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INTRODUCTION.

THE incomprehensible cause of motion having hitherto been adored by mankind, under the personification of a deity, with attributes suited to the imagination of the votaries, it is no wonder that more than nineteen twentieths of animate matter, or the brute creation, has been sacrificed to the cruelty, and the caprice of mankind, who created the deity and his laws for the protection of their particular species alone.

The Apocalypse of Nature, which testifies and exposes the intimate connection and relation of all matter, must necessarily destroy this partial demon, and his more partial laws, and substitute in his place, a power that demands no personification; and this is the effect of motion, or its instrument of operation, the VOLITION OF MAN, which is the source of all [moral] good and evil.

This then is the true and comprehensible power, which demands no adoration, but only the study and attention of mankind to bring it into operation, which may be effected by extending the force of the intellectual faculties. The means to produce this first of all intelligible causes, must be by association; for as by the increase of number of bodies, greater physical powers are acquired; so also is intellectual momentum increased by collective minds; so that if an union of all the inhabitants of this globe was procured, the increase of corporeal and of mental strength would be parallel.

Such an union of the mental powers, produced by the free communication and intercourse of thought of all mankind, would form such a perfect intelligence, or primary cause to direct a wise and universal volition, as would bring the moral world from its chaos to order and system, by exposing to every individual the knowledge of

Self, and its connection with Nature. Man would then exist in all the plenitude of his essence, connecting himself with all sensitive matter. He would stop the vibrations of violence upon the great chain of nature, and the moulds of animation would be perfectionated to communicate happiness to the universal inter-revolution of matter; and though the chain of Nature might be agitated from time to time, by opposition to the offensive volition of destructive animals, as ignorant men, beasts of prey, and venemous reptiles; yet its vibration would subside when the cause was removed, and sympathy would resume its power to eternize the tranquillity and happiness of all sensitive Nature.

The adoration of the effect of moral motion in volition, or self in system, should be formed by the example of the Guebers, or worshippers of the Sun, who contemplated its effects alone, and direct its congenial rays to the purposes of subsistence, and comforts of life. So should the children of Nature direct the congenial emotions of the volition, or self, iu system, to procure a happiness to all sensitive Nature, the only adoration a pure and perfect intelligence can admit of. Were the Guebers to neglect the effect, and reason only upon the cause or essence of the sun, the physical world would be affected with the same disorders that the moral world is now subject to, from the preposterous employment of thought about the cause, and not the effect, of intelligence.

THE

APOCALYPSE

[OR REVELATION]

OF

NATURE.

MATTER.

ALL things that make an impression upon the senses of animated matter, contain in themselves a power or propensity to motion, which power is augmented or varied by the different combinations of bodies.

Matter, which in its dissolution, separates, can never be annihilated, and though it may disperse into an infinity of small particles, which, making no impression upon the gross organs of sense, may disappear, yet must continue to be in the great mass of existence; to which, as it is impossible to suppose a beginning, it is also impossible to suppose an end, and it may, therefore, be called eternal.

Matter is sufficiently defined to all the purposes of useful intelligence, by the word substance.

Motion is that substance in action.

Volition is the inceptive motion of the moral world, and the direction of this, in a right line to happiness, or well-being, is the only operation upon which the intellectual powers ought to be employed. Secondary causes and effects should alone be investigated, and primary or connection abandoned. We know that desire is the motive cause of pleasure, which effect is also the object of

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desire; but the connection between them can never be known; and as it is the effect alone which brings any utility, the augmentation and improvement of its causes alone merit attention.

The operation of the intellectual powers is to be guided and governed by utility, till it has discovered the line or orbit of happiness: then speculation and abstraction may be indulged in, as if unsuccessful in discovery they will be useful in amusement; whereas at present they serve but to confound the mental faculty, and embarrass it in the search of the right line to happiness.

How vain are the researches of the finely-constituted faculties in the discovery of the well-being of animated matter, if the errant powers of some minds labor to prove its non-existence, whose sophistical reasonings, like the destructive eye of the basilisk, dazzles the fear-confounded faculties of the self-devoted bird. I have examined the syllogisms of these sophists, that seem to have confounded all philosophers, and they appear to me such impertinent vagaries of the verbal ingenuity of man, that they form a deplorable evidence of the distance of the human mind from its intellectual acme. The mind arrived at this state possesses full power to procure happiness to its essence, and all abstraction beyond that point, proves its weakness by its impertinence.

MOTION

Is the force or soul of matter, and cause of all action; [its source is] impenetrable to all human knowledge.

The noblest production of motion is the animation of matter, which it combines into an organization capable of much action; the long continuance of which uses the machine, and dissolves it into its primary state, from which it again returns into animation, and forms an eternal revolution of combination and dissolution.

The most complicated animal machine is that called

MAN.

THIS machine is formed of particles of matter, organized so as to resemble a corded instrument of music of five strings which correspond with the five senses. The intellectual faculties hold the bow and play, and the passions form the stops upon the handle of the instrument, and if just tones are produced, simultaneously or successively, their harmony or melody forms what is called an agreeable tune or air, or well-being and happiness, of which man himself possesses consciousness, and in this power he is superior to, and differs from the inanimate instrument.

The inceptive power of motion can no more be accounted for in the animal, than in any other part of matter; nor should the discovery at all interest the mind, being obviously impossible.

The volition or operation of the intellectual faculties to procure this agreeable air, or well-being of its essence, is all that merits the concern of a well-organized man.

The animal man is a subject that demands the whole attention and capacity of intellect, to investigate, not the origin, but means and end of his existence. On his action or motion depends the well-being of all animate and inanimate matter. We have proved that animals are ducts, or canals of identity, to receive matter in its eternal revolution. The connection or communion of matter with matter is seen by the constant transmutation of it in aliment, dissolved and digested by animated bodies; which bodies, decomposed and absorbed by the elements, return to vegetation and animation, and continue this change, (not death,) of existence, to all eternity.

Death or change of existence is the dissolution of identity, which is but the tune of the instrument, and has no connection with Nature, which is formed by matter alone. How this is formed we know as little of, as of the connection between fire and heat; but we have an instinc

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