Volume Ii Part 8 (1/2)

Men ask what right have the churches to the shadow of authority which clings to them--to make creeds, and to bind and to loose! So it is a thing which has happened, that when a church excommunicates a young stripling for heresy, he turns round, fulminates his edict, and excommunicates the church. Said a sly Jesuit to an American Protestant at Rome, ”But the rites and customs and doctrines of the Catholic church go back to the second century, the age after the apostles!” ”No doubt of it,” said the American, who had also read the Fathers, ”they go back to the times of the apostles themselves; but that proves nothing, for there were as great fools in the first century as the last. A fool or a folly is no better because it is an old folly or an old fool. There are fools enough now, in all conscience. Pray don't go back to prove their apostolical succession.”

There are always some men who are born out of due season, men of past ages, stragglers of former generations, who ought to have been born before Dr. Faustus invented printing, but who are unfortunately born now, or, if born long ago, have been fraudulently and illegally concealed by their mothers, and are now, for the first time, brought to light. The age lifts such aged juveniles from the ground, and bids them live, but they are sadly to seek in this day; they are old-fas.h.i.+oned boys; their authority is called in question; their traditions and old wives' fables are laughed at, at any rate disbelieved; they get profanely elbowed in the crowd--men not knowing their great age and consequent venerableness; the shovel hat, though apparently born on their head, is treated with disrespect. The very boys laugh pertly in their face when they speak, and even old men can scarce forbear a smile, though it may be a smile of pity. The age affords such men a place, for it is a catholic age, large-minded, and tolerant,--such a place as it gives to ancient armor, Indian Bibles, and fossil bones of the mastodon; it puts them by in some room seldom used, with other old furniture, and allows them to mumble their anilities by themselves; now and then takes off its hat; looks in, charitably, to keep the mediaeval relics in good heart, and pretends to listen, as they discourse of what comes of nothing and goes to it; but in matters which the age cares about, commerce, manufactures, politics, which it cares much for, even in education, which it cares far too little about, it trusts no such counsellors, nor tolerates, nor ever affects to listen.

Then there is a philosophical tendency, distinctly visible; a groping after ultimate facts, first principles, and universal ideas. We wish to know first the fact, next the law of that fact, and then the reason of the law. A sign of this tendency is noticeable in the t.i.tles of books; we have no longer ”treatises” n the eye, the ear, sleep, and so forth, but in their place we find works professing to treat of the ”philosophy”

of vision, of sound, of sleep. Even in the pulpits, men speak about the ”philosophy” of religion; we have philosophical lectures, delivered to men of little culture, which would have amazed our grandfathers, who thought a shoemaker should never go beyond his last, even to seek for the philosophy of shoes. ”What a pity,” said a grave Scotchman, in the beginning of this century, ”to teach the beautiful science of geometry to weavers and cobblers.” Here nothing is too good or high for any one tall and good enough to get hold of it. What audiences attend the Lowell lectures in Boston--two or three thousand men, listening to twelve lectures on the philosophy of fis.h.!.+ It would not bring a dollar or a vote, only thought to their minds! Young ladies are well versed in the philosophy of the affections, and understand the theory of attraction, while their grandmothers, good easy souls, were satisfied with the possession of the fact. The circ.u.mstance, that philosophical lectures get delivered by men like Walker, Aga.s.siz, Emerson, and their coadjutors, men who do not spare abstruseness, get listened to, and even understood, in town and village, by large crowds of men, of only the most common culture; this indicates a philosophical tendency, unknown in any other land or age. Our circle of professed scholars, men of culture and learning, is a very small one, while our circle of thinking men is disproportionately large. The best thought of France and Germany finds a readier welcome here than in our parent land: nay, the newest and the best thought of England, finds its earliest and warmest welcome in America. It was a little remarkable, that Bacon and Newton should be reprinted here, and La Place should have found his translator and expositor coming out of an insurance office in Salem! Men of no great pretensions object to an accomplished and eloquent politician: ”That is all very well; he made us cry and laugh, but the discourse was not philosophical; he never tells us the reason of the thing; he seems not only not to know it, but not to know that there is a reason for the thing, and if not, what is the use of this bobbing on the surface?”

Young maidens complain of the minister, that he has no philosophy in his sermons, nothing but precepts, which they could read in the Bible as well as he; perhaps in heathen Seneca. He does not feed their souls.

One finds this tendency where it is least expected: there is a philosophical party in politics, a very small party it may be, but an actual one. They aim to get at everlasting ideas and universal laws, not made by man, but by G.o.d, and for man, who only finds them; and from them they aim to deduce all particular enactments, so that each statute in the code shall represent a fact in the universe; a point of thought in G.o.d; so, indeed, that legislation shall be divine in the same sense that a true system of astronomy is divine--or the Christian religion--the law corresponding to a fact. Men of this party, in New England, have more ideas than precedents, are spontaneous more than logical; have intuitions, rather than intellectual convictions, arrived at by the process of reasoning. They think it is not philosophical to take a young scoundrel and shut him up with a party of old ones, for his amendment; not philosophical to leave children with no culture, intellectual, moral, or religious, exposed to the temptations of a high and corrupt civilization, and then, when they go astray--as such barbarians needs must, in such temptations--to hang them by the neck for the example's sake. They doubt if war is a more philosophical mode of getting justice between two nations, than blows to settle a quarrel between two men. In either case, they do not see how it follows, that he who can strike the hardest blow is always in the right. In short, they think that judicial murder, which is hanging, and national murder, which is war, are not more philosophical than homicide, which one man commits on his own private account.

Theological sects are always the last to feel any popular movement. Yet all of them, from the Episcopalians to the Quakers, have each a philosophical party, which bids fair to outgrow the party which rests on precedent and usage, to overshadow and destroy it. The Catholic church itself, though far astern of all the sects, in regard to the great movements of the age, shares this spirit, and abroad, if not here, is wellnigh rent asunder by the potent medicine which this new Daniel of philosophy has put into its mouth. Everywhere in the American churches there are signs of a tendency to drop all that rests merely on tradition and hearsay, to cling only to such facts as bide the test of critical search, and such doctrines as can be verified in human consciousness here and to-day. Doctors of divinity destroy the faith they once preached.

True, there are antagonistic tendencies, for, soon as one pole is developed, the other appears; objections are made to philosophy, the old cry is raised--”Infidelity,” ”Denial,” ”Free-thinking.” It is said that philosophy will corrupt the young men, will spoil the old ones, and deceive the very elect. ”Authority and tradition,” say some, ”are all we need consult; reason must be put down, or she will soon ask terrible questions.” There is good cause for these men warring against reason and philosophy; it is purely in self-defence. But this counsel and that cry come from those quarters before mentioned, where the men of past ages have their place, where the forgotten is re-collected, the obsolete preserved, and the useless held in esteem. The counsel is not dangerous; the bird of night, who overstays his hour, is only troublesome to himself, and was never known to hurt a dovelet or a mouseling after sun-rise. In the night only is the owl destructive. Some of those who thus cry out against this tendency, are excellent men in their way, and highly useful, valuable as conveyancers of opinions. So long as there are men who take opinions as real estate, ”to have and to hold for themselves and their heirs forever,” why should there not be such conveyancers of opinions, as well as of land? And as it is not the duty of the latter functionary to ascertain the quality or the value of the land, but only its metes and bounds, its appurtenances and the t.i.tle thereto; to see if the grantor is regularly seized and possessed thereof, and has good right to convey and devise the same, and to make sure that the whole conveyance is regularly made out,--so is it with these conveyancers of opinion; so should it be, and they are valuable men. It is a good thing to know that we hold under Scotus, and Ramus, and Albertus Magnus, who were regularly seized of this or that opinion.

It gives an absurdity the dignity of a relic. Sometimes these worthies, who thus oppose reason and her kin, seem to have a good deal in them, and, when one examines, he finds more than he looked for. They are like a nest of boxes from Hingham and Nuremburg, you open one, and behold another; that, and lo! a third. So you go on, opening and opening, and finding and finding, till at last you come to the heart of the matter, and then you find a box that is very little, and entirely empty.

Yet, with all this tendency--and it is now so strong that it cannot be put down, nor even howled down, much as it may be howled over--there is a lamentable want of first principles, well known and established; we have rejected the authority of tradition, but not yet accepted the authority of truth and justice. We will not be treated as striplings, and are not old enough to go alone as men. Accordingly, nothing seems fixed. There is a perpetual see-sawing of opposite principles. Somebody said ministers ought to be ordained on horseback, because they are to remain so short a time in one place. It would be as emblematic to inaugurate American politicians, by swearing them on a weatherc.o.c.k. The great men of the land have as many turns in their course as the Euripus or the Missouri. Even the facts given in the spiritual nature of man are called in question. An eminent Unitarian divine regards the existence of G.o.d as a matter of opinion, thinks it cannot be demonstrated, and publicly declares that it is ”not a certainty.” Some American Protestants no longer take the Bible as the standard of ultimate appeal, yet venture not to set up in that place reason, conscience, the soul getting help of G.o.d; others, who affect to accept the Scripture as the last authority, yet, when questioned as to their belief in the miraculous and divine birth of Jesus of Nazareth, are found unable to say yes or no, not having made up their minds.

In politics, it is not yet decided whether it is best to leave men to buy where they can buy cheapest, and sell where they can sell dearest, or to restrict that matter.

It was a clear case to our fathers, in '76, that all men were ”created equal,” each with ”Unalienable Rights.” That seemed so clear, that reasoning would not make it appear more reasonable; it was taken for granted, as a self-evident proposition. The whole nation said so. Now, it is no strange thing to find it said that negroes are not ”created equal” in unalienable rights with white men. Nay, in the Senate of the United States, a famous man declares all this talk a dangerous mistake.

The practical decision of the nation looks the same way. So, to make our theory accord with our practice, we ought to recommit the Declaration to the hands which drafted that great State-paper, and instruct Mr.

Jefferson to amend the doc.u.ment, and declare that ”All men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, if born of white mothers; but if not, not.”

In this lack of first principles, it is not settled in the popular consciousness, that there is such a thing as an absolute right, a great law of G.o.d, which we are to keep, come what will come. So the nation is not upright, but goes stooping. Hence, in private affairs, law takes the place of conscience, and, in public, might of right. So the bankrupt pays his s.h.i.+lling in the pound, and gets his discharge, but afterwards, becoming rich, does not think of paying the other nineteen s.h.i.+llings. He will tell you the law is his conscience; if that be satisfied, so is he. But you will yet find him letting money at one or two per cent. a month, contrary to law; and then he will tell you that paying a debt is a matter of law, while letting money is only a matter of conscience. So he rides either indifferently--now the public hack, and now his own private nag, according as it serves his turn.

So a rich State borrows money and ”repudiates” the debt, satisfying its political conscience, as the bankrupt his commercial conscience, with the notion that there is no absolute right; that expediency is the only justice, and that King People can do no wrong. No calm voice of indignation cries out from the pulpit and the press and the heart of the people, to shame the repudiators into decent morals; because it is not settled in the popular mind that there is any absolute right. Then, because we are strong and the Mexicans weak, because we want their land for a slave-pasture and they cannot keep us out of it, we think that is reason enough for waging an infamous war of plunder. Grave men do not ask about ”the natural justice” of such an undertaking, only about its cost. Have we not seen an American Congress vote a plain lie, with only sixteen dissenting voices in the whole body; has not the head of the nation continually repeated that lie; and do not both parties, even at this day, sustain the vote?

Now and then there rises up an honest man, with a great Christian heart in his bosom, and sets free a score or two of slaves inherited from his father; watches over and tends them in their new-found freedom: or another, who, when legally released from payment of his debts, restores the uttermost farthing. We talk of this and praise it, as an extraordinary thing. Indeed it is so; justice is an unusual thing, and such men deserve the honor they thus win. But such praise shows that such honesty is a rare honesty. The northern man, born on the battle-ground of freedom, goes to the South and becomes the most tyrannical of slave-drivers. The son of the Puritan, bred up in austere ways, is sent to Congress to stand up for truth and right, but he turns out a ”dough-face,” and betrays the duty he went to serve. Yet he does not lose his place, for every dough-faced representative has a dough-faced const.i.tuency to back him.

It is a great mischief that comes from lacking first principles, and the worst part of it comes from lacking first principles in morals. Thereby our eyes are holden so that we see not the great social evils all about us. We attempt to justify slavery, even to do it in the name of Jesus Christ. The whig party of the North loves slavery; the democratic party does not even seek to conceal its affection therefor. A great politician declares the Mexican war wicked, and then urges men to go and fight it; he thinks a famous general not fit to be nominated for President, but then invites men to elect him. Politics are national morals, the morals of Thomas and Jeremiah, multiplied by millions. But it is not decided yet that honesty is the best policy for a politician; it is thought that the best policy is honesty, at least as near it as the times will allow.

Many politicians seem undecided how to turn, and so sit on the fence between honesty and dishonesty. Mr. Facing-both-ways is a popular politician in America just now, sitting on the fence between honesty and dishonesty, and, like the blank leaf between the Old and New Testaments, belonging to neither dispensation. It is a little amusing to a trifler to hear a man's fitness for the Presidency defended on the ground that he has no definite convictions or ideas!

There was once a man who said he always told a lie when it would serve his special turn. It is a pity he went to his own place long ago. He seemed born for a party politician in America. He would have had a large party, for he made a great many converts before he died, and left a numerous kindred busy in the editing of newspapers, writing addresses for the people, and pa.s.sing ”resolutions.”

It must strike a stranger as a little odd, that a republic should have a slaveholder for President five sixths of the time, and most of the important offices be monopolized by other slaveholders; a little surprising that all the pulpits and most of the presses should be in favor of slavery, at least not against it. But such is the fact.

Everybody knows the character of the American government for some years past, and of the American parties in politics. ”Like master, like man,”

used to be a true proverb in old England, and ”Like people, like ruler,”

is a true proverb in America; true now. Did a decided people ever choose dough-faces?--a people that loved G.o.d and man, choose representatives that cared for neither truth nor justice? Now and then, for dust gets into the brightest eyes; but did they ever choose such men continually?

The people are always fairly represented; our representatives do actually represent us, and in more senses than they are paid for.

Congress and the Cabinet are only two thermometers hung up in the capital, to show the temperature of the national morals.

But amid this general uncertainty there are two capital maxims which prevail amongst our huxters of politics: To love your party better than your country, and yourself better than your party. There are, it is true, real statesmen amongst us, men who love justice and do the right, but they seem lost in the mob of vulgar politicians and the dust of party editors.

Since the nation loves freedom above all things, the name democracy is a favorite name. No party could live a twelvemonth that should declare itself anti-democratic. Saint and sinner, statesman and politician, alike love the name. So it comes to pa.s.s that there are two things which bear that name; each has its type and its motto. The motto of one is, ”You are as good as I, and let us help one another.” That represents the democracy of the Declaration of Independence, and of the New Testament; its type is a free school, where children of all ranks meet under the guidance of intelligent and Christian men, to be educated in mind, and heart, and soul. The other has for its motto, ”I am as good as you, so get out of my way.” Its type is the bar-room of a tavern--dirty, offensive, stained with tobacco, and full of drunken, noisy, quarrelsome ”rowdies,” just returned from the Mexican war, and ready for a ”buffalo hunt,” for privateering, or to go and plunder any one who is better off than themselves, especially if also better. That is not exactly the democracy of the Declaration, or of the New Testament; but of--no matter whom.

Then, again, there is a great intensity of life and purpose. This displays itself in our actions and speeches; in our speculations; in the ”revivals” of the more serious sects; in the excitements of trade; in the general character of the people. All that we do we overdo. It appears in our hopefulness; we are the most aspiring of nations. Not content with half the continent, we wish the other half. We have this characteristic of genius: we are dissatisfied with all that we have done. Somebody once said we were too vain to be proud. It is not wholly so; the national idea is so far above us that any achievement seems little and low. The American soul pa.s.ses away from its work soon as it is finished. So the soul of each great artist refuses to dwell in his finished work, for that seems little to his dream. Our fathers deemed the Revolution a great work; it was once thought a surprising thing to found that little colony on the sh.o.r.es of New England; but young America looks to other revolutions, and thinks she has many a Plymouth colony in her bosom. If other nations wonder at our achievements, we are a disappointment to ourselves, and wonder we have not done more. Our national idea out-travels our experience, and all experience. We began our national career by setting all history at defiance--for that said, ”A republic on a large scale cannot exist.” Our progress since has shown that we were right in refusing to be limited by the past. The political ideas of the nation are transcendant, not empirical. Human history could not justify the Declaration of Independence and its large statements of the new idea: the nation went behind human history and appealed to human nature.