Hints toward reforms, in lectures, addresses, and other writings

Front matter

*

LECTURES, ADDRESSES,

AND

Preface

CARLYLE, if i rightly remember, tells us of an impulsive Frenchman, who, in the very crisis of the great Revolution, when the frenzied public mind was intent on nothing short of the world's regeneration, and the due and ample feeding of the Guillotine as essential thereto, rose in the National Convention, full to bursting with an idea which he could 710 longer stifle, and vociferated, " Mr. President, I move that all the knaves ' and dastards be arrested !" — the very thing, you see, that the whole People were intent on, expressed in one very compact sentence. Where prisons could be found to hold the arrested, or jailers to guard them, — much more, provisions to subsist them — the mover had never stopped to calculate. He saw clearly that the fundamental evil, parent and fountain of all others, was the impunity allowed, the favor manifestly shown, to Knavery and Cowardice, and he was bent on a Radical Reform. A right good fellow, he was, too, at heart, I am sure, though not, perhaps, so practically sagacious, so readily cog nizant of the relations of means to ends, as he might have been. As lie grew older, he doubtless became cooler, sager, more 1* considerate, more conservative ; .yet one may well doubt whether he ever rose above the moral altitude of his single recorded inspiration,

Thif? apprehension of all the knaves and dastards, if you but consider, is one of tiie chief ends of Man's existence and effort on earth. A very arduous and tedious work, you may well pronounce it, especially when you observe that they who should combine to do it, including many of those who think they are doing it, with those who make a show of doing it, in the hope of imposing on their cotemporaries if not on themselves, are personally of the very class on whom the operation needs to be performed. It were a study to see the work really effected, and note how many who at the outset were flourishing handcuffs and trying to fit them to their neighbors' wrists, holding up ponderous jail-keys and calling out, ' This way, brother officers ! Here 's where the culprits are to be secured till further orders !' would find themselves wearing the ruffles and tenanting cells at the close, with eyes of blank amazement and visages of yard measure Not entirely a novel spectacle would this be, and yet deeply interesting and instructive.

Yes, 'the arrest of all the knaves and dastards' — or rather their thorough cure of knavery and cowardice — is a task given us to perform, and each must strive to do his part of it, even though with painful distrust that he himself is not wholly free from the vices he is laboring to eradicate. The more evil ho discerns or suspects in himself, the harder he should labor for the general abolition and extinction of evil, beginning with his own faults but not forgetting that others also deserve and require effort for their eradication. Perchance in the general warfare against injustice, meanness and wrong, the sincere soul finds the best attainable discipline and corrective for its own faults and errors.

The volume herewith presented is mainly composed of Lec tures prompted by invitations to address Popular Lyceums and Young Men's Associations, generally those of the humbler class, existing in country villages and rural townships. These Lectures were written in the years from 1842 to 1848 inclu sive, each in haste, to fulfil some engagement already made, for which preparation had been delayed, under the pressure of seeming necessities, to the latest moment allowable. A calling whose exactions are seldom intermitted for a day, never for a longer period, and whose requirements, already excessive, seem perpetually to expand and increase, may well excuse the dis traction of thought and rapidity of composition which it renders inevitable. At no time has it seemed practicable to devote a whole day, seldom a full half day, to the production of any of the essays contained in this volume. Not until months after the last of them was written did the idea of collecting and printing them in this shape suggest itself, and a hurried pe rusal is all that has since been given them. The Lecture here entitled ' The Organization of Labor' has been recast in part, to conform it to the existing state of facts ; the others are printed as they were delivered. Some of them are more florid in style than my present mood would dictate — that enti tled ' Human Life' especially — but they were faithful tran scripts of the mind whence they emanated at the time they were written, and I could not now change without destroying them. Should their diction provoke the critic's sneer, so be it :

I am tolerably case-hardened to the shafts of periodical wit, and shall receive any that may be in store for me with forti tude if not with complacency. I am quite aware that the Literary merits of this volume are inconsiderable indeed.

But this work has a loftier and worthier aim than that of fine writing. It aspires to be a mediator, an interpreter, a recon ciler, between Conservatism and Radicalism — to bring the two into such connection and relation that the good in each may obey the law of chemical affinity, and abandon whatever por tion of either is false, mistaken or outworn, to sink down and perish. It endeavors so to elucidate and commend what is just and practical in the pervading demands of our time for a Social Renovation that the humane and philanthropic can no longer misrepresent and malign them as destructive, demoralizing or infidel in their tendencies, but must joyfully recognize in them the fruits of past and the seeds of future Progress in the history of our Race. Defective and faulty as these ' Hints' may be found or judged, I feel confident that their tendency is to practical beneficence, and that their influence, however circumscribed, can not be otherwise than wholesome. In the absence of any reasonable ground of hope for personal gain or popularity, this trust must justify my intrusion upon the public, for the first and perhaps for the last time, as the author of a book.

The great truths that every human being is morally bound, by a law of our Social condition, to leave the world somewhat better for his having lived in it — that no one able to earn bread has any moral right to eat without earning it — that the obligation to be industrious and useful is not invalidated by the possession of wealth nor by the generosity of wealthy rela tives — that useful doing in any capacity or vocation is honorable and noble, while idleness and prodigality in whatever station of life arc base and contemptible — that every one willing to work has a clear social and moral right to Opportu nity to Labor and to secure the fair recompense of such Labor, which Society can not deny him without injustice — and that these truths demand and predict a comprehensive Social Re form based upon and molded by their dictates — these will be found faithfully if not forcibly set forth and elucidated in the following pages. Of course, as the Lectures were written independently of ^ach other, and with intervals of months and often years between them, the reader can hardly fail to find the same proposition restated, the same arguments adduced, the same illustrations employed, in two or more instances. Each Lecture is a separate thesis, deriving (I trust) confirmation and support from others, but not maintaining connection therewith. And ui the arrangement of the volume, so far as any plan was kopt in view, diversity and variety rather than continuity and consecutiveness were deemed desirable. I know how easily the public mind grows weary of dry discussion.

— Of the briefer Essays which conclude the volume, two only — that on ' Death by Human Law' and that on « Flogging in the Navy' — have been recast expressly for this work, and these but to give a more compact and methodical expression to views already submitted in other forms to the ordeal of public judgment. Four or five of these essays (mainly of a religious cast) were written from year to year for ' The Rose of Sharon* Annual, while the residue have in good part appeared at va rious times in the columns of The Tribune. These were generally suggested by some recent event, some apparent publie necessity, but I hope they will not be found antiquated nor out of place now and here.

— I trust this explanation of the impulse and character of these « Hints' will not be mistaken for an apology. I make none, arid solicit no lenity. I inculpate no partial friend, no delighted auditor, as instigating this volume. If there be no true worth in it, let the serious guilt of adding another to the deplorable multitude of books unfit to be read rest on my shoulders alone. But if it shall be found to utter any word calculated to irradiate, however faintly or transiently, the on ward pathway of our Race, then it will stand fully justified, though all the critics should unite to blast it by their fiercest maledictions or their more fatal silence. H. G.

NEW- YORK, April 20, 1850.

Contents

I.— THE EMANCIPATION OF LABOR : A Lecture PAGE 13

jr.— LIFE — THE IDEAL AND THE ACTUAL: A Lecture 51

III.— THE FORMATION OF CHARACTER : A Lecture 85

II. Life — The Ideal And The Actual

A LECTURE.

THIS dry, old mummy Life, so weird and withered, so parched and hlackened, so hackneyed and threadhare, shall I be able to draw from it a single idea or thought worthy of your patient regard ? Doubtless, there is warm blood yet lingering within the worn tenement, despite the incessant phlebotomy to which it has been subjected ; now and then by skillful leech, but always by swarms — ay, clouds — of minute, but indefatigable musquitoes. Should I fail utterly in my attempt, blame the operator, not the subject.

Human Life — unlike what we know of the lower creation, unlike what we fairly presume of the higher — is twofold, the Actual and the Ideal. Our daily deeds, our daily aspi rations, clash with each other — are the positive and negative poles of our being. Desire and Duty are the centrifugal and centripetal forces whose counterbalancing attractions hold us firm to our appointed orbit in the grand career of exist ence. A lofty discontent with the Actual is the main impulse to whatever is noble and heroic, as a mean dissatisfaction with physical conditions — a pining for richer food, or dress, or ampler service — is the incentive to the ignobler efforts of the million. A thoroughly contented man, could such be found, rnijjht have his uses. He would tend to moderate the fierceness of Aspiration and soothe the pangs of Disquiet, so prevalent in the human breast ; but a thoroughly con tented community would be a blank, a failure, a practical nonentity. China affords us some idea of it, by approxi mation ; and to what purpose those Three Hundred Millions of Chinese have lived these forty centuries, who beneath Omniscience can say ? The divergence of the Ideal from the Actual liberates the electricity of life.

This discrepancy pervades alike the cottage and the palace. The swart laborer discerns the conditions of hap piness only in the luxuries and dainties of the man of millions ; while Croesus, though he hugs his possessions, finds them a heavy and thorny burden. Ease, the grand desideratum, visits neither the rude pallet on which the one rests his toil-worn, aching limbs, nor the downy couch whereon the other nightly struggles with the twin demons Dyspepsia and Hypochondria, to whom his sumptuous fare and exemption from physical labor have rendered him a helpless prey. " O that I were a man !" cries the impatient child, " then I should no more be tyrannized over, and treated as a helpless idiot ! Childhood is allowed no scope — no respect ; its joys are few and trifling : haste, haste ! hour of my emancipation !" " O that I were a child again !" responds the man ; " that this load of consuming cares and duties were lifted from my burning, boiling, half-distracted brain ! Childhood ! glad season of innocence and bliss ! when simple life was pleasure, and any casual grief was quickly chased from the mind's dial by whole troops of dancing joys !" The king often looks on the beggar with something akin to envy — he would not exchange conditions, as a whole ; but he would give much, very much, to be rid, for a few days, of his tiresome, never-ending round of dull formalities, and absurd, exacting ceremonies, and unloved but inevitable associates, and harassing councils, and state dinners to be eaten with a headache instead of an appetite,

LIFE — THE IDE AT, AND THE ACTUAL. 53

and turbulent provinces, and unreasonable yet tenacious suitors, and murmuring ministers or allies, with death-war rants, demagogues, and a thousand shifting causes of life long disquiet. He would not be a beggar — pride and fear forbid — the beggar might do very well as a king, while the king would starve as a beggar — but, oh, what would he not give for a week's free roving through forest and heather, plucking the fruits fresh and juicy from the branches, instead of having them handed him, dead and tasteless, in golden vessels borne by supple slaves. Food they may still be, but that the palled appetite rejects ; fruits they ceased to be when Cod's sky no longer bent unobstructedly above them, and the ripple of the brook and sighing of the winds through the branches blent no longer with the blithe carol of the birds all around. Not even for a king will nature be defrauded ; and the truant boy, who, by long watching, has found the gold finch's nest, shall vainly consent to sell his prize to another. The nest and its twittering tenants may be carried to my lady's window and made fast there, but that which made their charm remains with the wood and its urchin ranger.*

It was no hyperbole, therefore, no windy pretense of ' Macedonia's madman,' when he said of the cynic of the tub, " If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes." Ft was his impulse to illustrate Manhood thoroughly in a par ticular direction ; lacking this impulse, he would have been driven to that different sphere illustrated with equal thorough ness by his stoical cotemporary. Perchance he dimly appre hended, through all the pomp and glitter and physical power and fulsome adulation surrounding him, that the philosopher who needed nothing, wished nothing, but his personal share of God's sunshine, was truly mightier than the lord of con tinents who could weep for more kingdoms to conquer. Possibly he discerned that, after a score or so of centuries,

* Of course, this idea must have been suggested by a passage in Emerson's iiiK» poem, " Each in All," though unconsciously.

the truth should be made apparent even to the common understanding, so that the era which witnessed the overthrow of Darius and Persia, should come to be regarded as the age, not of Alexander, but of Diogenes. But, even if this be ex alting too far the prescience of the son of Philip, let us never distrust his sincerity. He, too, was a veritable man in his perverse, bad way, and knew how to reverence simple Man hood. In a world of Alexanders, a Diogenes would never lack sunshine.

Have we not here an explanation of the charm which Literature exercises even over the most simple, unlettered, and prosaic ? The Arab circle gathered around the evening fire, hang breathless on the lips of the narrator, as he re counts the wondrous adventures of some Haroun, Saladin, or Rustam, because each listener is engrossed in the devel opment of qualities which he feels stirring within him, and which propitious circumstances might have ripened into deeds like those which challenge his admiration. In the wildest flight of imagination, the least credible adventure of paladin or genii-aided hero, we recognise some before undiscerned possibility of our own nature. The wonder-worker has not yet vaulted far above our heads ; he has ascended, indeed, but has drawn us up with him. I think the ultimate lesson of History is not dissimilar. What do we read with more delight, even in the polished, glittering pages of Gib bon or Robertson, than their narratives of the resignation of empire, the glad exchange of unrivaled power for powerless retirement and seclusion, by Dioclesian and Charles V. ? These are true heroes, because recognised by our hearts as brethren, and brethren of all mankind. Of narrow, one-sided persons — mere plowmen, pedagogues, generals or kings — the world is full enough ; but the True Man is universal — includes all these and more, and he it is we would have brought palpably before us — him we would grapple to our hearts with hooks of steel. " Equal to either fortune,"

was the talismanic expression of a mighty though erring spirit ; the thought would almost redeem a life of crime. It is this sentiment which has made, and will long make, Byron's gloomy heroes popular, in defiance of their misan thropy and utter want of conscience. Childe Harold and Lara have great faults — their lives have "little relish of salvation" in them — but they display a wide range of capa cities, and are at home in any environment of circumstances — they are men, and regard all around them with searching, manly gaze, looking straight through gauds and trappings to the unclothed heart, and testing all things by absolute standards. Misanthropic themselves, they yet inspire in us a deeper confidence and a loftier pride in humanity. We see their error, and avoid it if we choose ; the trust they in spire in the yet unfathomed capacities of our nature endures. The military leader who, having won by his ability a mighty and conclusive victory, shuns the parade of triumph, the roads strewn with flowers, and lined with grateful, adoring thousands, the civic banquets and the munificence of rescued kings, choosing rather to commune with himself in the deep forest, or retire to the dim cloister, there to ponder over Man's career and destiny — this is the hero our hearts yearn to, for by him they are chastened and exalted. He has added something, by exploration at least, to the common domain of our race. And thus our Washington, achieving no brilliant or astonishing success as a General or Statesman, vaulted at once to the topmost round of greatness by sin cerely, steadfastly refusing a continuance of power, exalting himself above all conquerors and autocrats by simply decli ning their company, and refusing to be accounted more or other than a man.

Rare indeed are the individuals who live exactly the life they would — whose Ideal and Actual exist in congenial, blended harmony. The son but seldom finds the conditions he seeks beneath the kindly, paternal roof; as Manhood opens to his gaze, he quits its warm shelter, and strikes off into the bleak world without, to find or make his future sphere and home. Art, Trade, Adventure, Professional Life, present their varied attractions, and each wins some ; while to others, the stormy, heaving Ocean wears a winning smile, and even grim and horrid War finds votaries. A dis content with the Actual is pouring Europe's surplus millions on the Western shore of the Atlantic, and thence over the whole surface of our continent. It is dotting the prairies of Illinois with the cabins of the. sons of New-England, and year by year the smoke of the squatter's lodge rises nearer and nearer the Rocky Mountains, wiiile hardy bands have already passed those formidable barriers, and are lining with their tents the shores of the mighty Pacific. Torrid heats and Arctic snows are lightly braved by thousands at all times, eagerly courting any change from the wearisome inanity of their past existence. Daily the city's crowded streets are pressed by thousands fresh from the plow and the rural workshop, who mind not how thronged the course on which they are entering, so that they can but secure a foot hold upon it, and Hope beckons to them from the distant goal. But intermingled with that host of eager, sanguine strivers, I see another, it seems an older, thinner, feebler band, who also have their trunks and portmanteaus beside them : they are the sated or oftener disappointed seekers of Wealth or Fame, who, having sped their arrow and spent their strength in the rugged rivalry of the mart, are seeking once more the country's green lanes and shady quiet — for health, perchance, or peace, or space to breathe, and time to think or pray — at all events for grassy graves. Not theirs the firm, elastic step, the gallant, sturdy bearing ; the soul intent on stern encounter and high achievement. No more is * Excelsior' their motto, but ' Implora pace;' — their youth's Ideal, whether realized or not, has faded, flickered, disappeared, giving place to one less lofty, more readily attainable. A snug cottage and a few pliant acres would now be happiness to him whose ambition once clutched at mines, or squares, or kingdoms. Who shall say that career has been a failure which, though it has won no golden store, has wrought this change of spirit ?

A discontent with the Actual is the mainspring of most that is noble in human endeavor. It spurs the traveler into the darkest dens of African barbarism or Tartar cruelty, and sends the Missionary to spend his life rapidly in sickly Bur mese huts or frozen Esquimaux lodges — joyfully dying that those he never saw till now may live for ever. The same spirit is now lighting the dens of loathsomest vice with the unwonted presence of angel purity and pity, and braving the filth and noisomeness of prisons, heedless of aught save the human hearts there shackled and pining for sympathy and freedom. Not even the scaffold's grim appointments can repel its fearless approaches, for wherever it sees Humanity, however scarred and ulcerated, however defiled or blasted by sin's ravages, it recognises the lineaments of a brother.

But a revolt against the tame insipidity of common life impels to evil as well as good — hurls the warrior, the slaver, the pirate, on his fell career, and blackens earth with carnage and ruin. It is not enough that man, as he is, should act up to the standard of his aspirations, for these also need to be corrected and exalted.

Two antagonist thoughts — Self and All — lie at the bot tom of the many warring tendencies in the breasts of man kind. Their symbols may be found in the geocentric and heliocentric theories of planetary motion. The advocates of the former appeal with success to the human senses uninstmcted by Science — to our eyes to bear witness that the Sun does truly move around the earth — to our position and that of all unfixed, gravitating bodies, to prove that the Earth is a vast plane and does not turn over day by day.

The evidence for this theory is such that its truth may be said to be intuitively perceived by every infant. But by-and-by comes along the Astronomer with his telescope, the Mathematician with his Geometry and Algebra, and reverses this conviction, enlarging the bounds of the visible Universe, and developing Laws of which the child knew nothing. Yet by far the larger part of mankind still live and die, as all formerly lived and died, in the undoubting belief that the Earth is daily circled by the Sun and Stars.

So with human character and effort. The child is born a citizen of the great Commonwealth of Man, but his entrance to it is through the narrow gate of the Family. His practical education there, during the most impressible and important period of his life, stamps into his mind three cardinal maxims, namely :

1st. To take special good care of himself in all cases, and shape everything he can control to his own enjoyment or uses ;

2d. To bestow whatever he does not thus need, or can not make available to his personal ends, on the narrow circle by which he is surrounded ;

3d. To give all beyond this — his blessing, for instance — to the general good of mankind.

Who can fail to see that the soul is distorted, shriveled, dwarfed, by this schooling ? — that the boy becomes a selfish, sensual, grasping man — in fact, only a politer beast of prey? The influences most immediately surrounding him from the cradle have all tended to this. Mine and Thine — the former to be prized and treasured — the latter to be ac quired or left to take care of itself — are the first distinctions impressed on his unfolding intellect. All within this narrow tenement, within these encircling fences, is ours, to be guarded, toiled for, beautified ; all without is others', to be obtained, envied, or disregarded. The stranger child who oversteps that magic ring in search of some fruit or herb, which, though enjoyed to satiety by us, would be luxury to him, is to be saluted with a stone or mastiff for his depraved temerity, and driven back to sate his gnawing hunger on the nettles of the highway. Now I am not quarreling with this as a fault of the individual, or a wanton exhibition of churl ishness. On the contrary, I recognise it as a necessary feature of a system — necessary while the system shall en dure. I am but regarding it in the light of its influence on the molding of Human Character. And in this light I do not hesitate to say that the Family and Social influences surrounding our youth are most unfavorable to the develop ment of manly, generous, sympathizing natures. These in fluences tend to educate the human race into two classes, thieves and constables — to foster an eternal antagonism be tween Wealth and Want — and throw every one into the attitude of a scout in an enemy's country, pressing cautiously forward with eyes piercing the thickets around him and rifle in the hollow of his arm. Here and there an individual tri umphs over all these influences, by the force of rare qualities or a singularly happy training, and shows us what Mankind might be, give them but fair play. But a race of Heroes of Humanity — a People elevated to Love and Universal Bles sing — such we have not and can not expect until the influ ences which overshadow Childhood, our modes of training youth for [Manhood, are radically changed.

And a race of Heroes was never more needed on earth than now. The old manifestations of Heroism have become effete or abhorrent, but the Nineteenth Century has need of many a Hercules, a Hector, an Achilles, who shall be all its own. Its Patriotism demands relief from the vain boasters, the self-seekers, the noisy braggarts, who, reckless of general misery and ruin, would fain involve nations wantonly in butchery and deadly hate, that they may chance to riot in the spoils of the universal devastation. Its religion pleads for release from the stifling bondages of Cant and Formalism b'O HINTS TOWARD REFORMS.

— from sour asceticism and a pestilent wrangling on points of non-practical belief. It protests against laying emphasis on any article of a creed which can not be embodied and evinced in a life. Its Philanthropy, pointing to new, vast, slightly-explored fields inviting effort for Human Well-being, calls on the generous, the hopeful, the ardent, to engage heartily in the work of securing to the next generation a bet ter world than that which we received from the last.

Ah ! if we had but a few regiments of life-enlisted volun teers in the service of Humanity, who, having first graduated their own physical wants to the standard of real necessity, should consecrate all their powers, mental and physical, to the persistent, unwearied, unshackled increase of Human Happiness and diminution of the causes of Suffering, the world could not remain where it is, but must move forward swiftly to that fairer future which can not be merely a Poet's dream. The history of Lot's sojourn in and escape from Sodom is not without its enduring lesson. States, cities, communities, are preserved from destruction, so long as pre served at all, by so much virtue as they embody ; when that wanes to insufficiency, the remnant may escape or linger, but the destruction of the depraved mass is inevitable. And, as the absolute lack of moral good is inexorable ruin, so is its unusual prevalence the sure occasion of strength and prosperity. There is no habitable portion of our globe where a thoroughly virtuous population might not reconstitute the Garden of Eden.

But to the formation of such a people, few influences con duce, while those which forbid it are incessant and innumer able. There has been little systematic training to heroism of any sort since the days of the Spartans. Our children are steeped in selfishness from their cradles, and nine-tenths of them are practically taught to dread Useful Labor as odious and degrading, and to regard idleness, with sensuality and ostentation, as the summitm bonum of life. I know that some-