Essays — Second Series
as morbid; "I thought I was right, but I was not,"--and the same
immeasurable credulity demanded for new audacities. If we were not of
all opinions! if we did not in any moment shift the platform on which
we stand, and look and speak from another! if there could be any
regulation, any 'one-hour-rule,' that a man should never leave his
point of view without sound of trumpet. I am always insincere, as always
knowing there are other moods.
How sincere and confidential we can be, saying all that lies in
the mind, and yet go away feeling that all is yet unsaid, from the
incapacity of the parties to know each other, although they use the same
words! My companion assumes to know my mood and habit of thought, and we
go on from explanation to explanation until all is said which words can,
and we leave matters just as they were at first, because of that vicious
assumption. Is it that every man believes every other to be an incurable
partialist, and himself a universalist? I talked yesterday with a pair
of philosophers; I endeavored to show my good men that I love everything
by turns and nothing long; that I loved the centre, but doated on the
superficies; that I loved man, if men seemed to me mice and rats; that
I revered saints, but woke up glad that the old pagan world stood its
ground and died hard; that I was glad of men of every gift and nobility,
but would not live in their arms. Could they but once understand that
I loved to know that they existed, and heartily wished them God-speed,
yet, out of my poverty of life and thought, had no word or welcome for
them when they came to see me, and could well consent to their living in
Oregon, for any claim I felt on them,--it would be a great satisfaction.
*****
NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS.
In the suburb, in the town,
On the railway, in the square,
Came a beam of goodness down
Doubling daylight everywhere:
Peace now each for malice takes,
Beauty for his sinful weeks,
For the angel Hope aye makes
Him an angel whom she leads.
NEW ENGLAND REFORMERS.
A LECTURE READ BEFORE THE SOCIETY IN AMORY HALL, ON SUNDAY, MARCH 3,
1844.
WHOEVER has had opportunity of acquaintance with society in New England
during the last twenty-five years, with those middle and with those
leading sections that may constitute any just representation of the
character and aim of the community, will have been struck with the great
activity of thought and experimenting. His attention must be commanded
by the signs that the Church, or religious party, is falling from
the Church nominal, and is appearing in temperance and non-resistance
societies; in movements of abolitionists and of socialists; and in very
significant assemblies called Sabbath and Bible Conventions; composed of
ultraists, of seekers, of all the soul of the soldiery of dissent,
and meeting to call in question the authority of the Sabbath, of the
priesthood, and of the Church. In these movements nothing was more
remarkable than the discontent they begot in the movers. The spirit of
protest and of detachment drove the members of these Conventions to
bear testimony against the Church, and immediately afterward, to declare
their discontent with these Conventions, their independence of their
colleagues, and their impatience of the methods whereby they were
working. They defied each other, like a congress of kings, each of
whom had a realm to rule, and a way of his own that made concert
unprofitable. What a fertility of projects for the salvation of the
world! One apostle thought all men should go to farming, and another
that no man should buy or sell, that the use of money was the cardinal
evil; another that the mischief was in our diet, that we eat and drink
damnation. These made unleavened bread, and were foes to the death to
fermentation. It was in vain urged by the housewife that God made yeast,
as well as dough, and loves fermentation just as dearly as he loves
vegetation; that fermentation develops the saccharine element in the
grain, and makes it more palatable and more digestible. No; they wish
the pure wheat, and will die but it shall not ferment. Stop, dear
nature, these incessant advances of thine; let us scotch these
ever-rolling wheels! Others attacked the system of agriculture, the use
of animal manures in farming, and the tyranny of man over brute nature;
these abuses polluted his food. The ox must be taken from the plough and
the horse from the cart, the hundred acres of the farm must be spaded,
and the man must walk, wherever boats and locomotives will not carry
him. Even the insect world was to be defended,--that had been too long
neglected, and a society for the protection of ground-worms, slugs, and
mosquitos was to be incorporated without delay. With these appeared the
adepts of homoeopathy, of hydropathy, of mesmerism, of phrenology, and
their wonderful theories of the Christian miracles! Others assailed
particular vocations, as that of the lawyer, that of the merchant, of
the manufacturer, of the clergyman, of the scholar. Others attacked the
institution of marriage as the fountain of social evils. Others devoted
themselves to the worrying of churches and meetings for public worship;
and the fertile forms of antinomianism among the elder puritans seemed
to have their match in the plenty of the new harvest of reform.
With this din of opinion and debate there was a keener scrutiny of
institutions and domestic life than any we had known; there was sincere
protesting against existing evils, and there were changes of employment
dictated by conscience. No doubt there was plentiful vaporing, and cases
of backsliding might occur. But in each of these movements emerged
a good result, a tendency to the adoption of simpler methods, and an
assertion of the sufficiency of the private man. Thus it was directly in
the spirit and genius of the age, what happened in one instance when a
church censured and threatened to excommunicate one of its members on
account of the somewhat hostile part to the church which his conscience
led him to take in the anti-slavery business; the threatened individual
immediately excommunicated the church in a public and formal process.
This has been several times repeated: it was excellent when it was done
the first time, but of course loses all value when it is copied. Every
project in the history of reform, no matter how violent and surprising,
is good when it is the dictate of a man's genius and constitution, but
very dull and suspicious when adopted from another. It is right and
beautiful in any man to say, 'I will take this coat, or this book, or
this measure of corn of yours,'--in whom we see the act to be original,
and to flow from the whole spirit and faith of him; for then that taking
will have a giving as free and divine; but we are very easily disposed
to resist the same generosity of speech when we miss originality and
truth to character in it.
There was in all the practical activities of New England for the last
quarter of a century, a gradual withdrawal of tender consciences from
the social organizations. There is observable throughout, the contest
between mechanical and spiritual methods, but with a steady tendency of
the thoughtful and virtuous to a deeper belief and reliance on spiritual
facts.
In politics for example it is easy to see the progress of dissent. The
country is full of rebellion; the country is full of kings. Hands off!
let there be no control and no interference in the administration of the
affairs of this kingdom of me. Hence the growth of the doctrine and of
the party of Free Trade, and the willingness to try that experiment, in
the face of what appear incontestable facts. I confess, the motto of
the Globe newspaper is so attractive to me that I can seldom find much
appetite to read what is below it in its columns: "The world is governed
too much." So the country is frequently affording solitary examples of
resistance to the government, solitary nullifiers, who throw themselves
on their reserved rights; nay, who have reserved all their rights; who
reply to the assessor and to the clerk of court that they do not
know the State, and embarrass the courts of law by non-juring and the
commander-in-chief of the militia by non-resistance.
The same disposition to scrutiny and dissent appeared in civil, festive,
neighborly, and domestic society. A restless, prying, conscientious
criticism broke out in unexpected quarters. Who gave me the money with
which I bought my coat? Why should professional labor and that of the
counting-house be paid so disproportionately to the labor of the porter
and woodsawyer? This whole business of Trade gives me to pause and
think, as it constitutes false relations between men; inasmuch as I am
prone to count myself relieved of any responsibility to behave well and
nobly to that person whom I pay with money; whereas if I had not that
commodity, I should be put on my good behavior in all companies, and man
would be a benefactor to man, as being himself his only certificate that
he had a right to those aids and services which each asked of the other.
Am I not too protected a person? is there not a wide disparity between
the lot of me and the lot of thee, my poor brother, my poor sister? Am
I not defrauded of my best culture in the loss of those gymnastics which
manual labor and the emergencies of poverty constitute? I find nothing
healthful or exalting in the smooth conventions of society; I do
not like the close air of saloons. I begin to suspect myself to be a
prisoner, though treated with all this courtesy and luxury. I pay a
destructive tax in my conformity.
The same insatiable criticism may be traced in the efforts for the
reform of Education. The popular education has been taxed with a want of
truth and nature. It was complained that an education to things was
not given. We are students of words: we are shut up in schools, and
colleges, and recitation-rooms, for ten or fifteen years, and come out
at last with a bag of wind, a memory of words, and do not know a thing.
We cannot use our hands, or our legs, or our eyes, or our arms. We do
not know an edible root in the woods, we cannot tell our course by the
stars, nor the hour of the day by the sun. It is well if we can swim and
skate. We are afraid of a horse, of a cow, of a dog, of a snake, of
a spider. The Roman rule was to teach a boy nothing that he could not
learn standing. The old English rule was, 'All summer in the field,
and all winter in the study.' And it seems as if a man should learn to
plant, or to fish, or to hunt, that he might secure his subsistence
at all events, and not be painful to his friends and fellow-men. The
lessons of science should be experimental also. The sight of the planet
through a telescope is worth all the course on astronomy; the shock of
the electric spark in the elbow, outvalues all the theories; the taste
of the nitrous oxide, the firing of an artificial volcano, are better
than volumes of chemistry.
One of the traits of the new spirit is the inquisition it fixed on our
scholastic devotion to the dead languages. The ancient languages, with
great beauty of structure, contain wonderful remains of genius, which
draw, and always will draw, certain likeminded men,--Greek men, and
Roman men,--in all countries, to their study; but by a wonderful
drowsiness of usage they had exacted the study of all men. Once (say two
centuries ago), Latin and Greek had a strict relation to all the science
and culture there was in Europe, and the Mathematics had a momentary
importance at some era of activity in physical science. These things
became stereotyped as education, as the manner of men is. But the Good
Spirit never cared for the colleges, and though all men and boys were