Man from his cradle to his grave

Front matter

aass B»^ElU

Book .Ql

MAN HH,

Contents

latroduction ^^

Yolition 146

Review of the Whole Subject 883

Preface

Having intended for some time past, to embody my thoughts upon the subject of mental and moral Philosophy, and of the government of man, into a small volume, bearing the title of "Man from his Cradle to his Grave"; but the cares of family and the busy scenes of life, not yet admitting of sufficient time, I have thought it well to first publish the outhnes in a pamphlet — that if there should be any solid objection to my positions, they may be discussed and corrected. My introduction will neccessarily be lengthy, containing the development and workings of mens^ minds from the earliest ages to the present time. This, I hope, however, will form no serious objection, as I have said something in every sentence, bearing upon the practical character of man, and worthy of serious consideration. My work, whether it may claim merit or not, will certainly be new and peculiarly unique. Seeing that more than two thousand years of labor in mental science and near the same in religious instruction had produced no practical influence whatever, either upon the minds or the morals of men, I have determined that it is owing, first, to a false position, and secondly, to an improper early education. As it will be seen, I propose to discord the study of the dead languages — Mathematics, Logic, Rhetoric and Belles-Letters, which have heretofore occupied almost the whole of the educational portion of our lives. These thmgs may enable us to make a pedantic and artistic exhibition of ourselves before our fellow-men, but never through all time, can they anymore enable us than it does the parrot or learned pig to make one step in science or in anything

1* that will meet the wants of Hfe ; nor can it avail us, when we appear naked before the bar of God after having spent a life in such follies, to the neglect of those great laws of our own being and the principles which bind us to God and to our fellow-men.

These are primordial truths far above the trite formulae of the schools and of the pedagogues' dry and inanimate details of common-place things which have a narrowing and stultifying influence upon the youthful mind.

Instead of amusing children with ghost-stories and teaching them to give way to their morbid and delusive feelings, we should instruct them who and what God is — who and what man is, and thus open their eyes to the phenomena- of the world in which "we live and move and have our being". Children from then* first lispings will ask who made the toy, the house, the tree, the horse ? And if indulged by kind lectures and fireside conversations, children at fifteen years of age would know more of the true relation of things as God has established them, than the graduates of the Universities now do.

This being my firm conviction, I maintain it, though feebly, yet with all the mind and earnest soul and strenght that God has given me.

Having the greatest abhorrence even to the semblance of hypocrisy, I shall write in the first person — I, myself — as being more natural and unsophisticated in conversational style than "we" — the false word of mock modesty. This "we'' is of American invention and reminds me of what a distinguished English writer says of the extreme modesty of American ladies, "who put pantalettes upon the naked legs of their pianos to prevent them from being seen".

Many of my strong points will be not only new, but original, and in regard to my mode of treating these, subjects of mental and moral philosophy, they are most assuredly sui generis.

I have never read an author upon the subject of metaphysics that did not at once obscure and perplex it by classifications, divisions, sub-divisions and technical refinings neither understood by the reader nor tlie writer. And this is the reason, that the very name of Metaphysics has fallen into disrepute among sound thinkers, as of no utility to the public, when in reality the laws of mind are so few and simple that they may be fully understood by a child in his first lessons.

In disregard, then, to the humbuggery of deep learning and of artistic taste in bookmaking, I have shaped mine in conformity with kind and simple nature — the author of its existence, and to which alone it can look for its favorable reception and future prosperity in this world, for in the next God will take care of his own.

The reason why I have selected the subject of volition for this Essay, is that it is the only one in the whole book, to which any exception can be taken, although in almost every case I disagree with all the authors whom I have ever read. I know that in maintaining this subject in its true relations as established by the Supreme, himself, that it requires a God-like fortitude and sublime virtue in the author to bear up against the outbreak of Puritanical prejudice that will be heaped upon him as an infidel and hell-deserving sinner, but the sacred armor of truth will be ample against all such billings-gate, violence, and reproach. Having a heart to feel for the suffering of every sensitive creature that God has made — from the fly of "Uncle Toby" up to man, I have spoken with severity against the authors of those horrid scenes of bloodshed and cruelty of man to man. Nor have I spared the intolerant and erring clergy, who have done more injury to the cause of religion by their immoral examples and distracted bickerings than scepticism and all other enemies besides. But when I shall have occasion to condemn them, it will not be en masse, for that would be to condemn religion, itself.

We have many truly pious and godly divines, who labor for the honor of God and the good of souls, and yet there are many foul hypocrites whose love of self and whose worldy passions have brought religion into disrespect. We also haye some noble and patriotic statesmen, who serve for the honor and prosperity of their country alone, and it is most grievously and ominously true that we are also encumbered by a swarm of canting demagogues — the veriest varlets of earth — who pounce upon the gangrenous masses as a vulture upon his prey and fatten upon the disordered condition of the body politic. Against such I shall also level my club.

In regard to my thoughts — be they worthy or unworthy — they are all my own — as I have no recollection of even having received a valuable or lasting idea from reading. For, out of near one hundred authors, whose works I have looked over, I have found but one single thought running through the whole of them. All the works of which I have any knowledge, are but stereotyped copies of the one original falsehood — the authors of Atheism, Deism, MateriaUsm, and Pantheism, who hold to the other extreme of error, are not here included in this one-idea system.

The controversy between Berkeley and Hume in regard to the actual existence of the objective and subjective world and by which Berkeley annihilated one and Hume the other — leaving us without either soul or body, shows the two extremes that still exist with shght shades of difference, only sufficient to give names to the various schools and systems since gotten up and now maintained. As General Jackson said in controversy with an adversary, " a coward can never write himself into a brave man ", nor can a book founded upon false principles argue itself into sound conclusions. A learned author might take the position that a child could beget itself and had no dependence upon either father or mother for its existence. A second author holds that the child has no power to create itself, nor has any innate or self-existence, but is created by the father ; and a third contends that they are both in great error — tl)e child depending exclusively upon the mother for its being. Now upon those false assumptions numerous large and learned books may be written by the various parties, and yet no solid or satisfactory results be obtained — which the sequence of many thousand years of metaphysical labors shows. Those positions are all false and no learning or labor of man can ever change them. My ground-right in this case is not from deep erudition or the hypotheses of schools, but from the simple observance of nature, (the laws of God,) that it requires the union of both father and mother to beget the child.

Now the laws of mind are just as simple as the laws of generation. Our ideas are conceived exactly as the child is, and delivered to the world in like manner. For, without such delivery they would never be made known to others.

And now with a full knowledge of these facts and with deep and solemn sincerity do I say to the reader that, to this philosophical error of a self-creating power in the mind may be traced all those difficulties both in religion and in moral science, which have perplexed the world for centuries past. If we will honestly grant the fact that we come into the world without innate or conjenital ideas, and that our after-ideas have no power to create or beget themselves, the whole enigma of mind is at once solved; for, we have nothing more to do than simply to observe, as in the case of the child how our ideas are begotten. Against the established and sealed law of God, however, men have rebelled and given to themselves a self-creating power — a power that the God of heaven cannot, himself, possess — as, for a thing, to act and bring itself into existence before itself had an existence, is wholly inconceivable. Hence God is held to be not a self-created 'jut a self-existent being from all eternity — and these fundamental facts I shall often recur to in the course of my essay — to impress it more fully upon the mind of the reader. To take from the mind those creative powers and bring it under the universal law of causation is no degradation to man, as has been asserted, for we are what we are by the will of God whose authority I hold as more honorable than the rebellious vanity of man. True, that in one case we are little gods of ourselves acting, as we may elect, by our own self-created and independent powers, while in the other we are brought under the laws of the great God's own appokitmcni. The reader will see before he is through, that this doctrine of a self-created will with powers to ,act without a motive — choose without a choice and decide without a difference, cannot be sustained — and further that the mind itself occupies identically the same position that the mother does in regard to conception, neither having anything more than a mere susceptibility — and that the external world is a father that begets through our senses every original idea of which the mind is susceptible. It is vanity more than piety and a love of self more than of truth that gives us all those supercillious and self-important conceits.

It has been objected that if we rest the phenomena of mind upon mere reason, and bring it under physical influences, that we reduce man to a level with the brute. True, but because the brute has a stomach and digestion like man, shall we refuse to eat and starve, and in like manner shall we, because of God has given to the brute senses through which alone their ideas enter, shut ours to the external world and the Paradise of delights that bounteous heaven has so profusely and kindly spread around us. It is from this self-sovereignty and vain bigotry of man, then, I again repeat it, that all the intolerance and cruelty of man to man has had its rise. And thus has the world for ages been distracted by our delusive feelings and vain assumptions that we are Lords of the world and that all Creation is for our benefit and must yield to our little views, though our views may be as different as our faces and the objects that impress us. And thus it is that those arrogant upstarts have ever opposed the knowledge of God and of his will as received through our senses and by the light and laws of nature of which God certainly is the author and cannot mislead us.

It being taught by such vain bigots as above spoken of that we possess internal and original powers independent of our brute senses and of the external world, and that those powers are above all reason and to be obeyed as the divine oracles and sovereign arbiters of men's actions, I must be indulged a little farther in exposing such sacrilegious and mischievous principles. It is this doctrine of being led by our internal feelings or promptings of a divine conscience that begets all the bitter feelings and feuds between neighbor and neighbor, the legal disputes — the Church divisions, and in short it is the author of that Satanic intolerance and persecution of man by man — amounting to more than all the other grievances of life, besides. If the Devil has any agency in the opinions and actions of man, this is certainly his strong and favorite hold upon the human mind. By this feeling he reduced Eve, and by it he has sustained the eternal bickerings and discord in the church of God. If we will grant the fact, that we are differently organized and that our feelings and opinions are prompted by the unavoidable circumstances, under which we are placed, we shall be inspu'ed with a truly Christian spirit of forbearance and forgiveness one to another, while on the contrary just so long as we are taught to believe that we have within us a divine and infallible prompter, we will be assured that we are right and that all others who may disagree with us are in wilful and punishable errors. Satan has ever flattered the vanity of man and puffed him up with the belief, that he is a God within himself and not subject to those fixed and fatal laws by which all the other departments of God's vast Universe are harmoniously governed, and hence the ignorant and arrogant assumption, that we have power to frustrate God's immutable and eternal designs and yet that we are favorites of God — that he has made all things throughout all time for our special benefit, and yet that we have kept him in a perpetual fret by undoing or causing him to undo all he ever did and to keep up a long and doubtful struggle between God and man for supremacy. Demented and rebellious, indeed, must be the man, who can be reduced by such supercillious and contemptible thoughts. Hence it is that I disbelieve those records of man in the Bible that it regretted God sorely, that he ever created man or that he ever swore in his wrath to reverse his own designs. If man can be brought to see himself aright, he will know that he is but a fated link in the eternal cham of Causality — that all things originate and terminate in God, who gave the first impulse to life and motion and who holds firm and fast to the two ends of this vast unbroken and eternal chain that binds his mighty Universe in one harmonious and ceaseless round. That all things are held in subordination to the accomplishment of one great end — God's preconceived plans of creation.

The wisdom and power of God forbid the doctrine that he has made any thing in vain, and that consequently he has not regretted and whined, pined and petted at his own works, as has been taught by many ignorant Christians and Divines whose opinions have been taken from the mischievous mistranslations and interpolations of the Bible.

All things bear a primary and kindred relation and are means and ends in the one eternal design. God has not given the power of self-creation to any being on earth, nor the ability of counteracting and disappointing his sovereign will in the realization of his first and final object of creation. It is the principles then of the all-sufficiency of creative power and wisdom which I wish to teach, and to show that the doctrines that God has done, things which he did not purpose to do, and that his laws do not act in harmony and undeviating fate — • and farther that those doctrines involve the grossest absurdity and self-contradiction.

My only aim is to teach those demi-gods and haughty monarchs of earth, that there is a great God in Heaven from whose mandates there is no escape, and that all we have to do is to study and obey his eternal and immutable laws as established in nature.

It is by those rebel dins of discord and pretended heirs of Heaven that nature has been excommunicated and wrested

PREFACE. IT

from the hands of its creator, and a thieving monopoly of God's best blessings to his children instituted and enjoined in the cannons of holy faith as essential to salvation.

Though God gives sunshine, soil and rain to all on earth, and spreads his blessings with a profuse and impartial hand around us, those elect and especial favorites of God deny to nine hundred and ninety-nine in the thousand of their brethren, the great boon of heaven — eternal life. Thus have those thricedeformed images of their maker for whom Christ died, crucified him anew and dared the wrath of Heaven. The sorrows of their poor brother are looked upon with the cold indifference of a bigot's heart, and yet can their disdained and toiling slave say to them : " In the name of God and by the decrees of eternal justice — am I not a brother and a man ?" Yea, and cannot the humble dog which he calls a brute, say in piteous tones of suffering neglect : " Am I not thy faithful friend ?" Tupper, in his proverbial philosophy, expresses himself thus :

" What hath the generous dog less than reason, Or the brute man more than instinct ?'^

Oh, we mock monarchs, we worms of the earth and insects of an hour ! Soon will we be brought low to commingle with our brother emmets in the dust ! Yes, soon — very soon will those proud forms be dissolved and mixed with the varying elements to be wafted to the extremes of land and sea, and yet will God's vast universe, created for the special benefit of us, specks of earth, roll on in all his pristine youth and resplendent glory through endless time. Gur hope, then, is not in our strength or in the favoritism of a just and impartial God, but in our weakness, ignorance and humbleness of heart. Then let us not take from God nor from our brother more than our rights — nor refuse to obey those ordinations of Heaven so plainly written upon the face of nature.

It will be shown that man is brought into this world without his knowledge or consent — that he is borne through the transit of Ufe by the laws of necessity, and that his exit from time to eternity is determined and fixed by the indissoluble chain of causality. That life, itself, is a forced state, and would die out as quickly without the vital air and the food that develope and nourish it as would the flame without the fuel which sustains it. That thought, in like manner, has no independent substantial existence. It is an effect — a result. It is conditional — it is the product of a subjective and objective unity. It, like life, has no intrinsic, real or prior existence, but is a new creation, and in turn is possessed of creative powers. For instance, powder has an existence, and the spark, also, but explosion has none — it is a new creation, a result, a product of the union of both. But, when thus begot, becomes a real, yet momentary entity — a power and a cause of other results. In like manner, the child is not a real entity, has no separate or independent existence, but is an effect, a product, the result of the union of father and mother, or a subject and an object. Just so it is with life and all organic existences. The grain of wheat that has been enveloped with the mummies of Egypt for three thousand years, and from which whole fields of wheat have sprung, would remain through all times without the stimulus of light, heat, soil and moistm'e that forces it into existence, and developes its intrinsic and inherent nature. In the acorn there are no limbs, leaves, roots or bark to be seen, nor is there any chicken to be seen in the egg, but by incubation, the magic power of nature is made manifest. Just so it is with the mind which would remain forever without ideas, unless it came in contact with objects to beget and develope those ideas.

All the faculties of the mind, so called, will be tested in turn, and it will be shown that this parade about external and internal powers of mind, and that the enumeration of faculties, as sensation, perception, consciousness, conception, memory, imagination, reason, judgment, attention, taste, and the moral faculty, are but lying sounds without an archetype, and distinctions without a difference, calculated only to confuse and mislead the pupil. These are delusive and contradictory terms, when carried out in their application. We might with equal propriety add the faculties of hunger, thirst, cold, hatred, love ; of fiddling and of dancing, and of all our endless thoughts, passions and emotions. At every turn of the mind, like that of the Kaleidescope, there is a new form that might have a new name for countless millions of times. The mind like the wax, is a simple substratum that may be shaped to many forms and stamped with endless impressions. Sensation, alone, constitutes that substratum upon which the whole superstructure of mind is founded. Feeling, alone, gives us a knowledge of all impressions — of every thing that we can by any possibility be made acquainted with. Now, from sensation arise pleasure and pain, and next follow desire and aversion. This constitutes the whole -^foundation and sum total of the human mind. God has implanted in mankind universally, a desire for happiness, and an aversion to misery. This is steady, uniform and innate — it is in all persons and in all ages — and it is the first law of our nature and assented to by all— it is a law of our constitution, and consequently intuitive and fatal.

God has so inseparably united virtue and happiness, that it becomes our interest to sustain moral rule — our own property, life and liberty depending upon it. Mill says, in his logic page 13-34 : "A feeling and a state of consciousness are equivalent expressions : everything is a feeling of which the mind is conscious. Every thing which it reels, or in other words, which forms a part of its own sentient existence." For this httle fragment of divine truth which he has dared to express in regard to mind, he has been much abused. Though this single sentence is worth all his book besides, though the best work on logic ever published, it has suffered the censure of theology for reducing the mind and the divine consciousness to a mere feeling — a thing which the uneducated and even the brutes possess. Mill's fault is in bringing truth and philosophy to the light — stript of its mystic garb, and making it so simple and plain, that the common laymen see and understand it. Yulgar and degraded as sensation may be, as represented by mystic and humbug writers, it will appear to the reader, before he is through with this little volume, that without sensation or feeling, we could not be conscious of a single idea, or even of our own existence. Feeling or sensibility, in short, is the distinguishing, characteristic and high boast of the soul, as rendering it susceptible of pleasure and pain, and consequently the subject of rewards and punishments. It must be granted by every close and unbiased observer, that we cannot be conscious of a thing without feeling it, nor feel 'and know a thing without being conscious of it. It must then be as Mill says, that feeling is the soul, and the substratum, and sum total of mind ; yes, and the identical thing called divine conscience, without which we could neither feel, nor know anything, and why theology should so traiterously misrepresent the simple laws of God, I cannot conceive, except it is to mislead mankind in a knowledge of their own nature, and thus perpetuate the necessity of learned imposters. It seems to me impossible that any set of authors should be so stupid as to fill their books, in good faith, with such gabble and gibberish as they have done, and I, therefore, surmise that it is more fi'om design than ignorance.

Holding as I do, that truth is the word and work of God himself, in whatever department of his government it may be found, I shall boldly pursue it with sacred fidelity, lead me where it may ; regardless of vulgar hue and cry, and the billings-gate ribaldry that may be poured upon me, by the foul and fallible mouth of that nut-shell, petty and party divinity, which has ever been the bane of religion, and the clamorous and clinging cure of science. In my condemnation of superstition, man-worship, and all other conventional and artistic innovations upon the pure and rational worship of God, it may be supposed, by the craven devotees to human authority, that I am opposed to religion itself, in which case, no inference could be more false ; my efforts throughout, being to strengthen and confirm the sacred bonds of reason and religion : not the religion of tho

Pope, nor of Luther — not of Calvinism, Armenianism, Mahometanism, or of Mormonism ; but the religion of God, the creator and governor, not of a little sect, but of the vast universe, wherein his son, our Savior Jesus Christ, shall be my preceptor and exemplar. I shall not teach the god of a dark corner, nor intriguer with any petty party — not a blind, mutable, partial and passionate God, who does things one hour and regrets and frets at his own acts the next, but a God of wisdom, power, love and mercy. Believing as I do, that there are great and grievous errors in all the schisms, isms and dogmatisms of man, which are detestable in the eyes of God, I feel it my religious duty to show the irrationality and enormity of such fatal folly. In exposing the superstition and mummeries of men, I shall expect the condemnation of fanaticism and blind prejudice ; but God whose supremacy, I have maintained throughout, will give me the reward of his smiling approbation. Believing that religion can be sustained by reason, I shall strive to show the absurdity of basing it upon mysteries ; and, in supposing that uninspired men can by any course of natural education, know any more of those mysteries than the common ploughman. The very name of mystery carries with it the impossibility of human explanation ; and why, then, give such degrading credence to the vanity of our earthly imposters, who profess to explain that which in its very nature is incomprehensible. I know that all who may dare the sacredness of long-established customs, must suffer popular censure, and I can now see Socrates swallowing the poison, because he could not believe in the corrupt religion of his day, and Galileo upon his knees before an ignorant and ungodly priesthood.

I also can see the mighty array of holy orders, and the thunder bolts of the Vatican hurled at Martin Luther, who was anathematized and pronounced by sacred custom, too base for dogs to eat with. John Wesley too, in common with all others, who have labored for the freedom of thought and the improvement of religion, have in like manner been rewarded by the malevolence and calumny of the church. The proper use of religion I hold to be essential to the good order and happiness of society ; while in the abuse of it, we have witnessed the most horrid scenes of wickedness and inhumanity. The greatest blessings on earth, we know, may be perverted to the most powerful engines of destruction. The incendiary who, by fire burns whole cities, and the Demon who, by the Bible, broils his brother alive, should in common receive the condemnation and wrathful detestation of all mankind. He who opposes the proper use of religion, opposes the known will of God, as evinced in his own constitution, for he has so interwoven religion into our very nature that every creature on earth possesses it. Search throughout the darkest ages and amongst the rudest nations of earth, and it is there. In light and in shade it is seen and felt, and fret it as you may, you cannot wear it out. Can I then, with the conviction of these facts, as firmly fixed upon my soul, as that of my own existence, impiously reject religion as an imposter. Some kind of religion mankind always had and ever will have, and being well assured, (speaking even as a heathen,) that ours is better suited to the constitution and wants of man, than any other, I thank my God for opening my eyes to its boundless reign and its endless blessings. Man left in this world of sorrows without that spark of light, is doomed to darkness, misery, and hopeless despau'. He is born with the seeds of destruction within him, and every step he takes in the chase of pleasure, pain steps close upon his heels, and in a speedy exit from all that is near and dear on earth, there is no escape. The loathsome and yawning grave is ever open before him, into which, without the hope of immortality, he sinks down to that dark and dread abyss of eternal oblivion. Religion, on the contrary throws a bright and heavenly halo around the soul that lights up the dark chambers of the grave, and guilds the empire of death itself. When the monster death is dealing his last fell strokes, we can in rapturous joy cry ont with the sainted Paul — '' death, where is thy sting, grave, thy vietories !" Soon shall mj disembodied soul ascend from the dark and dread abodes of dissolution to those bright realms of eternal bliss, where sickness and sorrow, and parting will be no more, for ever and for ever ; and where our dearly loved and long lost children, kindred and friends will see and know us face to face. Here, amidst perennial sweets and the undying love of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, will we endure in happy bonds through ceaseless time.