Obrazy na stronie
PDF
ePub

a state of putrefaction, inhaled by living bodies, to which they gave putrid fevers, exhibits a plain phenomenon of the return of some particles of that body again into human life.

In tracing the progress and regress of the mind, we cannot carry our research beyond the Grecian Olympiads, because all prior history wants authentic documents, and is but fable or tradition.

The Grecian philosophers had by their doctrines emanci pated the human mind from many phantasms and prejudices; but they discovered not the constitution of Nature.

Epicurus taught rational systems of individual happiness, but without any natural or social knowledge to give it duration or system. Socrates taught prudence, and Diogenes abstinence, as being productive of personal contentment; while the great mass of the nation were occupied in political feuds, verbal logic, and idolatrous superstition.

The Romans followed in the vestiges of the Greeks; but in a short time the schools of philosophy being abandoned for military glory, that is, to assassinate one part of a nation and to enslave the other, this empire prepared its own fate, and was overwhelmed by the barbarous nations of the North, who subjected it to a religious hierarchy of popes, bishops, and priests, who taught a new and more absurd system of superstition than the Pagan Pantheon.

This Christian superstition brought on the long period of the dark ages, whose influence now exists in defiance of all the progress of science, and the intercourse of civilized go. vernment by commerce, literature, and travels.

With a confirmed habit of thoughtfulness, I set out from my native country, England, to visit all the most interesting nations of the globe, with the sole object-the study of man and Nature.

The incessant contemplation of contradictions, errors, ab. surdities, and superstitious insanity, in religions, laws, cus. toms, and opinions, excited my mind to the most powerful attention and ratiocination; and the perpetual dangers and difficulties of travel produced the highest degree of mental sensibility. In this state of intellectual temperament, preju dices of country vanished, inquiry grew bold and ardent; and thought, with the intenseness of its own impulse, inverted, like the bomb, its parabolic line, and descended upon self.

POLYNOMY, OR THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL LIFE.

The population of the globe, we may divide into seven classes, viz. Savage, Pastoral, Agrestic, Scientific, Civic, Confederate, and Perfectible Society.

The Savage class comprises the Aboriginals of America and of the polar regions; the Pastoral all Tartary; the Agrestic, Africa and Asia; the Scientific, the continent of Europe; the Civic and the Confederate, the British isles and colonies; and the northern United States. The Perfectible state is the Golden Age, Elysium, Paradise or Millenium; the joint reign of universal Liberty and Humanity.

The early or Savage state, confers on man, rugged health, and freedom from the care and anxiety attendant on the others; but so limited an intellect, as scarcely to provide a permanent subsistence, or personal safety from enemies.

This class of society might be improved by missions from the superior classes, not to teach them, as has been the prac tice, the silly doctrines of mythology and metaphysics, to make them fools, but to teach them the use of letters, by reducing their language to an alphabet, and by a system of natural education, to instruct them in sagacity and virtue, to teach them the useful arts and useful sciences, for the purposes of subsistence, comfort, and pleasure. These means would elevate the savage state to all the advantages of the superior classes, and enable it to arrive at the elevated stage of perfectible life, without moving through the painful scale of the graduated classes of factitious civilization, with all its vices, follies, and misery.

The class of Pastoral life (shepherds and drovers,) might be improved by the same missions, exercised in the same manner, to instruct and educate the people in foresight and humanity, teaching them, at the same time, the useful arts and sciences, to draw the herdsman from a roving, cruel, and violent intercourse with the brute species, which makes war and rapine his constant occupation, to fix him in the peaceful and comfortable residence of agricultural life, progressing to perfectible life, through the improvement of his intellectual powers, rather than the exemplar scale of civilized systems, which has been necessary to produce the plant of perfectibility in the steril soil of human ignorance, through an incalculable period of ages, but which may be propagat.

ed in future with more facility and improvement in a different soil of new social institution, through the polynomy of edu cation and social experiments.

The class of Agrestic life in Asia and Africa, being subjected to the institutions of monarchical governments, and accumulated in towns and cities, the means of improvement must be conducted on a different plan from that of the inferior classes of savage and pastoral life; missionaries might still be employed to propagate useful arts and sciences, and prepare the people for the education of sagacity; but the most important and efficacious means of social improvement would be the formation of societies of instruction and inquiry, similar to those of Europe, as agricultural societies, societies of arts and science, and societies for the propagation of sagacity, education, and virtue, without any reference to politics, except under free governments, in which they might become the vehicle of truth to the people.

These societies should be occupied with the health, the labors, and the instruction of the people, to show the dangers of all kinds of intemperance, and the noxious use of all kinds of stimulants, as spiritous liquors, tobacco, opium, tea, or coffee; to propose modes of domestic economy in dress, aliment, and lodging; to be the guardians of the poor in devis ing plans, and superintending their asylums and their subsistence. (To promote these objects, was formed the English "Society for bettering the condition of the poor.")

To detect the arts of monopoly, and the oppression of masters, in destroying by avarice the numbers and strength of the laboring classes of the community, and to direct such a discipline of education as may preserve them from the dan gerous enthusiasm of political or religious fanatics.

These societies should carefully avoid all political discussions, except under free governments, and by confining them. selves to the melioration of the individual condition, they would be more useful to the monarch, than the farmers who till the soil of his domain; these multiplying only his riches, while the societies of individual economy would confirm the prosperity, the perpetuity, and the power of his empire, in the happiness of his people.

These societies offer the only means of progress to agrestic and scientific life; for it would be impossible to fix any

scale of reform for the revolutions of civil powers which should always be introduced by the monarch himself, in such gradual advancement towards mixed government of aristoc. racy and democracy, as might accommodate itself to the information of the people.

In Civic life, these societies of individual economy are already established, but their occupations are limited to the cultivation of arts and sciences. Their province, however, should be extended to political information, to the health, instruction, and happiness of the people: they should study, more especially, means to contend with monopoly, and the avarice of property, that oppresses the poorer classes of the community. This oppression of labor stupifies the mental and exhausts the bodily faculties. The laborer has no time allowed him for recreation, comfort, or instruction; the har. py eye of avarice watches over him in the field or the facto ry, to deprive him even of moments of respiration; and if his taskmaster should be absent, his calculated capacity of labor is made use of to excite his emulation and honest pride to more painful and destructive efforts.

The fruits of his own labor are turned against himself by enriching his master, and enabling him to be a monopolist : he is deprived of clothes and fire, and that nutritious and strengthening aliment which his efforts demand: hence, those disorders of ruptures, colds, rheumatism, and premature senectitude at the age of virility.

It should be the office of these economical societies to teach masters, that it is as much their interest to indulge and feed their laborers, as it is to indulge and feed their horses, which no prudent man would exhaust by labor, injure by severity, or impoverish by want of food.

The laboring classes of the community should be instructed, as to their domestic economy, to live in barracks, that their expenses might be diminished, and their comforts increased; they might be lodged, warmed, and fed at a cheaper rate than if they lived each in a separate cottage. In these larger societies, they would meet with recreation and instruc. tion, and have the convenience of being exonerated from the care of their children, which might all be left in the charge of a few old matrons, while the parents were all employed in their productive labors.

They might be instructed in the economy of health, to abstain from the use of spirituous liquors, tobacco, and tea, which debilitate and destroy the health, and render them less capable of labor: to improve the system of aliment by eating unleavened cakes, a little baked on the gridiron, which are more nutritious than meat, and so delicious in taste that they would need no sauce. Milk, or mild beer, drank with such cakes, would improve their nutrition. In my opinion, the leaven in bread impairs its tenacity, and diminishes its nutrition.

Among other popular societies, are the mutual benefit so. cieties, to assist members out of employment, or in sickness, distress, or advanced age. Also Saving Banks, Mutual Insurances, circulating libraries, &c. [For an eloquent expo. sition of the utility of Benevolent Societies, see Thomas Branagan's "Beauties of Philanthropy."]

A reward was offered by some benevolent societies, for the invention of an instrument, or any means to save the tortures of the unhappy chimney-sweepers. The hope of the reward at length produced the object sought, and philanthrophy gained a victory not equalled by the societies of science, or of religions.

The improvement of civilization is accompanied with great evils, even in its acme of civic and confederate life, where man should enjoy the highest degree of dignity, happiness, and intellectual power. The pressure of monopoly and avarice upon the poorer classes of the community, and the sufferings of the female sex from the folly of fashion in dress, and the punishment of incontinence, are so lamentable and preponderant, as to claim the first attention of philanthropy.

The pressure of monopoly and avarice is caused by the want of a legal limit to the amount of individual property, and the liberty of industry languishes for the want of free trade.

The whole class of females, from the servant to the princess, are so enslaved by the folly of fashion in dress, that their exposure to the elements, produces anguish and chronic disease, and so enfeebles the constitutions of the whole population. These evils are also caused by prostitution. A female, amiable perhaps and candid, yields to delusion, from want of firmness, or mistaken confidence, and is plunged

5

« PoprzedniaDalej »