These, of course operate blindly and necessarily. This tremendous conchision is confirmed by the doctrine of the eternity and self-existence of nature ; for a substance which has those attributes, and is also material, must be what it is, and do what it does, by an im- manent and immutable necessity. Positivism must teach us, therefore, if it is consistent, that all the events which befall us are directed by a physical fate ; that there is no divine intelli- gence, nor goodness, nor righteousness, nor will concerned in them ; that our hopes, our hearts, our beloved ones, our very existence, are all between the jaws of an irresistible and inex-
POSITIVISM IX ENGLAND. 29
orable macliine ; that our free-ageucy, in short, is iUusorj, and our free-will a cheat.
But the positive philosophy, with its sweeping conclusions, iufluenees the science of this generation to a surprising degree. We are continually told that in France, in Germany, and espe- cially in Great Britain, it is avowed by multitudes, and boasts of prominent names. The tendencies of physicists are, as has been noted, towards NaturaUsm ; the boldness with which the schools of Comte lifted up theu' standard, has encouraged many to gather around it. Its most deplorable result is the impulse which it has given to irrehgion and open atheism. Thousands of ignorant persons, who are incapable of comprehending any connected philosophy, true or erroneous, are emboldened to babble materialism and impiety, by hearing that the "positive pliilosophy" knows ''neither angel nor spirit," nor God. And this is one of those sinister influences which now humes Euro- pean and American society along its career of sensuous exist- ence. We detect the symptoms of this error in the strong di- rection of modern physical science to utilitarian ends. Even Lord Macaulay, in his essay on Bacon, seems to vaunt the fact that the new Organon aimed exclusively at "fruit." He con- trasts it in this respect with the ancient philosophy, which pro- fessed to seek truth primarily for its intrinsic value, and not for the sake of its material applications. He cites Seneca, as repudiating so grovelling an end, and as declaring that if the philosopher speculated for the dii'ect purpose of subserving the improvements of the arts of life, he would thereby cease to be a philosopher, and sink himself into an artisan, the fellowcrafts- man of shoemakers and such like. And tho witty essayist re- marks that, for his part, he thinks it more meritorious to be a shoemaker, and actually keep the feet of many people warm, than to be a Seneca, and ■v\Tite the treatise De Ira, which, he presumes, never kept anybody fi-om getting angry. The truth, of course, lies between the unpractical spirit of the ancient, and the too practical spirit of the modern philosphy. Man has a body, and it is as well to study its welfare ; but he also has a mind, and it is better to study the well-being of that nobler part. Truth is valuable to the soul in itself, as well as in its material applications. To deny this, one must forget that man
30 rOSITIVISM IN ENGLAND.
will have an immortal, rational existence, without an animal na- ture, when truth will be his immediate and only 2><^^uluiii ; so that an exclusive tendency to physical applications of science savors of materialism. To represent the splendid philosophy of the ancients as nugatory is also a mischievous extravagance. It did not give them all the mental progress of the moderns ! True. Perhaps no philosophy, without revelation, could do this. But it gave them the ancient civilization, such as it was. And surely, there was a grand difference in favor of Pericles, Plato, and Cicero, as compared with Hottentots and Austra- lians ! pagans who, like the Positivists, have neither a psycho- logy nor a natural theology.
When we look into Great Britain, we see startling evidence of the power of the new philosophy. John Stuart Mill presents one of these evidences. He has long since (in his Logic) com- mitted himself to some of its most fatal heresies ; and these he reaffirms and fortifies in his more recent Examination of Sir William ILaniltoiis PJiilosoj^Jiy. He holds in the main to the dogmas of the Sensualistic Philosoph}-. He flouts the primitive judgments of the human mind. He intimates, only too plainly, the ethics of utilitarianism. Pie disdains the idea of power in causation, and reduces man's intuitive judgment of adequate cause for every known effect to an empirical inference. Matter he defines, indeed, as being known to the mind as only a possi- bility of affecting us with sensations, thus parting company, in a very queer wa}', with his natural kindred, the more materialistic positivists. "While upon the subject of fatalism and free-will, his "trumpet gives an uncertain sound," he deserves the credit of correcting some of the errors of both the opposing schools, and stating some just truths upon these doctrines. His associa- tion with the anti-Christian school represented by the Westviin- ster lievieio is well known. Wo are now told that Mill is quite " the fashion " at one, at least, of the universities, and is the ad- mitted philosopher of liberalism.
Another of these evil portents in die literary horizon is Henry Thomas Buckle, in his Ifidory of Civilization in England. His theory of man and society is essentially that of the Positivist. He regards all religion as the outgrowth of civilization, instead of its root ; and is willing to compliment Christianity with the
POSITIVISM IN ENGLAND. 31
praise of being the best religions effect of the British mind and character — provided Christianity can be suggested without its ministers, whose supposed bigotry, ecclesiastical and theological; never fails to inflame his philosophic bigotry to a red heat — al- though he anticipates that English civilization AA'ill, under his teachings, ultimately create for itself a religion much finer than that of Christ. He, of course, disdains psychology ; he does not believe a man's own consciousness a trustworthy witness; and he regards those general facts concerning human action which are disclosed, for instance, by statistics, the only materials for a science of man and society. He commends intellectual skepticism as the jnost advantageous state of mind. He is an outspoken fatalist, and regards the hope of modifying immuta- ble sequences of events by prayer as puerile. He regards " posi- tive " science as a much more hopeful fountain of well-being and progress than virtue or holiness.
It is significant, also, to hear so distinguished a naturalist as Dr. Hooker, now filling the high position of President of the British Association, in his inaugural address, terming natural theology " that most dangerous of two-edged weapons," discard- ing metaphysics, as " availing him nothing," and condemning all who hold it as "licyond the pale of scientific criticism," and de- claring roundly that no theological or metaphysical proposition rests on positive proof.
As Americans are always prompt to imitate Europeans, especially in their follies, it is scarcely necessary to add that the same dogmas are rife in our current literature. Even an Agassiz has been seen A^i'iting such words as these : " We trust that the time is not distant when it will be universally under- stood that the battle of the evidences Avill have to be fought on the field of physical science, and not on that of the meta- physical."
All these instances are hints of a tendency in English and American philosophy. "We have refeiTed to Positivism as giving us their intelligible genesis. Our purpose is, in the remainder of this article, to discuss, not so much individual Englishmen, or their particular theories, as the central jirinciples of that school of thought from which they all receive their impulse. To de- bate details and corollaries is little to our taste ; and such debate
32 POSITIVISM IX ENGLAND.
never results in permanent factory. He ■^lio prunes the off- shoots of error has an endless task ; a task which usually results only in surrounding himself with a thicket of thorny nibbish. It is better to strike at the main root of the evil stock from ■which this endless outgroA^-th sprouts. Hence, vre propose to examine a few of the general objections against the body of the system, rather than to follow, at this time, the special ap- plications of one or another of the representative men named above.
Let us, then, look back again at Positivism fully pronounced. "SVe have pointed to that gnlf of the blackness of darkness, and of freezing despair, towards which it leads the human mind ; a gulf without an immortality, without a God, without a faith, without a providence, without a hope. AVere it possible or moral for a good man to consider such a thing dispassionately, it would appear to be odd and ludicrous to him to witness the surprise and anger of the Positivists at perceiving that reasonable and Christian people are not supposed to submit with entire meek- ness to all this havoc. There is a great affectation of philosophic calmness and impartiality. They are quite scandaUzed to find that the theologians cannot be as cool as themselves, while all our infinite and priceless hopes for both worlds are dissected away under their philosophic scalpel. Such bigotry is very naughty in their eyes. Such conduct sets Christianity in a very sorry light, beside the fearless and placid love of truth displayed by the apostles of science. This is the tone affected by the Pos- itiAists. But we observe that whenever these philosophic hearts are not covered with a triple shield of supercilious arrogance, they also burn with a scientific bigotry worthy of a Dominic, or a Philip II. of Spain. They also can vituperate and scold, and actually excel the bad manners of the theologians. The scien- tific bigots are fiercer than the theological, besides being the ag- gressors. "^^"e would also submit, that if we were about to enter upon an Arctic winter in Labrador, with a cherished and depend- ent family to protect from that savage clime, and if a philoso- pher should insist upon it that he should be permitted, in the pure love of science to extinguish, by his experiments, all the lamps from which we were to derive light, warmth, or food, to save us from a frightful death, and if he should call us testy
rOSITIYISM IX ENGLAND. 33
blockheads because we did not witness those experiments wij?;'. equanimity, with any number of other hard names ; nothing but our compassion for his manifest hmacy should prevent our break- ing his head before his enormous folly was consummated. Seri- ously, the monstrous pretensions of this philosophy are not the proper objects of forbearance. "We distinctly avow, that the only sentiment with which a good and sober man ought to resist these aggressions upon fundamental truths is that of honest indigna- tion. We pretend to affect no other.
The first consideration which exposes the baseless character of Positivism is, that we find it arrayed against the rudimeutal instincts of man's reason and conscience, as manifested in all ages. That the mind has some innate norms regulative of its own thinking ; that all necessary truth is not inaccessible to it ; that a universe does imply a creator, and that nature saggests the supernatural ; that man has consciously a personal will, and that there is a personal will above man's, governing him from the skies ; these are truths which all ages have accepted every- where. Now, we have always deemed it a safe test of pretended truths, to ask if they contravene what all men have everywhere supposed to be the necessary intuitions of the mind. If they do, whether we can analj-ze the sophisms or not, we set them down as false philosophy. When Bishop Berkeley proved, as he sup- posed, that the man who breaks his head against a post has yet no valid evidence of the olijective reality of the post, when Spi- noza reasoned that nothing can be evil in itself, the universal common sense of mankind gave them the lie ; there was needed no analysis to satisfy us that they reasoned falsely, and that a more correct statement of the elements they discussed would show it, as it has in fact done. This consideration also relieves all our fears of the ultimate triumph of Positivism. It will re- quire something more omnipotent than these philosophers to make the human reason deny itself permanently. Thank God, that which they attempt is an impossibility ! Man is a religious being. If they had applied that "positive" method, in which they boast, to make a fair induction from the facts of human nature and history, they would have learned this, at least as cer- tainly as they have learned that the earth and moon attract each other : that there is an ineradicable ground in man's nature,
Vo}.. III.— 3.
34 POSITIVISM IN ENGLAND.
I: hich will, iu tlie main, impel him to recognize the supernatural^ is as fairly an established fact of natural history as that man is, corporeally, a bimanous animal. His spiritual instincts cannot but assert themselves, in races, in individuals, in theories, and even in professed materialists and atheists, whenever the hour of their extremity makes them thoroughly in earnest. No ; all that Positivism, or any such scheme, can effect is, to give rej^ro- bate and sensual minds a pretext and a quibble for blinding their own understandings and consciences, and sealing their own perdition, while it affords topic of debate and conceit to serious idlers in their hours of vanity. Man will have the supernatu- ral again ; he will have a religion. If you take from him God's miracles, he will turn to man's miracles. " It is not necessary to go far in time, or wide in space, to see the supernatural of superstition raising itself iu the place of the supernatural of re- ligion, and credulity hurrying to meet falsehood half-way." The later labors of Comte himself give an example of this asser- tion, which is a satire upon his creed sufficientl}' biting to avenge the insults that Christianity has suffered from it. After begin- ning his system with the declaration that its principles necessa- rily made any religion impossible, he ended it by actually con- structing a religion, with a calendar and formal ritual, of which aggregate humanity, as impersonated iu his dead mistress, was the deity! "He changed the glory of an incorruptible God into an image, made like to corruptible man."
Here also it should be remarked, that it is a glaring misstate- ment of the history of the human mind, to say that when true scientific progress begins, it regularly causes men to relinquish the theory of the supernatural for that of metaphysics, and then this for Positivism. It was not so of old ; it is not so now ; it never will be so. It is not generally true, either of individuals or races. Bacon, Kepler, Sir Isaac Newton, Leibnitz, Cuvier, were not the less devout believers to the end, becauso each made splendid additions to the domain of science, The sixteenth cen- tury in Europe was marked by a grand intellectual activity in the rioht scientific direction. It did not become less Christian in its thought; on the contrary, the most perfect systems of reli- gious belief received an equal impulse. The happ}^ Christian awakening in France which followed the tragical atheism of the
POSITIVISM IX ENGLAND. 35
first Eevolution, and wliicli Positivism so tends to quencli in an- other bloody chaos, did not signalize a regression of the exact sciences. The history of human opinion and progress presents us with a chequered scene, in which many causes commingle, workine" across and with each other their incomplete and confused results Sometimes there is a partial recession of truth. The tides of thought ebb and flow, swelhng from secret fountains of the deep, which none but Omniscience can fully measure. But amid all the uncertainties, we clearly perceive this general result, that the most devout belief in supernatural verities is, in the main, concurrent with healthy intellectual progress.
2. We have seen that fatalism is a clear corollary of the posi- tive philosophy. It avows its utter disbelief of a personal and intelligent will above us ; yea, it is glad to assert the impossi- bility of reconciling so glorious a fact with its principles. It makes an impotent defence of man's own free agency. But our primitive consciousness demands the full admission of this fact. If there is anything which the mind thinks with a certainty and necessity equal to those which attend its belief in its own exist- ence, it is the conscious fact of its own freedom. It knows that it has a spontaneity within certain limits ; that it does itself originate some effects. Ko system, then, is C(^rrect which has not a place for the full and consistent admission of this primitive fact. But this fact alone is al^undant to convince the Positivist that he is mistaken in declaring the supernatural impossible, and in omitting a divine will and first cause from his system. Nature, says he, is the all ; no knoM'ledge can be outside the knowledge of her facts and laws ; no cause, save her forces. These laws, he asserts, are constant and invariable. But, re- member, he also teaches, that science knows nothing as effect save sensible j>^^'^^^omena, and nothing as cause save "the forces belonging to matter." Now, the sufficient refutation is in this exceedingly familiar fact, that our own wills are continually originating effects, of which natural forces, as the Positivist de- fines them, are not the efficients ; and that our wills frequently reverse those forces to a certain extent. Let us take a most familiar instance, of the like of which the daily experience of every workingman furnishes him with a liundred. The natural law of liquids requires water to seek its own level ; requires this
36 POSITITISM IN ENGLAND.
only, and ahvajs. But the peasant, by the intervention of hia own free will, originates absolutely an opposite eifect : he causes it to ascend from its level in the tube of his pump. He adopts the just, empirical, and " positive " method of tracing this pTie- norneaon to its true cause. He observes that the rise of the wa- ter is effected by the movement of a lever ; that this lever, how- ever, is not the true cause, for it is moved l)y his arm ; that this arm also is not the true cause, being itself but a lever of flesh and. bone ; that this arm is moved by nerves ; and finally, that these nervous chords are but conductors of an impulse which his consciousness assures him that he himself emitted by a func- tion of his mental spontaneity. As long as the series of j»j>Ag- -itomenci were affections of matter, they did not disclose t(^ him the true cause of the w^ater's rise against its own law. It was only when he traced the chain back to the mind's self-originated act that he found the true cause. Here, then, is an actual, ex~ perimental^j^/ienome^io/i, which has arisen without, yea, against, natural law. For, according to the Positivist, it discloses only the forces of matter ; this cause was above and outside of mat- ter. It was, upon his scheme — not ours — literally supernatural. Yet, that it acted was experimentally certain — certain by the testimony of consciousness. And if her testimony is not experi- mental and " positive," then no j)^^^i^ornenoii in physics is so, CA^en though seen by actual eyesight, because it is impossible that sensation can inform the mind, save through this same con- sciousness. But now, when this peasant is taught thus " posi- tively " that his own intelligent will is an original fountain of ef- fects outside of and above nature — the Positivist's nature — and when he Hfts his eyes to the orderly contrivances and wonderful ingenuity displayed in the works of nature, and sees in these the " experimental " proofs of the presence of another intelli- gence there kindred to his own, but immeasurably grander, how can he doubt that this superior mind also has, in its will, another primary source of effects above nature ? This is as valid an in- duction as the physicist ever drew from his maxim, " Like causes, like effects." We thus see that it is not true that the " positive method " presents any impossibility, or even any dif- ficulty, in the way of admitting the supernatural. On the con- trary, it requires the admission, that is to say, unless we commit the outrage of denying our ov.n conscious spontaneity.
POSITIYISM Dr ENGLAND. 37
3. The positive pliilosopliy scouts all metaplijsical science, namel}', psycliologr, logic, morals, and natural theology, as having no certainty, no Positivism, and as beiug, therefore, nothing viorth. These fictitious sciences, as it deems them, have no 2)^(<^>^omena, that is, no effects cognizable by the senses; and therefore it deems that they can have no experimental proofs, and can be no sciences. But we assert, that it is simply im- j)OSsible that any man can construct any other branch of know- ledge without having a science of psychology and logic of his own. In other words, he must have accepted some laws of thought, as sufficiently established, in order to construct his own thoughts. This he may not have done in words, but he must have done it in fact, T\'hat can be more obvious than that the successful nse of any implement implies some correct knowledge of its equalities and powers? And "tliis is as true of the mind as of any other implement. When the epicure argues, in the spirit of Positivism, *' I may not eat stewed crabs to-day with impunity, because stewed crabs gave me a frightful colic last week," has he not posited a logical law of the reason ? When the mechanic assumes without present experiment, that steel will cut wood, has he not assumed the validity of his own memory concerning past experiments ? These familiar instances, seized at hap-hazard, might be multiplied to a hundred. Every man is a psychologist and logician — unless he is idiotic ; he cannot trust his own mind, except he believes in some powers and properties of his mind. These beliefs constitute his science of practical metaphysics.
We urge further, that the uniformity of men's convictions concerning ^y7<t^/i(9;/ie;i« and experimental conclusions thereupon, obviously impHes a certain Uiiiformity in the doctrines of this common psychology. For, whenever one accepts a given pro- cess of " positive " proof as valid, this is only because he has accepted that function of the mind as A^alid by which he apj)re- liends that j)roof. Unless he has learned to trust the mental power therein exercised, he cannot trust the conclusion. If, then, physics do possess the glory — claimed for this science by the followers of Comte — of "positivity'' ; if their evidences are so exact that all men accept them, when understood, with C(m- fidence, this is only because they all have accepted with yet
38 POSITIVISM IN ENGLAND.
fuller confidence those mental laws by wliicli the physicist thinks. So that the very Positivism of the positive philosophy implies that so much, at least, of metaphysics is equally " positive."
The Positivist, of course, has a psychology, although he re- pudiates it. " If he had not ploughed with our heifer, ho had not found out our riddle." And this psychology, so far as it is peculiar to him, is that of the sensualistlc school. The partial inductions, errors, and natural fruits of that school are well known to all scholars. This is not the first instance in which it has borne its apples of Sodom, materialism and atheism. Hume, starting from the fatal maxim of Locke, very easily and logically concluded that the human reason has no such intui- tion as that of a cause for every effect, and no such valid idea as that of power in cause ; for in a causative (so-called) se- quence, is anything seen by the senses other than a regular and immediate consequent after a given antecedent ? Hence he de- duced the pleasant consequences of metaphysical skepticism. Hence he deduced that no man could ever believe in a miracle. Hence he inferred, that since world-making is a "singular ef- fect," of which no one has had ocular observation, all the won- ders of this universe do not entitle us to suppose a First Cause. Hence Hartley and Priestly, in England, deduced the conclusion that the mind is as material as the organs of sense, and perishes with them, of course. Hence the atheism Avhich in France pre- pared the way ft)r the Eeigu of Terror, and voted God a non- entity, death an eternal sleep, and a strumpet the goddess of Eeason. We do not wonder that the Positivist, viewing psy- chology through this school, should have a scurvy opinion of it ; indeed, we quite applaud him for it. The fact that he still employs it, notwithstanding his ill opinion, only proves how true is the assertion that no man can think without having a psychology of his own.
The relationship of the positive philosophy to these mis- chievous and exploded vagaries, appears especially in its argu- ment against the credibility of supernatural effects or powers. Thus, says the Positivist, since our oidy knowledge is of the plienomena and laws of nature, the supernatural is to us inac- cessible. Let us now hear H^ime : " It is experience only which gives authority to human testimony, and it is the same experi-
POSITIVISM IN ENGLAND. 39
ence which assures us of the laws of nature. When, therefore, these two kinds of experience are contrary, we have nothing to do but svibtract the one from the other, with that assurance which arises from the remainder. But according to the prin- ciples here explained, this subtraction, with regard to all popu- lar religions, amounts to an entire annihilation ; and, therefore, we may establish it as a maxim, that no human testimony can have such force as to prove a miracle, and make it a just founda- tion for any such system of religion."
The only true difference here is, that the recent Positivist is more candid ; instead of insinuating the impossibility of the su- pernatural in the form of the exclusion of testimony, ho flatly asserts it. " The supernatural," says he, "is the anti-natural^'' In reply, we would point to the obvious fact, that this view can have force only with an atheist. For, if there is a Creator, if he is a personal, intelligent, and voluntary Being, if he still super- intends the world he has made (the denial of either of these pos- tulates is atheism or pantheism), then, since it must always be possible that he may see a moral motive for an unusual inter- vention in his own possessions, our experience of our own free will makes it every way probable that he may, on occasion, inter- vene. No rational man who directs his own affairs, customarily on regular methods, but occasionally by unusual expedients, because of an adequate motive, can fail to concede the proba- bility of a similar free-agency to God, if there is a God. This noted demonstration of Positivism is, therefore, a " vicious circle." It excludes a God because it cannot admit the super- natural ; and lo ! its only ground for not admitting the supernat- ural is the gratuitous assumption, that there is no God. But, in truth, man's reliance on testimony is not the result of expe- rience ; the effect of the latter is not to produce, but to limit, that reliance. The child believes the testimony of its parent before it has experimented upon it — believes it by an instinct of its xeason. How poor, how shallow, then, is the beggarly arith- metic of this earlier Positivist, Hume, when he proposes to strike a balance between the weight of testimony for the supernatural and the evidence for the inflexible uniformity of nature ! The great moral problems of man's thought are not to be thus dis- patched, like a grocer's traffic. The nature of the competing
40 POSITIVISM IN ENGLAND.
evidence is also profoundly misunderstood. Our belief in the necessary operation of a cause is not based on simjDle experience, but on the intuition of the reason. The Positivist sees in the natural flora of England and France only exogenous trees. May he, therefore, conclude that nature has no forces to produce en- dogenous? The testimony of those who visit the tropics would refute him. The truth is — and none should know it so well as the physicist, since it is taught expressly by the great founder of this inductive logic, Bacon — a generalization simply experi- mental can never demonstrate a necessary tie of causation be- tween a sequence ol ^jhenomena, however often repeated before us. It can suggest only a probability. "We must apply some canon of induction to distinguish between the apparently imme- diate antecedent and the true cause, before the reason recognizes the tie of causation as permanent. If, therefore, reason — not empiricism — suggests from any other source of her teachings that the acting cause may be superseded by another cause, then she recognizes it as entu-ely natural to expect a new effect, although she had before witnessed the regular recurrence of the old one a million of times. If, therefore, she learns that there may, even possibly, be a personal God, she admits just as much possibility that his free will may have intervened as a superior cause.
The truth is, nature implies the supernatural. Nature shows "US herself the marks and proofs that she cannot be eternal and self-existent. She had, therefore, an origin in a creation. But what can be more supernatural than a creation ? If it were, in- deed, impossil)le that there could be a miracle, then this nature herself would be non-existent, whose uniformities give the pre- text for this denial of the miraculous. Nature tells us that her causes are second causes; they suggest their origin in a first cause. Just as the river suggests its fountains, so do the laws of nature, now flowing in so regular a current, command us to ascend to the Source who instituted them.
4, We carry farther our demonstration of the necessity of practical metaphysics to physical science, by an a]:)peal to more express details. "W^e might point to the service done to the sci- ences of matter by the Kovum Organum of Bacon. "What phy- sicist is there who does not love to applaud him, and fondly to
POSITITISM IN ENGLAND. 41
contrast tlie fruitfulness of liis inductive method with the inii- tihty of the old dialectics ? But Bacon's treatise is substantially a treatise on this branch of logic. He does not undertake to establish specific laws in physical science, but to fix the princi- ples of reasoning from facts, by which any and every physical law is to be established. In a word, it is metaphysics; the only difference being that it is true metaphysics against erro- neous. So, nothing is easier to the perspicuous reader than to take any treatise of any Positivist upon physical science, and point to instances upon every page, where he virtually employs some principle of metaphysics. Says the Positivist, concerning some previous solution offered for a class of phenomena : "This is not valid, because it is only hypothesis." Pray, Mr. Posi- ti\'ist, Avhat is the dividing line between hypothesis and inductive proof? And why is the former, without the latter, invalid ? Can you answ'er without talking metaphysics? Says the Positivist: " The ^j>(9.5i{ hoc does not prove the j^roj^^e;' hoc.''' Tell us why? We defy you to do it without talking metaphysics
The Positivist fails to apply his own maxims of philosophy •universally; his observations of the effects in nature are one- sided and fragmentary. He tells us that philosophy must be built on facts ; that first we must have faithful and exact ob- servation of pai-ticulars, then correct generalizations, and last, conclusive inductions. Eight, say we. But the primary fact which accompanies every observation which he attempts to make he refuses to observe. When it was reported to the great Leibnitz that Locke founded his essay on the maxim, Nihil in intellectu quod non jprius in sensv, he answered : JTisi inteHectus esse. These three words disclose, like the spear of another Ithuriel, the sophism of the whole sensualistic system. In at- tempting to enumerate the affections of the mind, ib overlooked the mind itself. At the first fair attempt to repair this omission, Positivism collapses. Does it attempt to resolve all mental states into sensations ? Well, the soid cannot have a conscious- ness of a sensation without necessarily developing the idea of conscious self over against that of the sensuous object. "As soon as the human being says to itself 'I,' the human being affirms its own existence, and distinguishes itself from that ex- ternal world whence it derives impressions of which it is not
42 POSITIVISM IN ENGLAND.
tlie author. In this primary fact are revealed the two primary objects of human knowledge ; on the one side, the human being itself, the individual person that feels and perceives himself; on the other side, the external world that is felt and perceived : the subject and the object." That science may not consistently omit or overlook the fir.st of these objects is proved absolutely l)y this simple remark, that our self- consciousness presents that object to us, as distinct, in every perception of the outer world ■R"hich constitutes the other object; presents it even more im- mediately than the external object, the perception of which it mediates to us. We must first be conscious of self, in order to perceive the not self. Whatever certainty we have that the lat- ter is a real object of knowledge, we must, therefore, have a certaintv even more intimate, that the former is also real- Why, then, shall it be the only real existence, the only substance in nature, to be ostracised from our science ? This is preposterous. Is it pleaded that its affections are not pltenomenay not cogniz- able to the bodily senses? How shallow and pitiful is this; when those bodily senses themselves owe all their vahdity to this inward consciousness !
We now advance another step. Everj' substance must have its attributes. The ego is a real existence. If our cognitions are regular, then it must be by virtue of some primary princi- ples of cognition, which are subjective to the mind. "VMiile we do not employ the antiquated phrase, " innate ideas," yet it is evident that the intelligence has some innate norms, which de- termine the nature of its ideas and aff3ctions, whenever the objective world presents the occasion for their rise. He who denies this must not only hold the absurdity of a regular series of effects without a regulative cause in their subject, but he must also deny totally the spontaneity of the mind. For what can be plainer than this ; that if the mind has no such innate norms, then it is merely passive, operated on from without, but never an au;ent itself. Kow then, do not these innate norms of intelligence and feeling constitute primitive facts of mind? Are they not proper objects of scientific observation ? Is it not manifest that their earnest comprehension will give us the laws of our thinking, and feeling, and volition ? Why have we not here a field of experimental science as legitimate as that
POSITIVISM IN ENGLAND. 43
material world wkicli is even less certainly and intimately known ?
Dr. Hooker would discard natural theology as entirely delu- sive. But now we surmise that this science has some general facts which are as certain as any in physics, and certain upon the same experimental grounds. He believes in the uniformity of :species in zoology. If one told him of a tribe of one-armed men in some distant countr}-, he would demur. He would tell the re- lator, that experimental observation had established the fact that members of the same species had by nature the same structure. He would insist upon solving the m^'tli of the one-armed nation by supposing that the witness was deceived, or was endeavor- ing to deceive him, or had seen some individuals who were one- armed by casualty, and not by nature. But psychologists profess to have established, by an observation precisely like that of the naturalist, this general fact, that all human minds have those moral intuitions which we call " conscience." Tiie utmost that science can require of them is, that they shall see to it that their observations are faithful to fact, and their generalization of them is correct. When they submit the result to this test, why is not the law of species as valid for them as for Dr. Hooker? Why shall he require us to be any more credulous concerning the natural lack of this moral "limb" than he was of the story of the one-armed tribe ? But if conscience is an essentird, primi- tive fact of the human soul, then it compels us to recognize a personal God, and his moral character, by as strict a scientific deduction as any which the physicist can boast. For, obligation inevitably implies an obligator ; and the character of this intui- tive imperative, which speaks for him in our reason, must be a disclosure of his character, since it is the constant expression of his moral volition.
5. This instance suggests another capital error of Positivism, in that it proposes to despise abstract ideas, and primitive judg- ments of the reason ; and yet it is as much constrained as any other system of thought, to build everything upon them. Mathe- matics, the science of quantity, is the basis of the positive phil- osophy, according to M. Comte ; for it is at once the simplest and most exact of the exact sciences. Now when we advert to this science, we perceive at once that it deals not with visible
44 POSITIVISM IX ENGLAND.
and tangible magnitudes and quantities of oilier classes, but %vitli abstract ones. The point, the line, tlie surface, the poly- gon, the curve of the geometrician, are not those which any hu- man hand ever drew with pen, pencil, or chalk hue, or which human eye ever saw. The mathematical point is without either length, breadth or thickness ; the line absolutely without thick- ness or breadth ; the surface absolutely without thickness ! How impotent is it for M. Comte to attempt covering up this cnishing fact by talking of the jj/ieno7/te?u-i of mathematics! In his sense of the word lyhenomena, this science has none. The intelhgent geometrician knows that, though he may draw the diagram of his polygon or his curve with the point of a diamond, upon the most polished plane of metal which the mechanic arts can give him, yet is it not exactly that absolute polygon or curve of which he is reasoning. How can he know that the ideas which he predicates, by the aid of his senses, of this imperfect type, are exactly true to the perfect ideal of figures? He knows that the true answer is this : abstract reasoning assures him that the dif- ference between the imperfect visible diagi'am and the ideal ab- solute figure, is one which does not introduce any element of error, when the argument taken fi'om the diagram is applied to the ideal. But, on the contrary, the reason sees that the more the imperfection of the diagram is abstracted, the more does the argument approximate exact truth. But we ask, how does the mind thus pass from the^7ie/iC'7/ic/<«Z diagram to the conceptual; fi'om the imperfect to the absolute idea ? Positivism has no an- swer. So, the ideas of space, time, ratio, velocity, momentum, substance, upon which the higher calcvlns reasons, are also ab- stract. Positivism would make all human knowledge consist of the knowledge of phenomena and their laws. Well, what is a law of nature? Itis not itself ?i, 2)^eTiomenon ; it is a general idea which, in order to be general, must be purely abstract. How preposterously short-sighted is that observation which leaves out the more essential elements of its own avowed process? These instances, to which others might be added, show that the admission of some dj^riori idea is necessary to the construction of even the first process of owx j^henomenal knowledge.
But the most glaring blunder of all is that wliich the Positivist commits in denying the prior validity of our axiomatic beliefs
rOSITIYISM IN ENGLAND. 45
or primitive judgments, ami representing tliem as only cmpirit-al conclusions. Tliat j)sycliology and logic of common sense in wliicli every man believes, and on wliicli every one acts, without troubling himself to give it a technical statement, holds that to conchide implies a premise to conclude from; and that the valid- ity of tlie conclusion cannot be above that of this premise. Every laan's intuition tells him that a process of reasoning must have a starting point. The chain which is so fastened as to sustain any weight, or even sustain itself, must have its first point of support at the top. That which depends must depend on some- thing not dependent. But why multiply words upon this truth, which every rational system of mental science adopts as a part of its alphabet? It can scarcely be more happilj- expressed than in the words of a countryman of Comte's, M. Royer Collard : "Did not reasoning rest upon principles anterior to the reason, anahsis would be without end, and the synthesis without com- mencement." These primitive judgments of the reason cannot be conclusions from observation, from the simple ground that they must be in the mind beforehand, in order that it may be able to make conclusions. Here is a radical fact wliioh explodes the whole "positive" philosophy.
Its advocates cannot but see this, and hence they labor with vast contortions, to make it appear that these primitive judg- ments are, nevertheless, empirical conclusions. Comte's expe- dient is the following: "If," says he, "on the one side, every positive theory must necessarily be founded upon observation, it is, on the other side, equally plain that to apply itself to the task of observation, our mind has need of some 'tlieorv.' If, in contemplating i\\e j)henomena, we do not immediately attach them to certain principles, not only would it be impossible for us to combine these isolated observations, so as to draw any fruit therefrom, but we should be entirely incapable of retaining them, and, in most cases, the facts would remain before our eves unnoticed. The need, at all times, of some ' theory ' whereby to associate facts, combined with the evident impossibility of the human mind's forming, at its origin, theories out of observations, is a fact which it is impossible to ignore." He then j^i'oceeds to explain that the mind, perceiving the necessity of some pre- vious "theories," in order to associate its own observations,
46 POSITIVISM m ENGLAND.
invents them, in tlie form of theoretical conceptions. Having- begnn, bj means of tliese, to observe, generalize and ascertain positive truths, it ends by adopting the latter, which are sohd, and repudiating the former, which its developed intelligence haa now tanght it to regard as unsubstantial. His idea of the pro- gress of science, then, seems to be this : the mind employs these assumed " theories " to climb out of the mire to the top of the solid rock, as one employs a ladder, and having gained its firm foot- ing, it kicks them away! But what if it should turn out that this means of ascent, instead of being only the ladder, is the sole pillar also, of its knowledge ? When it is kicked away, down tumbles the whole superstructure, with its architect in its ruins. And the latter is the truth. For if these " theories " are prior to our observation, and are also erroneous, then all which proceeded upon their assumed validity is as baseless as they. It is amus- ing to note the simple effort of Comte to veil this damning chasm in his system, by calling the assumed first truths " theo- ries." They are, according to his conception, manifestly nothing but hypotheses. "Why did he not call them so ? Because, then, the glaring solecism would have been announced, of proposing to construct our whole system of demonstrated beliefs upon a, basis of mere hypothesis. Nobody could have been deceived. Nor does the subterfuge avail which his follower. Mill, in sub- stance proposes. It is this : that as the sound physicist pro- pounds an hypothesis, which at first is only probaljle, not to be now accepted as a part of science, but as a temporary help for preparing the materials of an induction ; and as this induction not seldom ends by proving that the hypothesis, which was at first only a probable guess, was indeed, the happy guess, and does contain the true law ; so the whole of our empirical know- ledge may be constructed by the parallel process. In other words, the pretension of Mill is, in substance, that all our prim- itive judgments are at first only the mind's hypothetical guesses ; and that it is empirical reasoning constructed upon them after- wards, which converts them into universal truths. Now, the simple and complete answer is this : that this proving or testing process, by which we ascertain whether our hypothesis is a true law, alwavs implies some principle to be the criterion. How, we pray, was the test appHed to the first hypothesis of the series,
POSITIYIS:\r IN ENGLAND. 47
"W'lien, as jet, tliere "was no ascertained principle to apply, but only li}i3othesis ? Quid rides? Mr. Mill's process must ever be precisely as preposterous as the attempt of a man to bang a cbain upon nothing. Ko ; the hypothetical ladder is not the foundation of our scientific knowledge. Grant us a foundatiou and a solid structure built on that foundation, the ladder of hy- pothesis may assist us to carry some parts of the building higher ; that is all. And the parts which we add, carrying up materials by means of the ladder, rest at last, not on the ladder, but on the foundation.
The accepted tests of a primitive intuition are three : that it shall be a first truth, i. e., not learned from any other accepted belief of the mind ; that it shall be necessary, i. e., immediately seen to be such that it not only is true, but must be true ; and that it shall be universal, true of every particular case always and everywhere, and inevitably believed by all sane men, when its enunciation is once fully understood. The sensualistic school seem all to admit, by the character of their objections, that if the mind has beliefs which do fairly meet these three tests, then they will be proved really intuitive. But they object : these beliefs do not meet the first test, for they are empirically learned by every man, in the course of his own observation, like all inductive truths. And here they advance the plea of their amiable founder, Locke, who little dreamed, good man, what dragon's teeth he was sowing. It is this : that the formal an- nouncement of sundry axioms, in words, to unthinking minds, instead of securing their immediate assent, would evoke only a vacant stare. "We have to exhibit the application of the axioms in concrete cases before we gain an intelligent assent. Very true, but why ? It is only because the concrete instance is the occasion for his correctly apprehending the abstract meaning of the axiomatic enunciation. Is not the argument preposterous, that because the reason did not immediately see, while as yet the verbal Tnedium of intellection was darkness, therefore, the object is not an object of direct mental vision? Because a child is not willing to affirm which of " two pigs in a poke " is the bigger, it shall be declared, forsooth, that the child is blind, or that pigs are not visible animals !
Now, against all this idleness of talk, we demonstrate by proof
48 POSITITISM IN ENGLAND.
botli as empirical aucl deductive as that of tlie Positivist for an y law in physics, that observation and experience are not, and can not be, the source of intuitive beliefs. Let ns grant just such a case as Locke claims against us. AYe meet an ignorant, sleepy, heedless servant, and we ask, "Mj boy, if two magnitudes be each equal to a third magnitude, must they, therefore, be neces- sarily equal to each other?" We suppose that he will, indeed, look at us foolishly and vacantly, and, if he says anything, pro- fess ignorance. Our words are not in his vocabulary ; the idea is out of his ordinary range of thought. "We say to him, "Well, fetch me three twigs from yonder hedge, and we will explain. Xame them No. 1, No. 2, No. 3. Take your pocket knife, and cut No. 1 of equal length to No. 3. Lay No. 1 yonder on that stone. Now cut No. 2 exactly equal to No. 3. Is it done ?" " Yes, sir." *' Now, boy, consider ; if you should fetch back No. 1 from the stone yonder, and measure it against No. 2, do you think you would find them equal in length ?" If you have succeeded in getting the real attention of his mind, he will be certain to an- swer with confidence, " Y'es, sir, they will be found equal." " Are you certain of it?" "Y"es, sir, sure." "Had you not better fetch No. 1 and try them together ?" " No, sir ; there is no need; they are obliged to be equal in length." "Why are you sure of it, when you have not actually measured them together ?" " Because, sir, did I not cut No. 1 equal to No. 3, and is not No. 2 equal to No. 3 ? Don't you see that No. 1 and No. 2 cannot difier?" Let the reader notice here that there has been no ex- pe7nmenial trial of the equalit}' of the first and second twigs in length ; hence it is simply impossil)le that the servant's confi- dence can result from experiment. It is the immediate intuition of his reason, because there is absolutely no other source for it. Obviously, therefore, the only real use for the three twigs and the knife was to illustrate the terms of the proposition to his ignorant apprehension. Let the reader note also that now the servant has got the idea, he is just as confident of the truth of the axiom, concerning all possible quantities of which he has conception, as thoiigh he had tested it by experiment on all. This suggests the farther argument, that our intuitive beliefs can not be from experiment, because, as we shall see, we all hold them for universal truths, but each man's experience is limited.
POSITIVISM IN ENGLAND. 49
Tlie first time a child ever divides an apple, and sees that either part is smaller than the whole, he is as certain that the same thing will be true of all possible magnitudes as well as apples, as though he had spent ages in dividing apples, acorns, melons, and everything which came to his hand. Now, how can a uni- versal truth flow experimentally from a single case ? Were this the source of belief, the greatest multitude of experiments which could be made in a life-time could never be enough to demon- strate the rule absolutely, for the number of possible cases yet untried would still be infinitely greater. Experience of the past by itself does not determine the future.
Moreover, several intuitive beliefs are incapable of being ex- perimentally inferred, because the case can never be brought under the purview of the senses. " Divergent straight lines," we are sure, " will never enclose any space, though infinitely pro- duced." Now, who has ever inspected an infinite straight line •with his eyes ? The escape attempted by Mill, with great labor, is this : one forms a mental diagram of that part of the pair of divergent lines which lies beyond his ocular inspection (beyond the edge of his paper, or blackboard), and by a mental inspec- tion of this p^irt, he satisfies himself that they still do not meet. And this mental inspection of the conceptual diagram, saith he, is as properly experimental as though it were made on a mate- rial surface. On this queer subterfuge we might remark that it is more refreshing to us than consistent for them, that Positi- vists should admit that the abstract ideas of the mind can be subjects of experimental reasoning. We had been told all along that Positivism dealt only with ^;>/!t';'^(9w^g;^(2. It is also news to us that Positivism could admit any j^ower in the mind of con- ceiving infinite Hnes ! "Wliat are these, but those naughty things, absolute ideas, which the intelligence could not possibly have any lawful business with, because they were not given to her by sensation ? But chiefly Mill's evasion is worthless in presence of this question : how do wo know that the straight lines on the conceptual and infinite part of this imaginary diagram will have the identical property possessed hy the finite visible parts on the blackboard ? What guides and compels the intelligence to this idea ? Not sense, surely, for it is the part of the concep- tual diagram, which no eye will ever see. It is just the reason's
Vol. III.^.
50 rOSITIVISM IN ENGLAND.
own a priori and intuitive power. Deny this, as Mill does, and the belief — which all know is solid — becomes baseless.
In a word, this question betrays how inconsistent the sensual- istio philosopher is, in attempting to derive first truths from sen- sational experience, and ignoring the primitive judgments of the reason. How has he learned that sensational experience is itself true ? Only by a primitive judgment of the reason ! Here, then, is one first belief, which sense cannot have taught us, to wit, that what sense shows us is true. So impossible is it to construct any system of cognitions while denying to the reason all primary power of judgment.
When we propose the second test, that intuitive judgments must be "necessary," Positivism attempts to embarrass the inquiry by asking what is meant by a necessary truth. One answers — with "Whewell, for instance, — it is a truth the denial of which involves a contradiction. It is, of course, easy for Mill to rejDly to this heedless definition, that then every tnith may claim to be intuition, for is not contradiction of some truth the very character of error? If one should deny that the two angles at the base of an isosceles triangle are equal, he could soon be taught that his denial contradicted an admitted property of triangles ; and this, indeed, is the usual way we establish deduced truths, which are not intuitive. We affirm the definition of common sense, that a necessary truth is one the denial of which is immediately self-contradictory. Not only does the denial clash with other axioms, or other valid deduc- tions, but it contradicts the terms of the case itself, and this according to the immediate, intuitive view which the mind has. Does not every one know that his mind has such judgments necessary in this sense? When he says, "the whole 7nust he greater than either of its joarts," his mind sees intuitively that the assertion of the contrary destroys that feature of the case itself which is expressed in the word "parts." Who does not see that this axiom is inevitable to the reason, in a different way from the proposition, "The natives of England are white, those of Guinea black ? " The latter is as true, but obviously not as necessary as the former.
Or, if Whewell answers the question, what is meant b}- a truth's being " necessary," that it is one the falsehood of which
rOSITITISM IN ENGLAND. 51
is "inconceivable," Mill attempts to reply, that this is no test of the primariuess of a truth, no test of truth at all, because our capacity of conceiving things to be possible, or otherwise, de- pends notoriously upon our mental habits, associations, and acquirements. Ho points to the fact that all Cartesians, and even Leibnitz, objected against Sir Isaac Newton's theory of gravitation and orbitual motion, when first propounded, that it was "inconceivable" how a body propelled by its own rixornoi- tuvi should fail to move on a tangent, unless connected with its centre of motion by some substantial bond. There is a truth in this and similar historical facts. It is that the antecedent probability of the truth of a statement depends, for our minds, very greatly upon our habits of thought. And the j)i'f>'Ctical lesson it should teach us is moderation in dogmatizing, and candor in investigating. But for all this, Mill's evasion will bo found a verbal quibble, consisting in a substitution of another meaning for the word " inconceivable." We do not call a truth necessary, because, negatively, we lack the capacity to conceive the actual opposite thereof ; but because, positively, we are able to see that the opposite proposition involves a self-evident, im- mediate contradiction. It is not that we cannot conceive how the opposite comes to be true, but that we can see, that it is. impossible the opposite should come to be true. And this ifi wholly another thing. The fact that some truths are necessary in this self-evident light, every fair mind reads in its own con- sciousness.
As the third test of first truths, that they are universal, the sensualists ring many changes on the assertion, that there is debate what are first truths ; that some propositions long held to be such, as : " No creative act is possible without a pre- existent material;" "Nature abhors a vacuum;" "A material body cannot act immediately Bave where it is present;" are now found to be not axiomatic, and not even true. The answer is, that all this proves, not that the human mind is no instru- ment for the intuition of truth, but that it is an imperfect one. The same line of objecting would prove with equal fairness — or unfairness — that empirical truths have no inferential validity ; for the disputes concerning them have been a thousand-fold wider. Man often thinks incautiously; he is partially blinded
52 POSITIVISM IN ENGLAND.
by prejudice, liabit, association, hypothesis, so that he has blun- dered, a few times as to first truths, and is constantly blunder- ing, myriads of times, as to derived truths. "^Yhat then ? Shall ve conclude that he has no real intuition of first triiths, and by that conclusion compel ourselves to admit, by a proof reinforced a Miousand-fold, that he certainly has no means, either intuitive or deductive, for ascertaining derived truths ? This is blank skepticism. It finds its practical refutation in the fact, that amidst all his blindness man does ascertain many truths, the benefits of which we actually possess. No ; the conclusion cf common sense is, that we should take care when we think. But the fact remains, that there are axiomatic truths, which no man disputes, or can dispute ; which command universal and immediate credence when intelligently inspected; which, v.o see, must be true in all possible cases which come within their terms. For instance : every sane h iiman being sees, by the first intelligent look of his mind, that any whole must be greater than one of its own parts ; and this is true of all possi- ble wholes in the universe which come within the category of quantity, in any form whatsover. Is it not just this fact which makes the proposition a general one, that man is a reasoning creature? What, except these common and primitive facts cf the intelligence, could make communion of thought, or com- munication of truth from mind to mind, possible? It is these original, innate, common, primary-, regulative laws of belief.
The most audacious and the most mischievous assertion of MiU against absolute truths, is his denial to the mind of any in- tuitive perception of causation and power. Tlie doctrine of common sense here is, that when we see an effect, we intuitively refer it to a cause, as producing its occurrence. And this cause is necessarily conceived as having power to produce it, under the circumstances. For it is impossible for the reason to think that nothing can evolve something. Nothing can result only in nothing. But the effect did not produce its own occurrence, for this would imply that it acted before it existed. Hence, the reason makes also this inevitable first inference, that the power of that cause will produce the same effect which we saw, if all the circumstances are the same. But the sensualistic school asserts that the mind is entitled to predicate no tie between
POSITIVISM IX ENGLAND. 53
cause and effect, save immediate invariable sequence, as observed; because this is all tlie senses observe, and JSlhil in intellectu quod noil ^rias in sensu. The inference, that the like cause will, in future, be followed bv the like effect, is, according to them, an empirical result only of repeated observations, to which the mind is led by habit and association.
Now our first remark is, that only a sensuahstic philosopher could be guilt V of ar'^'uinfy that there can be no real tie of caus- ation, because the senses see only an immediate sequence. The absurdity (and the intended drift also) of such arguing appears thus : tliat, by the same notable sophism, there is no soxd, no God, no abstract truth, no substance, even in matter, but only a bundle of properties. For did our senses ever sec any of these? How often must one repeat the obvious fact, that if there is such a thing as mind, it also has its own properties ; it also is capable of being a cause ; it also can produce ideas according to the law of its nature, when sense f ur]iishes the occasion ? Sensation in- forms us of the presence of the effect ; the reason, according to its own imperative law, supposes power in the cause.
It is extremely easy to demonstrate, and that by the Positiv- ist's own method, that mental association is not the ground, but the consequence, of this idea of causation. We all see cer- tain "immediate, invariable sequences" recurring before us with perfect uniformity; yet we never dream of supposing a causative tie. We see other sequences twice or thrice, and we are certain the tie of ]:)Ower is there. Light has followed dark- ness just as regularly as light has followed the approach of the sun. Xobody dreams that darkness causes light; everybody be- lieves that the sun does cause it. It thus appears, experiment- ally, that association has not taught U' ; the notion of c:^use ; but that our knowledge of cause corrects our associations and con- trols their formation.
The experience of a certain phenomenon following another a number of times can never, by itself, produce a certainty that, under similar circumstances, it will always follow The mere empirical induction gives only probability. The experience of the past, were there no intuition of this law of causation by which to interpret it, would only demonstrate the past; there would be no logical tie entitling us to project it on the future.
54 POSITIYISM IN ENGLAND.
"We ask ovir opponents, if it be the experience of numerous in- stances wliicli gives us certaiuty of a future recurrence, how many instances will effect the demonstration ? Is their answer, for in- stance, that one hundred uniform instances, and no fewer, would be sufficient? What, then, is the difference between the ninety-ninth and the hundredth ? According to the very suppo- sition, the two instances are exactly alike ; if they were not, the unlike one could certainly contribute nothing to the proof, for it would be excluded as exceptional. Why is it, then, that all the ninety-nine do not prove the law, but the hundredth instance, ex- actly similar to all the rest, does ? There is no ansAver. Tho truth is, the reason why an empirical induction suggests the probability that a certain, oft-repeated sequence contains the true law of a cause (which is all it can do), is but this : intui- tion has assured us in advance, that the second ^heiioinenon of the pair, the effect, must have some cause ; and the fact observed, that the other is its seeming next antecedent, "indicates a pre- sumption that this may he the true cause. For the true cause must be the immediate next antecedent, either visible or unno- ticed. But there may be another more immediate antecedent than the one first noticed, not yet detected. We, therefore, re- sort to some test grounded on the intuitive law of cause, to settle this doubt. Just as soon as that doubt is solved, if it be by the second observation, the mind is satisfied ; it has ascer- tained the causative antecedent ; it is now assured that this ante- cedent, if arising under the same conditions, will inevitably pro- duce this consequent, always and everywhere, and ten thousands of uniform instances, if they do not afford this test, generate to such certainty. Yea, there are cases in which the conviction of causative connection is fully established by one trial, when the circumstances of that one trial are such as to assure the mind that no other iindetected antecedent can have intervened, or ac- companied the observed one. For instance, a traveller plucks and tastes a fruit of inviting color and odor, which was wholly unknown to him before. The resvilt is a painful excoriation of his lips and palate. He remembers that he had not before taken into his mouth any substance whatever, save such as he knew to be innocuous. The singleness of the new antecedent enables liim to decide that it must have been the true cause of his suffer-
POSITIVISM IN ENGLAND. 55
ings. The man thenceforward knows just as ceiiainly that this fruit is noxious, whenever he sees it, to the millionth instance, ■without ever tasting it a second time, as though he had tasted and suffered nine hundred thousand times.
Indeed, as Dr. Chalmers has well shown, experience is so far from begetting this belief in the law of cause, that its usual effect is to correct and limit it. A child strikes its spoon or knife upon the table for the first time ; the result is sound, in which children so much delight. He next repeats his experiment confidently upon the sofa-cushion or carpet, and is vexed at his failure to produce sound. Experience does not generate, but corrects his intiiitive confidence, that the same cause will produce the samje effect, not by refuting the principle, but by instructing him that the causative antecedent of the sound was not, as he supposed, simple impact, but a more complex one, namely, impact of the spoon and elasticity of the thing struck.
Mill himself admits express^, what Bacon had so clearly shown, that an induction merely empirical gives no demonstra- tion of causative tie. To reach the latter, we must apply some canon of induction, which will discriminate between the j?os£ hoc and the propte?^ Tioc. Does not Mill himself propose such can- ons? It is obvious that the logic of common life, by which plain people convert the inferences of experience into available certainties, is but the application of the same canons. Let us now inspect an instance of such application, and we shall find that it j)roceeds at every step on the intuitive law of cause as its postulate. Each part of the reasoning which distinguishes be- tween the seeming antecedent and the true cause is a virtual syllogism, of which the intuitive truth is the major premise. Let us select a very simple case ; the reader will see, if he troubles liimself to examine the other canons of induction, that they ad- mit of precisely the same analysis. We are searching for the true cause of an effect which we name D. We cannot march ■directly to it, as the traveller did in the case of the poisonous strange fruit, because w^e cannot ]3rociu'e the occurrence of the phenomenon D with only a single antecedent. We must, there- fore, reason by means of a canon of induction. First, we con- struct an experiment in which we contrive the certain exclusion of all antecedent j)henomena save two, which W'e name A and B.
56 POSITIVISM IX ENGLAND.
It still remains doubtful which of these produced the effect D^ or whether both combined to do it. ^'e contrive a second ex- periment, in which B is excluded, but another ^j'7ie;i07ne?ion, which we call C, accompanies A, and the effect D again follows. Kow we can get the truth. Here are two instances. In the first, A and B occurred, and D follows immediately, all other antecedents being excluded. Therefore, the cause of D is either A or B, or the two combined (thus the inductive canon proceeds). But why ? Because the effect D must have had its immediate cause, which is our d prioi^i and intuitive postulate. In the sec- ond instance, A and C occurred together, and T> followed. Here again, the true cause must be either A or C, or the combined power of the two, T\'hy ? For the same intuitive reason. But in the first instance C coidd not have been the cause of D, because C was absent then ; and in the second instance, B could not have been the cause, for B was then absent. Therefore, A was the true cause all the time, ^'hy ? Because we know intuitively that every effect has its own cause. And now we know, without far- ther experiment, that, however often A may occur under proper conditions, D will assuredly follow. Why? Only because we knew, from the first, the general law that like causes produce like effects.
It thvis appears that the intuitive belief in this law of cause, is essential beforehand, to enable us to convert an experimental induction into a demonstrated general tmth. Can any demon- stration be clearer, that the original lav; itself cannot have been the teaching of experience ? It passes human wit to see ho%v a logical process can prove its ovra premise, when the j^i'emise is what proves the process. Yet this absurdity Mill gravely at- tempts to explain. His solution is, that the law of cause is " an empirical law co-extensive with all human experience." In this case he thinks an empirical law may be held as perfectly demon- strated, because of its universality. May we conclude, then, that a man is entitled to hold the law of cause as ]3erfectly valid only after he has acquired "all human experience?" This simple question dissolves the sophism into thin air. It is experiment- ally proved that this is not the way in which the mind comes by the belief of the law ; becaiise no man ever acqiiires all human experience to the day of his death ; but only a part, which, rela-
POSITITISil IX ENGLAND. 57
tivelv to tlie wliole, is exceedingly minute ; and because every man beKeves the general la^' of cause as soon as lie begins to acquire experience. The just doctrine, tlierefoi'e, is, tliat ex- perimental instances are only the occasions upon wliicli the mind's own intuitive power pronounces the self-evident law.
John Stuart Mill is both a Positivist in his logic, and the ac- cepted philosopher of English radicalism. The reader has in the above specimens a fair taste of his quality. With much learning and labor, he combines subtlety and dogmatism. His stvle, hke his thoughts, is intricate, ill-defined, and ambiguous, having a great air of profundity and accuracy, without the real possession of either. When one sees the confused and mazy involutions in which he entangles the plainest propositions that are unfriendly to his sensuaHstic principles, he is almost ready to suppose him the honest victim of those erroneous postu- lates, until he observes the astute and perspicacious adroit- ness vrith which he wrests the evidence of the truth which he disHkes.
But we return, and conclude this branch of the discussion by resuming the points. Positivism denies all primary and abso- lute beliefs. We have now shown that in this it is inconsistent, because such beliefs are necessary premises to those experimen- tal processes of proof which alone it aifects to value. It is by these primitive truths of the reason that the soul reaches a realm of thought above the perception of the senses, and ascends to God, to immortality, to heaven.
6. Comte and his followers claim that the physical sciences have the most fruit, and the most satisfying certainty, because they have received the " positive " method. Metaphysics, includ- ing psychology, ethics and natural theology, had remained to his day worthless and barren of all but endless differences and de- bates, because they had attempted a different method, and refused Positivism. Introduce here Butler's idea : ProbahUlty the practical guide of life. But he undertook to reconstruct so much of these as he did not doom to annihilation upon the strict basis of the observation of the bodily senses and experimental reasoning, under the name of "sociology." In this instance, with the help of biology, he proposed to deduce all the laws of mind from physical experiments and observations upon its
58 POSITIVISM IN ENGLAND.
organs, the brain and nervous apparatus ; and from the visible acts of men's bodies as moved by the mind. Then, from the laAvs of mind, with the facts of human history, he professed to construct an experimental and positive science of ethics and gov- ernment. It is instructive to notice that the Positivists, just so soon as they approach these sciences of mind, morals, human rights and government, disagree with each other as much as the rest of us unpositive mortals. The Priest of Humanity has been compelled to expel many of his earliest admirers from his church. Somehow, Positivism itself, when it approaches these topics, is no longer "positive;" it guesses, dogmatizes, dreams, disputes, errs, fully as much as its predecessors. What, now, does this show? Plainly that the experimental methods of the physical sciences are incajDable of an exact and universal appli- cation in this field of inquiry. The objects are too immaterial ; they are no longer defined, as in physics, by magnitude, or fig- ure, or quantity , or duration, or ponderosity, or velocity. The combinations of causation are too complex. The effects are too rapid and fleeting. The premises are too numerous and unde- fined for our limited minds to grasp with uniform exactness and certainty. If Positivism, with all its acknowledged learning, and mastery of the science of matter, with its boasts and its confi- dence, has failed to conquer these difficulties in the little way it professes to advance in the science of the human spirit, shall we not continue to fail in part? " "^^^^-lat can he do that cometh after the king?"
Let us couple this fact, tliat the sciences of psychology, morals and natural theology have ever been, and are destined to remain, the least exact and positive of all the departments of man's knoAvledge, with this other, that they are immeasurably the most important to his. well-being and his hopes. The latter statement commends itself to our experience. It is far more essential to a man's happiness here, that he shall have his rights justly and fairly defined than his land accurately surveyed. It is far more interesting to the traveller to know whether the ship-captain to whom he entrusts his life has the moral virtue of fidelity than the learning of the astronomer and navigator. It is more im- portant to us to have virtuous friends to cherish our hearts than adroit mechanics to make our shoes. It is more momentous to
POSITIVISM IN ENGLAND. 59
:& clying man to know whether there is an immortality, and how it may be made happy, than to have a skilful physician, now that his skill is vain. We see here, then, that human science is least able to help ns where our need is most urgent. M. Comte re- prehends the human mind, because " questions the most radi- cally inaccessible to our capacities, the intimate nature of being, the origin and the end of all jj/ienomena, were precisely those which the intelligence propounded to itself as of paramount im- portance in that primitive condition, all the other problems Teally admitting of solution being almost regarded as unworthy of serious meditation. The reason of this it is not difficult to discover, for experience alone could give us the measure of our strength." Alas! the reason is far more profound. Man has ever refused to content himself with examining the properties of triangles, prisms, levers and pulleys, which he could have ex- actly determined, and has persisted in asking whence his spirit- ual being came, and whither it was going ; what was its proper rational end, and what its laws ; not merely because he had not learned the limits of his power, but because he was, and is, irre- sistibly impelled to these inquiries by the instinctive wants of his soul. His intuitions tell him that these are the things, and not the others, which are of infinite moment to him. It appears, then, that it is unavoidable for man to search most anxiously where he can find least certainty. His intellectual wants are most tremendous just in those departments where his power of self-help is least. To what should this great fact point us ? If we obey the spirit of true science, it will manifest to us the great truth that man was never designed by God for mental indepen- dence of him ; that man needs, in these transcendent questions, the guidance of the infinite understanding ; that while a " posi- tive philosophy " may measure and compare his material posses- sions, the only " exact science " of the spirit is that revealed to us by the Father of Spirits. This, we assure the Positivist, is the inevitable conclusion to which the sound and healthy reason will ever revert, as the needle to its pole, despite all his dogma- tism and sophistry. Introduce here the experimental argument for the certain failure of materialism from the constitutional ne- cessities of the soul, and from history of the past, even with so poor a religion as popery. If there were nothing else to ensure
60 POSITIVISM IN ENGLAND.
it, the intolerable miseries, crimes and despair, into wliicli Posit- ivism will ever plunge tlie societies which adopt it, will always bring back this result. He may draw an augury of the destiny of his \n'etched creed from the parsimony of its present followers. M. Comte drew up a scheme for the support of the ministers of his new " "Worship of Humanity," under which the " High Priest of Humanity " was to receive a salary of about $12,000 a year, and four national superintendents about $6,000 each. It ap]5ears from the newspapers that only forty-six persons contributed in 1867, and the total was $750. But meantime the votaries of that Lord Jesus Christ whom he despises, in the conquered South, though "scattered and peeled" by their enemies, contribute an- nually some millions of dollars, and are sending their best intel- lects and hearts to propagate their faith at the antipodes. Let the Positivist judge which system has the conquering vitaHty !
LIBERTY AND SLAVERY-
THE last and only time Mr. Bledsoe was introduced into the Critic, it was in connection with his Theodicy. This work, which was a thorough-going assertion of Pelagianism, was per- haps the most honest sophistry we have ever read. It exhibited some premises so erroneous that conclusions drawn from them could only be false, and displayed no little theological preju- dice ; but still the discussion was manly and vigorous, the style both nervous and rhetorical, and the love of truth apparent even in the advocacy of error. If a strong and energetic man start from the wrong point, and take the wrong direction, he will go only the farther astray, because of his vigorous exertions.
The work which we review possesses the same mental traits and characteristics of stjde with the former, with this advantage, that the subject is one which the writer approaches without preju- dice, and which the nature of his previous studies has qualified him to discuss. Born in Kentucky, where, as is well known, the emancipation feeling was almost as strong, until the abolition excitement began, as in any of the free States, spending the earlier years of his manhood in Ohio, and then a few years in Mississippi, and at all times disconnected with those occupa- tions which interest themselves in slave labor, the author may be regarded fairly as a man who has seen both sides, and who stands in an intermediate post of observation. But the aboli- tionist will probably say, if he meets the usual treatment from them, that his book now speaks the language of self-interest, because he holds office under the government of a "slave- breeding commonwealth." The common utterance of such charges is as offensive to public morality as to the individuals at whom they are hurled ; for they seem to take it for granted
' Appeared in The Critic for May, 1856, reviewing An Essay on Liberty and Sla.very, by Albert Taylor Bledsoe, LL. D., Professor of Mathematics in tlie Uni- versity of Virginia.
61
62 LIBERT! AND SLAYERY.
tliat candor, public virtue and moral courage are extinct in tlie South; and since the accusers cannot know a community in "wliich tliej Lave not lived, and wliicli tliey so muck contemn^ the inference is, that tliej disbelieve the existence of these quali- ties at the South, because they are not accustomed to meet with them at home. This is as unjust to the country at large as it is in this case to Mr. Bledsoe and the community in which he resides. It should not be supposed, that because the people of Virginia would deal summarily with a hypocritical incendiary fi'om abroad, who came with insolent malignitv meddlinoj with what does not concern him, they will, therefore, refuse the pri^^i- lecje of free discussion to her own honorable citizens.
Mr. Bledsoe's first chapter lays down first principles for his subsequent discussion, in a discussion of "the nature of civil liberty." It may be said in brief, that the theory of society which he advocates is the Bible theory ; the one which is advo- cated by the B'lhlical Repertory and bj^ Christian philosophers generally, in opposition to that infidel theory which ignores a Creator and moral Governor of mankind, the pet system of infidel French democrats and pseudo-Christian abolitionists. The author in substance describes Hberty to be a freedom to do icJiat a man. has a rigid to do ; and to define the extent of those rights he goes to the law of God. This chapter is marked most favorably with the best characteristics of the author, freedom from prescription, boldness in attacking errors sanctioned by great names and vigorous scientific inquiry. It rises, indeed,, very near the highest regions of ethical speculation, in the directness, simplicity and breadth of the thinking. The remain- ing chapters on the erroneous positions of abolitionists, the Bible argument for the lawfulness of slavery, the argument from the public good, and the fugitive slave law, do not quite fulfil the promise of the first in their philosophic method. This defect, if it is one, arises obviously from the author's pk\n of taking up and refuting the positions of abolitionists in detail ; so that the discussion, instead of b.nng strictly methodized on a logical plan,, is rather a series of refutations, each one indeed pimgent and demolishing, but yet as a whole, partaking of the confusion of the errors which they explode. The author does not conde- scend to meaner antagonists, but grapples only with the Ajaxes
LIBERTY AXD SLATERY. 6S
of the opposite host, Drs. Chauning and Wayland, aud Messrs. Barnes, Snmner, and Seward. The impression which manj of these special discussions leaves upon the mind of the reader is that of a strong man tearing away the defences of his helpless adversary, rending them into almost invisible shreds, and spurn- ing them as the driven stubble before his bow, till they can be no longer found. We were peculiarly gratified with the thorough work which he makes of the criticisms of that most glozing and treacherous of commentators, Barnes, upon the epistle to Phile- mon. But Avhile we would be glad that this book should be read, yea, studied by every man in the United States who is un- satisfied on the subject of slavery, we would not be understood as commending in every case the strength of its denunciations, or as approving all its j30sitions. Pages 151, 152, the author alludes to the familiar objection by which Dr. 'Wayland and others attempt to break the force of the unanswerablo argument from tlie legalizing of slavery in the law of Moses ; that in like manner the sins of polygamy and divorce are there permitted. Here Mr. Bledsoe makes the admission that the fact claimed is true; but that instead of proving slavery a sin, it only proves the two other practices innocent till they were prohibited by Christ. This would indeed be the just inference, if we were compelled to make the admission. But we would by no means, make it. We are by no means wdlling to surrender it as a set- tled question, that polygamy is in any sense allowed or legalized in the Pentateuch; and the scantj permissive legislation about divorce, explained as it is by our Saviour, is very far from placing that sin on the same platform with the ownership of slaves, which is not only limited and restrained (the whole of what is enacted about divorce), but authorized. Polemically it is a bad policy to seem to permit the abolitionist to say : " Well, after all, your notable Old Testament argument only succeeds in placing slavery in the same category with tbe two Mormon abominations of polygamy and divorce." There is no logical necessity on us to allow even the pretext for such a repartee.
In commending this book, with these and a few similar ex- ceptions, to our readers, we would avail ourselves of the occa- sion to make two important remarks. One is, that the political troubles in our federal relations growing out of slavery at the
64 LIDEKTY AND SLAVERY.
Soutli can never be permanently adjusted till tlie abstract ques- tion, "wlietlier the relation of master and slave is in itself an unrigliteous one or not?" is fullj met, discussed, and settled in tlie national mind. There were two courses of conduct, either of which might have been followed by the defenders of existing laws. Ono plan would have been to exclude the whole ques- tion of slavery persistently from the national councils, as extra- constitutional, unprofitable and dangerous, and to assert this exclusion always, and at every risk, as the essential condition of the continuance of the South in those councils. The other plan was to meet that abstract question from the first, as under- lying and determining the whole subject, to debate it every- W'here, until it was decided, and the verdict of the national mind was passed upon it. Unfortunately, the Southern men did neither steadily. They permitted the debate, and then failed to argue it on fundamental principles. With the exception of Mr. Calhoun — whom events are every year proving the most far-see- ing of our statesmen, notwithstandiug the fashion of men to depreciate him as an "abstractionist" while he lived — Southern politicians were accustomed to say that this whole matter was one of State sovereignty, according to the constitution ; that Congress had no right to legislate concerning its merits, and that, therefore, they should not seem to admit such a right, by condescending to argue the matter of its merits. The premise is true; but the inference is practically most erroneous. If Congress has no right to legislate about slavery, then Congress should not have been permitted to debate it. And Southern men, if they intended to stand on that ground, should have ex- acted the exclusion of all debate. But this was perhaj)s impos- sible. The debate came ; and of course the inferences of the premises agitated ran at once back of the constitution. South- ern men should have industriously followed them there; but they have not done it ; and now political agitation has gone so far, and become so complicated, that we fear the time has gone by when the country will be willing to consider calmly the fundamental question.
A moment's consideration ought to show that that question is the abstract lawfulness or unlawfulness of the relation of master and slave. The constitution gives to the Federal government
LIBERTY AND SLAVERY. 65
no power over that relation in the slave States. True, but that constitution is a compact between sovereign commonwealths ; it certainly gives incidental protection and recognition to the rela- lation of master and slave, and if that relation is intrinsically unrighteous, then it protects a wrong. The sovereign States of the North are found in the attitude of protecting a wrong by their voluntary compact ; and, therefore, it is the duty of all the righteous citizens of those commonwealths to seek by righteous means the amendment or repeal of that compact. They are not, indeed, justified to claim all the benefits of the compact, and still agitate under it a matter which the compact excludes. But they are more than justified ; they are bound to clear their skirts of the wrong, by surrendering the compact, if necessary. There is no evasion from this duty, except by proving that the consti- tution does not do unrighteously in protecting the relation; in other words, that the relation is not intrinsically unrighteous. Again, on the subject of the "Higher Law," our conservative statesmen and divines have thro\^Ti out a vast amount of pious dust. This may serve to quiet the country for a time, but it will inevitably be blown away. There is a higher lavj, superior to constitution and legislative laws; not indeed the perjured and "unprincipled cant which has no conscience about swearing alle- giance to a constitution and a body of laws which it believes vrong, in order to grasp the emoluments 'and advantages of those laws, and then pleads " conscience " for disobeying what it had voluntarilv sworn to obev ; but the law of everlasting ri^ht in the word of God. Constitutions and laws which contravene this ought to be lawfully amended or repealed ; and it is the duty of all citizens to seek it. Let us a23ply this to the Fugitive Slave Law. If the bondage is intrinsically unrighteous, then the fed- eral law which aids in remanding the fugitive to it legalizes a wrong. It becomes, therefore, the duty of all United States offi- cers who are required bv law to execute this statute, not indeed to hold their offices and emoluments, and swear fidelity, and then plead conscientious scruples for the neglect of these SM'orn functions, for this is a union of theft and perjury with hypoc- risy, but to resign those offices, with their emoluments. It be- ■comes the duty of any private citizen who may be summoned by ii United States officer to act as part of a 2^oi<^e, guard, or in any
Vol. UI —5.
66 LIBEIITY AND SLAVERY.
other way in enforciug this statute, to declhie obedience ; and then, in accordance "with Scripture, to submit meekly to the legal penalty of such a refusal, until the unrighteous law is re- pealed. But, moreover, it becomes the right and duty of these, and all other citizens, to seek the repeal of that law, or, if neces- sary, the abrogation of the compact which necessitates it. But when we have proved that the relation of master and slave is not intrinsically unrighteous, and have shown that the fugitive slave law does but carry out fairly the federal compact in this particular, it becomes the clear duty of every citizen to concur in obeying it.
Since the slavery discussion has now become inevitable in our federal politics, it is absolutely essential that the mind of the nation shall be enlightened and settled on the abstract question. The halls of Congress should ring with the arguments; the news- paper press should teem with them, and, above all, with the Bible arguments, for ours is a Christian nation in the main ; and the teachings of the sacred Scriptures are, after all, the chief means for influencing the convictions of the people. It seems, indeed, late in the day to begin the popular discussion of first principles afresh, when the immediate questions have almost reached their crisis ; but we are convinced that if it is too late now to get the pubhc ear for this discussion, it is too late to save the country. It is gratifying to notice that the political news- papers are at length weakening to the necessity of this discussion. A leading journal of the South a few weeks ago noticed, and lamented, the policy on w^hich we have been remarking, and said that since Mr, Calhoun died, not a single j^olitician had been found to argue the abstract question of right on its merits, while all that had been done for the peace of the coimtry since in this matter had been done by divines and scholars. The work of Mr. Bledsoe is important and timely, as making an able contri- bution to this fundamental discussion.
The second remark which we would urge is, that if this debate is to produce any good to the country at large, the propositions advanced must be marked by a wiser moderation, and the argu- ments by more soundness than have always been exhibited at the South. The Southern cause does not demand such asser- tions as that the condition of master and slave is the normal con-
LIBERTY AND SLAVEEY. 67
dition of human society, in such a sense as to be preferable to all others, in all time, and under all circumstances. Certain it is that the burden of odium which the cause will have to carry at the North will be immeasurably increased by such positions. Why array against ourselves indomitable prejudices, by the use- less assertion of a proposition which would be unnecessary to our cause, if it were true ? Nor can a peaceful and salutary purpose be ever subserved by arguing the question in a series of compar- isons of the relative advantages of slave and free labor, laudatory to the one party and invidious to the other. There has been, on both sides of this debate, a mischievous forgetfuluess of the old adage, " Comparisons are odious." When Southern men thus argue, they assume the disadvantage of appearing as the propagandists, instead of the peaceful defenders of an institu- tion which is, and will continue, very naturally, distasteful to their opponents ; and they array the self-esteem of those oppo- nents against them, by placing the discussion in an attitude where the acknowledgement of the Southern cause must be a confession of Northern inferiority. True, our Northern neighbors have often been only too zealous to play at this in\ddious game, or even to begin it in advance. They should not be imitated in their mistake. It is time that all parties should learn that the lawfulness and policy of opposite, or competing, social systems cannot be decided by painting the special features of hardship, abuse or mismanagement, which either of the advocates may im- agine he sees in the system of his opponent. The course of this great discussion has too often been this : each party has set up an easel, spread a canvass upon it, and proceeded to draw the system, of its adversary in contrast with its own, in the blackest colors which a heated and angry fancy could discover amidst the evils and abuses imputed to the rival institution. The only result possible is, that each shall blacken his adversary more and more, and, consequently, that both shall grow more and more enraged; and this, though all the black shades of sorrow and oppression be dra\\Ti from facts in the conditions of the rivals ; for, unfortunately, the human race is a fallen race, 'depraved, unrighteous and oppressive, under all institutions. Out of the best social institutions there still proceeds a hideous amount of wrong and woe ; and this, not because those institu-
68 LIBERTY AND SLAVERY.
tions are unrighteous, but because tliey are administered by de- praved man. For tliis reason, and for another equally conclu- sive, we assert that the lawfulness, and even the wisdom and policy of social institutions aflfecting a vast population cannot be decided by this odious contrast of their special wrong results. The other reason is, that the field of view is too immense and varied to be brought fairly into comparison under the limited eye of man. First, then, if we attempt to settle the matter by trying how much wrong we can find in the working of the oppo- site system, there will probably be no end at all to the melan- choly discoveries which we shall both make, and so, no end to the debate ; for the guilty heart of man is everywhere & 2)er2)etual fountain of "s^Tongs. And, second, the comparison of results must be deceptive, because no finite mind can take in both the endless wholes.
The policy of the South, then, is, to take no ultra positions, and to support herself by no unnecessarily invidious compari- sons. It is enough for her to place herself on this impregnable stand, that the relation of master and slave is recognized as law- ful in itself, by the infallible law of God. That truth she can triumphantly evince ; and from it she can deduce all that it is right for her to claim. There is no wisdom nor use in her as- serting that domestic slavery is always and everywhere the best relation between labor and capital, and should, therefore, be everywhere introduced ; a proposition against which, to say the least, indomitable prejudices are arrayed. It is enough for her to say — what is true, and susceptible of overwhelming demonstra- tion— that, for the African race, such as it is, in fact, such as Providence has placed it here, this is the best, yea, the only tol- erable relation. If it is lawful in the sight of God ; if the con- stitution of the Union does no moral wrong in recognizing it as la^-ful ; if it is best for the interests of the African, of the white race of the South, and of the whole Union, that the matter should be left untouched by the meddling hand of federal legis- lation— a hand impotent of good to it, and only nighty for mis- chief— to develop itself under the leadings of Providence and the benign influences of Christianity, then the South has all her rights asserted. If thus much is true, then the federal consti- tution, and the laws carrying out its provisions, only say what
LIBERTY AND SLAVERY. 69
tlie Bible says, that the holder of African slaves does uot neces- sarily live in the commission of wrong, and is not, therefore, to be disfranchised of any right which the law allows to any other citizen.
It is because Mr. Bledsoe's work is marked l)y this just mod- eration in its positions that we are Avilling to commend it to the public. We have here none of the absurdities, of which the facile exposure has given abolitionists the pretext to sing tri- umphs, such as the argument that African slavery is righteous, because Noah foretold it of the descendants of Ham. The author says, for instance (p. 140), "In opposition to the thesis of the aboKtionist, we assert that it is not always and everywhere wrong." " We only contend for slavery in certain cases." And in the argument from the public good, he says (p. 228) : " We are not called upon to decide whether slavery shall be estab- lished in our midst, or not. This question has been decided for us." .... "The only inquiry which remains for us now is, whether the slavery which was thus forced upon our an- cestors shall be continued, or whether it shall be abolished? The question is not what Virginia, or Kentucky, or any other slave State Tnight have been, but what they would be in case it were abolished. If abolitionists would speak to the point, then let them show us some country in which slavery has been abolished, and we will abide by the experiment." True, Mr. Bledsoe does not always speak of his ultra adversaries in sugared terms. But in our disapproval of the strength of his words, let us remember the outrageous provocation which has been given.
POPISH LITERATURE AXD EDUCATIOX.
WHILE the Ivomaii empire continued, it may be said that Latin was the common tongue of the whole "Western church. But after the empire fell, the modern languages of Eu- rope gradually formed themselves and displaced the Latin in popular use, until it remained only the language of courts and scholars. But Eome, in her fear of change and blind fondness for prescriptive things, persisted in retaining all her creeds, hymns and liturgies in the old tongue, as well as the only ver- sion of the Scriptures accessible to Europeans. Froin Gregory the Great, near the end of the sixth century, a continued war- fare ^^'as waged, until Gregory VII., in the eleventh century, hnally triumphed by driving all the vernacular languages from religious worship, and imposing the formularies, with the dead language of Home, on the whole church. The Scriptures could only be read, even by the clergy, from the Latin Yiilgate. Even to this day, the prayers in which the priest leads the aspirations, or presents the wants of his people to God are in words un- known to them. No hymn echoes through " fretted vault or long-drawn aisle," which does not hide its praise in a tongue barbarian to those who join it.
The constant policy of Home has also been to exalt this lit- urgy at the expense of the preaching of the gospel in vernacular languages. The mass is long and pompous ; the sermons few, brief and trivial. The very structure of her churches betrays her contempt for this potent means of enhghtening and arousing the popular mind, for tliey are not auditories in which to hear the words of instruction, but ghostly theatres for tho display of superstitious pantomime. The altar and the chancel, the stage of the sacred mummeries, are the centre of all eyes, and not the pulpit, the pillar from which shines the lamp of life. Now the formation of a cultivated vernacular tongue is absolutely neces- sary to national improvement. The reason is obvious : there
' Appeared in the Critic for September-November, 1856, 70
POPISH LITERATURE AND EDUCATION. 71
cannot be diffusiou of thought, unless there is a language refined enough to he its medium, and the bulk of a people can never know two languages, one living and common, the other dead and learned, so well as practically to use them both. The conse- quence is, that when the literature of a people is in a dead tongue, knowledge is not the inheritance of the masses, but the distinction of the few ; the native language of the people is left in its rudeness, and they remain as iincultivated as their speech. Hence, those who have first taught their countrymen to employ the native language of their homes and their daily life in litera- ture, a Boccaccio and Petrarch in Italy, a Luther in Germany, a Wickliife and Chaucer in England, have ever been regarded hy thinking men as high in rank among the fathers of civilization. But what ideas and topics so kindle the activity of the mind, and crave for its teeming productions the fitting dress of a cul- tivated language as the religious? Among every people, the £rst sentiments which attune for themselves the voice of elo- quence, are the aspirations of the soul towards its God. The oldest regular compositions in the world are the inspired books of the Hebrews. The first poem in Greece was probably the Theogony of Hesiod. And there are no sentiments so potent to unloose the stammering tongue of an awakening people, and to form its utterance, as those proceeding from man's relations to Lis Maker. It is hard to conceive how Bome could have devised a more ingenious and efficient mode to prevent the cultivation of the modern languages, and thereby, of the mind of Christen- dom, than when she compelled all people to retain their worship and religious lore locked up in a dead language. Let us sup- pose that she had done for every trilie to which she gave Chris- tianity what the primitive and Protestant missions have done, had seized their barbarous tongues and ennobled them by mak- ing them the vehicles of holy truth and sacred worship. Europe would scarcely have known the dark ages, but the glorious day of the sixteenth century might have followed the declining hght of the Augustan era without an intervening night. It may be, indeed, that when the popes thus postponed the dawn of civili- zation, "it was not in their hearts, and they meant not so." "When they commanded all people and tongues to speak to their God and to listen to his words only in a dead language, it was
72 POPISH LITERATURE AND EDUCATION.
in their liearts to magnify the venerable age and hoary "unity of their communion. But the result is one among the numerous instances of that guilty fatality which seems to make Home, in all her plans and policies, the instinctive and unerring enemy of all human welfare.
She has always been the enemy of a free Bible. What Chinese, Indian, Hindu version of the Scriptures have her mis- sionaries ever given to those on whom they conferred the fatal gift of Romish dogmas ? Her priests import cargoes of relics and rosaries, puppets and pictures, missals and vestures, but no Bibles. From that day when the language of her Latin Vulgate became a dead one in Europe to ours, in which we have seen her convulsions of helpless rage and storms of curses against the present glorious diffusion of God's word, Rome has never will- ingly given to the world a Bible in a vulgar language. She has permitted a few versions, as tlie French of Lefevre, of Staples, and the English Douay. But it was only to countermine the influence of Protestants. Her people are only permitted to pos- sess these partial versions, because else they would persist in reading the Protestant, and even her own are circulated as re- luctantly as possible. No layman may read them without a license from his pastor, and no priest except at the will of his superior ; and then none must dare to think on them for him- self, or have an opinion of their meaning, except as his soul's masters dictate. In all her processes of education, her forms and '■'■fathers " are taught in preference to the Bible, and no re- ligious literature is desired except the literature of superstition. The thinking man cannot but see how hostile all this is to mental improvement. The Bible is the great school-teacher of man- kind ; its truths are of all others the most stimulating and fructi- fying, and its presentation of them the most successful. They move the secret foundations of man's soul, stirring the mightiest of his hopes and fears, filling the mind with vast and ennobling conceptions of an infinite God, a perfect holiness, an immutable truth, an immortal destiny. The Scriptures present examples of the most forcible reasoning, the grandest eloquence, the most burning animation, the sweetest poetry, the most tender pathos, and instances of most admirable virtue and goodness. In one word, they bring the mind of their reader into contact with God's,
POPISH LITERATURE AND EDUCATION. 73
not mediately, as Rome would have it, througli the dim, deformed transmission of a murky, human soul, But face to face. What education can equal it ? In opposing an open Bible, Rome shows herself the great enemy of popular intelligence. The re- sults of the Reformation illustrate this charge by contrast. Wick- liffe, "the morning star of the Reformation," introduced the dawn by his English New Testament. One of Luther's first acts was to give the Scriptures in German to his countrymen ; and this great work, with the attendant discussions, gave form to that language as a vehicle for literature, and generated a nation of readers.
But more, while Rome makes religious discussion the privi- lege of the hierarchy, Protestantism makes it the right and bus- iness of every man. Hence, its very nature is an appeal from the ghostly throne beneath which the conscience and reason lay crushed, to the great tribunal of the common understanding. The audience to which it speaks is the whole race. It restores to every man his spiritual liberty, and thereby his responsibility ; it urges upon him the great issue between his soul and his God, and in urging, it elevates every man who will hearken to the level of his immortal destiny. Hence, the first work of the re- formers was to throw open the Bible, create a popular religious literature, and invite all Europe to the work of examination, and thereby of self-education. To see how much the popular intelli- gence owes to this, imagine that our venerable English version were blotted out of existence, and along with it, all the noble thought which it has stimulated in Britain and America ; and that in its place we had the corrupt, cunning Douay version of a corrupt Latin translation, only here and there in the hands of a priest or layman, whose supersition was known to be so dense as to permit no risk of its illumination.
The Popish prohibition of free enquiry and private judgment in religion is, if possible, still more fatal to the mind. The Council of Trent ordained that no one should presume to under- stand the Scriptures, except according to the doctrines of Rome and the unanimous consent of her Fathers. Rome enjoins on her children an implicit faith, which believes on authority with- OTiit evidence. The faith of tlie Protestant is an intelligent con- viction, the result of the fiee and manly exercise of the faculties
74 POPISH LITERATURE. AND EDUCATION.
God gave him, guided by divine fear and help. Tlie papist collects tlie dicta of Fathers and Councils, onlv to we'drthem as shackles on his understanding. The Protestant Inings all dkia to the test of reason, and still more, of that 'Word, to ^\hich his reason has spontaneously bowed as the supreme and infallible truth. Eome bids US listen to her authority and blindly submit; Protestant- ism commands : " Prove all things ; hold fast to that which is good." Happily, the prohibition of private judgment is as im- possible to be obeyed as it is alisurd. In the very act of com- manding us not to think for ourselves, Eome invokes oiu' thought io comprehend the proofs of her command. In the very breath with which she tells us not to reason, she calls upon reason to understand the justice of the prohibition. In truth, the exercise of private judgment is the exercise of thought ; for if the mind is to think at all, it must be its o^ti free thoughts which it pro- duces. If I ^ee at aU, it must be A^ith my own eyes, and in such shapes and colors as they of themselves reveal to me. To com- mand me to see only with the eyes of another, is to make me bhnd. And so, the attempt to banish private judgment from re- ligion is an attempt to make man cease to think, or, in other words, to reduce him on that subject below the level of a ra- iional being. If it were successful, man would no longer be a religious being, but a clever brute. And this is, indeed, the very ideal of that result in which Eome would most delight ; to make men a docile herd of human beasts, incapable of insubordina- tion, yet apt and skilful above other animals to toil for the pam- X)ering of her lordly luxury and pride. Nor is this mental bond- age limited to sacred learning ; it is also inculcated in secular studies, lest perchance the habit and spirit of free thought formed in the domain of human science should invade that of theology. The confines of every realm of thought are overspread with darkness, lest some sidedight should gleam upon the foul delu- sions of her spiritual tyranny, reveahng them to her victims. By how many odious restrictions, censorships, inquisitions and tortures is this despotism over thought sustained ! How many prisons, racks and faggots have been employed to crush the fi'ee- dom of the mind !
To Eome belongs the diabolical preeminence above all pagan priesthoods and political despots, of punishing with the tiirest
POPISH LITERATURE AND EDUCATION. 75
death which the human frame can endure, the crime of being too wise and truthful to believe all her absurdities. The Index of Prohibited Books, a stout volume composed of the mere titles of the works she has proscribed, gives curious evidence of her instinctive hatred of all human intelligence; for we find there, not only all the great works of her assailants, as we would ex- pect, but of nearly all the great masters who have extended the domains of knowledge. Whether they wrote of Philosophy, Geography, Histor}-, Poetry, Rome could not forgive them the attempt to ennoble the minds which it was her purpose to en- slave. When we read in the Index such names as these, which a few minutes' search has collected : Bacon, Cudworth, Descartes, Hume, Kant, Yillers, Malebranche, Leibnitz, Locke, Bentham, Grotius, Bayle, Basnage, Burnet, Hallam, Mosheim, Brucker, Robertson, Selden, Sismondi and Milton, does it not seem as though Pome had designedly proclaimed herself the patroness of ignorance, by arraying against herself all that is most glorious in human intellect ? To repress the free activity of the mind in religion is the most effectual mode to curb all expansive thought in every department. The truths of religion are the most per- vasive and stimulating of all others. Christianity sits as queen and directress of all man's exertions, controlling every duty, modifying every relation, influencing every interest of humanity, ennobling and fructifying every speculation. The conscience is the central power of the soul, so that he who is fettered there is a slave in his whole being. When the conscience is chained, there can be no free development of the faculties by bold and manly exercise. The Keformation, says Guizot, was, in its men- tal character, but the insurrection of the human mind against the mental impression of Pome, which had weighed so heavily on the irrepressible activity of thought as to provoke a resistless reaction. How beneficent the impulse which every science and every institution received from that great movement. Poman Catholicism itself was aroused by the collision into a reaction, to which is due nearly all the subsequent activity which has rescued it from stagnating into barbarism. The attempt may be made to refute these conclusions, by pointing to the many illustrious men who, living and dying in the Pomish communion, have helped to adorn every department of knowledge, human and di-
76 roriSH liteeature and education.
vine ; or, by boasting of a few great entrepots of science in the old foundations of Popish Europe. "Was it not a son of the Holy Mother Church," it may be asked, " who first taught us the true theory of the stars? "Was it not a Papist who "gave to Europe a new world ? Were they not Papists who exhumed the Greek and Latin classics out of the dust of the middle ages, and who have since produced the best editions of all the works of Christian antiquity ? Did not Papists invent gunpowder, the art of printing, the mariner's compass, the galvanic machine? Yea, were not the very Reformers themselves, in whose pretended light and learning Protestants so much glory, reared in the bosom of Popery ? And did they not acquire in her schools the know- ledge which they ungratefully turned against her ? How, then, can that system be justly cha-rged as the mother of ignorance, from beneath whose patronage have proceeded the most glorious elements of human progress ?" This is our reply : " True, the human mind, thanks to its benevolent Creator, has a native ac- tivity Avhich despotism cannot crush, however it may curb it. It may be that Rome has been so far aware of this as not to attempt an impossibility— except once, when her judicial blindness pro- voked the triumphant insurrection of the Eeformation. It may be that she has permitted or encouraged certain forms of men- tal activity, even to a high degree of cultivation, as a safe outlet for the indomitable elasticity of man's spirit, selecting those forms which were least important to his true welfare, in order that she might be able to suppress the most precious and fruit- ful exertions of the mind with sterner force. But these instances of mental activity in her subjects have not been because of, but in spite of her influences. But for the baleful paralysis of that system, they would have been a hundred fold more ; and Papists have usually made their happy exertions just in proportion to the weakness of the hold which Eomanism had upon their real spirit and modes of thought.
It is true, again, that the innate energies of some great soiils among Papists have prompted them to attempt and accomplish mental exploits of high emprise, but Rome has usually resisted their exertions, and punished their success. Hoger Bacon, the inventor of gunpowder, loas a Papist ; but tlie reward which his church apportioned him for his chemical knowledge and spirit
POPISH LITERATUFiE AND EDUCATION. 77
of free enquiry was a long imprisonment in a monastery on the charge of magic. J?euc/ilbi, another sou of Rome, introduced to Europe the long lost treasures of the Hebrew literature. This is true ; and his church so appreciated his labors as to prompt the German Emperor to order the biu'ning of all the Hebrew books in the realm, and the great scholar's pupils were nearly all found in the next generation among the Protestant Re- formers. Erasmus also was a nominal Papist, who published the first critical edition of the Greek Kew Testament. But his work provoked a general howl of contumely and curses from the priests and monks of all Europe, some of whom charged him with committing thereby the sin against the Holy Ghost. Col- umbus did indeed " give to Castile and Leon a new world," but his theory of geography was the mock of all the popish clergy and doctors of Ferdinand's court, so that it was impossible for him to secure patronage for his enterprise, till the womanly piety of Isabella was moved in his behalf. Galileo also was a son of Rome, that great man, v.'ho revolutionized astronomy and me- chanics, who first made the telescope reveal the secrets of the skies, and thus prepared the way for that Wondrous science which, among its other beneficial results, has taught the mariner to mark his beaten track across the pathless ocean, thus making possible the gigantic commerce of our century. How did Rome reward him ? She made him la:iguish in her Inquisition, till he was bowed to the shame of denying the truth, of which the de- monstration was his glor}-.
And this Index of Prohibited Books is found crowded with the names, not only of heretics, but with a part of the works of nearly all Rome's own sons, whose genius or learning has illumi- nated her history ; a proof that their improvements were the offspring of fruitful nature, borne in despite of the novercal envy of Holy Mother Church. Upon the fact that so many of the benefactors of human knowledge, including even the Reformers, were reared under Rome, it may be said, so have the greatest liberators been ever reared under despots. Harmodius and Aristogeiton under Pisistratus, Brutus under Tarquin, the Mac- cabees under Antiochus, Tell under Rudolph of Hapsbiirg, Hampden, Pym and Cromwell under the Stuarts, and our o^^^^ Washincjton under George III. With as much reason mij^jht we
78 POPISH LITEEATURE AND EDUCATION.
argue lience, that despotism is the proper soil to nourish liberty,. as infer from the instances of freedom of thought under Kome that tliej^ were her proper gift to the human mind. And finally, it is not a handful of particular cases which proves a general law : " One swallow does not make a summer." When we in- quire for the general influence of a system, we consider not the few exceptions which exist under it, but the condition of the masses.
"We trust this discussion has educed principles which, among other valuable applications, will enable us to value at their pro- per worth the merits of Koman Catholic education and scholar- ship. Ever since the Reformation urged the human mind for- ward on its great career of improvement, Rome has perceived that Christendom will no longer endure the shackles of ignor- ance, in which that tyrant church would be best pleased to bind the mind, and that men will no longer permit the boon of know- ledge to be plucked openly away. Hence she has adopted the- policy of countermining the intelligence which she fears, by be- coming the patroness of a pseudo-education. And she has committed the managemei t of this policy especially to the order of Jesus, the most slavish and most thoroughly popish of all papal societies. Hence the eager activity of this order in the establishment of colleges, especially to catch the children of Protestants ; hence the boasts of superior scholarship, which have deceived many unthinking and ill-informed men. The treachery of all their pretended zeal for letters is betrayed by this question even ; why does it exhaust its efforts on provid- ing for the education of our sons, and the sons of other similar Protestant states, Avho least need their help, while the benighted, masses of Ireland, Spain, Italy, the Danube are left unen- lightened? Why expend their exclusive exertions to educate heretics, while so many of the sons of their own church sit in. Boeotian night? We suspect this over-generous zeal; we fear lest this education which they offer be the gift of another Tro- jan horse.
Our good, unsuspicious Protestants have especially been gulled by pretensions of peculiar classical and linguistic accom- plishments. It is claimed that their Latinity, for instance, is to the best attainments of Protestant schools as Hyperion to a.
POPISH LITERATURE AND EDUCATION. 79'
Satyr. "Their pupils do not merely stumble tlirougli a slow translation of a Latin sentence : they can talk Latin. So thor- ough is their learning that the higher elasses actually receive lectures in philosophy in that learned tongue." But look beneath the surface. That fluency is but the recitation of a parrot, accompanied with no thorough apprehension of gram- matical principles, and leading to no awakening of thought. These Latin lectiu'es on philosophy are but the slow mechanical dictation of some miserable syllabus of the contracted anti- quated bare-bones of scholastic pedantry. It does not suit the purpose of Rome or Jesuits to do that which is the true work of mental training, to teach the mind to think for itself. That habit, so deadly to the base pretensions of the hoary deceiver, once learned in the walks of secular literature, would bo too probably carried into the domains of theology. Hence, the Jesuits' policy is, to form in secular learning the desired mental temper of servile docility, inordinate respect for authority and impotence of independent thought, so that even mechanic:^,, optics, chemistry, must be taught by the memorizing of dicta ^ not by the exercising of the understanding in their investiga- tions. Then, if to this servile temper there can be added any accomplishments, by which the bondage of the mind can be concealed and a false eclat thrown upon the church, they think it is very well. The policy of Rome in her education is that of the lordly Roman slave-owner towards his bondsmen. To pro- mote the amusement, the interest, or the pomp of their lords, slaves were trained to be masterly musicians, scribes, rhetori- cians, and even poets and philosophers; but still they must exert their attainments only for their masters. And so would Rome lay hold on our children, the sons of freemen, of free America, and make them only accomplished slaves. But above all, does their system sap the very foundations of virtue and nobleness. It substitutes an indolent and weak dependence on authority for honest conviction, and policy for rectitude. It poisons the health of the moral being. He who is spiritually enslaved is wholly a slave, every noble faculty is benumbed by the incubus of spiritual tyranny, and the soul lies prone in. degradation.
SIMPLICITY OF PULPIT STYLE.^
PERMIT me, dear bretliren, to offer you my liearty con- gratulations upon tliis re-nniou of onr Society, and tlie enjoyment of anotlier 3'ear of mercies and of liappy labors. A member of any of tlie successive classes which have issued hence, in an assemblage gathered from all those classes, meets some to whom he is a stranger in person, though a child of the same Alma Hater. But there is no distance between our aims and our hearts. AVliile we meet our own fellow-students with peculiar delight, we meet all as fellow-laborers. I need not suggest how much the enjoyment of each of us would be en- hanced, could we gather around us all who studied and prayed with us here ; for, doubtless, the busy thought of each one has already surrounded him with the familiar band. Probably such a meeting would be as impossible for all of us as it would be for me., Some of those whom I here learned to love I can see at no anniversary, till we meet in the general assembly and church of the first-born in Jerusalem, the mother of us all. "W'hat stronger evidence of the noble and holy influence of these annual gath- erings than that fact, of which, I doubt not, every heart has already been conscious, that they do not fail to carry our thoughts upward to that glorious re-union? Let it be our aim to make this momentary resting point in our warfare as like as possible to that eternal rest.
But we are reminded that we have not yet entered into that rest. To-morrow we return again to the struggle. And, there- fore, the appropriate mode of observing this season will be to make it such as God has made those Sabbaths which are his type of the eternal rest, a season for sharpening our weapons and girding our loins afresh for the contest.
I have thought anxiously in what way I could best contribute
' An address to the Society of Alumni of Union Theological Seminary, Vir- ginia. Delivered at the Annual Meeting, June, 1853.
80
SIMPLICITY OF PULPIT STYLE. 81
to this purpose. And it lias seemed that, poiliaps, as appro- priate a topic as any wliose discussion the times demand, would be SIMPLICITY AND DIKECTNESS OP PULPIT STYLE.
Many share with me the conviction that the renewed discus- sion of this topic is needful. Unless I am greatly deceived, a comparison of much that is now heard from educated clergy- men with the pure standards of classic English will prove that the vice is far gone. Our ears have become viciously accus- tomed to a degree of wordiness, complexity, and ornament, which would have been called bombast by Addison, Swift, or Pope. Even Dr. Samuel Johnson, the proverb of his day for his love of the os rotundum, seems simple and natural beside us. But let us compare ourselves with the great ancient masters of style, as to the length and structure of sentences, the employ- ment of useless epithet, and the mode of using figurative or- nament. Let us compare ourselves, for example, with Horace, as distinguished for the sparkling beauty of his language as for the hatefulness of his morals, and we shall comprehend something of the excess of our fault.
The profusion of reading matter among us,- and the careless speed with which men write and read, must naturally tend to the same vice. Perhaps, after all the rules for style that may be laid down, the real source of transparency and beauty is the p)ossession of the sterling ore of thought and feeling. He who has the most numerous, just, and weighty ideas, in most natural order, and whose own soul is most fully possessed and pene- trated with them, usually has the finest style. It is only when the sentiment so fills and fires the soul of the speaker that he looks wholly at the thoiight, and not at all at the words in which it clothes itself, that the perfection of eloquence is approached. Hence, as the art of writing much with small materials is ex- tended, wordiness and complexity must increase. The hurried and shallow author continually strives to outdo his rivals and his own previous exploits, by tricking out his productions more and more with these ornaments which are so much cheaper than great or sparkling thoughts.
History shows also, that an artificial and luxurious mode of living surely affects the literary taste of a nation. The simplic- ity of thought is banished. The manliness of soul whicli pro-
VoL. III.— 6.
O/J SniPLICITY OF PULPIT STYLE.
ceeds from labor, struggles witli diificulty and intercourse ■witli nature, becomes rare. The mawkisli mind of such a peoj)le demands the same tawdry profusion and frippery in literature "odiich it loves in its bodily enjoyments. We know how the manly eloquence of republican Eome faded away, as the people were corrupted by luxury, into the feeble bombast of the Byzan- tine literature. If the rapid increase of luxury can give any gi'ound for expecting a similar result now, that ground surely exists among us.
Hence, the impression has grown strong with me, that we need to be recalled to what would seem, to our exaggerated taste, a severe simplicity. When one so young as myself, and so lit- tle entitled by his own skill to teach on this subject, offers his humble contribution towards this refomu, he should do it with great modesty. And you will please receive what I shall offer, not as dogmatical, but suggestive. I do not dictate any- thing to you, but only offer, as subjects of your more thorough and wise reflection, those ideas jy which I have attempted the repression of my own faidts.
Permit me also to say, at the outset, that when I advocate a severe simplicity, I am waging no war against rhetoric. I am not presuming to impugn that argument, by which I know I should be met, that since it is our duty to do our utmost for the salvation of souls, that Christian minister is faulty who does not avail himself of exexj innocent aid or ornament by Avhich the truth can be commended. I only question whether any- thing which violates a natural simplicity and directness of speech is ornament, and has any efficacy in commending truth. Let rhetoric be truly defined as "the art of persuasion," the ari of so addressing the human understanding, conscience and affec- tions, as best to enforce our views, and I heartily shake hands with it. I will say, let us have as much true rhetoric as possi- ble. My objection to all meretricious aid is, that it is not or- nament, but deformity.
Indeed, throughout this discussion, it is on the principles of a sound rhetoric itself that I would ground all the considera- tions to enforce simplicity. The truest ari is that which is most natural. Tlie finest statue is that on which the strokes of the chisel are unseen, and the marble is most hke native flesh.
SIMPLICITY OF PULPIT STYLE. 83
Tlie finest paiuting is that in which the behokler is not for a moment reminded of the cunning union of lights and shades, but seems to see the hving and breathing man, standing forth from the canvas. And so, considering our profession of pubhc speaking as an art merely, he is most perfect in the art in ^hom the hearer perceives no art, but seems to hear nature pouring forth her voice in her own spontaneous simplicity. I have seen somewhere an incident which well illustrates this proposition. A simple countryman Avas taken by his friends in London to see Garrick act in Hamlet. He seemed to be intensely interested in. the performance. But at his return, when his fi'iends examined the effect of the scene upon his mind, they were astonished to find him perfectly silent concerning the great tragedian. He seemed to have made no impression on him, while he was loud in his praise of all the subordinate actors. "\\'hen they asked di- rectly, what he thought of Hamlet, they learned the explanation. " Oh ! " he answered, " as to the man whose father had been so basely murdered, it was nothing strange that he should feel and act as he did. Xo son could help it. But as to those other people, who were ouh' making believe, their imitations were wonderful." So true to nature, and so unaffected had been Ganick's manner, that the countryman had utterly overlooked the fact that Garrick was acting! But this was he whom the cultivated taste of Britain decided to be the prince of theatrical eloquence. One of the most just objections, therefore, which can be urged against artificial ornament is, that it is a sin. against art. Much that is now heard from the pulpit with ad- miration would be as explicitly condemned by rhetoric, by Hamlet's instructions to the players, or by Horace's Epistle to the Pisos, as by Christian feeling and principle.
But let us introduce the more direct discussion by reminding you of the topics and aims of our public addresses. Our sub- ject is the most august that can fill and fire the human soul — the perfect holiiiess of the divine law, redemption from eternal ruin, and the winning of eternal happiness. Our aim is to per- suade men to embrace this redemption for the salvation of their souls. It is an established nile that the grandest subjects should be treated with most sparing ornament. The greatness of the topic commends itself sufficiently without such aids. Labored
84 SniPLICITY OP PULPIT STYLE.
attempts to give it adventitious force seem to be a confession tliat tlie subject does not itself possess T\eiglit enough to com- mand tlie heart. Ornaments which might be graceful and ap- propriate when connected with a hghter topic, would seem mere- tricious, when applied to a grand one. "W'e do not sun'ound the majestic temple with the same tracery which would be in place upon the graceful pavilion.
Again, we ol)serve that man's nature is such that all powerful operations of the soul are simple and one. Complexity of the affections enfeebles all. Multiplicity of figure distracts the at- tention, and by distracting, weakens. It is the single, mighty, rushing wind, which raises the billows of the great deep, while a variety of cross-breezes only roughen its surface with trifling ripples. A moment's thought will show us that a multiplication of ornaments or epithets must disappoint its own object. The minds of men cannot attend effectually to a large number of im- pressions in rapid succession. Although thought is rapid, yet a certain lapse of time is necessary to allow the mind to receive and become possessed with the idea presented to it. Hence, he who listens to the verbose speaker, is compelled to allow many of the words which fall upon his ear to jiass through his mind without impression. The mind of the listener cannot fully weigh and feel each phrase addressed to it in so rapid and com- plex a stream, and, consequently, it suffers them all to pass through it lightly. It cannot do otherwise, though there was, at the outset, a sincere effort of attention. Every writer or speaker, therefore, who indulges himself in heaping up useless epithets, or in the multiplication of adjectives not distinct and strongly descriptive, or in any other luxuriance of language, should remember that he is himself compelling his reader or hearer to practice the habit of Hstless attention. And then there is an end of all vigorous impression. The speaker can no longer hope to infuse a strong sentiment into the soul of his au- dience. Hence the maxim so strongly enforced by Campbell, that " the fewer the words are, provided neither perspicuity nor propriety be Adolated, the expression is always the more vivid." To admit into our discourse any word, phrase, or figure, which has not its essential use as a vehicle of our idea, is a sacrifice of effect. The effort which the mind of the hearer is called to make
SIMPLICITY OF PULPIT STYLE. 85
towards these unessential plirases, in the acts of sensation and perception, is just so much taken from the force with which it receives the main idea. The highest species of eloquence is that which is suggestive, where clear and ^'igorous phrases not only convey to the hearer's mind distinct ideas, but point it to tracts of light which lead it along to higher conceptions of its o\\Ti. But such phrases must be brief. Our language should, therefore, be pruned, till every word is an essential part of the clearly defined idea, which the sentence holds up, like a strong picture, to the mind of the hearer. 11 we wish to strike a blow which shall be felt, we will not take up a bough laden vnth foli- age. ^\'e will use a naked club.
I suspect that the correctness of these views is confessed, even by the consciousness of persons of the most perverted taste. However they may laud their literary idol, they cannot conceal it from themselves, that their listlessness grows more and more dreary under the most brilliant sparklings of his rhetorical fire- works ; that the more his sparks are multiplied, the more feebly they strike. There is, indeed, a large class of Hsteners, whose minds are so utterly shallow, and who are so thoroughly uncon- scious of the real nature and aims of eloquence, that they are pleased with the mere lingual and grammatical dexterity with which surprising strings of fine words are rolled forth. Their idea of fine speaking seems to be that it is a sort of vocal leger- demain, Hke that of the juggler, who can twirl a plate on the end. of a rattan as no one else can, an art in which the perfection of skill consists in connecting the largest quantity of a certain style of words with the greatest fluency, so that they shall have the semblance of meaning and melody. "With minds so childish, of course, he who can carry this verbiage to the greatest length will be the greatest orator. But none here, surely, are caj)able of so base an ambition as to desire this low and ignorant ap- plause.
There are still stronger considerations, drawn from the natui'e of the preacher's subject, and of his purpose, in addressing his fellow men. All must admit that appropriateness is the very first element of good taste in every art. It is needless to argue this. Kow, if we consider what the preacher of the gospel pro- fesses to be, and what is the topic on which he addresses his
86 SIMPLICITY OF PULPIT STYLE.
fellow men, 'we shall feel hovr utterly inappropriate every artifi- cial ornament is. Every minister professes to be actuated by the love of souls, and by a strong sense of their danger without the gospel. He professes to be a man who is speaking, not to amuse, nor to gain money, nor to display his talent, but to do good. Even if he is so lost to tho feelings proper to his high ojffice as to harbor these ignoble motives, as a mere matter of taste he must conceal them ; for their display in connection with a sub- ject so awful cannot but be loathsome to all hearers. His mo- tive, then, must be benevolent sympathy and love to the Saviour. And his subject combines all that should awe the mind into sin- cerity, all that should unseal the fountains of tenderness and all that should fire the soul with warm and ennobling emotions. His themes are the attributes of an infinite and jealous God and his perfect law ; that fatal lapse which " brought death into the world and all our woe ; " the immortal soid, with its destiny of endless bhss or pain ; the tomb, the resurrection trump, the righteous Judge, the glories of heaven and the gloom of hell, the gospel's cheering sound, the tears of Gethsemane, the blood of Calvary, and the sweet and awful breathings of the Holy Ghost. His mission is to lay hold of his fellow men, as they hang over the pit, and draw them from perdition by the love of the Kedeemer. How unspeakably inappropriate is every arti- fice here which glances at self-laudation ! And how utterly un- natural is all complexity of figure ! If ever man should earnestly feel, he who presents these themes, fi'om the motives which the preacher professes, should be instinct with earnestness. But who is there that does not know that the eloquence of native emotion is always simple? When the wail of the bereaved mother rises from the bedside of her dying child, ah ! there is no art there ! "We have heard it, my brethren, and we know that our art cannot equal the power of its simplicity. When the story of his -VNTongs bursts from the heart of the indignant patriot, and he consecrates himself upon the altar of his country, it is in simple words. "When the almost despairing soul raises to the Saviour the cry, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner," he speaks unaifectedly. So should the preacher speak. Let me urge it, then, with all the emphasis which language can convey, that the ■very first dictates of good taste and propriety, for him who
SIMPLICITY OF PULPIT STYLE. 87
speaks of the gospel, are iiiiaffectedness and directness of style. To tiirn away tlie mind's eye for one moment from these over- powering realities, towards the mere accessories of rhetoric, is the most heinons sin against rhetoric. It is as though the man who desired to ronse his sleeping neighbor from a burning louse should bethink himself of the melody of his tones, while he cries fire. It is as though the champion, fighting for his hearth-stone and his household, should w^aste his thoughts on the grace of his attitudes and the beauty of his limbs.
Do I advocate, then, a directness and simplicity so bald as to exclude every figure ? By no means. A certain class of figures is the very language of nature. Such we should use in their proper place. They are those figures which, every one sees, are used to set forth the subject and not the speaker. They are those figures which the mind spontaneously seizes when en- larged and strengthened by the earnestness of its emotions, and welds, by the heat of its action, into the very substance of its topic. Such ornaments are distinguished at a glance from the epithets, tropes and similes which the artificial mind gathers up, wdth an eye turned all the time upon the meed of praise it is to receive. Wiiliiu the strict bounds of this directness ard sim- plicity there is ample scope for the exercise of genius and ima- gination. Indeed, it is when a vigorous logic, and a truly origi- nal imagination, are stimulated by the most intense heat of emo- tion, that the most absolute simplicity of language, and, at the same time, the grandest heights of eloquence,, are reached.
There is no stronger conviction with me than that the preacher should never attempt to rescue his discourse from baldness or tameness by those supposed rhetorical ornaments wdiich are collected with deliberate design. The moment an ornament is felt to be introduced " with malice prepense," it becomes a de- formity. It is always a futile and degrading resort. There is a rule of architecture propounded for some styles by the greatest masters which speakers might profitably adopt. It is, that while every essential member of the structure shall be so pro- portioned as to be an ornament, no ornament shall be admitted which is not also an element of construction ; no column which has nothing to support ; no bracket which has nothing to .strengthen. Next to the possession of native genius, the proper
88 SIMPLICITY OF PULPIT STYLE.
sources of literary ornament are in tlie warmth of an "honest, ear- nest emotion, cooperating with a clear and logical comprehension of the thing discussed. Unless our ornaments come spontane- ously from this, their proper mint, the}^ will inevitably be coun- terfeit. When, therefore, the preacher, after he has done all in the preparation of his sul)ject which clear definition, just ar- rangement, and sound logic can effect, feels that his work is still too tame to take hold on the people, it is worse than useless for him to seek, in cold blood, for ornament. He should seek feel- ing. He needs to sacrifice, not at the shrine of Calliope, but at the altar of the Holy Ghost,
Let us remember that all men have a native perception of con- sistency and appropriateness. And all men instinctively judge whether the tones, countenance and language of the person speaking to them are spontaneous or artificial. The cultivated do not surpass the ignorant and the young in the strength of these perceptions, for they are the direct result of intuitive ca- pacities, which are often perverted by the habits of a faulty cul- tivation. Not even does dramatic eloquence offer any exception to the statement that all artificial speaking is inevitably felt by all hearers to be artificial, and therefore naught. For I am sure that there never has been, and never will be a good actor, whether on the stage, at the bar, or in the forum, who did not become eloquent by so palpably conceiving the emotions proper to the part he was acting as to merge his personality for the time in the part, and to become sincerely inspired with its feelings. Let us, then, remember that the prompt and spontaneous perception of every hearer decides absolutely whether our manner seems to him artificial or hearty ; and if it decides us to be artificial, it has forthwith, with equal certainty, the feeling of our inconsist- ency. But what is worse than this, the chief motive which the world will naturally impute to us for this insincerity of manner is the desire of self-display. We may plead that if there is an error of manner, it has arisen from a well-meaning mistake in our disinterested effort to impress the truth. The world will not be so charitable as to credit us. It will say that the natural language of disinterestedness is simplicity, and that the natural language of self-display is artifice ; and it will persist in imput- ing the latter as our motive.
SIMPLICITY OF PULPIT STYLE. 89
It is very important to observe here also, that if, from our per- verted traiuiug, an artificial manner has become second nature to us, this Avill not prevent the mischief. To the instinctive per- ceptions of the hearer it still seems artificial, and he naturally concludes it is purposely such. It is not sufficient, therefore, for the speaker to say that it is " his manner," — that to him it is not artificial ; that in speaking thus he is giving free course ta his dispositions. He should inquire how it became his man- ner, whether through the promptings of an ingenuous, humble, and self-devoting love for souls, or through the itchings of con- ceit, literary vanity, and servile imitation, in the days of his in- experience.
But where the native perceptions of the hearers receive from our manner this impression of artifice, what reason is so dull as not to draw the inference that the preacher, if he really believed what he proclaimed of the sinner's risk, and if he really felt that generous compassion which is his ostensible motive, could have neither time nor heart to bestow one thought on self-display? AVhen men listen to one who preaches of their dread ruin and its sacred remedy with deliberate and intentional artifice, they are driven to one of two alternatives. They must conclude, " either this man does not believe his own words, when he tells nie of my hanging over eternal fires, and of heaven stooping to my rescue ; or, if he does believe them, he must have almost the heart of a fiend to be capable of vanity and selfish artifice in the presence of truths so sacred and dire." And, indeed, my brethren, what must be the callous selfishness of that man who, believing in the reality of the gospel themes, can desecrate them to the tricking forth of his own rhetorical fame !
Grecian story tells us that when the painter Parrhasius was engaged upon a great picture, representing Prometheus as he lay chained to the crags of Mount Caucasus, and eternally con- sumed by a ravenous vulture, he bought an old man from among the Olynthian captives, sold by Philip of Macedon, and tortured him to death beside hie easel, iu order that he might transfer to his canvas the traits of the last struggles in their native reality. Does not the heart grow sick at the devilish ambition of this pagan, as he steels his soul against the cry of agony, and cooily wrings out the life of a helpless and harmless fellow man to win
90 SIMPLICITY OF rULPIT STYLE.
fame for himself, by tlirowing into his master-piece the linea- ments of