Via moralis vincendi : or, The origin, basis, psychology, and elements of duty

PART I. GENERAL DUTIES. 1 Dedication

2 Preface.

I. The true foundation of morals is the divine law revealed, or indicated by

the physical, mental and psychical constitution of man.

II. Office of moral philosophy and classification of human duties.

III. The duty of the improvement of time, health, &c., time the basis of all

achievement.

IY. Of motives.

Y. Of the duty of diligence and parental duty to the young.

YI. The duty of self-knowledge aud self-culture.

YII. The duty of the support of institutions.

YIII. Three fundamental rules of limitation, and tests of duty in any case or contingency.

IX. Duty to one’s self as a corporal and psychical being. Care, temperance

and moderation in all things.

X. Of sexual love and the duties incideut to the family relation.

XI. Duty in the educational relations.

XII. Social duties.

XIII. Duties of children and dependants or inferiors or employees.

XIY. Business duties of employers, &c.

XY. The morals of timeliness.

XYI. Duty to our neighbor and neighborhood.

XYII. The citizens duty to his native or adopted land, to the State and his fellow-citizens as such.

XYIII. Benevolence an instinct; beneficence a duty; man’s duty to man everywhere.

XIX. Conscience the instinct of right and justice; universality of duty.

XX. The propensities, instincts and affections have laws and limitations. Their

sphere and objects.

XXI. Pleasure and pain, grief and mental agony dependant on obedience to or

violation of their laws. The beneficence of God.

IV.

Contents

XXII. Of the duty of practice and discipline of faculty.

XXIII. Of kindred vices and virtues.

XXIY. Of true morality and its basis—a summary of the fundamental princi¬ ples of this work.

Part II. Species Of Vices And Virtues

XXYII. Of the instinct of accumulation in virtuous or vicious activity.

XXYIII. The love of commendation or of fame as vice or virtue.

XXIX. Self-esteem, self-respect or ambition, virtuous or vicious.

XXX. Of the instinct of fear or caution—prudence a virtue or timidity a vice. XXXL The spirit of resistance or combat—its virtuous or vicious action. XXXII. Firmness, fortitude, perseverance, or waywardness and obstinacy. XXXIII The instinct of anger or destruction, its right or wrong action. XXXIY. OPsecretiveness or the instinct to conceal—its follies, decencies and

vices.

XXXY. Of attachment or friendship, wise, or wicked, or dangerous.

XXXYI. Of love of offspring, virtuous or foolish and criminal.

XXXYII. Of the sense of the sublime and beautiful.

XXXYIII. Of intellect and curiosity—its virtuous or moral and vicious action. XXXIX. Of observation, perception, memory and reading and duties therein. XL. Of the duty ot judgment and the faculty of reason and the knowlegde of causation.

XLI. Of self-love and selfishness.

XLII. Of the temptation and fall.

XLIII. Man’s inevitable and evitable destiny ; God’s service ; man’s respon¬ sibility.

Dedication

This book on the Law of Morals, is, with the profound respects of the author, dedicated to that exemplary Christian citizen, conceded leader of the bar of the State of New York, the eminent and just Judge, who, by his learning in the law of the land and his probity and right application of the elementary principles of justice, in a long life of practice at the bar, and as a Judge in cases in the Court of Appeals of the State of New York, has established stable rules and interpretations of legal justice, and achieved a fame rivalled by few and excelled by none—The Honorable George F. Comstock.

Preface

This book, with its brief chapters, is not intended to be an exhaustive system, of casuistry imagining or stating cases and applying to them the principles of morality, and deducing therefrom the case-law of morals, or what one ought to do or refrain from doing, in each particular case. Moral cases, like the cases in equity or law, are infinite in variety, and in circum¬ stances unlike. The subject of morals, so treated, would not be exhausted in any indefinite number of volumes, and could produce only works for reference; which few but the very rich could purchase, and none but men of literary leisure could afford to read.

The design of this book, is simply and briefly to ascertain and declare the true foundation and origin of morals or duty, and elaborately, perhaps, to state and illustrate such of the first principles of sound morals, as may be readily applied by man in the practical government of his instincts and affections, and may easily guide him through all the customary or extraordinary affairs and offices of daily life, to a well earned prosperity, happiness, honor and eminence in this world and to God and Heaven.

Whether the writer is or is not conversant with ancient or modern works on Moral Philosophy, can little concern the public, but the reader will see, that without repeating and com¬ batting the errors of others, the author has wrought out a con¬ sistent and harmonious system of morals, without direct refer¬ ence to the works of other moralists or their systems.

Having given much study and reflection to the subject during a life time, as indeed every man and woman must do, who has any aspiration beyond the lowest one of getting a living and pampering one’s self, the line of his studies, and their con¬ clusions, are briefly noted down in these pages, exhibiting at least some originality of view as to the origin, scope and true fundamental principles of the vast field of morality, and in-

PREFACE.

Vll.

augurating a system plain, clear, definite, just and liberal, yet one that cannot be lived up to without thought and a high degree of vigilance and diligence.

The fundamental theory of this book is, that all the obliga¬ tions of duty, like all the laws of physics, are ordained of God, and that each law of duty has its genesis in the God-ordained constitution of man and his relations to other things and beings, and that both are indicated and to be studied in the instinctive, affectional, mental, moral, spiritual and devotional nature of man, and in the light of the relations in which he is providen¬ tially placed and lives, and of which he is in some degree the author.

It is practically of far more momentous consequence, that man has ever before him the entire field of duty in his human and divine relations, and sound general rules and principles to guide him by their easy application in the contingencies of life, than that he should have or keep at hand any voluminous casuistical reasonings with their innumerable conclusions.

If the writer has succeeded in any degree in attaining his object, and has so arranged and expressed his ideas as to formu¬ late such rules and principles, and attract and hold the attention of readers generally from his first to and through his concluding chapters, he is not without hope that his work may do some good in the world; and whether it receive the plaudits which every writer aspires to, or not, if it is but effective to do good to its readers, its author will be content. If, on the other hand, it shall return any considerable gains to the author or publisher, the fact will be peculiarly grateful, because, that very fact, taken in connection with the character of the work, will furnish the most convincing proof of its merit, and that it is doing and has done a good work.

Having distributed the virtues and vices into classes and ©

genera, and these again into species, the chapters of Part I of the work, treat only of them by class and genera, and the gene¬ ral duties and principles, or tests of duty. Part II, from chapter 27 to 43 inclusive, treats of some of them by species, that is to say, treats of each several instinct, propensity, affection and spiritual or moral faculty and the intellect, in its several spheres and right and duly limited action as such, constituting a distinct

Vlll.

PREFACE.

virtue, and yielding its appropriate pleasure; and of the excess or perversion of each, as constituting vice, and effective to pro¬ duce their proper penalties of re-action, revulsion, grief, loss, outlawry, disease or death. As Part I strives to answer the questions, what are the bases, origin and general principles of the Moral Law and the classes and genera of duties; so Part II, strives to answer the question what are the species of virtue and vice, or the special office and law of each instinct, affection and faculty, except the several mental faculties, which pertains more to mental philosophy than to morals. The whole is designed to teach the general principles of victory in life’s warfare and to indicate the honorable path to prosperity, felicity and eminence.

Chapter I. The True Foundation Of Morals Is The Divine Law And Law-giver

The fundamental principle of morals as well as of religion, is briefly, that there is a God, 1 a Divine Creative, constitutive, and all ruling power, by whom all things are created, con¬ stituted and governed. The name of this Power, Jah, Je¬ hovah, Jove, Jupiter, Brahma, Allah, God, or under whatever name he ma}^ be substantially or essentially recognized, is of less consequence than a recognition of Him, as He really is in all His attributes or in His relations to us. Diverse as is the recog¬ nition of his attributes by the barbarous and civilized peo¬ ples, and by the ignorant or the cultivated races of mankind, yet the universal belief of mankind attests the existence of a creative and all ruling power—for which and its laws, evolution is but a new name—the miracle of the creation, the materiality and evanescence of the visible and known in its every con¬ stituted form and the existence, infinity and eternity of an unknowable, immutable, invisible Supreme Being ! 1

All science establishes that there are fixed laws of the universe and all that it contains, unchanged if not also unchange¬ able so far as man has been able to discover. 2 The existence of laws implies a law-giver, and their constancy implies His im¬ mutability. Whether this invisible power, the great first cause, produces effects by one volition impressed forever upon nature, material, or immaterial, or spiritual, or by a continuous unceas¬ ing exertion of the divine omnipresent will, is a curious specu¬ lation of <no practical moment; for, if that will usually or in¬ variably operates under like conditions and circumstances, the same results, this rule of divine action by and on matter and

VIA MORALIS VINCENDI.

mind, is for all human purposes, God’s law of mind or matter for mankind, to conform to or to violate, thereby derogating from or consummating his own prosperity and felicity or those of his associates.

Law is thus a rule of action impressed by the Supreme ruler upon or inhering in mind and matter, things material or things immaterial, things visible and things spiritual, things concrete or things abstract, 3 or whatsoever else he has created or permits to be made. It is self-evident that whatever is not self-existent or eternal must have been created or constituted, and the modern theories of evolution, when they seek to reach the ultimate cause of things, come but to the unknowable or God, whom finite intelligences can but imperfectly compre¬ hend. And it is equally self-evident, that whatever has been or may be constituted, has and must have a law of its con¬ stitution, existence and decay. We have no knowledge of any material thing that has not impressed upon it its law of existence, growth, preservation or continuance, decay or dissolution. Even abstract entities, like governments and cor¬ porations chartered by human law, exist by conformity to law natural as well as civil, or perish by violation of either. 4 We have no authority for a belief that the soul or spirit, the mind or the affections of man are free from the obli¬ gation of their own special law or system of laws. On the other hand the very existence of mental and moral philosophy, of sanity and insanity, and psychology in all ages, admits and recognizes the existence of laws applicable thereto, and capable of interpretation by man. And in truth and fact, every in¬ stinct propensity and faculty lias had, has and will continue to have a law of its existence, development, disease, decadence or aggrandizement. And as there is a law of the lake, the river and ocean, of the waters above and the waters below the firma¬ ment, and as law rules the growth and decline of visible things, so law must and does rule invisible realities, also, like the soul, or spirit, or spiritual elements of the psychical constitution of man. All these laws man is free to ignore or to know. For everything that is, there must not only be a divine law of its existence, but it must be a constant and unchanging one or system, or anarchy, confusion and chaos exist—law

TRUE FOUNDATION OF MORALS, ETC.

that by its constancy is discoverable by the mind of man or is revealed to him ; or he, the only intelligent earthly creature of God, must dwell forever in a chaos of confusion, doubt and un¬ certainty, the gloom of which no human intellect can penetrate, unless there be momentary special revelations of the divine will, to the whole human race. The latter condition certainly is not and never has been the condition of nature or of man. The world of mind, of matter, of business, of government, of physics or metaphysics, of substance or of soul, cannot be and has not been a realm of blind accident or of even divine caprice, or of constantly recurring miracle or miraculous reve¬ lation. The wisdom of Solomon, of Socrates and Plato, and Seneca and Cicero, is also the wisdom of to-day. 5 Miracle is ex¬ ceptional, but law has been and must be constant. Miracle may sanction a revelation, but law, capable through its con¬ stancy of discovery and formulation by finite intelligences, must be universal. And it does everywhere rule and has ruled all created and constructive things concrete and abstract.

In conformity or obedience to the divine law of their ex¬ istence consists the life and perpetuity of all that is : in non¬ conformity or disobedience its decline, decay, dissolution or death. And this is the primary fundamental law of penalty against non-conformity and disobedience Such was the pen¬ alty denounced against disobedience at the very day of man’s creation, and it is written in letters of light not only in his physical, but also in his mental, moral and religious constitu¬ tion. So by sin, wdiich is a disobedience of the moral law of God, came death premature and abnormal into a sinless and law-obeying world, and so sin and error have been until very recently, shortening from generation to generation the patri¬ archal and ante-diluvian term of human life.

As ignorance and disregard of physical laws afflict with disease and death of material living things and of man’s ma¬ terial body, so willful or ignorant violation of the moral or spir¬ itual laws of man’s nature and psychical constitution, not only affect for ill the body, but must more vitally affect the soul and bring premature and penal debility, decrepitude, disease and death to the soul or spirit of man.

VIA MORALIS VINCENDI.

The fulfillment of all duty in morals is to study, learn and obey the law of man’s constitution or nature, and of his rela¬ tions to the external world material and spiritual, temporal and eternal. Without knowledge of and careful conformity to laws inhering in the nature' and constitution of things ma¬ terial, whether existing in nature or fabricated by man, all these decay and perish. Wealth takes wings and is dissipa¬ ted, governments become oppressive, corrupt, anarchical, effete or vain, and are overthrown, states flourish then decline, totter into decrepitude and perish, whole nations enervate and corrupt and are swept away. The law of nature and of nature’s God is for all existences the survival and domination of that or them which in their kind retain the highest fitness, through due conformity to His higher law of vigor and health, to do his work or effect his purpose. 6 And as between the creator and his moral and intelligent creatures, whom he has created lords of all other things, this conformity to law is duty, and the moral law has reference to those duties, and distinguishes right from wrong, and is the ^interpretation and formulation of the rule of right and of man’s duty in his every condition and re¬ lation and wheresoever he may be. 7 This rule of right or di¬ vine moral law is co-extensive with whatsoever in man’s mental, moral or psychical constitution is capable of right use, or of abuse, or injury to one’s self or another.

Chapter II. Classification Of Human Duties-office Of

MORAL PHILOSOPHY.

Duties are, in general, of two genera, the one positive, and the other negative. The negative class of duties demands that we should not think and do certain thoughts or deeds, but ab¬ stain from thinking and doing them—the things forbidden be¬ ing perversions, excesses or misdirection of desire, instinct, fac¬ ulty or power. These are duties of restraint and self-denial. The positive class of duties, on the other hand, demands activi-

CLASSIFICATION OF HUMAN DUTIES, ETC.

ties right and normal, of every instinct, affection, faculty or moral and spiritual power, according to its right object, sphere and function, followed by appropriate corporal acts. And gen¬ erally, in order to enthrone the moral and spiritual faculties in their rightful supremacy, they require special culture to ad¬ vance their activity, promptitude and power.

Man’s <soul nature, and relations are triune. In the image of the triune God was he created.

He has instincts, appetites, affections common to all other mammals, indispensable to his physical existence and protection, and to the perpetuation of the human race upon the earth, that may become exalted into domineering and noxious passions, and also those which prompt him to beautify and adorn it. And here originates one class of duties, the earthly and worldly ones, which, usually self-trained from their urgent daily neces¬ sary activity, too generally dominate all others, to which of right they ought to be subordinate.

He is endowed with a variety of mental faculties, which, duly exercised, disciplined and informed, fit him and are effi¬ cient and sufficient to enable him to discover, comprehend and know in this life, not all that is to be known even of earth dur¬ ing life’s brief span, but all that is really necessary to be known by him in order to insure his happiness here and hereafter; whose office is to prompt and enable him to learn, among other things, the just limits of worldly appetite, instincts and affec¬ tions, their proper objects, sphere and bounds. And here arises a second class of duties having reference both to earth and to the hereafter, and to the laws of both, of all which the intel¬ lectual faculties are fitted to take some cognizance.

He has a will and conscience prompting to know and do the right; has a spiritual nature and an endowment of the faculties of wonder and veneration, which incline and enable him to hold communion with, and ally him to the spiritual natures of earth and Heaven, and make him, if he will, a partaker of the communion of saints, and can bring him into exalted communion with his Maker; and hence arise a third class of allied duties, the moral, spiritual and God revering and God obeying.

YIA MORALIS VINCENDI.

Each of these classes of duties have several species. And each species of duty consists of whatsoever duty pertains to or grows out of the possession of each several instinct, affection, appetite, intelligent faculty, or moral, or spiritual faculty, or power.

Leaving all the laws of his material being to be learned from the study of Physiology and Hygiene, moral philosophy deals only with those which concern duty as it affects or grows out of the soul of man and its attributes. His duties are of three classes, as his soul nature is triune. His spiritual consti¬ tution—especially the faculties of wonder or faith in the won¬ derful, and veneration—implies a duty and relation to the in¬ visible God and the spirit world, and prompts him to worship, prayer, praise, contemplation of Deity, His laws and works and obedience to the divine law of those higher relations. His moral faculties—especially conscientiousness and benevolence imply that he has duties to God, his creatures and to himself and prompt to the knowledge of rights and wrongs. And the gift of his intelligence implies that a principal duty, affecting alike himself and the creatures and created things around him, is to inform and train that intelligence to the utmost of his power and opportunity, and that neglect of opportunity and of this duty is a sin against the creator and a wrong to himself and his fellow beings. Ignorance itself, so far as it is due to the waste of time and neglect of power and opportunity, is an of¬ fence against one’s self, against his fellow man, and against God, and against whatsoever he entrusts to us that may be ill-affected or lost through ignorance, and is not often a misfortune to be pitied and condoned. And, as we find that no man escapes the penalty of a violation of the physical or physiological laws be¬ cause he is ignorant of them, so neither can we reasonably con¬ clude that man can, in this world at least, escape the penalties of a violation of moral and spiritual laws, simply because of his ignorance of them. In things moral and spiritual, as in the Municipal law, the maxim is fundamental Ignorantia nonexcusat legem . Man is predestined, under and by a law, uni¬ versal, benevolent and just, according to his own acts of omis¬ sion or commission. Hence he is bound by duty, and by pen¬ alty, and by a prudent concern for his own welfare, to study,

ECONOMY, USE AND IMPROVEMENTS, ETC.

learn, know and practice at least the laws of business, of so¬ ciety, of physiology and hygiene, of mind, of morals, and of that religion which teaches him his relation to the invisible and spiritual. And short as man’s earthly life is, and particularly that part of it which affords him great leisure for study, the primary duty of all intelligent beings, and especially of parents for their children, must be the close economy and due improve¬ ment of time, not only after maturity, but especially in child¬ hood and youth, and thence forward through all the eras of man’s existence.

Chapter III. The Economy, Use And Improvements Of Time, Health, Strength And Mind

Weighing duties in the scales of necessity and urgency, in relation to terrestrial or spiritual affairs, no one is of more con¬ stant and urgent glavity than the due conservation and economy of time, health, strength, mind and moral faculty ; all of which are loans or gifts of the Creator to man, to be employed in seeking to know, knowing and doing His will and work on earth and in Heaven. Every intelligent being has a work or mission, according to his original endowments, opportunity and his im¬ provement or neglect of them.

Why does man exist, and what is his responsibility as lord of the visible and terrestrial ? To what end is he more highly endowed than the worm he treads upon ? Is he here for naught but to live for the indulgence of his own ease and appetites, to lounge, sleep, eat, drink and die ? Such seems practically to be the idea of multitudes of the human race. Why then is he so marvellously endowed ? Even many of the lower animals and plants have their known beneficent uses, other than in their own existence and perishing. Does man alone, the crowning glory of the terrestrial creation, exist for himself only, for the mere gratification of his own animal appetite, or selfish ambition, * or for indulgence in the pleasures of sensuality ? Why then is

VIA MORALIS VINCENDI.

he endowed with dominion over all other things, with moral faculty, whose function is to rule his relation to beings and things external to himself, and with other faculties, which everywhere and in his every estate prompt a conception of his own spiritual nature and other spiritual essences and powers ? The conception of such beings may be crude and debased like those of the barbarian, the Indian or semi-civilized pagan; or purer or loftier, like those of the Jew or Christian ; but wliereever man has been found and studied, so as to be really compre¬ hended, he has not been found, either in ancient or modern times, without some belief or tradition of his own spirit as des¬ tined to a hereafter ; or of a spirit world, whither his deceased ancestors had journeyed after death, 7 and whither he was travel¬ ing, and of some Ruling Spirit who swayed the destinies of men and recompensed them according to the deeds done in the body. The almost universal belief has been, that this earthly state of being is but preliminary and preparatory to a better and more enduring one ; a state where he is to be informed, trained, dis¬ ciplined for a future world, in which he is to find happiness without alloy, or enduring penalty. Can such a belief so exist, unless the God implanted faculty exists to make it so univer¬ sal ? Can priest-craft instill ideas for the reception of which God has given no faculty ? Can the painter convey any idea of color to the congenitally blind ?

And if this be true, as nature and revelation alike declare, he must enter the realms of bliss, if he enter them at all, with a nature and soul disciplined and fitted, alike to be happy him¬ self and to contribute to the happiness of others. This he connot be fitted to do, without being here prepared, instructed and disciplined to know and to do right, and to love God supremely and his fellow man as himself.

But how brief is the period now alloted for the acquisition of all we need to know for this world, and for that other practical knowledge of duty and for that perfected discipline fitting for the happy hereafter. The ignorance that errs through life, and snarls and is unhappy in it, and brings inten¬ tionally or unintentionally, infelicity to others, must unless miraculously changed at death, err also in the hereafter. He who does not. or cannot know and practice the moral laws of

ECONOMY, USE AND IMPROVEMENTS, ETC. 17

right and benevolence here, how can he expect to enjoy and be happy in their practice hereafter ? He who cannot and does not love, worship and adore the Supreme here, how can he find happiness in contemplating, adoring and worshipping the Supreme Perfection hereafter ? He who through his selfishness cannot discern the wisdom and justice and goodness of God, in the wonders and laws of earth, how can he discern them in any other scene of the hereafter ? He who is the slave of sense and sensual pleasure, knowing no joy of righteousness nor spiritual felicity here, what fitness can he have for the joys of a state of being purely spiritual ? Man therefore has other duties to per¬ form here, than the training only of those powers and faculties, which simply fit him to live here and earn his subsistence and attain terrestrial objects, ambitions and enjoyments. And he, or she, who seeks to limit himself or herself or their children to such training, criminally errs.

Man must devote a very considerable portion of his time, of course, to the daily toils or arts which bring him his subsistance, and the studies which fit him for worldly employments more or less laborious, intellectual or exacting; but he must also learn and practice here the laws or principles of physiology, which are necessary to the preservation and maintenance of the physical health, without which he can do nothing ; and he must master so much of the laws of mind and its operations as are necessary to enable him to train, discipline, inform and energize his mental powers. And he must know enough of his moral in¬ stincts, their sphere and law and the law of morals, as shall enable him to rule his animal instincts, propensities, affec¬ tions, passions and actions, within the bounds of right; and he must seek and have such illumination to his spiritual faculties, and as to the laws of spiritual things, as to be able thereby to enforce and aid his obedience to the moral law, and to contri¬ bute here and hereafter to the highest happiness of himself and others, and to find a sublime pleasure in the contemplation and adoration of the power, majesty, wisdom and glory of the Great Author of all being, all whose works declare his power and wisdom ; while the innumerable sources of happiness opened up to all his creatures announce his beneficence.

But, without a thorough use and resolute due apportion-

B

VIA MORALIS VINCENDI.

ment of time, through infancy and maturer years, to all these varied uses and ends, man must fail, at least in all the higher and nobler objects and aspirations of his being. He is in a world, which, for the attainment of necessary worldly things and objects, makes urgent daily demands upon his time, talents and powers; how incessant in any particular avocation of life, none can tell so well as those who are prosperously engaged in it.

In the arduous struggle for the things of this life, for the supply of its needs, or in pursuit of its ambitions, or its gauds, he is, even when extraordinarily rapid and industrious, too often tempted to consume the whole time which God gives him. And if he gives rein to the perversions or excesses of those lower in¬ stincts of his nature which are essential to the perpetuity of his race here, or enters too eagerly upon the pursuit of sensual pleasures, he may speedily wreck, not only his own soul and body, but also his fortune and worldly prospects and reputation.