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This bugbear is a great source of real evil, because it forces man to drag on years of anguish, in the torment of incurable disease, or in the torture of slavery; to exist in the dungeon of a tyrant, or to bear arms in the triumph of a conqueror; to destroy the peace of the world in time present, and perpetuate misery to the transmuting atoms of sensitive life in futurity.

What an instance is here of intellectual imbecility, preferring a long life of anguish, to a happy moment of oblivion, called death, in which nothing is lost, nothing is changed, nothis effected, but the dispersion of one form or figure into others, as if you make a globe of wax, and then compress it with your hand into another figure, or divide it into a thousand, then consider the change, and you see the bugbear phenomenon, Death.

And shall this be a bugbear to force the wretch to cling to life on the rack of torture and despair? The first lesson of education should be the true nature of death; and the discovery of its plain and simple phenomena of transmutation should be promulgated over all the world, as the first element of truth, happiness and universal good.

It is the function of wisdom to regulate and control our virtues as well as our passions; so that sympathy may give pleasure, and not pain; probity produce security, and not exposure; fortitude good, and not evil; that the economy of these virtues may be directed to the good of self, in its widest relations of interest with all surrounding being in time present and futurity.

The doctrine of ethics, as taught hitherto by both ancient and modern doctors, has treated virtue as an inflexible rule of duty, to which even happiness is to be sacrificed; resembling a landmark, to which the traveller is directed in a straight line, though bogs, rivers, and seas intervene.

My doctrine places the criterion of virtue in inflexible prin. ciple and flexible rule, and my road of approach is directed by the circuitous route of accommodative circumstances to self-happiness, viewed in its widest relations and interests. This gives exercise and a most inciting motive to the im provement of intellectual power, pursuing the great object of well-being in human perfectibility in time and futurity.

LOGONOMY, OR THE SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE.

I shall not enter here into an idle and vain research after the origin of language,* but, in the true discipline of under. standing and knowledge, exhibit some of the various pheno mena of speech.

The function of speech, that is, its nature and end, is to communicate the operations of one mind to the intelligence of another.

Certain words are established as the representative signs of things, and when uttered by the mouth or exhibited in writing or printing, we receive them as the exposition of things or their corresponding thoughts.

All Nature is comprehended in the term physics, which means the laws or course of matter and power, that is, substance and its qualities as exhibited in their phenomena, and verified by experience. The word metaphysics has been used and abused as a vain and futile distinction applied to qualities alone, as to heat in the body of the sun, or thought in the body of man.

The quality of heat is as substantial a phenomenon, presented to the sense of feeling, as the body of the sun to the sense of sight; they are both physical essences, and stand in no need of the useless distinction of the word metaphysics. In the same manner the quality of thought in the human brain is as much a physical action as the circulation of the blood, and exhibits its phenomena with the same palpable sense and intelligence, to be verified by the test of experi ence; and therefore the word metaphysics is a misapplied and useless distinction in real knowledge, and should be confined to those impenetrable secrets of Nature which are concealed from the human species, because they would avail nothing if known, towards producing the general harmony of existence, in the coöperation of powers, called the wor ship of self and Nature, that is, the augmentation of good and the dimunition of evil in the mundanc system in time and futurity.

[Language in all its dialects, has been gradually formed by the various wants and whims of man. That it required no supernatural inspiration, must be evident, from the more recondite discover. ies and complicated inventions of human ingenuity.]

The mythology of gods, goddesses, celestial senates, demons, &c., drawn from human imagination, is vague hypo thesis, characterized by words without meaning, and sounds without sense, which can have no import in human language, as they represent no phenomena, no objects, and no relations amenable to the test of experience.

The words virtue and vice, or good and evil, are perpetually interchanging their limits and varying their identities in the incessant mutability of circumstances. Falsehood or ly. ing is a great vice; but the suppression of truth may some. times be required by necessity. Secrecy is often the basis of confidence, and a great virtue.

War is, no doubt, an evil; but if the worship of Nature, that is, the advancement of good and diminution of evil in the mundane system, requires war in the defence of social life, it becomes a good, as peace would become an evil if adopted in such predicament.

In common conversation and discussion, discord is produced by three different causes: first, the incapacity of thought to seize with accuracy and plentitude the relation of things; secondly, the incapacity of language adequately to represent the relations of thought; and, thirdly, the general repugnance of men to laborious attention or profound thinking.

The first cause, incapacity of thought, is exemplified by the paucity of relations to complete the view of a system or whole, as in considering the relation of good, how few minds can carry its relations beyond the limits of person, family, or country!

The second cause, incapacity of language, is discoverable in the constant use of allegory, metaphor, &c., which, while it enables speech to keep pace with the rapidity and extension of thought, suggests much matter which has no real correspondency, and leads to erroneous conclusion: Thus, in speaking of government, we may compare the body politic of a nation with the body personal of a man (which has a head,) and conclude despotism necessary, while experience proves the happy existence of constitutional government.

The last cause of discord in conversation, the aversion to attention or profound thinking, is the cause of those frequent exclamations of, Ah! well, I think! which means, I will not

give myself the trouble to examine my own opinions, or to explain them to another, but conclude that to be truth which suits my inclination and prejudice.

The purpose of language in oratory or eloquence among all ages and nations, has been to persuade, that is, to display opinions in such an artful manner, as might seduce the minds of others to adopt them, without any examination, in. quiry, or doubt. This artifice of speech was conducted by recommending implicit faith in false data or principles, in exhibiting arguments that favored the opinion to be taught, with great force, and those which opposed it with weakness and concealment, and the whole impressed upon the mind of hearers with all the ornament of composition, the grace of attitude, and the zeal of conviction.

To avert or avoid the mist of sophistry, I propose the fol lowing rules:

First. Make thought a pure mirror of the phenomena of things, that the mind may have solid objects, and the lan guage of reasoning become truly representative.

Second: Consider all the different parts of a proposition in their full evidence.

Third: Substitute clearness to ornament of speech and of style: and

Fourth: Guard against undue zeal, or passion, as incompatible with ratiocination.

The first rule, to make language represent things instead of phantoms, may be exemplified by considering the oratorical, rhetorical, and eloquent nonsense of metaphysicians, from the great prototype Plato down to the modern Locke.

What volumes of erudite logomachy have been produced and disciplined by logic, both scholastic and natural, so called by Locke, to prove that we have ideas in the mind without things, their archetypes; that is, copies without origi. nals, or images without prototypes-downright contradic tions, calculated to deprave human reason, and produce a state of universal insanity.

The mind has no power to create original objects or ideas; and that even their remote and projected relations, which appear as the simple act of thought, are all suggested by the objects themselves in their capacities, and therefore copied, and not created by the arbitrium of the mind; and the most

complicate systems of moral institutions are nothing but the development of human energy, detected and discovered by genius in the suggested or projected relations of the capaci ty or constitution of man.

The second rule of the art of reasoning, is to consider in full evidence all the parts or subjects of propositions.

The moral science resembles the mathematical science; no part in a demonstration can be fully understood, unless we embrace the whole; and as the elements and system of the first have never yet been understood by mankind, all its words and terms are but dialects of local education, customs, and knowledge; and whoever attempts to pass beyond these, must speak to his countrymen an unknown language, and can be intelligible only to travellers who have no country, or philosophers who have no prejudice.

Philosophy, in searching after the elements, or universal centre of virtue, discovers it to be the art of happiness; its circumference, all sensitive Nature; and its means, absti nence from violence and falsehood.

On the scale of practice its radius is shortened by laws, customs, and education, which graduate its definition vari ously in the following manner: European virtue permits violence and death to the brute species, and often to men, and allows falsehood, under the semblance of superstition, to dictate laws of morality.

East Indian or Braminical virtue permits violence but not destruction to the brute species, and superstitious falsehood to regulate religious rites and ceremonies as a substitute for morality.

The Dunkers, a sect in America, permit no violence or destruction of the brute species, but follow intellectual idolatry or falsehood as a dictator of morality.

Virtue among Quakers, signifies abstinence from violence towards the human species, while it permits it to the brute species; and superstitious pretence is made the criterion of moral truth.

The third rule, which is, to prefer clearness to ornament of speech and of style.

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It is the office of oratory or eloquence to persuade, and

[In opposition to this, see Clarkson's History of Quakerism.]

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