Radical problems

Contents

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CHAPTER PAGE

I. Open Questions i

I. Open Questions

WHAT legislators sometimes say is true of all questions : they may be divided. Life looks like a page disfigured with interrogation-points ; and every ansv\^er breeds new curiosity, as if it were a polyp. The child is an incarnate question, posing all his elders ; and the widening circle of light subtends such a broader round of darkness as to give color to the old sage's remark, — " One thing I know, that God hates inquisitiveness ; " while many, like Lord Bacon, value investigation superficially for its results of utility, despairing of absolute truth. But experience and memory are tests that all inquiry is intrinsically precious. I call to mind a college excursion with the mathematical professor, to measure with instruments, by triangulation, the distance between some towns in Maine. How far it was I have long since forgot, but not the wonderful delight of the experiment, the new dignity of the search for hill- tops of observation, nor the cup of tamarind water a good woman, honoring our errand, gave to the thirsty, foot-sore wanderers by the way. We are glad at every solution of a problem ; yet queries are the intellectual miser*s hoard, in whose satisfaction by successful study he would not rejoice, but that other queries take their place. I fancy a shade of sadness tinged the exultation of Columbus when the Western hemisphere showed signs of its neighborhood to his vessel, to unbury the mystery of the deep, and give an interpretation to the magnificent dream he had so soon to exchange for ungrateful facts. To guess pleases as to find out the conundrum, riddle, or buried city. Our first conception equals in pleasure any verification. The hen is not happier among the brood she is so anxious about than in her nest ; and in the mind's incubation there are no heavy hours, but Time blends with Eternity, so deep and peaceful is its flow.

In all pursuit there is a certain dignity. The money-making we despise is nobler than profuseness, and is often not avarice of acquisition, but activity of worthy powers ; so that a sincere Croesus said, if his children had as much comfort in spending as he in accumulating his fortune, he should be content. It is a pulpit lamentation, as shallow as it is doleful, that we are but getting ready to live, as also that poet line, —

" Man never is, but always to be blest."

Let me join the enterprise, share who will the fruit ! To go with Cortes was better than Mexican gold ; and my friend's expedition to Alaska is of more worth than any plant or precious fur. You buy your land and build your house, arrange the orchard and trim the garden-grounds, and then expect your reward. Foolish, if you count on any recompense sweeter than you had as you went along ! No peach or pear will be more delicious than your thought in setting out the trees. My neighbor grew weary of his perfect situation, and wanted to cross the bay and occupy a lonelier point.

There is a movement-cure for the mind. Of one not established in his views, it is said in pity, " He is all afloat ;" as if that were not the best condition, grander and safer than to be ashore, — as if there were a finer spectacle of ships, in port than of the yacht-squadron racing along the coast, or the grating of my keel on the beach could be such transport as to be rocked in my boat on the waves. The anchor, said one, is a true emblem : it holds the vessel fast, though it does not hold the vessel still. But the eternal heaving underneath is a signal that the true state is to hoist at the windlass, and away ; and no figure of Hope leaning on the fluke is jiist to its nature of exploration without end. . There is provision for further growth in the bones of the skull and organs of the brain after the sutures are closed : let there be space to expand in the hardest understanding.

Freedom is not caprice, but room to enlarge. There is a certain shock from the pavement to whoever returns from roaming among the mountains or by the sea. The city streets, like broad curtains or enormous window-blinds, shut us in ; and we feel robbed of the elements — light, air, earth, and water — which make the liberty of our frame, and are better than any physician's medicine-chest for every nervous disease. We want not only so much sun and oxygen as can be got into a chamber, the drink a bottle will hold, and ground enough, like a caged tiger, to pace to and fro in, — but to breathe the whole atmosphere, behold the sky full of radiance, put our lips to the living spring, and have no goal for our feet. Civilization increases liberty, which is not, as jurists say, its price. When institutions become bounds, the soul is cramped. Forms and ordinances multiplied and made essential to salvation feel sepulchral, like some walled town of Quebec whose old defences stand against enemies long since passed away. All creeds and rituals are on the defensive against benefactors who open the question of their truth, and stop them with a challenge for the loyal pass-word. Jesus well prescribed for our communication, nay^ ^2<^JK) as well 2i?, yea^ yea. I admired the little girl who to my questions rolled out a succession of clear noes round as a revolver's bullets, — a sign that the footing I should be on with her would never become a swamp of good-nature ; and was pleased with the yearling boy who said, plain as he could, " Hands off!" to those who would seize him, issued his declaration of independence that he was no lump of dough to be kneaded, but a block of marble to be turned into beauty by some artist's skill. Establishments must answer for themselves to him by and by !

The dogmatic look is stupid ; the inquiring, bright, like that of people eager in the chase. So we can explain the extreme changes in the same countenances. How uninteresting when they are close, with nothing to impart or receive, like the shut bivalve on the tideless flats ! People who have made up their minds, and are fixed, as they say, resemble merchants taking

OPEN QUESTIONS. e

account of stock, or householders making an inventory of their goods, instead of venturing bold purchase, exercising hospitality, or driving a brisk trade. Lighthouses by day are useless for guides ; and your system of theology, which no ever-burning thought illuminates, is an old vase or lantern that lost its lamp long ago. I observe the face of that young woman settling upon the lees of religious reflection, — how plain and ugly the features are ! Anon she comes to me, earnest in study, ready to compare notes, and so handsome I cannot believe my own eyes.

We are made for spiritual progress. Our organism hints for its object perpetuation of the race. But the easy propagation of vulgar specimens, and the number of noble members of mankind without posterity ; the decease of genius and virtue leaving no issue, though the trustees of those shining glories have descendants also from their loins ; or the too much or little of some parental element, giving insanity, eccentricity, or idiocy, instead of the expected soundness, — force us to conclude there are ends beside earthly inheritance and continuance. Jesus and Paul and Washington have no heirs ; and to how many might Shakspeare's sonnets to one who was cheatinp- the world with barren singleness be addressed ! Without intentions of development outreaching fleshly designs, men would come down to the level of animals and plants. In the unfolding of truth is the honor of our species and the immortality of every soul ; and for this all questions of truth must be opened. One thing is sacred, — the sincere thought ; and the being of God, character of Jesus, ultimacy of Christianity, reality of heaven, must be discussed. If, in the old Bible hyperbole, the scheme of redemption is so fine the angels desire to look into it, surely we are not forbid.

Doubtless, in the wide charter of freedom, offensive and extravagant things will be said. The remedy is not to mind them. Defy incendiaries not by watch-

"^ men and engines, but by building fire-proof! Why be ti'oubled everybody does not think like you of Christ ? Tell the defamer of your Master his battery is too weak or your constitution too strong for a shock. Not only children, but childish opinions, are the better for a little wholesome neglect. Irrational rationalists, rootless radicals, and infidels for pride or prominence of unbelief, are to be let severely alone. Only they who have something to say are, with refutation or welcome, to be met. Set your castle-walls and windows too high for the malicious to bombard or break with stones. Are you disturbed by a doctrine ? Surely it has ground ! There must have been something in the book, or Paine's " Age of Reason " would not have hurt so much or lasted so long. Calvin would not have burnt Servetus could he have otherwise answered his argument. Jonathan Mayhew said the foes of freemen in Church and State, in default of logic, knocked out their brains, and so furnished an effectual reply. That man, you say, is a common scold. Take no notice of him, if you would give him better than he sends. Recrimination of others crimi-

y nates you, and is the recriminator's proof. Solomon says a fretful wife is like a bitter rain. Let her rain under as it rains on the roof, and heed either storm alike ! Oaths and remonstrances in the street are answered every day by not stopping to parley, but simply keeping on. You resist only when wrestled with : the most terrible are the speechless retorts. What an iconoclast ! you say. I see not that he breaks any thing. He is impotent who bolts or is schismatic without cause. Outrageous expressions ! you declare. I am not outraged. The community is not absorbed in the barking of dogs. Treat the irritable controversialist, who makes a question of every statement, as travellers do the brainless cur who thinks it his duty to run every moment and growl at the gate. I walk right by the guns on the Common bellowing so loud, that have no shot in them for all the noise and blaze, and despised the loud manifesto of a farmer's dog when I learned he had no teeth, though I saw some boys in an English preserve scared by a c-anine monster alike destitute ; and there are critics that mouth and bay, but draw no blood. I suspect the dogs Paul told his friends to beware of had something to say, or could bite.

So God himself sets limits to the objector in the weakness of the objection, and dispenses us from all need to bridle others' tongues, or, like Louis Napoleon with his throne of bayonets, to muzzle the press. Truth cannot be disproved, purity cannot be libelled, nor wisdom overthrown. Repression of free inquiry is not too much ridiculed in the proverb that a cat may look upon a king. I thought, said one, our house in the great September gale would go, till I remembered it was founded on a rock. A basis in the eternal rock who can shake? Pay not folly the compliment of fear. It takes a deep sound to reverberate. What you do not echo, do not dread.

But conservatives distinguish between questions of science and questions of faith : the first are open ; not the last, which no theories of nature can affect. To all criticisms of the Scripture history or cosmogonyone answer is made : that the Bible does not mean to teach natural knowledge. Doubtless the sentiment of faith lies deeper than the understanding which the peace of God passes. Yet articles of faith are amenable to the intellect. We distinguish that, too, as a general power, from any logical conclusions. But it is not true that any feeling is independent of the judgment. Jesus bids us love God with all our mind as well as heart ; and the Divine way, not our imperceptiveness, is the basis of our trust. We are learning that horses do not travel better, with more courage or safety, for blinders ; and the soul is no swifter for duty or loftier in aspiration for being hoodwinked. Ignorance is not the mother of devotion, but of superstition and obsequious flattery ; not of service, but of servility. We worship the King in the world he makes his crystal palace. Has our idea of the building nought to do with our prayer? Had a Ptolemaist as much cause to ascribe glory to God as a Copernican .^ If to Alphonso creation was on the old notion so misfashioned he thought he could, if present, have given the Creator useful hints, his regard for the Architect must have been lessened by the faults of the house, which Schopenhauer held so enormous he saw nothing to praise and could not adore at all, leaving us a book not deserving to be opened, and a portrait we should fain turn to the wall, save that the pessimist was so honest and brave. The Deity in Genesis that made such short business of the world, doing it up in six days, — like some master workman, called a driver because he gets through and throws off so many affairs in the twenty-four hours, or a jobber stopping a moment, then off on some other errand, like Jehu with his team,

— wins not the reverence we pay to Him who works in spaces no geometry can measure, and through periods no numerals can express.

Faith not touched by sight, taking no guidance or glory from the eye of the mind ? The God that commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son, or prompted Jacob to plot with his mother to rob Esau by practising on father Isaac with his anachronism of false hair,

— there are people not a few, and ever becoming more, who cannot believe. The old altar-fires are gone out, and we can no more go back to the Hebrew notions than to the lambs and goats of their sacrifice. Science is to be minister in the new temple not completed yet, and will bring abundant fuel to the shrine to feed the flame. The one Jehovah of the Jews, presiding over a narrow province, is expanding to the manifold Pervader of an infinite sphere. His unity is verified by analogies, of whose extent and clearness Moses or Jesus gave no hint, but modern investigation shows the universe kindling and alive with. When from the leafing of plants to the orbits of planets a law of relation is traced, the words, / am^ and there is none beside me^ gather a wider sense than in their first utterance. As the soft aurora and the rending thunder suggest a common electricity, whose spending is followed by cold, we catch a glimpse of threads that stretch through the firmament and sew all parts of lO RADICAL PROBLEMS.

God's live garment together finer than any handiwork or conception of man.

The keeping open of the questions has, more than any closure of them, promoted piety. Religion would have been crushed, if not quenched, by any authority to solve them at whatever Hebrew or Christian time. Could terms of salvation have been written down, and the plenary verbal inspirationists have succeeded in the final settlement they undertook, the Church would have been banished from the circle of light, degraded below the arena of controversy, and dismissed from the region of intelligence as no subject of.reason, but a motive to grovel and cringe like abject savages in a fit of terror, too gloomy to be streaked with the twilight of doubt for a reminder and herald of the dawn. If we would be rid of denial, danger, and despair, we must keep every thing open : the conventicle, communion, caucus, hall, and railway track, whose clogging by some untimely train is occasion of ruin and death. The thought of vast assemblies for musical celebrations of peace and international friendship — nobler than that division of the spoils at which the so-called Internationals^ are, let us trust, falsely understood to aim — has had such fortune as to be accepted now for an inspiration, till we at last invite to wave together amid strains of harmony the flags of all the kingdoms and republics of the earth, type of a Commune worthy to have. Eaith must not in its proportions fall below the generosity of amusement and politics, or lag in corners out of sight. Let the Dogmatist give place to the Liberal ! When Jesus represents the Judge as setting the goats on the left hand,

OPEN QUESTIONS. II

he may refer not to the lascivious but stubborn nature of the beast, which even in tender years rears on its hinder legs to butt at your kindest approach. If the bigots are so typified, they will turn up in unexpected places. Let them reasonably suffer the love that would emancipate them from their fetters ; and not, like the cross cow I saw, hook the benefactor that would untether the bonds from their own feet.

Free inquiry is more than a prerogative of one man against the interference of another. The variety of questions we ask, as of wants we feel, is the length of our scale, and measures the dignity of our being : let us pity the angels if, as we are told, they have found out the secret of Nature and know all. The animals seem to inquire little, and maybe classified according to the signs they show, in their several tribes, of wishing to learn. The summer-flies stiffen, curl up, and wither in the autumn wind, without any apparent queries what death is, or any dread of their fate. Their incuriosity marks the degree of their inferiority. Our interest in the subject, our constitution to entertain the problem. Job's desire to understand, If a man die^ shall he live again P — is the token of immortality ; for it is no creation of our will, no fiction of man, but the instigation of God, who hints nothing he will not carry out. Shall not the lower creatures we lord it over, and are so cruel to, have his vindication also ? The cook told the complaining duck, " Do not cry : all these things will be explained to you by and by." Of how much we are as ignorant as the bird seized in the barn-yard, or under the doom of the fowler's gun !

Every theological system or sect Is an attempt to close questions ; and every prophet's word a new eruption through the old crust of conventionality. The denominations are so many extinct craters, only like ^tna or Vesuvius showing signs of activity, and every little while breaking out afresh. What is the deadest conservatism is only a short lull, a temporary sleep. Like the son of Agamemnon, the searching mind comes terrible to purify. Unitarianism, Universalism, Episcopacy, the English Church, and the Romish, are all rumbling with pent-up commotions, and out of the fiery contention in their own bowels ready to throw up, like the aiguilles round Mont Blanc, rival summits of belief; and any undertaking to shut up and seal the questions respecting God and man and heaven, Bible or Saviour, prophecy or worship, is like chaining down the safety-valve of the engine or binding too tight the breathing-holes of the globe. Destructive explosions, earthquakes that swallow up cities, ensue.

But is every thing left at loose ends like a feather on the wind ? No : questions of doctrine must be open, but questions of conscience closed before the day passes, and the opportunity is lost. No moral problem has many links. Open questions in a house about trivial matters are like open wounds. Of what bits we build our heavy cross ! Do not spend the day discussing whether you shall drive or walk, invite a guest or accept an invitation, wear white or black, write a letter, rub out a spot, be on speaking terms with a neighbor, or have honest acquaintance with any woman or man. Time is valuable, nerves are precious. " I cannot," said a man, making thousands

OPEN QUESTIONS. I3

every day, " consume my strength in debates with boys whether they shall steal my grapes or run across my shed." Have no open questions to quarrel about and generate in your affections chronic disease. It is better to decide a case wrongly than to get into a wronp- state of mind. You are sincere and conscientious in your respective views : do not, therefore, be tyrannical to insist and urge them past all patience, and reopen the topic for bickering without cessation or fruit. Make not your conscience a torment. The w^orst thing in the world may be a man's conscience, or what, like Launcelot Gobbo, it is his- humor to call such. His sting is not that of the bee laden with honey, but the barren wasp. As lief have a hornet buzzing round your ears, or gad-fly searching for the sore spot, as a domestic or social critic falling fatally on your weak side. A duellist may be pardoned for finding out the armor's open joint or inexpert pass of his adversary; but there should be no challenge between friends. Spare in your associate, him or her that leans on your bosom, the tender place. Aggravate not already existing inflammation, but heal and soothe. " Dwelling together In unity is like ointment," says the Psalmist : there is no salve like silence, and no blister of mustard or Spanish flies equal to a fresh plaster of interrogatory words. I do not wonder the poor Malay sailor begged the captain either to whip or scold him, but not do both together; for that, like the multiplication-table to Marjorie Fleming, is what human nature cannot endure.

People are prosecuted for assault and battery ; but the language I they fling is harder than their fists. It Is against tlie law for private persons to carry arms ; but what stiletto or pistol is so dangerous as a tongue ? It is harder to hold than a bull by the horns. I fancy that excellent actor, Walter Montgomery, followed to England by the woman of ill repute, declaring she would be his wife, who two days after the wedding destroyed himself, whatever she suffered at his hands, suffered something from her lips. Little vexations, more than enormous crimes, lay waste our joy, and turn life from a boon to a ban. They say the Inquisition is abolished : it has an emissary in every house. The mosqiJito has an open question whether he shall insert his lancet, and take his fill of your blood, which, to settle the matter, you might freely let him do, but for the host of his peers on a like surgical errand behind ; and there is a sort of mosquito-mind always alert to consider w^here most to your disadvantage, and the security of its satisfaction against your comfort, it can make its petty attack. Be not that name for Satan, the accuser of your brethren. Put your conscience to private use. Keep it in your closet for a probe, not unsheathe it as a sword. The unhealthy action of the human frame is rightly called disorder : what shall be said of those that disease us with their moral complaints and uncharitable judgments } They are authors of the worst maladies, and most contagious. Our Orthodox friends well bid us beware of the plague of our own heart ; for it is catching, whether yellow fever and cholera be so or not. Does anybody in your circle desire to lead.^ Let him not communicate to you that itch ! Ivy or the wild sumach is not poisonous to some vigorous people. But we do not phiiit

OPEN QUESTIONS. I5

the shrub or vine at our door-sill : we give a wide berth to- the deadly night-shade, even in the pasture ; and we learn to avoid folks who envenom us with their manners and speech, and by their very glance disturb, as some cannot look at or brush by the evil plant but their skin will prick and swell. " This creature worries the life out of me," said one, of a dog biting and scratching only in play. But ill-temper has worse teeth and claws ; and, of all the gifts distributed among human beings, the least to be coveted is the positive genius some disputatious persons have for making everybody unhappy, dealing in questions only, and accepting no one's reply.

Qiiestions of action and disposition are somehow, at length, to be closed. I must decide if I am going in tlie cars or the steamer. If any temper of envy or jealousy enter the lists and contest the prize, it will be master or I shall. To settle moral questions is safe ; for no man ever decided to be a drunkard or profligate, however sin take advantage of his indecision to make him a slave. Foster's Essay on Decision of Character was wise.

But questions of doctrine cannot be wholly closed ; because, first, words are inadequate to express all the truth. Some conclusions about finite things abide beyond any power to shake. Kepler's and Newton's laws of attraction hold like theorems in the mathematics. The effects of food and poison on the human system are demonstrable, though it is disputed if alcohol be food or medicine. The physiological and intellectual analogies run further between man and the brute with every day's investigation ; and plants disclose r similitudes reminding one of the classic Dryads and voices of trees complaining when the limbs were torn. Iron, in the shape of filings about the roots, is given to a pear-tree to prevent or cure a disease appearing as spots on the fruit, — just the tonic the doctor prescribes to his patient ; and lime strengthens it as it does our teeth and bones, while it drinks every day, or like an animated creature dies of thirst. But when we come to inquire what God is, or the soul is, or life or death is, or what we are before or after our mortality, our most earnest convictions cannot be precipitated as a solution or projected like a chart. They refuse the confinement of a creed. The longevity of a dog or horse, eagle or elephant, is fixed ; but of a spirit there is no report. There are no terms to express it, or our persuasions about it, unless we have made up our mind that this mind is a mode of matter, the phosphorescence of decay, like some vegetable and animal particles ceasing to shine when it ceases to rot. We can compass the definite with ease. What is done in secret or whispered in the ear in closets will come abroad and be published on the house-top ; for an occurrence is impossible to hide, or a noise to be unheard. Do not tell anybody, we whisper. It is a vain request ! It will be known because it is a fact ; and every fact is matter of knowledge. But the celestial realities defy aught but a hint in speech. Because, says the sceptic, they are so vague, have no solidity more than moonshine. But is moonshine nothing? Is it less than the stifi:^ and ponderous clod ?

'.' How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank! '*

OPEN QJJESTIONS. I 7

Lorenzo in the play showed Jessica all the orbs of heaven in tune ; and the glories of paradise gleam through this same moonshine, as you call it, of the mind, though you can make no medium for this light, and no conductor for this lightning, of a phrase. Is it all in the Bible ? As well say the electricity of Nature is collected in a Leyden jar, that coined money has exhausted the mines of Nevada, or some cabinet contains all the jewels of God.

Spiritual questions must be open, secondly, because of honest difference of belief, — open between diverse persons as in every single mind. Attempts to force conformity on the ground of the unity of truth imply our possession of it, delinquency in whoever rejects our results, and the right to inflict penalties for disagreement as a crime. Shall there be for the iniquity of intolerance no punishment? The inquisitor shall come to question at last. Sure as God ordains sincerity of manifold conclusions, the hierarchs will reach a sore pass when the blood of heretics shall call for judgment after long crying. From prisons underground, and tombs they were walled into, above it they shall ascend as shapes of prophets, for sentence not from the oppressor's but the victim's mouth. Sometime I shall exercise the right you deny. Resurrection of the body ! A poor boon God grant I may be spared ! The rising shall be of the soul in every faculty, and of that best of its parts, free inquiry. The questions choked off and strangled, hushed with the voices that put them, shall return with imperial dignity of divine permission and a prerogative of eternal satisfaction ; and " what we know not now we shall know hereafter," though other, greater things to be known, suspected and half seen, tempt and beckon us on. It will af)pear that Thought did not perish on a cross, and Freedom was not choked on a scaffold, and Humanity was not beheaded with a sword ; that of many notes God made the music false pretenders to his confidence branded as discord ; and that heaven is no monotony, but, like an earthly performer's, the great Harmonizer's skill is measured by the reach of keys he can command.