Section I.

The Appetites.

The Appetites are cravings of the body, adapted, and undoubtedly designed, to secure the continued life of the individual and the preservation of the species. They are common to man with the lower orders of animals, with this difference, that in man they may be controlled, directed, modified, in part suppressed, while in brutes they are uncontrollable, and always tend to the same modes of gratification.

Appetite is intermittent. When gratified, it ceases for a time, and is renewed for the same person nearly at the same intervals, and under similar circumstances. It is, while it lasts, an uneasy, even a painful sensation, and therefore demands prompt relief, and leads [pg 011] to action with a view to such relief. It is also a characteristic of appetite that its indulgence is attended, not merely by relief, but by positive pleasure.

The appetites are essential to the well-being of men, individually and collectively. Were it not for the pain of hunger and thirst, and the pleasure of gratifying them, both indolence and engrossing industry would draw off the attention of men from their bodily needs; nourishment would be taken irregularly, and with little reference to quality; and one would often become aware of his neglect only too late to arrest its consequences. A similar remark applies to the appetite designed to secure the preservation of the species. But for this, it may be doubted whether men would willingly take upon themselves the cares, labors, responsibilities, and contingent disappointments and sorrows involved in the rearing of children.

In a life conformed to nature, hunger and thirst recur only when the body actually needs the supply which they crave. But stimulating food, by the reaction that follows strong excitement of any portion of the nervous system, may create hunger when there is no need of food, and in like manner not only intoxicating, but highly stimulating liquids, may occasion an excessive, morbid, and injurious thirst.

Appetite is modified by habit. There is hardly any substance so offensive that it may not by use become agreeable, then an object of desire, and, at length, of intense craving.

The craving for repose and that for muscular action, though not classed among the appetites, have all their characteristics, and serve similar ends in the economy of human life. After a certain period of activity, rest is felt as a bodily necessity, as food is, after long fasting; and in like manner, when the wearied muscles have had their due repose, there is an irresistible tendency to their exercise, without reference to any special employment or recreation. It is by the alternation of these tendencies that the active and industrious are saved from the ruinous consequences of overtasked limbs or brain, and that the indolent are urged to the reluctant activity without which health and life itself would be sacrificed.

The appetites, being mere bodily impulses, and being all liable to excess or misdirection, need the control of the will, and of the principles of action by which the will is determined and regulated.

Section II.

The Desires.

The Desires are distinguished from the Appetites, first, in their not originating from the body; secondly, in their not being necessarily intermittent; and thirdly, in their tendency to increase indefinitely, often through the whole of life, and to gain strength by the attainment of their specific objects. If classified by their objects, they might seem too numerous to be specified; but they may all be embraced under the [pg 013] titles of the Desire for Knowledge, for Society, for Esteem, for Power, and for Superiority. These all may be traced, in a more or less rudimentary form, in the inferior animals. Many of these animals show an active curiosity. Many are gregarious in their native state, and most of the domestic animals delight in the society of their kind; some take manifest pleasure in human society; and the instances are by no means rare, in which animals, by nature mutually hostile, become strongly attached to each other, and render to each other the most friendly services. The dog, the horse, and the cat evidently crave the esteem of human beings, and show tokens of genuine grief when they incur rebuke or discern tokens of disapproval. The dog maintains with watchful jealousy his own authority in his own peculiar domain; and in the chase or on the race-ground the dog and the horse are as emulous of success as their masters.

1. The Desire of Knowledge. This in the human being is manifested with the earliest dawn of intelligence. The infant is busy with eye and hand throughout his waking hours; and that the desire of knowledge is innate, and has no reference to the use that is to be made of the things known, is manifest from the rapid growth of knowledge in the first years of life, before the child has any distinct conception of the uses of objects, or any conscious capacity of employing them for his own benefit. It may be doubted whether in any subsequent year of life so much knowledge is acquired as during the first year. The [pg 014] child but a year old has learned the nature of the familiar objects of the house and the street, the faces and names of a large number of relatives, domestics, and acquaintances, the regular succession of seasons and events in daily domestic life, and the meanings of most of the words that are addressed to him or employed concerning him and the objects around him. In more advanced life this desire grows by what it feeds on, and never ceases to be active. It assumes, indeed, different directions, in part determining, and in part determined by, condition, profession, or employment. Even in the most idle and frivolous, it is strong, often intense, though its objects be worthless. Such persons frequently are as sedulous in collecting the paltry gossip of society as the naturalist in acquiring the knowledge of new species of plants or insects, and as ingenious in their inferences from what they see and hear as the philosopher in his inductions from the facts of science.

Not only in infancy, but through life, knowledge is sought evidently for its own sake, and not merely for its uses. But a very small part of what one knows can be made of practical utility as to his own comfort or emolument. Many, indeed, voluntarily sacrifice ease, gain, position, in the pursuit of science or literature. Fame, if it accrues, is not unwelcome; but by the higher order of minds fame is not pursued as an end, and there are many departments of knowledge in which little or no reputation is to be attained. Then, too, it is not the learner, [pg 015] but the teacher, not the profound scholar, merely, but the able expositor, speaker, or writer, who can expect a distinguished name; while there are many who content themselves with acquiring knowledge, without attempting publicity. Nor yet can benevolence account for the love of knowledge. Many, indeed, make their attainments the property of others, and are zealous in diffusing their own scientific views, or in dispensing instruction in their own departments. But there are also many solitary, recluse students; and it may be doubted whether, if a man who is earnestly engaged in any intellectual pursuit were shut out entirely from human society, and left alone with his books or with nature, his diligence would be relaxed, or his ardor abated.

2. The Desire of Society. This, also, is manifested so early as to show that it is an original, and not an acquired principle. Little children dread solitude, crave the presence of familiar faces, and evince pleasure in the company of children of their own age. A child, reared in comparative seclusion and silence, however tenderly, suffers often in health, always in mental vigor and elasticity; while in a large family, and in intimate association with companions of his own age, the individual child has the fullest and most rapid development of all his powers. There is, indeed, in the lives of many children, a period when the presence of strangers is unwelcome; but this state of feeling—seldom of long duration—can in most instances be traced to some sudden fright, harsh voice, or imagined neglect or unkindness.

The natural course of human life proves that man is by the necessity of his nature a social being. The young of other animals are at a very early period emancipated and forsaken by their parents, while the human child has many years of dependence, and is hardly prepared to dispense with the shelter and kind offices of his native home, when he is moved to create a new home of his own.

There is no pursuit in life in which a community of interest fails to give added zest and energy. There is no possible ground of association on which societies are not formed, and the trivial, fictitious, or imaginary pretences on which men thus combine, meet, and act in concert, are manifest proofs of a social proclivity so strong as to create reasons for its indulgence where such reasons do not already exist. Even in science and in the most abstruse forms of erudition, men of learning seek mutual countenance and encouragement, and readily suspend their solitary research and study for the opportunity of intercommunication on the subjects and objects of their pursuit. The cases in which society is voluntarily shunned or forsaken are as rare as the cases of congenital disease or deformity; and for every such instance there may generally be assigned some grave, if not sufficient, cause. Religious asceticism has, indeed, induced many persons, especially in the early Christian ages, to lead a solitary life; but the cœnobites have always vastly outnumbered the hermits; monasteries (solitary abodes) have become convents (assemblages); and those who [pg 017] are shut out from the rest of the world find comfort in social devotion, in the common refectory, and in those seasons of recreation when the law of silence is suspended. For prisoners solitary confinement has been found deleterious both to body and mind, and this system, instituted with philanthropic purpose, and commended on grounds that seemed intimately connected with the reformation of the guilty, is now generally repudiated as doing violence to human nature. Even for the insane, society, with judicious classification and restriction, is an essential part of curative treatment, and the success of asylums, as compared with the most skilful and humane private treatment, is due in great part to the social element.

It cannot be maintained that the desire of society results from fear, and from the felt need of mutual protection; for it exists in full at the most fearless periods of life, and among those who are the least timid, and is equally manifest in the strong and the weak, in those who can proffer and in those who might crave protection.

3. The Desire of Esteem. It is almost superfluous to say that this is a native and indestructible element of the human constitution. Its first manifestations bear even date with the earliest displays of intelligence and affection. To the infant, approval is reward; rebuke, even by look, is punishment. The hope of esteem is the most healthful and effective stimulant in the difficult tasks of childhood and of school-life. Under the discipline of parents both [pg 018] wise and good, it is among the most important and salutary means of moral discipline. It is seldom deficient in young persons. Their chief danger lies in its excess; for when it is too strongly developed, it inclines them to seek at all hazards the approval of their associates for the time being. Hence the chief danger from vicious or unscrupulous associates. The first steps in vice are oftener prompted, no doubt, by the desire for the complacent regard of one's companions than by an antecedent disposition to evil. Indeed, the confession is often made, that these steps were taken with compunction and horror, solely from the fear of ridicule and from the desire to win the approval and favor of older transgressors.

On the other hand, the desire of the esteem of good men is one of the strongest auxiliary motives to virtue; while a yearning for the Divine approval forms an essential part of true piety towards God.

4. The Desire of Power. This is manifested in every period of life, and in the exercise of every faculty, bodily, mental, and moral. It is this which gives us pleasure in solitary exercises of physical strength, in climbing mountains, swimming, lifting heavy weights, performing difficult gymnastic feats. It is this, more than deliberate cruelty, that induces boys to torture animals, or to oppress and torment their weaker or more timid companions.

In intellectual pursuits, the love of power leads to many exercises and efforts that have no ulterior result. The mathematician will turn aside from his [pg 019] course of study to master a problem, which involves no new principle, but is merely difficult and perplexing. The reading of books obscurely written, or in languages that task the utmost power of analysis, frequently has no other result, and probably no other object, than the trial of strength. What can be attained only by strenuous mental labor, is for that very reason sought, even if it promise no utility.

In the affairs of practical life, every man desires to make his influence felt. With persons of the highest character, the love of power is manifest in connection with the aim to be useful. Even the most modest men, while they may spurn flattery, are gladdened by knowing that they are acting upon the wills and shaping the characters of those around them.

The love of property belongs in great part under this head. Money is power, preëminently so at the present day. Property confers influence, and puts at one's command resources that may be the means of extended and growing power alike over inanimate nature and the wills of men. Avarice, or the desire of money for its own sake, is not an original desire. Few or none are avaricious in very early life. But money, first sought for the power it confers, from being a means becomes an end, to such a degree that, in order to possess it, the miser will forego the very uses for which he at the outset learned to value it.

5. The Desire of Superiority. This is so nearly universal in all conditions of society, and at all periods [pg 020] of life, that it must be regarded as an original element of human nature. Without it there would be little progress. In every department of life, men stimulate one another toward a higher standard of endeavor, attainment, or excellence. What each does, his neighbor would fain outdo; what each becomes, his neighbor would fain surpass. It is only by perversion that this desire tends to evil. It finds its proper satisfaction, not in crushing, depressing, or injuring a rival, but barely in overtaking and excelling him; and the higher his point of attainment, the greater is the complacency experienced in reaching and transcending it. On the race-ground, I do not want to compete with a slow runner, nor will it afford me the slightest satisfaction to win the race by tripping up my competitor; what I want is to match myself with the best runner on a fair field, and to show myself his equal or superior. The object striven for is the individual's own ideal, and those whom he successively passes on his course mark but successive stages on his progress toward that ideal. Thus, in the pursuit of moral excellence, it is only a mean and a bad man who can imagine that he gains anything by detracting from the merit of others; but he who is sincerely contending for a high place among virtuous men, rejoices in the signal examples of goodness of every kind which it is his privilege to emulate, and rejoices most of all that the ideal of perfect excellence—once only actualized in human form—is so pure and lofty that it may be his life-work to approach it without reaching it.

Emulation is not envy, nor need it lead to envy. Among those who strive for superiority there need be no collision. The natural desire is to be, not to seem, superior; to have the consciousness, not the mere outward semblance, of high attainment; and of attainment, not by a conventional, but by an absolute standard; and this aim excludes none,—there may be as many first places as there are deserving candidates for them. Then, too, there is so wide a diversity of ideals, both in degree and in kind, there are so many different ruling aims, and so many different routes by which these aims are pursued, that there need be little danger of mutual interference. Even as regards external rewards, so far as they depend on the bounty of nature, the constitution of society, or the general esteem and good will of men, the success of one does not preclude the equal success of many; but, on the other hand, the merited prosperity and honor of the individual cannot fail to be of benefit to the whole community. It is only in offices contingent on election or appointment that the aspirant incurs a heavy risk of failure; but when we consider how meanly men are often compelled to creep into office and to grovel in it, it can hardly be supposed that a genuine desire of superiority holds a prominent place among the motives of these who are willingly dependent on patronage or on popular suffrage.

These desires, according as one or another has the ascendency, prompt to action, without reference to [pg 022] the good or the evil there may be in the action; and they therefore need the control of reason, and of the principles which reason recognizes in the government of conduct.

Section III.

The Affections.

The Affections are distinguished from the Desires, mainly in these two particulars: first, that the Desires are for impersonal objects, the Affections, for persons; and secondly, that the Desires prompt to actions that have a direct reference to one's self; the Affections, to actions that have a direct reference to others.

The Affections are benevolent or malevolent.

1. The benevolent affections are Love, Reverence, Gratitude, Kindness, Pity, and Sympathy.

Love needs no definition, and admits of none. It probably never exists uncaused; though it survives all real or imagined ground for it, and in some cases seems rendered only the more intense by the admitted unworthiness of its object. When it is not the reason for marriage, it can hardly fail to grow from the conjugal relation between one man and one woman, if the mutual duties belonging to that relation be held sacred. It is inconceivable that a mother should not love her child, inevitably cast upon her protection from the first moment of his being; the father who extends a father's care over his children finds in that care a constant source of love; and the children, [pg 023] waking into conscious life under the ministries of parental benignity and kindness, have no emotion so early, and no early emotion so strong, as filial love. It may be doubted whether there is among the members of the same family a natural affection, independent of relations practically recognized in domestic life. It is very certain that at both extremities of the social scale family affection is liable to be impaired, on the one hand, by the delegation of parental duties to hirelings, and, on the other, by the inability to render them constantly and efficiently. We may observe also a difference in family affection, traceable indirectly to the influence of climate. Out-of-door life is unfavorable to the intimate union of families; while domestic love is manifestly the strongest in those countries where the shelter and hearth of the common home are necessary for a large portion of the year.

Friendship is but another name for love between persons unconnected by domestic relations, actual or prospective.

Love for the Supreme Being, or piety, differs not in kind from the child's love for the parent; but it rightfully transcends all other love, inasmuch as the benefits received from God include and surpass all other benefits. To awake, then, to a consciousness of our actual relation to God, is “to love Him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and all the soul, and all the strength.”

Reverence is the sentiment inspired by advanced [pg 024] superiority in such traits of mind and character as we regard with complacency in ourselves, or with esteem in our equals. Qualities which we do not esteem we may behold with admiration (that is, wonder), but not with reverence. Our reverence for age is not for advanced years alone, but for the valuable experience which they are supposed to have given, and especially for the maturity of excellence which belongs to the old age of good men, of which their features generally bear the impress, and which, in the absence of knowledge, we are prone to ascribe to a venerable mien and aspect. A foolish or wicked old man commands no reverence by his years.

God, as possessing in infinite fulness all the properties which we revere in man, must ever be the worthy object of supreme reverence.

Gratitude, though it can hardly be disjoined from love, is seldom cherished for the same person in the same degree with love. We love our beneficiaries more than our benefactors. We love those dependent upon us more than those on whom we depend. The mother's love for her child is the strongest of human affections, and undoubtedly exceeds that even of the child for the mother to whom he owes every benefit and blessing under heaven. We may be fervently grateful to persons whom we have never seen; but there cannot be much vividness in our love for them. Love to God, whom we have not seen, needs to be kindled, renewed, and sustained by gratitude for the incessant flow of benefits from Him, and by the [pg 025] promise—contingent on character—of blessings immeasurable and everlasting.

Kindness is benevolence for one's kind,—a delight in their happiness and well-being, a readiness to perform friendly offices whenever and however they may be needed. In its lower forms it is designated as good nature; when intense and universal, it is termed philanthropy. It befits the individual man as a member of a race of kindred, and is deemed so essential an attribute of the human character, that he who utterly lacks it is branded as inhuman, while its active exercise in the relief of want and suffering is emphatically termed humanity.

Pity is the emotion occasioned by the sight or knowledge of distress or pain. While without it there can be no genuine kindness, it may exist without kindness. There are persons tenderly sensitive to every form of suffering, who yet feel only for the sufferer, not with him, and who would regard and treat him coldly or harshly, if he were not a sufferer. In such cases, pity would seem to be a selfish feeling; and there can be no doubt that some men relieve distress and poverty, as they would remove weeds from a flower-bed, because they are offensive to the sight.

Sympathy is feeling, not for, but with others.1 It has for its objects successes and joys, no less than sufferings and sorrows; and probably is as real and intense in the case of the former as of the latter, [pg 026] though its necessity is less felt and its offices are less prized in happy than in sad experiences. Kindness alone cannot produce sympathy. In order to feel with another, we must either have passed through similar experiences, or must have an imagination sufficiently vivid to make them distinctly present to our thought. This latter power is by no means necessary to create even the highest degree of kindness or of pity; and among the most active and persevering in works of practical beneficence, there are many who feel intensely for, yet but faintly with, the objects of their charity. On the other hand, sympathy sometimes finds its chief exercise in sensational literature, and there are persons, profoundly moved by fictitious representations of distress, who yet remain inactive and indifferent as regards the real needs and sufferings around them that crave relief.

2. The malevolent affections are Anger, Resentment, Envy, Revenge, and Hatred.

Anger is the sense of indignation occasioned by real or imagined wrong. When excited by actual wrong-doing, and when contained within reasonable bounds, it is not only innocent, but salutary. It intensifies the virtuous feeling which gives it birth; and its due expression is among the safeguards of society against corruption and evil. But when indulged without sufficient cause, or suffered to become excessive or to outlast its occasion, it is in itself evil, and it may lead to any and every form of social injustice, and of outrage against the rights of man and the law of God.

Resentment is the feeling excited by injury done to ourselves. This also is innocent and natural, when its occasion is sufficient, and its limits reasonable. It may prevent the repetition of injury, and the spontaneous tendency to it, which is almost universal, is an efficient defence against insult, indignity, and encroachment on the rights of individuals. But, indulged or prolonged beyond the necessity of self-defence, it is prone to reverse the parties, and to make the injured person himself the wrong-doer.

Both anger and resentment are painful emotions, and on this account are self-limited in a well-ordered mind. He who makes happiness his aim will, if wise, give these disturbing forces the least possible hold upon him, whether in intensity or in duration.

Envy has been defined as the excess of emulation. It seems rather to be a deficiency in the genuine principle of emulation. The instinctive desire of superiority leads us, as we have seen, to aim at absolutely high attainments, and to measure ourselves less by what others are, than by our own ideal. It is only those of lower aims, who seek to supplant others on their career. Envy is the attempt, not to rise or excel, but to stand comparatively high by subverting those who hold or seek a higher position. No just man voted for the banishment of Aristides because he was always called the Just; but his ostracism was the decree of those who knew that they could obtain no reputation for justice till he were put out of their way.

Revenge is the desire to inflict evil for evil. In principle it is always wrong; for the evil-doer, though he may merit transient anger and resentment, is not therefore placed beyond our benevolence, but is rather commended to our charity as one who may be reformed and may become worthy of our esteem. In practice, revenge can scarce ever be just. Our self-love so exaggerates our estimate of the wrong we receive, that we could hardly fail to retaliate by greater wrong, and thus to provoke a renewal of the injury. There are, no doubt, cases in which self-defence may authorize the immediate chastisement or disabling of the wrong-doer, and in an unsettled state of society, where there is no legal protection, it may be the right of individuals to punish depredation or personal outrage; but acts of this kind are to be justified on the plea of necessity, not of revenge.

Hatred is the result of either of the malevolent affections above named, when carried to excess, or suffered to become permanent. It precludes the exercise of all the benevolent affections. No man can rightfully be the object of hatred; for there is no man who has not within him some element or possibility of good, none who has not rights that should be respected, none who is not entitled to pity for his sufferings, and, still more, for his sins.

The affections, benevolent and malevolent, are common to man with lower animals. Love and hatred are manifested by all of them whose habits are [pg 029] open to our inspection; anger, by not a few; gratitude, kindness, pity, sympathy, resentment, and revenge, by the more intelligent; envy, by those most completely domesticated; reverence, perhaps, by the dog towards his master.

The affections all prompt to action, and do not discriminate the qualities of actions. Hence they need the control and guidance of reason, and can safely be indulged only in accordance with the principles which reason recognizes as supreme in the conduct of life.

Section I.

Conscience.

Conscience is a means, not a source, of knowledge. It is analogous to sight and hearing. It is the power of perceiving fitness and unfitness. Yet more, it is consciousness,—a sense of our own personal relation to the fitting and the unfitting, of our power of actualizing them in intention, will, and conduct. It is in this last particular that man differs from the lower animals. They have an instinctive perception of fitness, and an instinctive impulse to acts befitting their nature. But no brute says to himself, “I am acting in accordance with the fitness of things;” while man virtually says to himself, in every act, “I am doing what it is fit for me to do,” or, “I am doing what it is unfitting for me to do.”

Conscience is a judicial faculty. Its decisions are based upon such knowledge as the individual has, whether real or imagined, and from whatever source derived. It judges according to such law and evidence as are placed before it. Its verdict is always [pg 042] relatively right, a genuine verdict (verum dictum), though, by the absolute standard of right, it may be wrong, through defect of knowledge,—precisely as in a court of law an infallibly wise and incorruptibly just judge may pronounce an utterly erroneous or unjust decision, if he have before him a false statement of facts, or if the law which he is compelled to administer be unrighteous.

We may illustrate the function of conscience by reference to a question now agitated in our community,—the question as to the moral fitness of the moderate use of fermented liquors. In civilized society, intoxication is universally known to be opposed to the fitnesses of body and mind, an abuse of alcoholic liquors, and an abuse of the drinker's own personality; and it is therefore condemned by all consciences, by none more heartily than by those of its victims. But there still remains open the question whether entire abstinence from fermented liquors be a duty, and this is a question of fact. Says one party, “Alcohol, in every form, and in the least quantity, is a virulent poison, and therefore unfit for body and mind.” Says the other party, “Wine, moderately used, is healthful, salutary, restorative, and therefore fitted to body and mind.” Change the opinion of the latter party, their consciences would at once take the other side; and if they retained in precept and practice their present position, they would retain it self-condemned. Change the opinion of the former party, their consciences would assume the [pg 043] ground which they now assail. Demonstrate to the whole community—as it is to be hoped physiology will do at no distant day—the precise truth in this matter, there would remain no difference of conscientious judgment, whatever difference of practice might still continue.

Conscience, like all the perceptive faculties, prompts to action in accordance with its perceptions. In this respect it differs not in the least from sight, hearing, taste. Our natural proclivity is to direct our movements with reference to the objects within the field of our vision, to govern our conduct by what we hear, to take into our mouths only substances that are pleasing to the taste. Yet fright, temerity, or courage may impel us to incur dangers which we clearly see; opiniativeness or obstinacy may make us inwardly deaf to counsels or warnings which we hear; and motives of health may induce us to swallow the most nauseous drugs. In like manner, our inevitable tendency is to govern our conduct by the fitness of things when clearly perceived; but intense and unrestrained appetite, desire, or affection may lead us to violate that fitness, though distinctly seen and acknowledged.

Men act in opposition to conscience only under immediate and strong temptation. The great majority of the acts of bad men are conscientious, but not therefore meritorious; for merit consists not in doing right when there is no temptation to evil, but in resisting temptation. But, as has been said, it is [pg 044] as natural, when there is no inducement to the contrary, to act in accordance with the fitness of things, as it is to act in accordance with what we see and hear. It is the tendency so to act, that alone renders human society possible, in the absence of high moral principle. In order to live, a man must so act with reference to outward nature; still more must he so act, in order to possess human fellowship, physical comfort, transient enjoyment, of however low a type; and the most depraved wretch that walks the earth purchases his continued being and whatever pleasure he derives from it by a thousand acts in accordance with the fitness of things to one in which he violates that fitness.

Conscience, like all the perceptive faculties, is educated by use. The watchmaker's or the botanist's eye acquires an almost microscopic keenness of vision. The blind man's hearing is so trained as to supply, in great part, the lack of sight. The epicure's taste can discriminate flavors whose differences are imperceptible to an ordinary palate. In like manner, the conscience that is constantly and carefully exercised in judging of the fit and the unfitting, the right and the wrong, becomes prompt, keen, searching, sensitive, comprehensive, microscopic. On the other hand, conscience, like the senses, if seldom called into exercise, becomes sluggish, inert, incapable of minute discrimination, or of vigilance over the ordinary conduct of life. Yet it is never extinct, and is never perverted. When roused to action, even in the most obdurate, it [pg 045] resumes its judicial severity, and records its verdict in remorseful agony.

Conscience is commonly said to be educated by the increase of knowledge as to the relations of beings and objects, as to the moral laws of the universe, and as to religious verities. This, however, is not true. Knowledge does not necessarily quicken the activity of conscience, or enhance its discriminating power. Conscience often is intense and vivid in the most ignorant, inactive and torpid in persons whose cognitive powers have had the most generous culture. Knowledge, indeed, brings the decisions of conscience into closer and more constant conformity with the absolute right, but it does not render its decisions more certainly in accordance with the relative right, that is, with what the individual, from his point of view, ought to will and do. It has the same effect upon conscience that accurate testimony has upon the clear-minded and uncorrupt judge, whose mind is not made thereby the more active or discriminating, nor his decision brought into closer accordance with the facts as they are presented to him. Knowledge is indeed an indispensable auxiliary to conscience; but this cannot be affirmed exclusively of any specific department of knowledge. It is true of all knowledge; for there is no fact or law in the universe that may not in some contingency become the subject-matter or the occasion for the action of conscience. Nothing could seem more remote from the ordinary field of conscience than the theory of planetary motion; [pg 046] yet it was this that gave Galileo the one grand opportunity of his life for testing the supremacy of conscience,—it may be, the sole occasion on which his conscience uttered itself strongly against his seeming interest, and one on which obedience to conscience would have averted the only cloud that ever rested on his fame.

Section II.

Sources Of Knowledge. 1. Observation, Experience, And Tradition.

Except so far as there may have been direct communications from the Supreme Being, all man's knowledge of persons, objects, and relations is derived, in the last resort, from observation. Experience is merely remembered self-observation. Tradition, oral and written, is accumulated and condensed observation; and by means of this each new generation can avail itself of the experience of preceding generations, can thus find time to explore fresh departments of knowledge, and so transmit its own traditions to the generations that shall follow. Now what we observe in objects is chiefly their properties, or, what is the same thing, their fitnesses; for a property is that which fits an object for a specific place or use. What we observe in persons is their relations to other beings and objects, with the fitnesses that belong to those relations. What we experience all resolves itself into the fitness or unfitness of persons and objects to one [pg 047] another or to ourselves. What is transmitted in history and in science is the record of fitnesses or unfitnesses that have been ascertained by observation, or tested by experience. The progress of knowledge is simply an enlarged acquaintance with the fitnesses of persons and things. He knows the most, who most fully comprehends the relations in which the beings and objects in the universe stand, have stood, and ought to stand toward one another. Moreover, as when we see a fitness within our sphere of action, we perceive intuitively that it is right to respect it, wrong to violate it, our knowledge of right and wrong is co-extensive with our knowledge of persons and things. The more enlightened and cultivated a nation is, then, the more does it know as to right and wrong, whatever may be its standard of practical morality.

For instance, in the most savage condition, men know, with reference to certain articles of food and drink, that they are adapted to relieve the cravings of hunger and thirst, and they know nothing more about them. They are not acquainted with the laws of health, whether of body or of mind. They therefore eat and drink whatever comes to hand, without imagining the possibility of wrong-doing in this matter. But, with the progress of civilization, they learn that various kinds of food and drink impair the health, cloud the brain, enfeeble the working power, and therefore are unfit for human use; and no sooner is this known, than the distinction of right and wrong begins to be recognized, as to what men eat and [pg 048] drink. The more thorough is the knowledge of the human body and of the action of various substances on its organs and tissues, the more minute and discriminating will be the perception of fitness or unfitness as to the objects that tempt the appetites, and the keener will be the sense of right or wrong in their use.

For another illustration of the same principle, we may take the relation between parents and children. In the ruder stages of society, and especially among a nomadic or migratory people, there is not a sufficient knowledge of the resources of nature or the possibilities of art, to render even healthy and vigorous life more than tolerable; while for the infirm and feeble, life is but a protracted burden and weariness. At the same time, there is no apprehension of the intellectual and moral worth of human life, still less, of the value even of its most painful experiences as a discipline of everlasting benefit. In fine, life is little more than a mere struggle for existence. What wonder then, that in some tribes filial piety has been wont to relieve superannuated parents from an existence devoid equally of joy and of hope; and that in others parental love may have even dictated the exposure—with a view to their perishing—of feeble, sickly, and deformed children, incapable of being nurtured into self-sustaining and self-depending life? But increased conversance with nature and art constantly reveals new capacities of comfort and happiness in life, and that, not for the strong alone, but for [pg 049] the feeble, the suffering, the helpless, so that there are none to whom humanity knows not how to render continued life desirable. At the same time, a higher culture has made it manifest that the frailest body may be the seat of the loftiest mental activity, moral excellence, and spiritual aspiration, and that in such a body there is often only a surer and more finished education for a higher state of being. Filial piety and parental love, therefore, do all in their power to prolong the flickering existence of the age-worn and decrepit, and to cherish with tender care the life which seems born but to die. There is, then, to the limited view of the savage, an apparent fitness in practices which in their first aspect seem crimes against nature; while increased knowledge develops a real and essential fitness, in all the refinements and endearments of the most persevering and skilful love.

These examples, which might be multiplied indefinitely, show the dependence of conscience on knowledge, not for relatively right decisions, but for verdicts in accordance with the absolute right. There is no subject that can be presented for the action of conscience, on which, upon precisely the same principles, divergent and often opposite courses of conduct may not be dictated by more or less accurate knowledge of the subject and its relations.

It will be seen, also, that with the growth of knowledge, conscience has a constantly wider scope of action. The number of indifferent acts is thus diminished; the number of positively right or [pg 050] wrong acts, increased. An indifferent act is one for the performance of which, rather than its opposite, no reason, involving a question of right or wrong, can be given. Thus, if the performance or the omission of a specific act be equally fitted to the time, place, circumstances, and persons concerned, the act is an indifferent one; or, if two or more ways of accomplishing a desired end be equally fitted to time, place, circumstances, and persons, the choice between these ways is, morally speaking, a matter of indifference. But with a knowledge both more extensive and more minute of the nature, relations, and fitnesses of beings and objects, we find an increasing number of instances in which acts that seemed indifferent have a clearly perceptible fitness or unfitness, and thus acquire a distinct moral character as right or wrong.

Section III.

Sources Of Knowledge. 2. Law.

Law is the result of the collective experience, in part, of particular communities, in part, of the human race as a whole. It encourages, protects, or at least permits whatever acts or modes of conduct have been found or believed to be fitting, in accordance with the nature of things and the well-being of men, and therefore right; it forbids and punishes such acts or modes of conduct as have been found or believed to be unfitting, opposed to nature and to human well-being, [pg 051] and therefore wrong. It is far from perfect; it is below the standard of the most advanced minds; but it represents the average knowledge or belief of the community to which it belongs. The laws of any particular state cannot rise far above this average; for laws unsustained by general opinion could not be executed, and if existing in the statute-book, they would not have the nature and force of law, and would remain on record simply because they had lapsed out of notice. Nor can they fall far below this average; for no government can sustain itself while its legislation fails to meet the demands of the people.

While law thus expresses the average knowledge of belief, it tends to perpetuate its own moral standard. The notions of right which it embodies form a part of the general education. The specific crimes, vices, and wrongs which the law marks out for punishment are regarded by young persons, from their earliest years, as worthy of the most emphatic censure and condemnation; while those which the law leaves unpunished are looked upon as comparatively slight and venial. Not only so, the degree of detestation in which a community learns to look on specific crimes and offences is not in proportion to their actual heinousness, but to the stress of overt ignominy attached to them by legal penalties. Instances of this effect of law on opinion will be readily called to mind. Thus a common thief loses, and can hardly regain his position in society; while the man who by dishonest [pg 052] bankruptcy commits a hundred thefts in one, can hold his place unchallenged, even in the Christian church, while it is known to every one that he is living—it may be in luxury—on the money he has stolen. The obvious reason is that from time immemorial simple theft has been punished with due, when not with undue, severity, while the comparatively recent crime of fraudulent bankruptcy has as yet been brought very imperfectly within the grasp of penal law. Again, no man of clear moral discernment can doubt that he who consciously and willingly imbrutes himself by intoxication is more blameworthy than he who sells alcoholic liquors without knowing whether they are to be used internally or externally, moderately or immoderately, for medicine or for luxury. Yet because the latter makes himself liable to fine and imprisonment, while the former—unless he belong to the unprivileged classes—has legal protection, instead of the disgraceful punishment he deserves, there is a popular prejudice against the vender of strong drink, and a strange tenderness toward the intemperate consumer. Yet another instance. There are crimes worse than murder. There are modes of moral corruption and ruin, whose victims it were mercy to kill. But while the murderer, if he escape the gallows, is an outcast and an object of universal abhorrence, no social ban rests upon him whose crime has been the death of innocence and purity, yet, if reached at all by law, can be compounded by the payment of money.

But though law is in many respects an imperfect moral teacher, and its deficiencies are to be regretted, its educational power is strongly felt for good, especially in communities where the administration of justice is strict and impartial. It is of no little worth that a child grows up with some fixed beliefs as to the turpitude of certain forms of evil, especially as the positive enactments of the penal law almost always coincide with the wisest judgments of the best men in the community. Moreover, law is progressive in every civilized community, and in proportion as it approaches the standard of absolute right, it tends to bring the moral beliefs of the people into closer conformity with the same standard. It is, then, a partial and narrow view of law to regard it only or chiefly as the instrument of society for the detection and punishment, or even for the direct prevention of crime. Its far more important function is so to train the greater part of each rising generation, that certain forms and modes of evil-doing shall never enter into their plans or purposes.

The civil, no less than the criminal law is a source of knowledge as to the right. The law does not create, but merely defines the rights appertaining to persons and property. The laws of different nations are, indeed, widely different; but there may be that in their respective histories which makes a difference in the actual rights of citizens, or their civil codes may present different stages of approach toward the right. Thus the laws as to the conveyance and inheritance [pg 054] of property are in some respects unlike in France, England, and the United States, and vary considerably in the several States of our Union; but there generally exist historical reasons for this variation, and it would be found that the ends of justice are best served, and the reasonable expectations of the people best met in each community, by its own methods of procedure. By the law of the land, then, we may learn civil rights and obligations, which we have not the means of ascertaining by our own independent research.

It remains for us to speak of the factitious rights and wrongs, supposed to be created by law. Of these there are many. Thus one mode of transacting a sale or transfer is in itself as good as another; and it might be plausibly maintained that, if the business be fairly and honorably conducted, it matters not whether the legally prescribed forms—sometimes burdensome and costly—be complied with or omitted. The law, it may be said, here creates an obligation for which there is no ground in nature or the fitness of things. This we deny. It is intrinsically fitting that all transactions which are liable to dispute or question should be performed in ways in which they can be attested; and this cannot be effected except by the establishment of uniform methods. He who departs from them performs not only an illegal, but an immoral act; and the legal provisions of the kind under discussion have an educational value in enlarging the knowledge of the individual as to the [pg 055] conditions and means of security, order, and good understanding in human society.

Similar considerations apply to the crimes created by law. Smuggling may serve as an instance. Undoubtedly there are smugglers who would not steal; and their apology is that they are but exercising the rights of ownership upon their own property. But the public must have property, else its community is dissolved; government must be able to avail itself of that property, else its functions are suspended. Men need to be taught that the rights of the state are inseparable from those of individuals, and no less sacred, and the laws that protect the revenue are among the most efficient means of teaching this lesson. Their only defect is that they attach less ignominy to frauds upon the revenue than to other modes of theft, and thus fail to declare the whole truth, that there is no moral difference between him who robs the public and him who robs any one of its individual members.

Section IV.

Sources Of Knowledge. 3. Christianity.

Religion, in its relation to ethics, may be regarded both as a source of knowledge, and as supplying motives for the performance of duty. We are now concerned with it in the former aspect; and it will be sufficient for our present purpose to ascertain how much Christianity adds to our knowledge of the fitnesses [pg 056] that underlie all questions of right and duty. We by no means undervalue the beneficent ministry of natural religion in the department of ethics; but the most sceptical admit that Christianity includes all of natural religion, while its disciples claim that it not only teaches natural religion with a certainty, precision, and authority which else were wanting, but imparts a larger and profounder knowledge of God and the universe than is within the scope of man's unaided reason.

Christianity covers the entire field of human duty, and reveals many fitnesses, recognized when seen, but discovered by few or none independently of the teachings and example of its Founder; while it gives the emphasis and sanction of a Divine revelation to many other fitnesses, easily discoverable, but liable to be overlooked and neglected.

In defining the relations of the individual human soul to God, Christianity opens to our view a department of duty paramount to all others in importance and interest. His fatherly love and care, his moral government and discipline, his retributive providence, define with unmistakable distinctness certain corresponding modes, in part, of outward action, and in still greater part, of action in that inward realm of thought whence the outward life receives its direction and impulse.

The brotherhood of the whole human race, also, reveals obligations which would exist on no other ground; and for the clear and self-evidencing statement [pg 057] of this truth we are indebted solely to Christianity. The visible differences of race, color, culture, religion, and customs, are in themselves dissociating influences. Universal charity is impossible while these differences occupy the foreground. Slavery was a natural and congenial institution under Pagan auspices; nor have we in all ancient extra-Christian literature, unless it be in Seneca (in whom such sentiments may have had indirectly3 a Christian origin), a single expression of a fellowship broad enough to embrace all diversities of condition, much less, of race. But the Christian, so far as he consents to receive the obvious and undoubted import of Christ's mission and teachings, must regard all men as, in nature, in the paternal care of the Divine Providence, in religious privileges, rights, and capacities, on an equal footing. With this view, he cannot but perceive the fitness, and therefore the obligation, of many forms of social duty, of enlarged beneficence, of unlimited philanthropy, which on any restricted theory of human brotherhood would be neither fitting nor reasonable.

The immortality of the soul, in the next place, casts a light at once broad and penetrating upon and into every department of duty; for it is obvious, without detailed statement, that the fitnesses, needs, and obligations of a terrestrial being of brief duration, and those of a being in the nursery and first [pg 058] stage of an endless existence, are very wide apart,—that the latter may find it fitting, and therefore may deem it right, to do, seek, shun, omit, endure, resign, many things which to the former are very properly matters of indifference. Immortality was, in a certain sense, believed before the advent of Christ, but not with sufficient definiteness and assurance to occupy a prominent place in any ethical system, or to furnish the point of view from which all things in the earthly life were to be regarded. Indeed, some of the most virtuous of the ancients, among others Epictetus, than whom there was no better man, expressly denied the life after death, and, of course, could have had no conception of the aspects of human and earthly affairs as seen in the light of eternity.

Christianity makes yet another contribution to ethical knowledge in the person and character of its Founder, exhibiting in him the very fitnesses it prescribes, showing us, as it could not in mere precept, the proportions and harmonies of the virtues, and manifesting the unapproached beauty and majesty of the gentler virtues,4 which in pre-Christian ages were sometimes made secondary, sometimes repudiated with contempt and derision. We cannot overestimate the importance of this teaching by example. The instances are very numerous, in which the fitness of a specific mode of conduct can be tested only by experiment; and Jesus Christ tried successfully several experiments in morals that had not been tried before within the [pg 059] memory of man, and evinced, in his own person and by the success of his religion, the superior worth and efficacy of qualities which had not previously borne the name of virtues.

Christianity still further enlarges our ethical knowledge by declaring the universality of moral laws. There are many cases, in which it might seem to us not only expedient, but even right, to set aside some principle acknowledged to be valid in the greater number of instances, to violate justice or truth for some urgent claim of charity, or to consent to the performance of a little evil for the accomplishment of a great good. But in all such cases Christianity interposes its peremptory precepts, assuring us on authority which the Christian regards as supreme and infallible, that there are no exceptions or qualifications to any rule of right; that the moral law, in all its parts, is of inalienable obligation, and that the greatest good cannot but be the ultimate result of inflexible obedience.

That Christianity gives a fuller knowledge of the right than can be attained independently of its teachings, is shown by the review of all extra-Christian ethical systems. There is not one of these which does not confessedly omit essential portions of the right, and hardly one which does not sanction dispositions and modes of conduct confessedly wrong and evil; while even those who disclaim Christianity as a Divine revelation, fail to detect like omissions and blemishes in the ethics of the New Testament. Thus, though there is hardly a precept of Jesus Christ, [pg 060] the like of which cannot be found in the ethical writings of Greece, China, India, or Persia, the faultlessness and completeness of his teachings give them a position by themselves, and are among the strongest internal evidences of their divinity. They are also distinguished from the ethical systems of other teachers by their positiveness. Others say, “Thou shalt not;” Jesus Christ says, “Thou shalt.” They forbid and prohibit; He commands. They prescribe abstinence from evil; He, a constant approach to perfection. Buddhism is, in our time, often referred to as occupying a higher plane than Christianity; but its precepts are all negative, its virtues are negative, and its disciple is deemed most nearly perfect, when in body, mind, and soul he has made himself utterly quiescent and inert. Christianity, on the other hand, enjoins the unresting activity of all the powers and faculties in pursuit of the highest ends.

Section I.

Self-Preservation.

The uses of life, both to ourselves, and to others through us, suffice, as we have said, to render its preservation a duty, enjoined upon us by the law of fitness. This duty is violated not only by suicide—against which it is useless to reason, for its victims in modern Christendom are seldom of sound mind—but equally by needless and wanton exposure to peril. Such exposure is frequently incurred in reckless feats of strength or daring, sometimes consummated in immediate death, and still oftener in slower self-destruction by disease. There are, no doubt, occasions when self-preservation must yield to a higher duty, and humanity has made no important stage of progress without the free sacrifice of many noble [pg 100] lives; but because it may be a duty to give life in the cause of truth or liberty, it by no means follows that one has a right to throw it away for the gratification of vanity, for a paltry wager, or to win the fame of an accomplished athlete.

The duty of self-preservation includes, of course, a reasonable care for health, without which the uses of life are essentially restricted and impaired. Here a just mean must be sought and adhered to. There is, on the one hand, an excessive care of the body, which, if it does not enfeeble the mind, distracts it from its true work, and makes the spiritual nature a mere slave of the material organism. This solicitude is sometimes so excessive as to defeat its own purpose, by creating imaginary diseases, and then making them real; and the number is by no means small of those who have become chronic invalids solely by the pains they have taken not to be so. On the other hand, there is a carelessness as to dress and diet, to which the strongest constitution must at length yield; and the intense consciousness of strength and vigor, which tempts one to deem himself invulnerable, not infrequently is the cause of life-long infirmity and disability. Of the cases of prolonged and enfeebling disease, probably more are the result of avoidable than of unavoidable causes, and if we add to these the numerous instances in which the failure of health is to be ascribed to hereditary causes which might have been avoided, or to defective sanitary arrangements that may be laid to the charge of the public, we have an [pg 101] enormous amount of serviceable life needlessly wasted for all purposes of active usefulness; while for the precious examples of patience, resignation, and cheerful endurance, the infirmities and sufferings incident to the most favorable sanitary conditions might have been amply sufficient.

There are, no doubt, such wide diversities of constitution and temperament that no specific rules of self-preservation can be laid down; and as regards diet, sleep, and exercise, habit may render the most unlike methods and times equally safe and beneficial. But wholesome food in moderate quantity, sleep long enough for rest and refreshment, exercise sufficient to neutralize the torpifying influence of sedentary pursuits, and these, though not with slavish uniformity, yet with a good degree of regularity, may be regarded as essential to a sound working condition of body and mind. The same may be said of the unstinted use of water, which has happily become a necessity of high civilization, of pure air, the worth of which as a sanitary agent is practically ignored by the major part of our community, and of the direct light of heaven, the exclusion of which from dwellings from motives of economy, while it may spare carpets and curtains, wilts and depresses their owners. These topics are inserted in a treatise on ethics, because whatever has a bearing on health, and thus on the capacity for usefulness selfward and manward which constitutes the whole value of this earthly life, is of grave moral significance. If the preservation of life is a duty, [pg 102] then all hygienic precautions and measures are duties, and as such they should be treated by the individual moral agent, by parents, guardians, and teachers, and by the public at large.

Self-preservation is endangered by poverty. In the lack or precariousness of the means of subsistence, the health of the body is liable to suffer; and even where there is not absolute want, but a condition straitened in the present and doubtful as to the future, the mind loses much of its working power, and life is deprived of a large portion of its utility. Hence the duty of industry and economy on the part of those dependent on their own exertions. It is not a man's duty to be rich, though he who in acquiring wealth takes upon himself its due obligations and responsibilities, is a public benefactor; but it is every man's duty to shun poverty, if he can, and he who makes or keeps himself poor by his own indolence, thriftlessness, or prodigality, commits a sin against his own life, which he curtails as to its capacity of good, and against society, which has a beneficial interest in the fully developed life of all its members.

Section II.

The Attainment Of Knowledge.

Inasmuch as knowledge, real or supposed, must needs precede every act of the will, and as the adaptation of our actions to our purposes depends on the accuracy of our knowledge, it is intrinsically fitting [pg 103] that our cognitive powers should be thoroughly developed and trained, and diligently employed. Especially is this fitting, because—as has been already shown—it is through knowledge alone that we can bring our conduct into conformity with the absolute right, and there is nothing within the range of our possible knowledge, which may not become in some way connected with our agency as moral beings.

It is of prime importance that what we seem to know we know accurately; and as it is through the senses that we acquire our knowledge, not only of the outward objects with which we are daily conversant, but of other minds than our own, the education of the senses is an obvious duty. There are few so prolific sources of social evil, injustice, and misery, as the falsehood of persons who mean to tell the truth, but who see or hear only in part, and supply the deficiencies of perception by the imagination. In the acquisition of knowledge of the highest interest and importance this same hindrance is one of the most frequent obstacles. The careless eye and the heedless ear waste for many minds a large portion of the time ostensibly given to serious pursuits, and render their growth pitifully slow and scanty as compared with their means of culture. The senses may, especially in early life, be trained to alertness and precision, so that they shall carry to the mind true and full reports of what they see and hear; and it is only by such training that the perceptive faculties can accomplish the whole work for which they are designed and fitted.

There are, also, interior senses, apprehensive powers of the mind, which equally crave culture, and which depend for their precision and force on careful education and diligent use. Mere observation, experience, or study, cannot give knowledge that will be of any avail. One may have a largely and variously stocked memory, and yet be unable to employ its contents to his own advantage or to the benefit of others. Indeed, there are minds that are paralyzed by being overloaded,—by taking in freight faster than they have room for it. It is only materials which the mind has made its own, incorporated into its substance, that it can fully utilize. Knowledge must be acted upon by the understanding, the reason, the judgment, before it can be transmuted into wisdom, and employed either in the acquisition of new truth or in the conduct of life. Mental activity, then, is a duty; for if we are bound to preserve life, by parity of reason, we are bound to improve its quality and increase its quantity, and this cannot be done unless the intellectual powers are strengthened by diligent exercise, as well as nourished by the facts and truths which are the raw material of wisdom.

The fit objects of knowledge vary indefinitely with one's condition in life. Things in themselves trivial or evanescent may, under certain circumstances, claim our careful attention and thorough cognizance. We ought, on the one hand, to know all we can about matters concerning which we must speak or act, and, on the other hand, to refrain from voluntarily speaking [pg 105] or acting in matters of which we are ignorant. Thus our social relations and our daily intercourse may render it incumbent on us to obtain for current use a large amount of accurate knowledge which is not worth our remembering. Then a man's profession, stated business, or usual occupation opens a large field of knowledge, with which and with its allied provinces it is his manifest duty to become conversant to his utmost ability; for the genuineness and value of his work must be in a great degree contingent on his intelligence. At the same time, every man is bound to make his profession worthy of respect; in failing to do so, he wrongs and injures the members of his profession collectively; and no calling can obtain respect, if those who pursue it show themselves uncultivated and ignorant. Thus far, then, should knowledge be extended on grounds of practical utility. Beyond and above this range, there is an unlimited realm of truth, the knowledge of which is inestimably precious for the higher culture of the mind and character. In this realm, of which only an infinitesimal portion can be conquered during an earthly lifetime, there is no unfruitful region,—there is no department of nature, of psychology, or of social science, through which the mind may not be expanded, exalted, energized, led into more intimate relations with the Supreme Intelligence, endowed with added power of beneficent agency. While, therefore, knowledge of things as they are, and of their underlying principles and laws, so far as we are able to acquire it, is not only a [pg 106] privilege beyond all price, but an absolute duty, there are no moral considerations which need direct or limit our choice of the themes of research or study. These may properly be determined by native or acquired proclivity, by opportunity, or by considerations of usefulness. Nor, if the love of truth be formed and cherished, can it of be of any essential importance whether this or that portion of truth be pursued or neglected during the brief period of our life in this world; for, at best, what we leave unattained must immeasurably exceed our attainments, and there is an eternity before us for what we are compelled to omit here. At the same time, the unbounded scope and the vast diversity of things knowable and worthy to be known are adapted to stimulate self-culture, and in that same proportion to invest human life with a higher dignity, a larger intrinsic value, and a more enduring influence.

Section III.

Self-Control.

A man must be either self-governed, or under a worse government than his own. God governs men, only by teaching and helping them to govern themselves. Good men, if also wise, seek not, even for the highest ends, to control their fellow-men, but, so far as they can, enable and encourage them to exercise a due self-control. It is only unwise or bad [pg 107] men who usurp the government of other wills than their own. But the individual will is oftener made inefficient by passion, than by direct influence from other minds. Man, in his normal state, wills either what is expedient or what is right. Passion suspends, as to its objects, all reference to expediency and right, even when there is the clearest knowledge of the tendencies of the acts to which it prompts. Thus the sensualist often knows that he is committing sure and rapid suicide, yet cannot arrest himself on the declivity of certain ruin. The man in whom avarice has become a passion is perfectly aware of the comforts and enjoyments which he is sacrificing, yet is as little capable of procuring them as if he were a pauper. Anger and revenge not infrequently force men to crimes which they know will be no less fatal to themselves than to their victims. Now if a man will not put and keep himself under the government of conscience, it concerns him at least to remain under the control of reason, which, if it do not compel him to do right, will restrain him within the limits of expediency, and thus will insure for him reputation, a fair position, and a safe course in life, even though it fail of the highest and most enduring good.

Self-control is easily lost, and is often lost unconsciously. The first surrender of it is prone to be final and lifelong. Indeed, in many cases, the passion destined to be dominant has nearly reached the maturity of its power previously to any outward violation of the expedient or the right. Where the restraining [pg 108] influences of education and surroundings are strong, where important interests are at stake, or where conscience has not been habitually silenced or tampered with, the perilous appetite, desire, or affection broods long in the thought, and is so largely indulged in reverie and anticipation, that it becomes imperious and despotic before it assumes its wonted forms of outward manifestation. Hence, the sudden infatuation and rapid ruin which we sometimes witness,—the cases in which there seems but a single step between innocence and deep depravity. In truth there are many steps; but until they become precipitous, they are veiled from human sight.

Self-control, then, in order to be effective, must be exercised upon the thoughts and feelings, especially upon the imagination, which fills so largely with its phantasms and day-dreams our else unoccupied hours. Let these hours be as few as possible; and let them be filled with thoughts which we would not blush to utter, with plans which we could actualize with the approving suffrage of all good men. The inward life which would dread expression and exposure, already puts the outward life in peril; for passion, thus inwardly nourished and fostered, can hardly fail to assume sooner or later the control of the conduct and the shaping of the character. Let the thoughts be well governed, and the life is emancipated from passion, and under the control of reason and principle.

Section IV.

Moral Self-Culture.

It is evident that, whatever a man's aims may be, the attainment of them depends more upon himself than upon any agency that he can employ. If his aim be extended influence, his words and acts have simply the force which his character gives them. If his aim be usefulness, his own personality measures in part the value of his gifts, and determines entirely the worth of his services. If his aim be happiness, the more of a man he is, the larger is his capacity of enjoyment; for as a dog gets more enjoyment out of life than a zoöphyte, and a man than a dog, so does the fully and symmetrically developed man exceed in receptivity of happiness him whose nature is imperfectly or abnormally developed. Now it is through the thorough training and faithful exercise of his moral faculties and powers that man is most capable of influence, best fitted for usefulness, and endowed with the largest capacity for happiness. History shows this. The men whose lot (if any but our own) we would be willing to assume, have been, without an exception, good men. If there are in our respective circles those whose position we deem in every respect enviable, they are men of preëminent moral excellence. We would not take—could we have it—the most desirable external position with a damaged character. Probably there are few who do not regard [pg 110] a virtuous character as so much to be desired, that in yielding to temptation and falling under the yoke of vicious habits they still mean to reform and to become what they admire. Old men who have led profligate lives always bear visible tokens of having forfeited all the valuable purposes of life, often confess that their whole past has been a mistake, and not infrequently bear faithful testimony to the transcendent worth of moral goodness. To remain satisfied without this is, therefore, a sin against one's own nature, a sacrifice of well-being and happiness which no one has a right to make, and which no prudent man will make.

Self-culture in virtue implies and demands reflection on duty and on the motives to duty, on one's own nature, capacities and liabilities, and on those great themes of thought, which by their amplitude and loftiness enlarge and exalt the minds that become familiar with them. The mere tongue-work or hand-*work, of virtue slackens and becomes deteriorated, when not sustained by profound thought and feeling. Moreover, it is the mind that acts, and it puts into its action all that it has—and no more—of moral and spiritual energy, so that the same outward act means more or less, is of greater or less worth, in proportion to the depth and vigor of feeling and purpose from which it proceeds. It is thus that religious devotion nourishes virtue, and that none are so well fitted for the duties of the earthly life as those who, in their habitual meditation, are the most intimately conversant with the heavenly life.

In moral self-culture great benefit is derived from example, whether of the living or the dead. Perhaps the dead are, in this respect, more useful than the living. In witnessing the worthy deeds and beneficent agency of a person of superior excellence, the tendency is to an over-exact imitation of specific acts and methods, which, precisely because they are spontaneous and fitting in his case, will not be so in the case of his copyist; while the biography of an eminently good man enlists our sympathy with his spirit rather than with the details of his life, and stimulates us to embody the same spirit in widely different forms of duty and usefulness. Thus the school-master who in Dr. Arnold's lifetime heard of his unprecedented success as an educator, would have been tempted to go to Rugby, to study the system on the ground, and then to adopt, so far as possible, the very plans which he there saw in successful operation,—plans which might have been fitted neither to his genius, the traditions of his school, nor the demands of its patrons. At the same time, the interior of Rugby School was very little known, the principles of its administration still less, to persons other than teachers. But Arnold's biography, revealing the foundation-principles of his character and his work, raised up for him a host of imitators of all classes and conditions. Price, who converted his immense candle-factory near London into a veritable Christian seminary for mutual improvement in knowledge, virtue, and piety, professed to owe his impulse to this [pg 112] enterprise solely to the “Life of Arnold,” and like instances were multiplied in very various professions throughout the English-speaking world. In fine, example is of service to us, not in pointing out the precise things to be done, but in exhibiting the beauty, loveliness, and majesty of moral goodness, the possibility of exalted moral attainments, and the varied scope for their exercise in human life. Even he whose example we, as Christians, hold in a reverence which none other shares, is to be imitated, not by slavishly copying his specific acts, which, because they were suitable in Judæa in the first century, are for the most part unfitting in America in the nineteenth century, but by imbibing his spirit, and then incarnating it in the forms of active duty and service appropriate to our time and land.

Finally, and obviously, the practice of virtue is the most efficient means of moral self-culture. As the thought uttered or written becomes indelibly fixed in the mind, so does the principle or sentiment embodied in action become more intimately and persistently an element of the moral self-consciousness.

Section I.

Duties To God.

While we cannot command our affections, we can so govern and direct our thoughts as to excite the [pg 114] affections which we desire to cherish; and if certain affections must inevitably result from certain trains or habits of thought, those affections may be regarded as virtually subject to the will, and, if right, as duties. It is in this sense that gratitude and love to God are duties. We cannot contemplate the tokens of his love in the outward universe, the unnumbered objects which have no other possible use than to be enjoyed, the benignity of his perpetual providence, the endowments and capacities of our own being, the immortality of our natural aspiration and our Christian faith and hope, the forgiveness and redemption that come to us through Jesus Christ, and the immeasurable blessings of his mission and gospel, without fervent gratitude to our infinite Benefactor. Nor can we think of him as the Archetype and Source of all those traits of spiritual beauty and excellence which, in man, call forth our reverence, admiration, and affection, without loving in Him perfect goodness, purity, and mercy. These attributes might, indeed, of themselves fail to present the Supreme Being to our conceptions as a cognizable personality, were it not that the personal element is so clearly manifest in the visible universe and in God's constant providence. But there are numerous objects, phenomena, and events in nature and providence which have—so to speak—a distinctive personal expression, so that the familiar metaphors of God's countenance, smile, hand, and voice do not transcend the literal experience of him who goes through life with the inward eye and ear always open.

The omnipresence of God makes it the dictate of natural piety to address Him directly in thanksgiving and prayer,—not, of necessity, in words, except as words are essential to the definiteness of thoughts, but in such words or thoughts as constitute an expression to Him of the sentiments of which He is fittingly the object. As regards prayer, indeed, the grave doubts that exist in some minds as to its efficacy might be urged as a reason why it should not be offered; but wrongly. It is so natural, so intrinsically fitting to ask what we desire and need of an omnipresent, omnipotent, all-merciful Being, who has taught us to call him our Father, that the very appropriateness of the asking is in itself a strong reason for believing that we shall not ask in vain. Nor can we ask in vain, if through this communion of the human spirit with the Divine there be an inflow of strength or of peace into the soul that prays, even though the specific objects prayed for be not granted. That these objects, when material, are often not granted, we very well know; yet we know too little of the extent of material laws, and of the degree to which a discretionary Providence may work, not in contravention of, but through those laws, to pronounce dogmatically that the prayers of men are wholly unrecognized in the course of events.

As the members of the same community have very numerous blessings and needs in common, it is obviously fitting that they should unite in public worship, praise, and prayer; and if this be a duty of [pg 116] the community collectively, participation in it must, by parity of reason, be the duty of its individual members. Public worship involves the fitness, we may even say the necessity, of appropriating exclusively to it certain places and times. Associations attach themselves to places so indelibly, that it would be impossible to maintain the gravity and sacredness of devotional services in buildings or on spots ordinarily devoted to secular purposes, either of business or of recreation. Nor could assemblies for worship be convened, otherwise that at predetermined and stated intervals; nor could their devotional purpose be served, were there not stated portions of time sequestered from ordinary avocations and amusements. Hence the duty—on the part of all who admit the fitness of public worship—of reverence for conventionally sacred places, and of abstinence from whatever is inconsistent with the religious uses of the day appropriated to worship.11

It remains for us to consider the obligations imposed by an acknowledged revelation from God. The position in which we are placed by such a revelation may best be illustrated by reference to what takes place in every human family. A judicious father's commands, precepts, or counsels to his son are of two kinds. In the first place, he lays emphatic stress on duties which the son knows or might know from his own sense of the fitting and the right, such as honesty, veracity, temperance. These duties will not be in reality any more incumbent on the son because they are urged upon him by his father; but if he be a son worthy of the name, he will be more profoundly impressed by their obligation, and will find in his filial love an additional and strong motive toward their observance. The father will, in the second place, prescribe either for his son's benefit or in his own service certain specific acts, in themselves morally indifferent, and these, when thus prescribed, are no longer indifferent, but, as acts of obedience to rightful authority, they become fitting, right, obligatory, and endowed with all the characteristics of acts that are in themselves virtuous. Now a revelation naturally would, and the Christian revelation does, contain precepts and commands of both these classes. It prescribes with solemn emphasis the natural virtues [pg 118] which are obligatory upon us on grounds of intrinsic fitness; and though these are not thus made any the more our duty, we have, through the teachings and example of Jesus Christ, a more vivid sense of our obligation, a higher appreciation of the beauty of virtue, and added motives to its cultivation derived from the love, the justice, and the retributive providence of God. The Christian revelation, also, contains certain directions, not in themselves of any intrinsic obligation, as, for instance, those relating to baptism and the eucharist. So far as we can see, other and very different rites might have served the same purpose with these. Yet it is fitting and right that these, and not others, should be observed, simply because the Divine authority which enacts them has a right to command and to be obeyed. Duties of this class are commonly called positive, in contradistinction from natural obligations. Both classes are equally imperative on the ground of fitness; but with this difference, that in the latter class the fitness resides in the duties themselves, in the former it grows out of the relation between him who gives and those who receive the command.

Section II.

Duties Of The Family.

The inviolableness and permanence of marriage are so absolutely essential to the stability and well-being [pg 119] of families, as to be virtually a part of the law of nature. The young of other species have but a very brief period of dependence; while the human child advances very slowly toward maturity, and for a considerable portion of his life needs, for both body and mind, support, protection, and guidance from his seniors. The separation of parents by other causes than death might leave it an unsolvable question, to which of them the custody of their children appertained; and in whichever way they were disposed of, their due nurture and education would be inadequately secured. The children might be thrown upon the mother's care, while the means of supporting them belonged exclusively to the father. Or in the father's house they might suffer for lack of a mother's personal attention and services; while if he contracted a new matrimonial connection, the children of the previous marriage could hardly fail of neglect, or even of hatred and injury, from their mother's successful rival, especially if she had children of her own.12

The life-tenure of the marriage-contract contributes equally to the happiness of the conjugal relation, in the aggregate. There are, no doubt, individual cases of hardship, in which an utter and irremediable incompatibility [pg 120] of temper and character makes married life a burden and a weariness to both parties. But the cases are much more numerous, in which discrepancies of taste and disposition are brought by time and habit into a more comprehensive harmony, and the husband and wife, because unlike, become only the more essential, each to the other's happiness and welfare. Where there is sincere affection, there is little danger that lapse of years in a permanent marriage will enfeeble it; while, were the contract voidable at will, there might be after marriage, as often before marriage, a series of attachments of seemingly equal ardor, each to be superseded in its turn by some new attraction. Where, on the other hand, the union is the result, not of love, but of mutual esteem and confidence, aided by motives of convenience, the very possibility of an easy divorce would render each party captious and suspicious, so that confidence could be easily shaken, and esteem easily impaired; while in those who expect always to have a common home the tendency is to those habits of mutual tolerance, accommodation, and concession, through which confidence and esteem ripen into sincere and lasting affection.

As in many respects each family must be a unit, and as the conflict of rival powers is no less ruinous to a household than to a state, the family must needs have one recognized head or representative, and this place is fittingly held by the husband rather than by the wife; for by the laws and usages of all civilized [pg 121] nations he is held responsible—except in criminal matters—for his wife and his minor children. But in the well-ordered family, each party to the marriage-contract is supreme in his or her own department, and in that of the other prompt in counsel, sympathy, and aid, and slow in dissent, remonstrance, or reproof. These departments are defined with perfect distinctness by considerations of intrinsic fitness, and any attempt to interchange them can be only subversive of domestic peace and social order.

The parent's duties to the child are maintenance in his own condition in life, care for his education and his moral and religious culture, advice, restraint when needed, punishment when both deserved and needed, pure example and wholesome influence, aid in the formation of habits and aptitudes suited to his probable calling or estate in his adult years, and provision for his favorable entrance on his future career. Some of these duties are obviously contingent on the parent's ability; others are absolute and imperative. The judicious parent will, on the one hand, retain his parental authority as long as he is legally responsible for his child; but, on the other hand, will train him gradually to self-help and self-dependence, and will concede to him, as he approaches years of maturity, such freedom of choice and action as is consistent with his permanent well-being.

The child's duty is unqualified submission to the parent's authority, obedience to his commands, and compliance with his wishes, in all things not [pg 122] morally wrong, and this, not only for the years of minority, but so long as he remains a member of his parent's family, or dependent on him for subsistence. Subsequently, it is undoubtedly his duty to consult the reasonable wishes of his parent, to hold him in respect and reverence, to minister assiduously to his comfort and happiness, and, if need be, to sustain him in his years of decline and infirmity.

Section III.

Veracity.

The duty of veracity is not contingent on the rights of any second person, but is derived from considerations of intrinsic fitness. If representations of facts, truths, or opinions are to be made, it is obviously fitting and right that they should be conformed to one's knowledge or belief; and no one can make representations which he knows to be false without the consciousness of unfitness and wrong.

The most important interests of society depend on the confidence which men repose in one another's veracity. But for this, history would be worth no more than fiction, and its lessons would be unheeded. But for this, judicial proceedings would be a senseless mockery of justice, and the administration of law and equity, the merest haphazard. But for this, the common intercourse of life would be invaded by incessant doubt and suspicion, and its daily [pg 123] transactions, aimless and tentative. Against this condition of things man is defended by his own nature. It is more natural to tell the truth than to utter falsehood. The very persons who are the least scrupulous in this matter utter the truth when they have no motive to do otherwise. Spontaneous falsehood betokens insanity.

The essence of falsehood lies in the intention to deceive, not in the words uttered. The words may bear a double sense; and while one of the meanings may be true, the circumstances or the manner of utterance may be such as inevitably to impose the false meaning upon the hearer. A part of the truth may be told in such a way as to convey an altogether false impression. A fact may be stated with the express purpose of misleading the hearer with regard to another fact. Looks or gestures may be framed with the intent to communicate or confirm a falsehood. Silent acquiescence in a known falsehood may be no less criminal than its direct utterance.

But has not one a right to conceal facts which another has no right to know? In such a case, concealment is undoubtedly a right; but falsehood, or equivocation, or truth which will convey a false impression, is not a right. This question has not unfrequently arisen with regard to anonymous publications. It might be a fair subject of inquiry, whether anonymous writing is not in all cases objectionable, on the ground that a sense of personal responsibility for statements given to the public would insure a [pg 124] more uniform regard to truth and justice, as well as greater care in the ascertainment of facts, and more mature deliberation in the formation of judgments and opinions. But if anonymous writing be justified, the writer is authorized to guard his secret by employing a copyist, or by covert modes of transmission to the press, or by avoiding such peculiarities of style as might betray him. But if, notwithstanding these precautions, the authorship be suspected and charged upon him, we cannot admit his right to denial, whether expressly, or by implication, or even by the utterance of a misleading fact. He undertook the authorship with the risk of discovery; he had no right to give publicity to what he has need to be ashamed of; and if there be secondary, though grave reasons why he would prefer to remain unknown, they cannot be sufficient to justify him in falsehood.

Is truth to be told to an insane person, when it might be dangerous to him or to others? May not he be deceived for his benefit, decoyed into a place of safe detention, or deterred by falsehood from some intended act of violence? Those who have the guardianship of the insane are unanimous in the opinion that falsehood, when discovered by them, is always attended with injurious consequences, and that it should be resorted to only when imperatively required for their immediate safety or for that of others. But in such cases the severest moralist could not deny the necessity, and therefore the right, of falsehood. But it would be falsehood in form, and [pg 125] not in fact. Truth-telling implies two conscious parties. The statement from which an insane person will draw false inferences, and which will drive him to an act or paroxysm of madness, is not truth to him. The statement which is indispensable to his safety, repose, or reasonable conduct, is virtually true to him, inasmuch as it conveys impressions as nearly conformed to the truth as he is capable of receiving.

Is falsehood justifiable for the safety of one's own life or that of others? This is a broad question, and comprehends a very wide diversity of cases. It includes the cases, in which the alternative is to deny one's political or religious convictions, or to suffer death for the profession of them. Here, however, there can be no difference of opinion. Political freedom and religious truth have been, in past ages, propagated more effectively by martyrdoms, than by any other instrumentality; and no men have so fully merited the gratitude and reverence of their race as those who have held the truth dearer than life.

But the form which the question ordinarily assumes is this: If by false information I can prevent the commission of an atrocious crime, am I justified in the falsehood? It ought first to be said, that this is hardly a practical question. Probably it has never presented itself practically to any person under whose eye these pages will fall, or in any instance within his knowledge. Nor can the familiar discussion of such extreme cases be of any possible benefit. On the other hand, he who familiarizes [pg 126] himself with the idea that under such a stress of circumstances what else were wrong becomes right, will be prone to apply similar reasoning to an exigency somewhat less urgent, and thence to any case in which great apparent good might result from a departure from strict veracity. Far better is it to make literal truth the unvarying law of life, and then to rest in the assurance that, should an extreme case present itself, the exigency of the moment will suggest the course to be pursued. Yet, in ethical strictness, falsehood from one self-conscious person to another cannot be justified; but we can conceive of circumstances in which it might be extenuated. There are no degrees of right; but of wrong there may be an infinite number of degrees. One straight line cannot be straighter than another; but we can conceive of a curve or a waving line that shall have but an infinitesimal divergence from a straight line. So in morals, there may be an infinitesimal wrong,—an act which cannot be pronounced right, yet shall diverge so little from the right that conscience would contract from it no appreciable stain, that man could not condemn it, and that we cannot conceive of its being registered against the soul in the chancery of heaven. Such may be the judgment which would properly attach itself to a falsehood by which an atrocious crime was prevented.

Promises belong under the head of veracity for a double reason, inasmuch as they demand in their [pg 127] making the truthful declaration of a sincere purpose, and in their execution an equal loyalty to the truth, even though it involve inconvenience, cost, or loss. The words of a promise may often bear more than one interpretation; but it is obviously required by veracity that the promiser should fulfil his promise in the sense in which he supposed it to be understood by him to whom it was made.

There are cases in which a promise should not be kept. The promise to perform an immoral act is void from the beginning. It is wrong to make it, and a double wrong to keep it. The promise to perform an act, not intrinsically immoral, but unlawful, should be regarded in the same light. If both parties were aware, when the promise was made, of the unlawfulness of the act, then neither party has the right to deem himself injured by the other. If, however, the promiser was aware of the unlawfulness of his promise, while the promisee supposed it lawful, the promiser, though not bound by his promise, is under obligation to remunerate the promisee for his disappointment or loss. If the act promised becomes unlawful between the making and the execution of the promise, the promise is made void, and the promisee has no ground of complaint against the promiser. Thus, if a man promised to send to a correspondent goods of a certain description at a certain time, and before that time the exportation of such goods were prohibited by law, he would be free both from his promise and from responsibility for its non-fulfilment.

A promise neither immoral nor unlawful, but made under a mistake common to both parties, and such as—had it been known—would have prevented the promise, is void. An extorted promise to perform an immoral or unlawful act cannot be binding. One has, indeed, no moral right to make such a promise, though if the case be one of extreme urgency and peril, extenuating circumstances may reduce the wrong to an infinitesimal deviation from the right; but, when the duress is over, no considerations can justify the performance of what it was wrong to promise. But a promise, not in itself immoral or unlawful, is binding, though made under duress. Thus, if a man attacked by bandits has had his life spared on condition of a pecuniary ransom, he is bound to pay the ransom; for at the moment of peril he thought his life worth all he promised to give for it, and it is neither immoral nor unlawful to give money, even to a robber. In a case like this, regard for the safety of others should, also, have weight; for in a country liable to such perils, the breach of a promise by one man might cost the community the lives of many.

Contracts are mutual promises, in which each party puts himself under specific obligations to the other. They are to be interpreted on the same principles, and to be regarded as void or voidable on the same grounds, with promises.

An oath is an invocation of the protection and [pg 129] blessing of God, or of his indignation and curse, upon the person swearing, according as his assertion is true or false, or as his promise shall be observed or violated. “So help you God,” the form in common use in this country, expresses the idea that underlies an oath,—so being, of course, the emphatic word. Oaths are exacted of witnesses in courts of justice in confirmation of their testimony, and of incumbents of public offices in pledge of their fidelity. They are required, too, in attestation of invoices, inventories of estates, returns of taxable property, and various financial and statistical statements made under public authority. There are, also, not a few persons of whom, and occasions on which an oath of allegiance to the government of the state or nation is demanded.

An oath does not enhance one's obligation to tell the truth, or to fulfil his promise. This obligation is entire and perfect in all cases, on the ground of intrinsic fitness, and of the known will and command of God. But the tendency of oaths is to establish in the minds of men two classes of assertions and promises, one more sacred than the other. He who is required under the solemn sanction of an oath merely to tell the truth or to make a promise in good faith, arrives naturally at the conclusion that he is bound to a less rigid accuracy or fidelity in ordinary statements or promises. The law of the land, as we have seen, bears an important part in the ethical education of the young; and by means of the legal distinction created between assertions or promises under [pg 130] oath and those made without that sanction, children and youth are trained to regard simple truth-telling and promise-keeping as of secondary obligation. This effect of legal oaths is attested by the prevalence of profane swearing, and by the frequent use of oath-like forms of asseveration, not regarded as profane, by persons of a more serious character. Except in the religious sects that abjure the use of oaths, nine persons out of ten swear more or less, and spontaneously confirm statements which are in the least degree strange or difficult of belief, or promises to which they wish to give an air of sincerity and earnestness, by the strongest oaths they dare to use. This comes of a felt necessity, which will exist as long as preëminent sanctity is attached to legal oaths.

Oaths are notoriously ineffective in insuring truth and fidelity. So far as their educational influence is concerned, they tend, as we have seen, to undermine the reverence for truth in itself considered, which is the surest safeguard of individual veracity. Then too, so far as reliance is placed upon an oath, the attention of those concerned is directed with the less careful scrutiny to the character for veracity borne by him to whom it is administered. In point of fact, men swear falsely whenever and wherever they would be willing to utter falsehood without an oath. In courts of justice, the pains and penalties of perjury undoubtedly prevent a great deal of false swearing; but precisely the same penalties are attached to the affirmation of persons who, on the ground of religious [pg 131] scruples, are excused from swearing, and they certainly are none too severe for false testimony, in whatever way it may be given. Notwithstanding this check, however, it is well known that before a corrupt or incompetent tribunal, an unprincipled advocate never finds any difficulty in buying false testimony; and even where justice is uprightly and skilfully administered, it is not rare to encounter between equally credible witnesses such flagrant and irreconcilable contradictions as to leave no room for any hypothesis other than perjury on one side or both. Perjury in transactions with the national revenue and with municipal assessors is by no means unprecedented among persons of high general reputation. False oaths of this description are, indeed, not infrequently preceded by some fictitious formalism, such as an unreal and temporary transfer of property; but this is done, not in order to evade the guilt of perjury, but, in case of detection, to open a technical escape from its legal penalty. Promissory oaths are of equally little worth. There is not a public functionary from the President of the United States to the village constable, who does not take what is meant to be a solemn oath (though often administered with indecent levity) to be loyal to the constitution of the country or state, and faithful in the discharge of his official duties. Yet what effect has this vast amount of swearing, if it be not to make perjury so familiar an offence as to be no longer deemed disgraceful? Not a bribe is taken by a [pg 132] member of Congress, not a contract surreptitiously obtained by a municipal official, not an appointment made to the known detriment of the public on personal or party grounds, without the commission of a crime, in theory transcendentally heinous, in practice constantly condoned and ignored. Nor can we be mistaken in regarding the sacrilege and virtual blasphemy resulting from the institution of judicial, assertory, and promissory oaths, as holding no secondary place among the causes of the moral decline and corruption of which we witness so manifest tokens.

To one who does not carry foregone conclusions of his own to the interpretation of the New Testament, it can hardly appear otherwise than certain that the Founder of Christianity intended to prohibit all oaths. His precept, “Swear not at all,” occurs in a series of specifications of maxims drawn from the standard morality of his day, under each of which he sets aside the existing ethical rule, and substitutes for it one covering precisely the same ground, and conformed to the intrinsic right as represented in his own spirit and life. “Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth; but I say unto you, that ye resist not evil.” “Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy; but I say unto you, Love your enemies.” The analogy of these and other declarations of the same series compels us to believe that when Jesus said, “Ye have heard that it [pg 133] hath been said by them of old time, Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths,” the precept which followed, “I say unto you, Swear not at all,” must have applied to the same subject-matter with the maxim which precedes it,—that Jesus must have intended to disallow something that had been previously permitted. If so, not trivial or profane oaths alone, but oaths made in good faith and with due solemnity must have been included in the precept, “Swear not at all.”13 It is historically certain that the primitive Christians thus understood the evangelic precept. They not only refused the usual idolatrous forms of adjuration, but maintained that all oaths had been forbidden by their Divine Lawgiver; nor have we any proof of their [pg 134] having receded from this position, until that strange fusion of church and state under Constantine, in which it is hard to say whether Christianity mounted the throne of the Cæsars or succumbed to their rule.

Section IV.

Honesty.

Honesty relates to transactions in which money or other property is concerned. In its broadest sense, it forbids not only the violation of the rights of individuals, but, equally, acts and practices designed to gain unfair emolument at the expense of the community, or of any class or portion of its members. It enjoins not merely the paying of debts and the performance of contracts, but rigid fidelity in every trust, whether private or public. Its ground is intrinsic fitness; and a sense of fitness will suggest its general rules, and will always enable one to determine his duty in individual cases. Its whole field may be covered by two precepts, level with the humblest understanding, and infallible in their application. The first relates to transactions between man and man,—Do that, and only that, which you would regard as just and right, if it were done to you. The second embraces concerns that affect numbers or classes of persons,—Do that, and only that, which, were you the responsible trustee and guardian of the public good, you would prescribe or sanction as just and right.

Notwithstanding the undoubted increase of dishonesty in recent times and its disastrous frequency, there can be no doubt that the majority of men are honest, and that the transactions in which there is no deception or wrong, largely outnumber those which are fraudulent. Were this not so, there could be neither confidence nor credit, enterprise would be paralyzed, business would be reduced to the lowest demands of absolute necessity, and every man would be the sole custodian of what he might make, produce, or in any way acquire. There can, therefore, be no element more directly hostile to the permanence, not to say the progress, of material civilization and of the higher interests which depend upon it, than fraud, peculation, and the violation of trust, in pecuniary and mercantile affairs, and with reference to public funds and measures. Yet there are methods, for which to a large degree honest men are responsible, in which dishonesty is created, nourished, and rewarded. In political life, if few office-holders are inaccessible to bribes, it is not because men of impregnable integrity might not, as in earlier times, be found in ample numbers for all places of trust; but because the compromises, humiliations, and concessions through which alone, in many of our constituencies, one can become the candidate of a party, are such as an honest man either would spurn at the outset, or could endure only by parting with his honesty. So long as men will persist in electing to municipal trusts those whose sole qualification is blind loyalty [pg 136] and unscrupulous service to a party, they can expect only robbery under the form of taxation; and, in fact, the financial revelations that have been made in the commercial metropolis of our country are typical of what is taking place, so far as opportunity serves, in cities, towns, and villages all over the land. As regards embezzlements, forgeries, and frauds in the management of pecuniary trusts, there can be no doubt that the number is greatly multiplied by the morbid sympathy of the public with the criminals, by their frequent evasion of punishment or prompt pardon after conviction, and by the ease with which they have often recovered their social position and the means of maintaining it.

In addition to this complicity with fraud and wrong on the part of the public, there are many ways in which dishonesty engenders, almost necessitates dishonesty. A branch of business, in itself honest, may be virtually closed against an honest man. The adulterations of food, so appallingly prevalent, will suggest an illustration of this point. There are commodities in which the mixture of cheaper ingredients cannot be detected by the purchaser, and which in their debased form can be offered at so low a price as to drive the genuine commodities which they replace out of the market; and thus the alternative is presented to the hitherto honest dealer to participate in the fraud, or to quit the business. The former course is, no doubt, taken by many who sincerely regret the seeming necessity.

Dishonesty not only injures the immediate sufferer by the fraud or wrong, but when it becomes frequent, is a public injury and calamity. In one way or another it alienates from the use of every honest man a very large proportion of his earnings or income. In this country, at the present time, we probably fall short of the truth in saying that at least a third part of every citizen's income is paid in the form of either direct or indirect taxation, and of this amount a percentage much larger than would be readily believed is pillaged on its way into the treasury or in its disbursement. Then, as regards bad debts (so-called), most of them fraudulently contracted or evaded, they are not, in general, the loss of the immediate creditor, nor ought they to be; he is obliged to charge for his goods a price which will cover these debts, and honest purchasers must thus pay the dues of the insolvent purchaser. Nor is this a solitary instance in which innocent persons are obliged to suffer for wrongs with which they seem to have no necessary connection. There are very few exceptions to the rule, under which, however, we have room but one more example. It is a well known fact that many American railways have not only cost very much more money than was ever laid out upon them, but are made, by keeping the construction-account long and generously open, to represent on the books of the respective corporations much larger sums than they cost,—especially in cases where the enterprise is lucrative and the dividends are limited by statute.

Now in some sections of our country a transaction of this kind—essentially fraudulent, under however respectable auspices—is a disastrous check on productive industry by the heavy freight-tariff which it imposes,—so heavy sometimes as to keep bulky commodities, as wheat and corn, out of the markets where, at a fair cost for transportation, they might find remunerative sale. Thus the very means devised for opening the resources of a region of country may be abused to their obstruction and hindrance. In fine, dishonesty in all its forms has a diffusive power of injury, and, on the mere ground of self-defence, demands the remonstrance and antagonism of the entire community.

While in most departments of conduct there is a wide neutral ground between the right and the condemnably wrong, there are matters of business in which there seems to be no such intermediate territory, but in which what is fair, honorable, and even necessary, is closely contiguous to dishonesty. Thus, except in the simplest retail business, all modern commerce is speculation, and the line between legitimate and dishonest speculation is to some minds difficult of discernment. Yet the discrimination may be made. A man has a right to all that he earns by services to the community, and these earnings may in individual instances reach an immense sum. We can easily understand how this may be, nay, must needs be the case with the very high salaries paid to master manufacturers. Such salaries would not be paid, did [pg 139] not the intelligence, skill, and organizing capacity of these men cheapen by a still larger amount the commodities made under their direction. The case is precisely similar with the merchant engaged in legitimate commerce. By his knowledge of the right times and best modes of purchasing, by his enterprise and sagacity in maintaining intercourse with and between distant markets, and by his outlay of capital and skill as a carrier of commodities from the place of their production to the place where they are needed for use, he cheapens the goods that pass through his hands by a greater amount than the toll he levies upon them, which—however large—is his rightful due.

Thus also, when, in anticipation of a scarcity of some one commodity, a merchant so raises the price as essentially to diminish the sale, he earns his increased profits; for an enhanced price is the only practicable check on consumption. For instance, if at the actual rate of consumption the bread-stuff on hand would be consumed a month before the new harvest could be made availing, no statistical statement could prevent the month of famine; but experienced grain-merchants can adjust the price of the stock in hand so as to induce precisely the amount of economy which will make that stock last till it can be replaced. They will, indeed, obtain a large profit on their sales, and will be accused by ignorant persons of speculating on scarcity and popular apprehension; but it will be due wholly to their prescience that the [pg 140] scarcity did not become famine, and the apprehension suffering; and they will have merited for this service more than the largest profits that can accrue to them.

The same principles will apply to speculation in stocks, which is in many minds identified with dishonest gain. Stocks are marketable commodities, equally with sugar and salt. They are liable to legitimate fluctuations in value, their actual value being affected, often by facts that transpire, often by opinions that rest on assignable grounds. Now if a man possess skill and foresight enough to buy stocks at their lowest rates and to sell them when they will bring him a profit, he makes a perfectly legitimate investment of his intelligence and sagacity, and in facilitating sales for those who need to sell, and purchases for those who wish to buy, and thus preventing capital from lying unused, or remaining inconvertible at need, he earns all that his business yields him by the substantial services which he renders.

The legitimate business of the merchant and the broker is contingent, as we have seen, on fluctuations in the market, and he who has the sagacity to foresee these fluctuations and the enterprise to prepare for them, derives from them advantage to which he is fairly entitled. But it is precisely at this point that the stress of temptation rests, and the opportunity presents itself for dishonesty in ways of which the laws take no cognizance, and on which public opinion is by no means severe. The contingencies which sagacity can foresee, capital and credit can [pg 141] often create. Virtual scarcity may be produced by forestalling and monopoly. When there is no actual dearth, even famine-prices may be obtained for the necessaries of life by the skilful manipulation of the grain-market. So too, in the stock-market, bonds and shares, instead of being bought or sold for what they are worth, of actual owners and to real purchasers, may be merely gambled with,—bought in large amounts in order to create a demand that shall swell their price, or so thrown upon the market as to reduce their price below their real value, and all this with the sole purpose of mutual contravention and discomfiture. By operations of this kind, not only is no useful end subserved, but the financial interests and relations of the community are injuriously, often ruinously, deranged; while not a few private holders of stock have their credit essentially impaired by a sudden fall of price, or by the inflation of nominal value are led into rash speculations.

In the cases cited it may be seen how closely the right abuts upon the wrong, so that one may over-pass the line almost unconsciously. Yet it is believed that a man may determine for himself on which side of the line he belongs. The department of business, or the mode of transacting business, which cannot by any possibility be of benefit to the community, still more, that which in its general course is of positively injurious tendency, is essentially dishonest, even though there be no individual acts of fraud. He [pg 142] really defrauds the public who lives upon the public without rendering, or purposing to render any valuable return; and if there be any profession or department of business to which this description applies, it should be avoided or forsaken by every man who means to be honest.

Among the many mooted cases in which the question of honesty is involved, our proposed limits will permit us to consider only that of usury14 (so-called). There can be no doubt that usury laws and the opinion that sustains them sprang from the false theory, according to which money was regarded, not as value, but merely as the measure of value. It is now understood that it owes its capacity to measure value solely to its own intrinsic value; that its paper representatives can equal it in purchasing power only when convertible at pleasure into coin; and that paper not immediately convertible can obtain the character of money only so far as there is promise or hope of its ultimate conversion into coin. It follows that money stands on the same footing with all other values,—that its use, therefore, is a marketable commodity, varying indefinitely in its fitting price, according as money is abundant or scarce, the loan for a long or a short period, and the borrower of more or less certain solvency. For ordinary loans the relations of supply and demand are amply competent to regulate the rate [pg 143] of interest, while he who incurs an extra-hazardous risk fairly earns a correspondingly high rate of compensation. There is, therefore, no intrinsic wrong in one's obtaining for the use of his money all that it is worth; and while we cannot justify the violation of any laws not absolutely immoral, dishonesty forms no part of the offence of the man who takes more than legal interest.15

Section V.

Beneficence.

We have a distinct consciousness of the needs of human beings. If we have not suffered destitution in our own persons, we yet should deprecate it. What we should dread others feel. The things which we find or deem essential to our well-being, many lack. We, it may be, possess them or the means of procuring them, beyond our power of personal use. This larger share of material goods has come to us, indeed, honestly, by the operation of laws inherent in the structure of society, and thus, as we believe, by Divine appointment. At the same time we are conscious, in a greater or less degree, of the benevolent affections. We are moved to pity by the sight or knowledge of want or suffering. Our sense of fitness [pg 144] is painfully disturbed by the existence of needs unsupplied, of calamities unrelieved. We cannot but be aware of the adaptation of such superfluity of material goods as we may possess to beneficent uses; and it can hardly be that we shall not rest in the belief that, in the inevitable order of society, it is the predetermined design and purpose of abundance to supply deficiency,—of the capacity of service, to meet the ever pressing demands for service. Beneficence, then, is a duty based on considerations of intrinsic fitness.

But beneficence must be actual, not merely formal, good-doing. Some of the most easy and obvious modes of supply or relief are adapted to perpetuate the very evils to which they minister, either by destroying self-respect, by discouraging self-help, or by granting immunity to positively vicious habits. The tendency of instinctive kindness is to indiscriminate giving. But there can be very few cases in which this is not harmful. It sustains mendicants as a recognized class of society; and as such they are worse than useless. They necessarily lose all sense of personal dignity; they remain ignorant or become incapable of all modes of regular industry, and it is impossible for them to form associations that will be otherwise than degrading and corrupting.

Of equally injurious tendency are the various modes of relief at the public charge. They affix upon their beneficiaries the indelible brand of pauperism, which in numerous instances becomes hereditary, and in not a few cases has been transmitted through [pg 145] several generations. Experience has shown that recovery from a condition thus dependent is exceedingly rare, even with the young and strong, who, had they been tided over the stress of need by private and judicious charity, would shortly have resumed their place among the self-subsisting members of the community. Public alms, while they are thus harmful to their recipients, impose upon society a far heavier burden than private charity. This is due in part to the permanent pauperism created by the system, in part to the wastefulness which characterizes public expenditures of every kind. By special permission of the national legislature, the experiment was tried in Glasgow, under the direction of Dr. Chalmers, of substituting private munificence for relief from the public chest, in one of the poorest territorial parishes of the city, embracing a population of ten thousand, and the result was the expenditure of little more than one third of what had been expended under legal authority. At the same time, the poor and suffering were so much more faithfully and kindly cared for, that there was a constant overflow of poverty from the other districts of the city into this. Public charity, when thoroughly systematized, is liable to the still stronger objection, that those who are able to give relief, in ceasing to feel the necessity, lose the will and the capacity of benevolent effort. Yet, were there no public provision for the poor, there would be cases of destitution, disease, disability, and mental imbecility, which would elude private charity, however [pg 146] diligent and generous. It must be remembered, too, that the same causes may at once enhance the demand for beneficent aid, and cripple its resources. Thus, in a conflagration, a flood, a dearth, or a commercial panic, while the stress of need among the poor is greatly intensified, the persons on whose charity, under ordinary circumstances, they could place the most confident reliance, may be among the chief sufferers. Thus, also, during the prevalence of infectious disease, a large proportion of those who are wont to perform the offices of humanity for the suffering, are withdrawn by their own fears, or those of their friends, from their wonted field of service. Then, too, there are various forms of disease and infirmity, which demand special treatment or a permanent asylum; and while institutions designed to meet these wants are more wisely and economically administered under private than under public auspices, the state should never suffer them to fail or languish for lack of subsidy from private sources. The most desirable condition of things undoubtedly is that—more nearly realized in France than in any other country in Christendom—in which the relief of the poor and suffering in ordinary cases, and the charge of charitable institutions to a large degree, are left to individuals, voluntary organizations, and religious fraternities and sisterhoods, while government supplements and subsidizes private charity where it is found inadequate to the need.

The demands upon beneficence are by no means [pg 147] exhausted, when material relief and aid have been bestowed. Indeed, alms are often given as a purchase of quitclaim for personal service. But the manifestation and expression of sympathy may make the gift of immeasurably more worth and efficacy. Considerate courtesy, delicacy, and gentleness are essential parts of beneficence. There are very few so abject that they do not feel insulted and degraded by what is coldly, grudgingly, superciliously, or chidingly bestowed; while the thoughtful tenderness which never forgets the sensibilities of those whom it relieves, inspires comfort, hope, and courage, arouses whatever capacity there may be of self-help, and is often the means of replacing the unfortunate in the position from which they have fallen.

Beneficence has a much broader scope than the mere relief of the poor and suffering. In the daily intercourse of life there are unnumbered opportunities for kindness, many of them slight, yet in their aggregate, of a magnitude that eludes all computation. There is hardly a transaction, an interview, a casual wayside meeting, in which it is not in the power of each person concerned to contribute in an appreciable degree to the happiness or the discomfort of those whom he thus meets, or with whom he is brought into a relation however transient. In all our movements among our fellow-men, it is possible for us to “go about doing good.” What we can thus do we are bound to do. We perceive and feel that this is fitting for us as social and as mutually dependent beings. We are conscious [pg 148] of the benefit accruing to us from little, nameless attentions and courtesies, often of mere look, or manner, or voice; and from these experiences we infer that the possibility, and therefore the duty of beneficence is coextensive with our whole social life.

The measure of beneficence, prescribed for us on the most sacred authority, “All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them,” needs only to be stated to be received as authentic. It supplies a measure for our expectations also, as well as for our duties. We have a right to expect from others as much courtesy, kindness, service as, were they in our place and we in theirs, we should feel bound to render to them,—a rule which would often largely curtail our expectations, and in the same proportion tone down our disappointments and imagined grievances.

There is another scriptural precept, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,” which might at first sight seem impracticable, yet which, as we shall see on closer examination, represents not only a possible attainment, but one toward which all who heartily desire and love to do good are tending. There are various conditions under which, confessedly, human beings love others as well as themselves, or better. What else can we say of the mother's love for her child, for whose well-being she would make any conceivable sacrifice, nay, were there need, would surrender life itself? Have we not also sometimes witnessed, a filial devotion equally entire and self-forgetting?

Nor are instances wanting, in which brothers and sisters, or friends who had no bonds of consanguinity, have shown by unmistakable deeds and sufferings that their love for one another was at least equal to their self-love. This same love for others, as for himself, is manifested by the self-devoting patriot, the practical philanthropist, the Christian missionary. There is ample ground for it in the theory of humanity which forms a part of our accustomed religious utterance. We call our fellow-men our brethren, as children of the same Father. So far as sayings like these are sentiments, and not mere words, there must be in our feelings and conduct toward and for our fellow-men in general a kindness, forbearance, self-forgetfulness, and self-sacrifice similar to that of which, toward our near kindred, we would not confess ourselves incapable. Here it must be borne in mind that the precepts of Christianity represent the perfection which should be our constant aim and our only goal, not the stage of attainment which we are conscious of having reached, or of being able to reach with little effort.

The love of enemies is also enjoined upon us by Jesus Christ. Is this possible? Why not? There are cases where one's nearest kindred are his worst enemies; and we have known instances in which love has survived this rudest of all trials. Were the Christian idea of universal brotherhood a profound sentiment, it would not be quenched by enmity, however bitter. Enmity toward ourselves need not affect our [pg 150] estimate of one's actual merit or claims. If we should not think the worse of a man because he was the enemy of some one else, why should we think the worse of him because he is our enemy? He may have mistaken our character and our dispositions; and if so, is he more culpable for this than for any other mistake? Or if, on the other hand, he has some substantial reason for disliking us, we should either remove the cause, or submit to the dislike without feeling aggrieved by it. At any rate we can obey the precept, “Do good to them that hate you;” and this is the only way, and an almost infallible way, in which the enmity may be overcome, and superseded by relations of mutual kindness and friendship.

Section I.

Patience.16

Patience is incumbent on us, only under inevitable sufferings or hardships, or under such as are incurred in the discharge of manifest duty, or for the benefit of our fellow-men. Needless sufferings or privations we are bound to shun or to escape, not to bear. The caution and foresight by which they may [pg 153] be evaded hold an essential place among the duties of prudence. Nor does reason or religion sanction self-imposed burdens or hardships of any kind, whether in penance for wrong-doing, as a means of purchasing the Divine favor, or as a mode of spiritual discipline.

Patience implies serenity, cheerfulness, and hopefulness, under burdens and trials. It must be distinguished from apathy, which is a temperament, not a virtue. There are some persons whose sensibilities are so sluggish that they are incapable of keen suffering, and of profound and lasting sorrow. We can hardly call this a desirable temperament; for its capacity of enjoyment is equally defective, and, as there is more happiness than misery in almost every life, he whose susceptibility of both pain and pleasure is quick and strong is, on the whole, the gainer thereby. The serenity of patience requires vigorous self-command. It is essential, first of all, to control, and as far as possible to suppress, the outward tokens of pain and grief. They, like all modes of utterance, deepen the feeling they express; while a firm and self-contained bearing enhances the fortitude which it indicates. Control must also be exercised over the thoughts, that they be abstracted from the painful experience, and employed on themes that will fill and task them. Mental industry is the best relief that mere philosophy has for pain and sorrow; and though it certainly is not a cure, it never fails to be of service as a palliative. Even when bodily distress or infirmity [pg 154] renders continuous thought impossible, the effort of recollection, or the employment of the mind in matters too trivial for its exercise in health, may relieve the weariness and lighten the stress of suffering. Nor let devices of this sort be deemed unworthy of a place even among duties; for they are often essential means to ends of high importance. They assert and maintain the rightful supremacy of the mind over the body; they supersede that morbid brooding upon painful experiences which generates either melancholy or querulousness; and they leave in the moral nature an unobstructed entrance to all soothing and elevating influences.

Cheerfulness in the endurance of pain and hardship must result in great part from the belief. If I regard myself as irresistibly subject to an automatic Nature, whose wheels may bruise or crush me at any moment, I know not why or how I could be cheerful, even in such precarious health or prosperity as might fall to my lot; and there could certainly be no reassuring aspect to my adverse fortune. But if I believe that under a fatherly Providence there can be no suffering without its ministry of mercy, no loss without its greater gain within my reach and endeavor, no hardship without its reflex benefit in inward growth and energy, then I can take and bear the inevitable burdens of this earthly life in the same spirit in which I often assume burdens not imposed upon me from without, for the more than preponderant benefit which I hope to derive from them. But if I have this faith [pg 155] in a benignant Providence which will not afflict me uselessly, I am under obligation not to let my faith, if real, remain inactive in my seasons of pain, loss, or grief. I am bound so to ponder on my assured belief, and on such proofs of it as may lie in my past experience, that it shall give its hue to my condition, its tone to my thought, its direction to the whole current of my sentiment and feeling. Thus may endurance be not only calm, but cheerful, because pervaded by the conviction that at the heart of all that seems evil there is substantial good.

Yet, it cannot be denied that there are life-long burdens and griefs,—incurable illnesses, irretrievable losses, bereavements that will never cease to be felt, and cannot be replaced. Especially in advanced years there are infirmities, disabilities, and privations, which cannot by any possibility have a resultant revenue equivalent to what they take from us; for in old age the growth of character is too slow to be worth the sacrifice which in earlier life may be more than compensated by the consciousness of spiritual enlargement and increase. How shall these burdens be borne cheerfully? They cannot, unless they be also borne hopefully. But if there be presented to the faith, beyond the earthly life, a future, the passage into which is to be made the easier by loss and sorrow here; if families are there to be reunited, and void places in the affections filled again; if worthy hopes, seemingly disappointed, are only postponed for a richer and happier fulfilment,—there is in that future [pg 156] exhaustless strength for solace and support under what must be endured here. Earthly trial must seem light and momentary in view of perfect and eternal happiness; and thus the hope that lays hold on an infinite domain of being is coined into utilities for the daily needs of the tried, suffering, afflicted, and age-bowed, supplying to patience an element without which it cannot be made perfect.

Section II.

Submission.

There are events, seemingly adverse, which in themselves are transient, and inflict no permanent discomfort, but which necessitate the surrender of cherished expectations, the change of favorite plans, it may be, the life-long abandonment of aims and hopes that had held the foremost place in the anticipated future. Here submission of some sort is a necessity. But the submission may be querulous and repining; it may be bitter and resentful; it may be stern and rigid. In the last of these types only can there be any semblance of virtue; and this last can be virtuous, only where inevitable events are attributed to Fate, and not to Providence. But if a wise and kind Providence presides over human affairs, its decrees are our directory. The very events which hedge in, mark out our way. The tree which has its upward growth checked spreads its branches; that which is [pg 157] circumscribed in its lateral expansion attains the greater height. The tendrils of the vine are guided by the very obstacles placed in its way. Thus, in human life, impassable barriers in one direction prescribe aims and endeavors in a different direction. The things that we cannot do determine the things that we ought to do. The growth which is impeded must give place to growth of a different type, and to us undoubtedly more wholesome, more congenial with our capacities, more conducive to our true well-being. What seem obstacles may be supports, giving the best possible direction to our active powers, and so training our desires and affections as to lead to higher happiness and more substantial good than could have otherwise been attained.

Submission, then, must be grounded in faith. The inevitable must be to us the appointment of Omniscient Love. In our childhood the very regimen and discipline that were least to our taste proceeded often from the wisest counsels, and in due time we acquiesced in them as judicious and kind, nor would we in the retrospect have had them otherwise. As little as we then knew what was best for our well-being in the nearer future, we may now know as to what is best for us in a remote future, whether in the present or in a higher state of being. All that remains for us is acquiescence, cheerful and hopeful, in a Wisdom that cannot err, in a Love which can will only the best of which we are capable.

Submission is not merely a passive, but equally [pg 158] an active virtue. Inevitable events impose imperative duties. In the direction which they indicate there is work for us, of self-culture, of kindness, of charity. Our characters can be developed, not by yielding, however cheerfully, to what seem misfortunes, but by availing ourselves of the opportunities which they present, in place of those of which they have deprived us. When the way we had first chosen is barred against us, we are not to lie still, but to move onward with added diligence on the way that is thus opened to us. If outward success is arrested and reverted, there is only the more reason for improving the staple of our inward being. If those dearest to us have passed beyond the reach of our good offices, there are the more remote that may be brought near, and made ours, by our beneficence. If our earthly life is rendered desolate, the affections, hopes, and aims thus unearthed may by our spiritual industry and thrift be trained heavenward. All this is included in full submission to the will of the Divine providence; for that will is not our loss, disappointment, or suffering, but our growth, by means of it, in quantity of mental and spiritual life, in capacity of duty, and in the power of usefulness.

Section III.

Courage.

Patience, as its name imports, is a passive quality; Submission blends the passive and the active; while [pg 159] Courage is preëminently an active virtue. Patience resigns itself to what must be endured; submission conforms itself to what it gladly would, but cannot reverse; courage resists what it cannot evade, surmounts what it cannot remove, and declines no conflict in which it is honorable to engage. It is obvious that the occasions for these virtues are widely different. Patience has its place where calm and cheerful endurance is the only resource; submission, where there must be voluntary self-adaptation to altered circumstances; courage, where there is threatened evil which strenuous effort can avert, mitigate, or subdue.

Courage is a virtue, only when it is a necessity. There is no merit in seeking danger, in exciting opposition, in courting hostility. Indeed, conduct of this description more frequently proceeds from persons who know themselves cowards and fear to be thought so, than from those who are actually possessed of courage. But there are perils, encounters, enmities, which cannot by any possibility be avoided, and there are others which can be avoided only by the sacrifice of principle, or by the surrender of opportunities for doing good, and which, therefore, to a virtuous man are inevitable.

The physical courage, commonly so called, which is prompt and fearless in the presence of imminent danger, or in armed conflict with enemies, may be, or may not be, a virtue. It may proceed from a mind too shallow and frivolous to appreciate the worth of [pg 160] life or the magnitude of the peril that threatens it; it may, as often in the case of veteran soldiers, be the result of discipline without the aid of principle; or it may depend wholly on intense and engrossing excitement, so that he who would march fearlessly at the head of a forlorn hope might quail before a solitary foe. But if one be, in the face of peril, at the same time calm and resolute, self-collected and firm, cautious and bold, fully aware of all that he must encounter and unfalteringly brave in meeting it, such courage is a high moral attainment. Its surest source is trust in the Divine providence,—the fixed conviction that the inevitable cannot be otherwise than of benignant purpose and ministry, though that purpose may be developed and that ministry effected only in a higher state of being. To this faith must be added a strong sense of one's manhood, and of his superiority by virtue of that manhood over all external surroundings and events. We are conscious of a rightful supremacy over the outward world, and deem it unworthy to succumb, without internecine resistance, to any force by which we may be assailed, whether that force be a power of nature or a wrongful assault from a fellow-man. It is the presence of this consciousness that wins our admiration for all genuine heroism, and the absence of it at the moment of need that makes cowardice contemptible.

There is a moral courage required in pursuing our legitimate course in life, or in discharging our manifest duty, notwithstanding straitnesses, hindrances, [pg 161] obstacles, to which the feeble and timid could not but yield. The constituent elements of this type of courage are precisely the same that are needed in the encounter with physical peril. In both cases it is equally unmanly to succumb until we have resisted to the utmost. But while physical courage can at best only insure our safety, moral courage contributes essentially to the growth of mind and character; and the larger the opportunity for its exercise, the greater will be the mass of mind, the quantity of character, the power of duty and of usefulness. Straitnesses develop richer resources than they bar. Hindrances nurture hardihood of spirit in the struggle against them, or in the effort to neutralize them. Obstacles, when surmounted, give one a higher position than could be attained on an unobstructed path. The school of difficulty is that in which we have our most efficient training for eminence, whether of capacity or of moral excellence. What are accounted inevitable evils are, when met with courage, only benefits and blessings, inasmuch as they bring into full and vigorous exercise the hardier muscles and sinews of the inner man, to measure strength with them or to rise above them.

Courage is needed in the profession and maintenance of the true and the right, when denied, assailed, or vilipended. Communities never move abreast in the progress of opinion. There are always pioneer minds and consciences; and the men who are in advance of their time must encounter obloquy at least, [pg 162] often persecution, loss, hardship, sometimes legal penalties and disabilities. Under such circumstances, there are doubtless many more that inwardly acknowledge the unpopular truth or the contested right, than there are who are willing to avow and defend their belief. Many are frightened into false utterance or deceptive silence. But there must be in such minds a conscious mendacity, fatal to their own self-respect, and in the highest degree detrimental to their moral selfhood. It demands and at the same time nurtures true greatness of soul to withstand the current of general opinion, to defy popular prejudice, to make one's self “of no reputation” in order to preserve his integrity unimpaired. Therefore is it that, in the lapse of time, the very men who have been held in the lowest esteem rise into eminence in the general regard, sometimes while they are still living, oftener with a succeeding generation. Martyrs in their day, they receive the crown of martyrdom when the work which they commenced is consummated. The history of all the great reforms which have been successive eras in the moral progress of Christendom is full of names, once dishonored, now among the foremost of their race.

This type of courage has, in less enlightened ages than our own, been made illustrious by those who have sacrificed life rather than deny or suppress beliefs which they deemed of vital moment. It can hardly be anticipated that the civilized world will recede so far into barbarism as to light again the [pg 163] death-flame of persecution; but it may be questioned whether the chronic sacrifice of all which men most desire in life requires or manifests less of heroism than in earlier times furnished victims for the arena or the stake.

In the moral hierarchy the first rank is probably due to the courage that inspires and sustains arduous and perilous philanthropic enterprise. The martyr for opinion suffers or dies rather than stain his soul with the positive guilt of falsehood; while the philanthropist might evade toil and danger without committing any actual sin, or making himself liable to censure or disapproval either from God or man. In the former case, hardship or danger is rendered inevitable by the felt necessity of self-respect; in the latter, by the urgency of a love for man equal or superior to the love for self. As examples of this highest type of courage, it may suffice to name Howard, whose labors for prison-reform were pursued at the well-known risk and the ultimate cost of his life; Florence Nightingale and the noble sisterhood inaugurated by her, who have won all the untarnished and undisputed laurels of recent wars on both sides of the Atlantic; and the Christian missionaries to savage tribes and in pestilential climates, who have often gone to their work with as clear a consciousness of deadly peril as if they had been on their way to a battle-field.

Section I.

Time.

A life-time is none too long for a life's work. Hence the fitness, and therefore the duty, of a careful economy of time. This economy can be secured only by a systematic arrangement of one's hours of labor, relaxation, and rest, and the assignment to successive portions of the day, week, or year, of their appropriate uses. The amount of time wasted, even by an industrious man who has no method or order in his industry, bears a very large proportion to the time profitably employed. In the needlessly frequent change of occupations, there is at each beginning and ending a loss of the working power, which can neither start on a new career at full speed, nor arrest itself without previous slackening. This waste is made still greater by the suspense or vacillation of purpose of those who not only have no settled plans of industry, but often know not what to do, or are liable, so soon as they are occupied in one way, to feel themselves irresistibly drawn in a different direction.

But in the distribution of time a man should be the master, not the slave of his system. The regular work and the actual duty of the moment do not always coincide. Due care for health, the opportunity for earned and needed recreation, the claims of charity, courtesy, and hospitality, in fine, the immediate urgency of any duty selfward, manward, or [pg 166] Godward, should always take precedence of routine-work however wisely planned. Obstinate adherence to system may lead to more and greater criminal omissions of duty than would be incurred, even in the spasmodic industry which takes its impulse from the passing moment. It must be remembered that timeliness is the essential element of right and obligation in many things that ought to be done, especially in all forms of charity, alike in great services, and in those lesser amenities and kindnesses which contribute so largely to the charm of society and the happiness of domestic life. There are many good offices which, performed too late, were better left undone,—courtesies which, postponed, are incivilities,—attentions which, out of season, are needless and wearisome.

Every day, every waking hour has its own duty, either its special work, or its due portion of one's normal life-work. Procrastination is, therefore, as unwise as it is immoral, or rather, it is immoral because it is unwise and unfitting. The morrow has its own appropriate duties; and if to-day's work be thrown into it, the massing of two days' good work into one exceeds ordinary ability. The consequence is, either that both days' works are imperfectly performed, or that part of what fitly belongs to the morrow is pushed farther on, and the derangement of duty made chronic. Thus there are persons who are always in arrears with their engagements and occupations,—in chase, as it were, after duties which they never lose from sight, and never overtake.

Hardly less grave, though less common, is the error of those who anticipate duty, and do to-day what they ought to do to-morrow. The work thus anticipated may be superseded, or may be performed under better auspices and with fewer hindrances in its own time; while it can hardly fail to interfere injuriously with the fit employment or due relaxation of the passing day. Moreover, the habit of thus performing work before its time at once betokens and intensifies an uneasy, self-distrusting frame of mind, unfavorable to vigorous effort, and still more so to the quiet enjoyment of needed rest and recreation. There are those, who are perpetually haunted by the forecast shadows, not only of fixed, but of contingent obligations and duties,—shadows generally larger than the substance, and often wholly destitute of substance.

Punctuality17 denotes the most scrupulous precision as to time,—exactness to a moment in the observance of all times that can be designated or agreed upon. In matters with which we alone are concerned, we undoubtedly have of right, and may often very fittingly exercise, the dispensing power. Thus, in the arrangement of our own pursuits, the clock may measure and direct our industry, without binding us by its stroke. It is often of more consequence that we finish what is almost done, than that we change our work because the usual hour for a change has arrived. But where others are concerned, rigid [pg 168] punctuality is an imperative duty. A fixed time for an assembly, a meeting of a committee or board of trust, or a business interview, is a virtual contract into which each person concerned has entered with every other, and the strict rules that apply to contracts of all kinds are applicable here. Failure in punctuality is dishonesty. It involves the theft of time, which to some men is money's worth, to others is worth more than money. It ought not to surprise us if one wantonly or habitually negligent in this matter should prove himself oblivious of other and even more imperative obligations; for the dullness of conscience and the obscure sense of right, indicated by the frequent breach of virtual contracts as to time, betoken a character too feeble to maintain its integrity against any strong temptation.

Section II.

Place.

The trite maxim, A place for everything, and everything in its place, so commends itself to the sense of fitness, as hardly to need exposition or enforcement; yet while no maxim is more generally admitted, scarce any is so frequently violated in practice. In duty, the elements of time and place are intimately blended. Disorder in place generates derangement in time. The object which is out of place can be found only by the waste of time; and the most [pg 169] faithful industry loses a large part of its value when its materials are wanting where they ought to be, and must be sought where they ought not to be.

Apart from considerations of utility, order is an æsthetic duty. It is needed to satisfy the sense of beauty. Its violation offends the eye, insults the taste. The æsthetic nature craves and claims culture. It has abundant provision made for it in external nature; but so large a part of life must be passed within doors, at least in a climate like ours, that it is starved and dwarfed, if there be not in interior arrangements some faint semblance of the symmetry and harmony of the universe. To effect this needs neither abundance nor costliness of material. A French man or woman will charm the eye at a cost which in England would be represented by bare and squalid poverty. A Parisian shop-window will make with a few francs' worth of goods an exhibition of artistical beauty which might challenge the most fastidious criticism. These effects are produced solely by prime reference to fitness of place,—to orderly arrangement,—to a symmetry which all can understand, and which any one might copy. Our very capacity of receiving gratification from this source is the measure of our duty in this regard. If with the simplest materials we can give pleasure to the soul through the eye by merely assigning its fit place to every object, order is among the plainest dictates of beneficence.

Order is essential to domestic comfort and well-being, [pg 170] and thus to all the virtues which have their earliest and surest nurture in domestic life. There are homes at once affluent and joyless, groaning with needless waste and barren of needed comfort, in which the idea of repose seems as irrelevant as Solomon's figure of lying down on the top of a mast, and all from a pervading spirit of disorder. In such dwellings there is no love of home. The common house is a mere lodging and feeding place. Society is sought elsewhere, pleasure elsewhere; and for the young and easily impressible there is the strongest inducement to those modes of dissipation in which vice conceals its grossness behind fair exteriors and under attractive forms. On the other hand, the well-ordered house affords to its inmates the repose, comfort, and enjoyment which they crave and need, and for those whose characters are in the process of formation may neutralize allurements to evil which might else be irresistible.

Section III.

Measure.

There are many objects, as to which the question of duty is a question of more or less. To this class belong not only food and drink, but all forms of luxury, indulgence, recreation, and amusement. In all these the choice lies between excess, abstinence, and temperance. The tendency to excess is intensely strong, when not restrained by prudence or principle. [pg 171] This tendency is by no means confined to the appetite for intoxicating liquors, though modern usage has restricted to excess in this particular the term intemperance, which properly bears a much more extended signification. There is reason to believe that there is fully as much intemperance in food as in drink, and with at least equally ruinous consequences as to capacity, character, health, and life,—with this difference only, that gluttony stupefies and stultifies, while drunkenness maddens; and that the glutton is merely a dead weight on the community, while the drunkard is an active instrument of annoyance and peril. There are probably fewer who sink into an absolutely beastly condition by intemperance in food than by intemperance in drink; but of persons who do not expose themselves to open scandal, those whose brains are muddled, whose sensibilities are coarsened, and whose working power is impaired by over-eating, are more numerous than those in whom similar effects are produced by over-free indulgence in intoxicating drinks. Intemperance in amusements, also, is not uncommon, and would undoubtedly be more prevalent than it is, were not the inevitable necessity of labor imposed on most persons from a very early period. In this matter the limit between temperance and excess is aptly fixed by the term recreation, as applied to all the gay and festive portions of life. Re-creation is making over, that is, replacing the waste of tissue, brain-power, and physical and mental energy occasioned by hard work. Temperance permits [pg 172] the most generous indulgence of sport, mirth, and gayety that can be claimed as needful or conducive to this essential use, but excludes all beyond this measure.

Abstinence from all forms of luxury and recreation, and from food and drink beyond the lowest demands of subsistence, has, under various cultures, been regarded as a duty, as an appropriate penance for sin, as a means of spiritual growth, as a token of advanced excellence. This notion had its origin in the dualistic philosophy or theology of the East. It was believed that the sovereignty of the universe was divided between the semi-omnipotent principles of good and evil, and that the earth and the human body were created by the evil principle,—by Satan or his analogue. Hence it was inferred that the evil principle could be abjured and defied, and the good principle propitiated in no way so effectually as by renouncing the world and mortifying the body. Fasting, as a religious observance, originated in this belief. It was imported from the East. The Hebrew fasts were not established by Moses; they were evidently borrowed from Babylon, and seem to have been regarded with no favor by the prophets. The Founder of Christianity prescribed no fast, nor have we any reason to believe that his immediate disciples regarded abstinence as a duty. Christian asceticism in all its forms is, like the Jewish fasts, of Oriental origin, and had its first developments in close connection with those hybrids of Christianity and Oriental philosophy of [pg 173] which the dualism already mentioned forms a prominent feature.

With regard to all objects of appetite, desire, and enjoyment, temperance is evidently fitting, and therefore a duty, unless there be specific reasons for abstinence. Temperance demands and implies moral activity. In the temperate man the appetites, desires, and tastes have their continued existence, and need vigilant and wise control, so that he has always work to do, a warfare to wage; and as conflict with the elements gives vigor to the body, so does conflict with the body add strength continually to the moral nature. The ascetic may have a hard struggle at the outset; but his aim is to extirpate his imagined enemies in the bodily affections, and when these are completely mortified, or put to death, there remains no more for him to do, and moral idleness and lethargy ensue. Simon Stylites, who spent thirty-seven years on pillars of different heights, had probably stupefied his moral faculties and sensibilities as effectually as he had crushed to death the appetites and cravings of the body. It must not be forgotten that the body no less than the soul is of God's building, and that in his purpose all the powers and capacities of the body are good in their place and uses, and therefore to be controlled and governed, not destroyed or suppressed. The mediæval saint, feeding on the offal of the streets, was unwittingly committing sacrilege, by degrading and imbruting an appetite for which God had provided decent and wholesome nutriment.

Temperance is better than abstinence, also, because the moderate use of the objects of desire is a source of refining and elevating influences. It is not without meaning that, in common speech, the possession or loss of the senses is made synonymous with mental sanity or derangement. By the temperate gratification of the senses the mind is sustained in its freshness, vigor, and serenity; while when they are perverted by excess, impaired by age, or deadened by disease, in that same proportion the mental powers are distracted, enfeebled, or benumbed. Taste, the faculty through which we become conversant with the whole realm of beauty, and than which devotion has no more efficient auxiliary, derives its name from what the ascetic deems the lowest animal enjoyment, which, however, has its range of the very highest ministries. The table is the altar of home-love and of hospitality, and there are clustered around it unnumbered courtesies, kindnesses, and charities that make a large part of the charm and joy of life. So far is thoughtfulness for its graceful and generous service from indicating a low type of character, that there is hardly any surer index of refinement and elegant culture than is furnished by the family meal. Similar remarks apply to the entire range of pleasurable objects and experiences. While there are none of them in which excess is safe, they all, when enjoyed in moderation, stimulate the mental powers, develop and train the æsthetic faculty, and multiply beneficial relations alike with nature and with society.

Temperance, rather than abstinence, is needed on grounds connected with social economy. Labor for the mere necessaries of life occupies hardly a tithe of human industry. A nation of ascetics would be a nation of idlers. It is the demand for objects of enjoyment, taste, luxury, that floats ships, dams rivers, stimulates invention, feeds prosperity, and creates the wealth of nations. It is only excess and extravagance that sustain and aggravate social inequalities, wrongs, wants, and burdens; while moderate, yet generous use oils the springs and speeds the wheels of universal industry, progress, comfort, and happiness.

But there are cases in which abstinence, rather than temperance, is a duty.

Past excess may render temperance hardly possible. From the derangement consequent upon excess, an appetite may lose the capacity of healthy exercise. In such a case, as we would amputate a diseased and useless limb, we should suppress the appetite which we can no longer control. Physiological researches have shown that the excessive use of intoxicating drinks, when long continued, produces an organic condition, in which the slightest indulgence is liable to excite a craving so intense as to transcend the control of the will.

Inherited proclivities may, in like manner, render temperance so difficult as to make abstinence a duty. It is conceivable that a nation or a community may, by the prevalence of excess in past generations, be characterized by so strong a tendency to intemperance [pg 176] as to render general abstinence a prerequisite to general temperance.

Abstinence may also become a duty, if to many around us our example in what we may enjoy innocently would be ensnaring and perilous. The recreation, harmless in itself, which by long abuse has become a source of corruption, it may be our duty to forego. The indulgence, safe for us, which would be unsafe for our associates, it may be incumbent on us to resign. The food, the drink which would make our table a snare to our guests, we may be bound to refrain from, though for ourselves there be in it no latent evil or lurking danger. This, however, is a matter in which each person must determine his duty for himself alone, and in which no one is authorized to legislate for others. It may seem to a conscientious man a worthy enterprise to vindicate and rescue from its evil associations an amusement or indulgence in itself not only harmless, but salutary; and there may be an equally strong sense of right on both sides of a question of social morality falling under this head. The joyous side of life must be maintained. The young, sanguine, and happy will at all events have recreations, games, festivities, and of these there is not a single element, material, or feature that has not been abused, perverted, or invested with associations offensive to a pure moral taste. To disown and oppose them all in the name of virtue, is to prescribe a degree of abstinence which can have the assent of those only who have outlived the capacity of enjoyment. [pg 177] The more judicious course is to favor, or at least to tolerate such modes of indulgence as may for the present be the least liable to abuse, or such as may in prospect be the safest in their moral influence, and by sanctioning these to render more emphatic and efficient the disapproval and rejection of such as are intrinsically wrong and evil.

Section IV.

Manners.

The ancients had but one word for manners and morals. It might be well if the same were the case with us,—yet with this essential difference, that while they degraded morals to the level of manners, a higher culture would lead us to raise manners to the level of morals. The main characteristics of good manners are comprised in the three preceding Sections. They are the observance, in one's demeanor and conduct toward others, of the fitnesses of time and place, and of the due and graceful mean between overwrought, extravagant, or fantastic manifestations of regard on the one hand, and coldness, superciliousness, or indifference on the other. Courtesies, like more substantial kindnesses, are neutralized by delay, and, when slow, seem forced and reluctant. Attentions, which in their place are gratifying, may, if misplaced, occasion only mortification and embarrassment, as when civilities befitting interior home-life [pg 178] are rehearsed for the public eye and ear. Nor is there any department of conduct in which excess or deficiency is more painfully felt,—a redundance of compliments and assiduities tending to silence and abash the recipient, while their undue scanting inflicts a keen sense of slight, neglect, and injury.

Politeness must, indeed, in order even to appear genuine, be the expression of sincere kindness. There is no pretence so difficult to maintain as the false show of genial and benevolent feeling. The mask cannot be so fitted to the face as not to betray its seams and sutures. Yet kindness is not of itself politeness. Its spontaneous expressions may be rude and awkward; or they may take forms not readily understood and appreciated. There are conventional modes of polite demeanor no less than of courteous speech. These modes may have no intrinsic fitness, yet they acquire a fitness from their long and general use; and while the mere repetition of stereotyped formulas whether in word or deportment is justly offensive, he who would have his politeness recognized and enjoyed must beware lest he depart too widely from the established sign-language of society. There is a brusquerie often underlying hearty kindness and good fellowship, which at the outset pains, wounds, and repels those brought within its sphere, and which the most intimate friends endure and excuse rather than approve.

Politeness is to be regarded as an indispensable duty. It is believed that from its neglect or violation [pg 179] more discomfort ensues than from any other single cause, and in some circles and conditions of society more than from all other causes combined. There are neighborhoods and communities that are seldom disturbed by grave offences against the criminal law, but none which can insure itself against the affronts, enmities, wounded sensibilities, rankling grievances, occasioned by incivility and rudeness. Moreover, there are persons entirely free from vice, perhaps ostentatious in the qualities which are the opposites of vices, and not deficient in charitable labors and gifts, who cultivate discourtesy, are acrid or bitter in their very deeds of charity, and carry into every society a certain porcupine selfhood, which makes their mere presence annoying and baneful. Such persons, besides the suffering they inflict on individuals, are of unspeakable injury to their respective circles or communities, by making their very virtues unlovely, and piety, if they profess it, hateful. On the other hand, there is no truer benefactor to society—if the creation of happiness be the measure of benefit—than the genuine gentleman or gentlewoman, who adds grace to virtue, politeness to kindness; who under the guidance of a sincere fellow-feeling, studies the fitnesses of speech and manner, in civility and courtesy endeavors to render to all their due, and in the least details that can affect another's happiness, does carefully and conscientiously all that the most fastidious sensibility could claim or desire.

Section V.

Government.

The establishment and preservation of order is the prime and essential function of government; the prevention and punishment of crime, its secondary, incidental, perhaps even temporary use. In a perfect state of society, government would still be necessary; for it would be only by the observance of common and mutual designations of time, place, and measure, that each individual member of society could enjoy the largest liberty and the fullest revenue from objects of desire, compatible with the just claims and rights of others. These benefits can, under no conceivable condition in which finite beings can be placed, be secured except by system, under a central administration, and with the submission of individual wills and judgments to constituted and established authority. A bad government, then, is better than none; for a bad government can exist only by doing a part of its appropriate work, while in a state of anarchy the whole of that work is left undone and unattempted.

Obedience to government is, then, fitting, and therefore a duty, independently of all considerations as to the wisdom, or even the justice of its decrees or statutes. If they are unwise, they yet are rules to which the community can conform itself, and by which its members can make their plans and govern [pg 181] their expectations, while lawlessness is the negation alike of guidance for the present and of confidence in the future. If they are unjust, they yet do less wrong and to fewer persons, than would be done by individual and sporadic attempts to evade or neutralize them. Nay, unwise and inequitable laws, to which the habits and the industrial relations of a people have adjusted themselves, are to be preferred to vacillating legislation, though in a generally right direction. Laws that affect important interests should be improved only with reference to the virtual pledges made by previous legislation, and so as to guard the interests involved against the injurious effects of new and revolutionary measures. The tariff regulations of our own country will illustrate the bearing of this principle. It forms no part of our present plan to discuss the mooted questions of free trade and protection. But in the confession of even extreme partisans on either side, the capital and industry of our people could never have suffered so much from any one tariff of duties, however injudicious, as they suffered for a series of years from sudden changes of policy, by which investments that had been invited by the legislation of one Congress were made fruitless by the action of the next, and manufactures stimulated into rapid growth by high protective duties, were arrested and often ruined by their sudden repeal. The stability of laws is obviously a higher good than their conformity to the theoretical views of the more enlightened citizens. Except under a despotism, laws are virtually an expression [pg 182] of the opinion or will of the majority; and laws which by any combination of favoring circumstances are enacted in advance of the general opinion, are always liable to speedy repeal, with a double series of the injurious consequences which can hardly fail to ensue immediately on any change.

But are there no limits to obedience? Undoubtedly there are. A bad law is to be obeyed for the sake of order; an immoral law is to be disobeyed for the sake of the individual conscience; and of the moral character of a particular law, or of action under it, the individual conscience is the only legitimate judge. Where the law of the land and absolute right are at variance, the citizen is bound, not only to withhold obedience, but to avow his belief, and to give it full expression in every legitimate form and way, by voice and pen, by private influence and through the ballot-box. But in the interest of the public order, it is his duty to confine his opposition to legal and constitutional methods, to refrain from factious and seditious resistance, to avoid, if possible, the emergency in which disobedience would become his duty, and in case his conscience constrains him to disobedience, still to show his respect for the majesty of law by quietly submitting to its penalty. The still recent history of our country furnishes a case in point. By the Fugitive-Slave Law—which the Divine providence, indeed, repealed without waiting for the action of Congress—the private citizen who gave shelter, sustenance, or comfort to a fugitive slave; who, [pg 183] knowing his hiding-place, omitted to divulge it, or who, when called upon to assist in arresting him, refused his aid, was made liable to a heavy fine and a long imprisonment. Now as to this law, it was obviously the duty of a citizen who regarded the slave as entitled to the rights of a man, to seek its repeal by all constitutional methods within his power. It was equally his duty to refrain from all violent interference with the functionaries charged with its execution, and to avoid, if possible, all collision with the government. But if, without his seeking, a fugitive slave had been cast upon his humane offices, the question then would have arisen whether he should obey God or man; and to this question he could have had but one answer. Yet his obedience to God would have lacked its crowning grace, if he had not meekly yielded to the penalty for his disobedience to the law of the land. It was by this course that the primitive Christians attested their loyalty at once to God and to “the powers that be,” which were “ordained of God.” They refused obedience to the civil authorities in matters in which their religious duty was compromised; but they neither resisted nor evaded the penalty for their disobedience. Similar was the course of the Quakers in England and America almost down to our own time. They were quiet and useful citizens, performing the same functions with their fellow-citizens, so far as their consciences permitted, and, where conscience interposed its veto, taking patiently the distraining of their goods, and the imprisonment of their bodies, [pg 184] until, by their blameless lives and their meek endurance, they won from the governments both of the mother country and of the United States, amnesty for their conscientious scruples.

There may be a state of society in which it becomes the duty of good citizens to assume an illegal attitude, and to perform illegal acts, in the interest of law and order. If those who are legally intrusted with executive and judicial offices are openly, notoriously, and persistently false to their trusts, to such a degree as to derange and subvert the social order which it is their function to maintain, good citizens, if they have the power, have undoubtedly the right to displace them, and to institute a provisional government for the temporary emergency. A case of this kind occurred a few years ago in San Francisco. The entire government of the city had for a series of years been under the control of ruffians and miscreants, and force and fraud had rendered the ballot-box an ineffectual remedy. No law-abiding citizen deemed his life or property safe; gross outrages were committed with impunity; and thieves and murderers alone had the protection of the municipal authorities. Despairing of legal remedy, the best citizens of all parties organized themselves under the direction of a Committee of Safety, forcibly deposed the municipal magistrates and judges, brought well-known criminals to trial, conviction, and punishment, reëstablished the integrity of suffrage, and resigned their power to functionaries lawfully elected, under whom and their [pg 185] successors the city has enjoyed a degree of order, tranquillity, and safety at least equal to that of any other great city on the continent.

The right of revolution undoubtedly is inherent in a national body politic; but it is an extreme right, and is to be exercised only under the most urgent necessity. Its conditions cannot be strictly defined, and its exercise can, perhaps, be justified only by its results. A constitutional government can seldom furnish occasion for violent revolutionary measures; for every constitution has its own provisions for legal amendment, and the public sentiment ripe for revolution can hardly fail to be strong enough to carry the amendments which it craves, through the legal processes, which, if slow and cumbrous, are immeasurably preferable to the employment of force and the evils of civil war. On the other hand, a despotic or arbitrary government may admit of abrogation only by force; and if its administration violates private rights, imposes unrighteous burdens and disabilities, suppresses the development of the national resources, and supersedes the administration of justice or the existence of equitable relations between class and class or between man and man, the people—the rightful source and arbiter of government—has manifestly the right to assert its own authority, and to substitute a constitution and rulers of its own choice for the sovereignty which has betrayed its trust. Under similar oppression, the same right unquestionably exists in a remote colony, or in a nation subject by conquest to a foreign [pg 186] power. If that power refuses the rights and privileges of subjects to a people over which it exercises sovereignty, and governs it in its own imagined interests, with a systematic and persistent disregard to the well-being of the people thus governed, resistance is a right, and may become a duty. In fine, the function of government is the maintenance of just and beneficent order; a government forfeits its rights when it is false to this function; and the rights thus forfeited revert to the misgoverned people.