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That man only, reaches the summit of the scale of essence, or intellectual existence, who dreads to impose his will by violence, when he cannot by persuasion assimilate it to that of his fellow-creature, and disclaims, as totally unnecessary to the well-being of the human species, all intercourse with the brute creation. For, their unknown and unintelligible pains caused by human coercion, so agitate the chain of connections of matter and Nature, that we prepare dreadful evil for our own connection, which must no doubt, in the eternal revolution, pass through those animal ducts or identities of brutes.

Sympathy, or the affection that participates in the pain suffered by our fellow-animals, is the all of virtue. Pretended duties have been imposed by the arbitrary institutions of cunning and powerful men, in order to subjugate to their will, the great body of the people, under the pretext of enabling them to contend with hostile nations; these "duties" are enemies to individual happiness, and therefore are vices.

Did these bodies of people, who are organized by institutions that demand the sacrifice of individual liberty and happiness to the security of existence, labor to conciliate political enmities, by disseminating wisdom, and opening virtuous communications, I should then bear patiently the present misery of nations, in hopes of a happier futurity. But as the great, who administer the power of nations, make no such attempts, governments appear to me, to be intoxicated with the love of dominion, which entails misery on themselves and their subjects; and they are as much the dupes of the passions of pride and ambition, as the miser is of avarice, who stands over his hoard agitated with ambiguous emotions of pain and pleasure, blinded by ignorance, which prevents him

from putting it to a proper use. Thus is it with power, which would be the cause of happiness, if the hereditary error and prejudices of mankind did not induce them to imitate the ignorant conduct of the wretched miser, and regard the accumulation rather than the use of their favorite hoards.

To assist these meditations, these pages, I hope, will be useful; if not, I must recommend the writings of Hume, Voltaire, Bolingbroke, Rousseau, and last of all Mirabaud [D'Holbach,] who has completed the destruction of error in his System of Nature: and when, conversant with these writings, the mind shall be purged of its errors and prejudices, these pages will, I trust, be use ful to introduce it to a system of wisdom and happiness.

WISDOM,

Is the internal operation of the mental faculties, as knowledge is the external. In the first, the mind returns upon itself immediately when it receives an alarm from the passions, or impression from the senses. When the passion of hunger, for example, agitates the machine man, and he finds a fruit he never saw before, the first volition he forms is to eat it; but judgment immediately arrests it by the following reflections:-I know not whether it is congenial to my nature, and that, while it allays or gratifies the passion of hunger, it may not be noxious to my essence by causing disease, or dangerous to its existence, being a poison to cause death. In consequence of this reasoning, the volition of the animal is changed, and he goes in pursuit of other food, reserving this for experiment, by eating it gradually, and observing its innocent or noxious effects. In a similar manner all the passions are cited to the tribunal of judgment, and tried by the succinct and universal CODE OF MORAL LAW:

Prefer a greater pleasure in futurity to a less pleasure in time present:

Suffer a less pain in time present, to avoid a greater in futurity.

This internal operation of the mental faculties upon self is called wisdom.

Wisdom is that quality of the mind that guides the volition of man in a right line to his well-being or hap

piness, by taking a large and comprehensive view of the past and present, and by a just and accurate association of pure, unprejudiced ideas that arise in the contemplation, to judge of the future, and prepare such causes as may, in the greatest probability, produce the desired effects.

In the labyrinth of error, when contemplation penetrates, practice constantly breaks the clue of speculation, and prevents man from arriving at the exit for happiness.

Wisdom, when unembarrassed by the prejudices of education and custom, should lead contemplation to avoid the violent frictions of practice, and having carried the clue of theory safe to the exit, practice will of itself follow, and humanity will be extricated from the dark dictates of error and ignorance.

The mystic point of union of speculation with practice can never be determined; wisdom imperceptibly guides the mind to this union: but though the progress is comparatively as little discernable as in vegetation is that of the seed to its tree, it is equally active, and as ultimately certain.

A man who may, upon full conviction, adopt the religion of Nature, will not recommend to the government to annihilate its coercive powers, civil and military, but will recommend the improvement of education, the promulgation of that useful knowledge which leads to wisdom, and then the association of every member in a state of democracy, where the odious and humiliating name of subject is changed to the equitable and honorable appel lation of citizen, who will claim his natural rights the moment wisdom arrives to intellectualize his essence.

The child of Nature will not recommend to a parent the dereliction of tutelary defensive authority over his children, but will explain to him, that being the author of their existence, he is bound to render that existence happy; and that the pretext of custom does not justify the parent in acts of tyranny or torment, to resemble a cruel task-master.

The same humanity and liberality he will incurcate into masters, without destroying the bonds of subordination; and these virtues he will recommend to the practice of every individual in the mutual toleration of weaknesses and foibles, without removing the restraints laid on vice, and the encouragements offered to virtue, by abolishing the blame or applause which the customs of society attach to them; and lastly, all these virtues he will sum up in the universal affection of sympathy to all sensitive Nature.

KNOWLEDGE

Is the effect of the intellectual faculties externally applied in the arts and sciences, to procure the means of corporeal subsistence, well-being and health. Agriculture and medicine occupy the first rank in the operations or scale of knowledge, and all other branches or works of art follow, in proportion as they procure means to gratify the pleasures of the senses, and increase the comfort of animal existence; contrivances of dress and architecture, to preserve the body from the inclemencies of the elements; music to delight the sense of hearing; and inventions of imagination, as oratory and poetry, to amuse the mind, and to make up the complement of pleasure, or well-being of the animal existence. Knowledge is to wisdom, what food is to the body, mere nouriture and aliment; and as the body animalizes food or matter, so serves wisdom to intellectualize knowledge, and gives to the combined machine intellectual existence, or knowledge of self.

The great cause of the origin and perpetuation of error has been the mistaking the quality of knowledge for that of wisdom. The former resembles the latter in all its productions, and they differ only in their application. The operations of knowledge are employed upon outward and foreign objects; but those of wisdom are internal, and applied only to self. The greatest efforts of

the former were exerted by Sir Isaac Newton, to discover the physical laws of bodies; but when he attempted to make use of the latter to make discoveries in the moral world, he became an eminent example of deficiency in the quality of wisdom, and proved its great difference from knowledge. Mankind, however, had long been used to confound them, and Newton was immortalized, though all his works produced not a grain of utility to the well-being of man.

The shoals of error seem so to have empoisoned the stream of wisdom, that knowledge is wholly employed to keep man from approximating its source, lest before he can arrive at it, the draught of this adulterated stream on his passage, should destroy him. These fears can

never be dispelled till some mortal shall set the success ful example, and having discovered the source, may turn the current from the letiferous soil of prejudice, that infects its waters, to the pure and wholesome channel of truth, when every draught will invigorate the traveller upon its banks, and give him strength in proportion to the labor he undergoes to arrive at the fountain of wisdom.

What destructive apothegms folly and error have invented to guard the access of this fountain of light and happiness!

"The people must be kept in ignorance."

"Truth is dangerous to the happiness of mankind."

These are the infernal falsehoods from which are derived the origin and perpetuation of ignorance, the cause of all misery.

Speculative or abstract truth is irrefragably and eternally right, and its practice is right or wrong, in proportion as it is [or is not] skilfully reduced to operation and exercise.

What man of even superior animal existence, but knows and avows, that the trade and practice of slavery in America is an infernal and abominable crime? yet he would not immediately cast off their chains, lest the disorders produced by the intoxication of liberty in minds

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